Curse

Martin Alvito · Aug 18, 2009, 12:33 AM // 00:33

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Originally Posted by BadgerzFTW

The thing is, you can't compare Urgoz/Deep greens to Eternal Blades. The greens were expensive to start out because they were new and Urgoz/Deep were new. The prices were bound to plummet with inscriptions and their rarity. Doing U/D normally was enough to drop the price.

Sure, but there's a difference between it taking an hour and a half to complete D/U and blowing through in twenty minutes. The latter drives the price down a lot faster.

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Originally Posted by BadgerzFTW

Eblades are very rare. Eternal Blades WILL go down. Anything will if you give it enough time. Honestly, Eternal Blades becoming less rare/expensive is no reason to nerf a skill. E-peen is not game breaking. If they nerf this skill, I'm hoping it's for a reason that actually affects the game.

What you seem to be missing is that rare items becoming common does affect the game. People stop working to acquire them. Once people quit having goals, they leave. This is why the developers put grind-based goals in as a substitute for content.

I don't approve of grind; I don't think it's the way to address the problem. But I do think that there is reason to create goals and objectives for players, and watering down those systems with overpowered skills is poor game design.

If ANet wants to make this an easy button game to sell it to a younger audience, that's their decision. But I think it's a poor business decision that will hurt them in the long run; too much competition across various genres and platforms.

reaper with no name · Aug 18, 2009, 03:05 AM // 03:05

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Originally Posted by Aeon221

HAY THAR ED COMMA SPECIAL.

Before you hit your iddqd button and roar through some more UW, think a lil bit. Anet previously nerfed two common farms with creature spawns that made it harder to pull off the same farm, but not impossible. Griffon farms with Kephket, and 55ing in UW with Dying Nightmares. IOW a precedent exists for nerfhammering farms with critters.

My suggestion is to leave the iddqd alone, since some people apparently shoot blood from their eyes at the thought of it going away, and just make it harder with a few CG rangers.

Since CG hits through the block effect, even though the attack misses, it'll make the build harder without making it non-functional. IOW allowing skilled players to go through with silly build, but punishing people who suck.

KADUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

You referenced Doom. You, therefore, rule.

UnChosen · Aug 18, 2009, 04:52 AM // 04:52

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Originally Posted by MithranArkanere

More like some people is too lazy, but others will get to the outpost and find no one to form groups, since they are being runned, so all that's left fr them is looking for a runner too.

Dungeon runs are a symptom of extreme grindiness that stems from the ridiculous difficulty that are far above what average pugs can handle...and these are not even end game areas. Which is why people would pay though the nose for a dungeon run.

Seriously when you get people that want to pay 20k+ to complete an area that yields ~2k most of the time...there is a problem. The last time there was a kanthandrax dungeon Z Quest there was a runner for 30k

, and it filled up in less than a minute. And that was with the influx of population due to Z-quest.

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Originally Posted by Unreal Havoc

Wow you really want this game to be dumbed down for the masses don't you?

I call it difficulty adjustment. The masses pays for development and create a community for me to interact with, I can stand some area being a bit "too easy" since I'm semi-casual anyways.

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What planet are you living on? You may not see PuGs do it that much but pretty much most guilds and/or alliances are speed clearing these dungeons nowadays.

Shitty drops? Frog Scepter, Emerald Blade, Bone Dragon Staff, Voltaic Spear (which was another dungeons I missed from my speed clear list), yeah they're really shit aren't they when a decent one can easily fetch you over 100k+.

As for taking effort, some might others don't. Bogroots is loleasy, a half decent team can manly it pretty quickly, and if they don't feel they can spike properly they can take slightly longer and full perma team it.

