Curse

Fril Estelin · Jul 21, 2009, 07:22 AM // 07:22

Re AI, it seems from dev updates throughout the last few years that they developped it in an inefficient way which lead to many things not working as intended. I am always annoyed by henchmen scattering while heroes don't, or Olias wanting to spam SS even if it means overaggroing.

But to be fair with Anet, there's so much they can do to make a "good AI", it'll always remain an average AI in an MMO because of resource constraints, even more in a F2P. But obvious improvements like scatering on AoE is the least they could do.

But you can find some really good balanced teams, I remember some Stone Summit groups being really good. And res signet puts them definitely on par with a player group.

Anyway, many are true to say that the design focus should have been on this part of the game, rather than the "numerical part" where you nerf, buff, prot, boost, degen, etc as 4thVariety explains. I was amazed at how easy Rotscale was to kill (in NM) with BHA, Winter and Spinal Shivers, whereas other "tactics" (I'm not sure it's the right word) would fail (more or less miserably) due to monster skills.

Re monster skills, I don't think you can avoid them, because if you put monsters on par with players by using normal skills only, players will find a "numerical" workaround and abuse it. I remember Shiro being a very interesting uberBoss which required carefull organisation until I played with a PUG which removed his stance, and then boom.

One wonders if a grain of randomness would have helped here, but once more is this conscious design so that, as trialist said, GW gameplay doesn't become alienating for the player with "average skills"? Is the fundamental "tension" between "good" players wanting a difficult challenge and "average" players not wanting to adapt/change their gamestyle the reason why GW design fails to satisfy the first category while the second one gets a (possibly) more acceptable game experience? This sort of relates to what Martin Alvito said about players being spoilt by FAQs/wikis.

By reading posts in this thread, I realised this is a collective attempt at "reverse design" and attempting to find some sense in some of the game features.

Kashrlyyk · Jul 21, 2009, 08:00 AM // 08:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

... Is the fundamental "tension" between "good" players wanting a difficult challenge and "average" players not wanting to adapt/change their gamestyle the reason why GW design fails to satisfy the first category while the second one gets a (possibly) more acceptable game experience?....

GW doesn't fail to satisfy the first category. It provides everything it has to to give any challenge you want, but you actually have to do it yourself. But the "good" players don't want to "adapt/change their gamestyle" and instead cry/whine to the designers.

If you want GW to be harder there is a LOT that players can do themselves! Why do the "good" players want the designers to gimp the players and not do it yourself? The latter case gives much more control over the result.

trialist · Jul 21, 2009, 08:08 AM // 08:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

But to be fair with Anet, there's so much they can do to make a "good AI", it'll always remain an average AI in an MMO because of resource constraints, even more in a F2P. But obvious improvements like scatering on AoE is the least they could do.

Therein lay the problem, anet essentially designed themselves into a corner with their low level cap and static weapon stats premise. Those are fine ideas for a pvp game, however, those same ideas are contradictory to a pve game, especially one where you are raising the numbers in pve to get more difficulty.

Part of the problem with raising numbers, especially monster damage, is that you force players to play a certain way. No longer are all builds able to be used because first and foremost, you need to neutralize that damage the buffed monsters are throwing at you (you can't really do anything if you are continuously kissing the ground can you?), that means damage prevention/reduction builds becomes predominant.

The likes of imbagon, permsin, pre-nerf ursan, all became popular because of this. You can't really expect to just slap on a "fun" build and expect to not get smacked down, hard, by the buffed monsters. Which is why build diversity in GW pve gradually lessened with each expansion as the monsters hit harder and were harder to kill. Had anet concentrated on developing better AI, and hence more varified monster skill bars, instead of just raising numbers, more builds would have been playable in pve, instead of this emphasis on damage prevention/reduction.

Avarre · Jul 21, 2009, 08:14 AM // 08:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kashrlyyk

GW doesn't fail to satisfy the first category. It provides everything it has to to give any challenge you want, but you actually have to do it yourself. But the "good" players don't want to "adapt/change their gamestyle" and instead cry/whine to the designers.

If you want GW to be harder there is a LOT that players can do themselves! Why do the "good" players want the designers to gimp the players and not do it yourself? The latter case gives much more control over the result.

Sure, Guild Wars PvE is pretty difficult if I balance a cat on my head while eating dinner and juggling at the same time as moderating Guru and punching myself in the testicles, but that doesn't mean GW succeeds in 'proving everything it has to do to give any challenge you want'.

It's the job of the competition, not the competitor, to provide the setting. Perhaps I should slam my head into a wall until I'm qualified to find the Special Olympics a challenge? From what I dredge out of your post, that's the equivalent of what you suggest good players do in order to try to find challenge in GW. How exactly is this the better option than implementing challenging areas intelligently?

Or perhaps you should stop trying to speak for the 'good players'. Not wanting ridiculously overpowered nonsense in the game is not 'gimp[ing] the players', and not finding DoA-style statpumping an interesting challenge is good taste.

Phaern Majes · Jul 21, 2009, 08:16 AM // 08:16

I would agree that GW's major limitation is its inability to improve AI. But with the way the game was designed I'm not really sure how much better they could do. Mobs always pull in groups no matter how far one particular member of that group may be when you aggro them, and they always ALWAYS use the same skill set. Movement and position has for me always been preferably to button mashing. Larger numbers and mobs is only 1/2 the equation. Movement, position, and strategics make for a far more interesting game.

Playing Rainbow 6 Vegas: 2 I've experienced some semi decent AI. The terrorist you go around trying to exterminate will try to pull off maneuvers on you. They will try to flank you, rappel off the roofs of buildings, use cover effectively, etc. While these are two entirely different games and playstyles the point