Like I said, 0.00001% chance of dropping. Its hardly significant, by the time someone gets one of those with and sell it, another person could have gotten the 100k+ just by doing Z quest and Zunlai tournament house. A guildie of mine did VSF for 2 months straight before he got a req 13 Voltaic Spear, all those time he spent farming like mad I got over 300k just doing Z quest everyday and Xunlai for 2 months with a bit of PvP thrown in. As for bogroot...the last time I did it for Z quest it took 3 times because they got "swarmed" by that huge group of frogs near the end, the 2nd time a perma went ahead but "lagged" (more like screwed up) and released the whole swarm onto the group, the 3rd time it was with guild. Majority of players in the game suck, and they should determine the difficulty for non-endgame areas, get over it.

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As efficiently? As reliably? Rememeber a permas selling point is invincibility. Why do you think most runners use permas?

Its RUNNING. Who cares how efficient it is, people getting runs always go get a drink or afk for a while, it doesn't really matter. And a perma runner has higher risk of an instant death if there's any sort of lag near monsters.

AtomicMew · Aug 18, 2009, 04:54 AM // 04:54

[QUOTE=Grj;4805856]Farm's in the past have been nerfed/changed that had a fraction of the impact UWSC has now which begs the question why waste dev time in the first place changing these farms.

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Why do people seem the care that other's where botting HFFF... its not effecting you.

HFFF was broken because it allowed botting which is against the TOS, not because of faction gain. Nowadays, you can get way more faction in a fraction of the time.

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As long as this game is multiplayer to an extent people will "care" what others do in this game, even if they don't even play with them. Its pathetic seeing that as a justification for keeping broken farms/builds/skills because i don't play with you, it doesn't effect you.

Except that wasn't my argument... Learn to read. I stated that UWSC isn't any faster than other farms, and is in fact, quite a bit slower than a few methods of gaining wealth. If getting more people to play a particular area is affecting you (negatively) that is seriously sad.

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Oh and i'm getting that some people seem to think that nerfing Shadow Form is some kind of attack on assassins and regardless of the balance issue or discussion at hand they feel the need to constantly defend it.

Um, no?

Assassin is not even my main.

Targren · Aug 18, 2009, 01:00 PM // 13:00

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Originally Posted by Unreal Havoc

Wow you really want this game to be dumbed down for the masses don't you?

Better than have them quit because it's not fun to play? Seems preferable.

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What planet are you living on? You may not see PuGs do it that much but pretty much most guilds and/or alliances are speed clearing these dungeons nowadays.

Because that's the only reasonable way to do them (more below).

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Shitty drops? Frog Scepter, Emerald Blade, Bone Dragon Staff, Voltaic Spear (which was another dungeons I missed from my speed clear list), yeah they're really shit aren't they when a decent one can easily fetch you over 100k+.

The odds of getting one of the good drops are low enough that a month of speed clears still doesn't guarantee you one, much less a "decent" one.

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No, like I said most people are too lazy to want to make the effort. They'ld rather pay for a run because they don't want to get a group together and try the old fashioned way, playing the game.

You might consider the crappy design in that, rather than assuming the people are lazy. The same dungeons, shuffled around with different groups of OMGBIGNUM monsters with abilities far more "overpowered" than the ones you're complaining about, each (snowman and fronis excepted) taking 1-3 hours or more to play through for a crappy chest with a cheap gemstone reward if you're lucky, but more likely a pair of crappy merchfood golds.

Yeah, you're right. There's no good reason ANYONE would want to skip all THAT entertainment. </sarcasm>

Tom Swift · Aug 18, 2009, 01:43 PM // 13:43

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Originally Posted by Targren

You might consider the crappy design ........ The same dungeons, shuffled around with different groups of OMGBIGNUM monsters ....... taking 1-3 hours or more to play through for a crappy chest with a cheap gemstone reward if you're lucky, but more likely a pair of crappy merchfood golds.

Yeah, you're right. There's no good reason ANYONE would want to skip all THAT entertainment. </sarcasm>

And that is the most intelligent that that has been said in this entire discussion.

Unreal Havoc · Aug 18, 2009, 02:42 PM // 14:42

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Originally Posted by UnChosen

Dungeon runs are a symptom of extreme grindiness that stems from the ridiculous difficulty that are far above what average pugs can handle...and these are not even end game areas. Which is why people would pay though the nose for a dungeon run.

Seriously when you get people that want to pay 20k+ to complete an area that yields ~2k most of the time...there is a problem. The last time there was a kanthandrax dungeon Z Quest there was a runner for 30k

, and it filled up in less than a minute. And that was with the influx of population due to Z-quest.

More fool them. Me and my guildies did several Kathandrax runs that day and completed all of them on HM without using permas or 600/smite.

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I call it difficulty adjustment. The masses pays for development and create a community for me to interact with, I can stand some area being a bit "too easy" since I'm semi-casual anyways.

Normal mode and hard mode. There's a reason why one is called normal and the other is called hard.

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Like I said, 0.00001% chance of dropping. Its hardly significant, by the time someone gets one of those with and sell it, another person could have gotten the 100k+ just by doing Z quest and Zunlai tournament house. A guildie of mine did VSF for 2 months straight before he got a req 13 Voltaic Spear, all those time he spent farming like mad I got over 300k just doing Z quest everyday and Xunlai for 2 months with a bit of PvP thrown in. As for bogroot...the last time I did it for Z quest it took 3 times because they got "swarmed" by that huge group of frogs near the end, the 2nd time a perma went ahead but "lagged" (more like screwed up) and released the whole swarm onto the group, the 3rd time it was with guild.

The chances aren't that low. If they were there wouldn't be a good amount available on the market. You only need to check party search in Kamadan and you can see a good number of Voltaic Spears, Frog Scepters, Celestial compass's etc for sale.

You can also look in Gurus high end section, there's quite a fair amount of stuff for sale there too.

And that's just the items being sold.

Now with that 0.00001% chance of drops there would be literally nothing, right?

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Majority of players in the game suck, and they should determine the difficulty for non-endgame areas, get over it.

Then they should stick to normal mode, that's what the difficulty split is supposed to be there for.

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Originally Posted by Targren

Better than have them quit because it's not fun to play? Seems preferable.

Why are people still playing the game if they don't find it fun to play?

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Because that's the only reasonable way to do them (more below).

No it's not. If you expect to just grab 7 other randoms, people you have never played with and have no idea of their experience or skill level, and roll through an area on HM then you are seriously deluded.

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The odds of getting one of the good drops are low enough that a month of speed clears still doesn't guarantee you one, much less a "decent" one.

I hear this thrown around but I rarely find it to be true. I've had more than my fair share of high end drops from end chests.

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You might consider the crappy design in that, rather than assuming the people are lazy. The same dungeons, shuffled around with different groups of OMGBIGNUM monsters with abilities far more "overpowered" than the ones you're complaining about, each (snowman and fronis excepted) taking 1-3 hours or more to play through for a crappy chest with a cheap gemstone reward if you're lucky, but more likely a pair of crappy merchfood golds.

Yeah, you're right. There's no good reason ANYONE would want to skip all THAT entertainment. </sarcasm>

So lazy design equals lazy gamers? I think I get it now.

Grj · Aug 18, 2009, 03:18 PM // 15:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by traversc

Except that wasn't my argument... Learn to read. I stated that UWSC isn't any faster than other farms, and is in fact, quite a bit slower than a few methods of gaining wealth. If getting more people to play a particular area is affecting you (negatively) that is seriously sad.

And whats the sole reason why people play togther for the UWSC? People only play together for the sole reason of farming the ass of it in the quickest amount of time, if the UW could be completed in the same time solo as a group of 8 i bet people wouldn't even consider grouping with others.

Most farmers don't care about grouping, all they care about it getting the most amount of loot in the shortest time with the least amount of effort.

When the desire for the loot dwindles and/or when anet changes either Shadow Form or the UW itself and farmers no longer have their easy mode farm what are they going to do?

Unreal Havoc · Aug 18, 2009, 04:22 PM // 16:22

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Originally Posted by Grj

When the desire for the loot dwindles and/or when anet changes either Shadow Form or the UW itself and farmers no longer have their easy mode farm what are they going to do?

Find the next profitable activity.

Targren · Aug 18, 2009, 06:07 PM // 18:07

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Majority of players in the game suck, and they should determine the difficulty for non-endgame areas, get over it.

Then they should stick to normal mode, that's what the difficulty split is supposed to be there for.

By introducing titles, Anet made titles the new endgame. Get Anet to drop the reputation gain cutoffs for normal mode, and I'll give you that the majority of players should stay in normal mode.

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Why are people still playing the game if they don't find it fun to play?

They do find it fun to play. You're the one proposing to take that away from them because you disapprove of how they do it.

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Because that's the only reasonable way to do them (more below).

No it's not. If you expect to just grab 7 other randoms, people you have never played with and have no idea of their experience or skill level, and roll through an area on HM then you are seriously deluded.

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The odds of getting one of the good drops are low enough that a month of speed clears still doesn't guarantee you one, much less a "decent" one.

I hear this thrown around but I rarely find it to be true. I've had more than my fair share of high end drops from end chests.

No one ever mentioned pugging. I suggest that anyone I know quit the game rather than PUG, it's that bad. I'm talking about guild/alliance grouping or, the preferred method of playing for the majority of players, H/H.

The effort required is not balanced by the rewards gained. You may be particularly lucky (more power to you) but the drop rates do not hold with your assertion (if they did, those skins would be far less valuable, which is one of the most common arguments against letting dungeons be farmed).

Going by my personal statistics (the more samples, the more accurate, but I go with what I have) of VSF/Thommis runs.

Out of about 60 runs I've been on, for example, 1 VSF has dropped (not q9 and not for me). Given 2 drops per player per run, that's roughly 1/120, or about 0.8%. That doesn't even take into consideration that VS might not even have a heavier weight than any other gold drop, but be one of however many golds in the drop table for that chest. But even if you assume it does, you're talking about spending an 45-60 minutes where the only really desirable result has less than a 1 in 100 chance of occuring. And that's one of the FASTER ones. A bunch of the dungeons don't have ANY good drops in them, and they're even more annoying to play through (*cough*Frostmaw*cough*).

Unless you're working on something else at the same time (say, LMotN title), the opportunity cost there really doesn't balance the reward, especially with what little we know about drop rates (you'd think there'd be other players besides me who like to metagame enough to keep logs of this stuff :P) and whether q9-13 all have equal chances of dropping or whatnot...

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Originally Posted by Grj

Most farmers don't care about grouping, all they care about it getting the most amount of loot in the shortest time with the least amount of effort.

What, pray tell, is the impetus to go back to UW after the first time (for the statue) if not the loot? (And "Fun" isn't a valid answer in the context of this argument, because if enough people found it "fun" then the existence of farmers would have no effect on them. One of the great advantages of an instanced world)

Bryant Again · Aug 18, 2009, 06:16 PM // 18:16

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Originally Posted by Targren

By introducing titles, Anet made titles the new endgame. Get Anet to drop the reputation gain cutoffs for normal mode, and I'll give you that the majority of players should stay in normal mode.

If you're not experienced enough, you shouldn't stay in experienced areas. Vanity based additions aren't much of an excuse in this instance (save for the instances where titles benefit you, but that's an entirely different problem all in itself). Not that I wouldn't mind the cutoffs, but still.

Kashrlyyk · Aug 18, 2009, 06:29 PM // 18:29

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Originally Posted by Unreal Havoc

....
Normal mode and hard mode. There's a reason why one is called normal and the other is called hard.

....
Then they should stick to normal mode, that's what the difficulty split is supposed to be there for.

....

Sorry, but they can't because ANet than decided to RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO up that split by forcing people to go HM to max titles.

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Originally Posted by Targren

By introducing titles, Anet made titles the new endgame. Get Anet to drop the reputation gain cutoffs for normal mode, and I'll give you that the majority of players should stay in normal mode.
.....

That is what they should do. It takes forever to get the points in NM especially since there is no vanquish bonus. So you get it fast or slowly, depending on how much skill/time/nerves you are willing to put into the game.

Targren · Aug 18, 2009, 06:41 PM // 18:41

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Originally Posted by Bryant Again

If you're not experienced enough, you shouldn't stay in experienced areas. Vanity based additions aren't much of an excuse in this instance (save for the instances where titles benefit you, but that's an entirely different problem all in itself). Not that I wouldn't mind the cutoffs, but still.

So after they finish NM, they should just quit the game?

Coverticus · Aug 18, 2009, 06:46 PM // 18:46

Farming (solo or group) has always been in existence within Guild Wars since very close to Day 1 of release.

Main farms off the top of my head (not in chronological order lol):

Solo Underworld with Protective Bond. This skill got nerfed.
Underworld continued to be soloed. Dying Nightmares were added. Underworld still was/is "farmable" by soloers/2 man teams.
Trapping was possible too until the nerf came to that. Trapping is still done there though.

Griffons were the pre-ancenstors to Vaettir in terms of body counts. Firstly the was game updated to stop foes continually following a player. Then AoE scatter introduced to counter the likes of Balthazar's Aura.
Still players farmed them. Kepkhet and co were added in to curb this fruitful area. Thus it created a new farm in its own right.

Troll farming was popular (in the days when the free chests were available in Dreadnaughts Drift). Warriors, monks, eles etc all enjoyed rewards doing this until skill changes made them less efficient.

Once Factions was out, new farms became available and off everyone went again. Yes ok, Shadow Form became popular (though no where near as popular as today). Fond memories of the elemental poof crews which brought about the first round of nerf batting on this skill.
Warriors had an easier time going back into the Underworld with W/Rt and VwK (as opposed to the old W/Me build which was harder).

Nightfall brought many viable farm areas and skills to the plate. Dead sword farms were on, Elemental Swords another. DoA was released, cue solo farming there. This is still doable too.

GWEN has farming available too as we are all aware. Raptors (boring yes) are viable on many professions. Budger (RIP) netted people lots of items. Dungeon farms (aka runs) became the mainstay of income for many with competant 600ing skills.
And now we have SinWay dungeon clears starting to become widely known (thanks to PvX).

Farming areas come and go. Some stay popular (UW/FoW), others disappear from the radar. Yep Shadow Form sins/eles are indeed ripping the game for it's worth atm but its following a trend set by other professions before (monks primarily). SF is by far easier though, as demonstrated by the current "PUG" level, as Grj was alluding to earlier in this thread. But we all play this game to have fun and be as good as we can be.

I would prefer to see a change to the mechanics of Shadow Form though. Make it still useable for "perma" but further limit "soloing". The Underworld could easily have 3 simple changes made to it to render it far harder/longer to SC (doors not opening on completion of the first 3 squid groups, choking gas and tranquility on the Behemoth's skill bar). This though does not go far enough. One area being changed because of a current trend has been done before but does not tackle the underlying issue. But hell, 55ing still is possible so the quick fix will be done again.

Bryant Again · Aug 18, 2009, 06:56 PM // 18:56

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Originally Posted by Targren

So after they finish NM, they should just quit the game?

If they don't want to experience the game in a higher difficulty than I suppose so. I'd say this to every game that someone completes on an easier difficulty.

Targren · Aug 18, 2009, 07:12 PM // 19:12

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Originally Posted by Bryant Again

If they don't want to experience the game in a higher difficulty than I suppose so. I'd say this to every game that someone completes on an easier difficulty.

Then I have to counter with the fact that the average-and-below group outnumbers the better-than-average group, and if they want a game that's more challenging, they should find another one instead.

Bryant Again · Aug 18, 2009, 07:45 PM // 19:45

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Originally Posted by Targren

Then I have to counter with the fact that the average-and-below group outnumbers the better-than-average group, and if they want a game that's more challenging, they should find another one instead.

Of course they are. This goes for every single game in the entirety of the world: Inexperienced > experienced, always. But that doesn't mean you should make all of your games "nub friendly" from start to finish.

A good game caters to as many skill ranges as possible. This is what difficulties settings are supposed to do: provide something for the newcomer, and for the seasoned. A poorly designed game is one that caters to only one end of the spectrum, be it only to "newbies" or only to "proz".

Martin Alvito · Aug 18, 2009, 09:28 PM // 21:28

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Originally Posted by Terra Jim

I would prefer to see a change to the mechanics of Shadow Form though. Make it still useable for "perma" but further limit "soloing". The Underworld could easily have 3 simple changes made to it to render it far harder/longer to SC (doors not opening on completion of the first 3 squid groups, choking gas and tranquility on the Behemoth's skill bar). This though does not go far enough. One area being changed because of a current trend has been done before but does not tackle the underlying issue. But hell, 55ing still is possible so the quick fix will be done again.

These solutions are easily defeated. Take an SS necro out there with the permas, have a perma draw aggro at the extreme limit of Behemoth range and dance out of range to refresh. Take a bit of direct damage or interrupts to suppress Tranq and you're good. All you've done is waste a couple minutes of time per run.

As for the squid groups, you do realize that the whole reason Bleys introduced a sin back in the day was to solo Chamber, right? The Aatxes in the main room can be defeated easily enough. The basic problem was that there wasn't any way short of SF to survive Chamber and still be able to kill at that time. It's not like we couldn't finish UW in a single cons set without the sin. The sin was just a timesaver, because it completed a pain-in-the-neck quest alone without sacrificing much kill power out in Vale.

You also realize that there are ways to beat even the touch skills that rip enchants, right? Eg: Frostmaw speed clear.

The fundamental problem is effective invincibility coupled with the ability to kill. To fix the problem, you have to divorce these two mechanics. Either you suppress permanent invincibility or you make it impossible to be invincible AND kill anything.

Guardian of the Light · Aug 18, 2009, 09:33 PM // 21:33

My only concern with SF is it's near limitless farming reach.

Back in the old days of 55 monks/eles/I think I had a 105 dervish and armor stacking warriors, you would often have a specific build for a specific area and you couldn't just use the same farming build everywhere, everyone had weaknesses (55 monks would die with any enchantment removal). A side effect of this was often different classes were better in different areas somewhat creating a "balance" of farming.

But SF seems to just kill everything and therefor there's no reason to use a different build.

Coverticus · Aug 18, 2009, 09:49 PM // 21:49

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Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

....

Martin, yes I know these are counterable, I have been playing this game long enough to understand the mechanics. But if you read what I was suggesting was that UWSC is made harder/longer. Not completely hitting the nerfbat into an area therefore making the whole area stupid even for normal groups.

And you didn't get what I meant by the doors (in conjunction with skill additions). At present, once the 3 squids are killed ALL areas are opened up. This could be changed so that completing chamber opens the paths to Vale and Wastes (for example) and thus requires the team to complete said areas for the other areas to be opened up (admittedly a new door would be needed to block off the path to mounts/planes). Completing planes opens pools etc etc. This would thus slow SCs but still making them (and normal clears) viable. Plenty other options could be thrown into the equations as to extra foes, skills etc but this was just one idea. After all, I'm trying here to play devils advocate and look at things from both sides of this argument, not just the "lets kill SF" angle.

But I agree (as I said in my post too) - the underlying problem needs to be fixed which is indeed the ability to godkill. I have stated in many other threads before SF can be invincible by all means (allowing people to be happy) but not allow any damage at all to be generated while under this enchantment. Butif people wish to do damage while under the effect of SF, then godmode is not allowed (cool down rate similar to a form for example). One or the other.

But given what Linsey has alluded to already regarding Speed Clears, this is not really in scope.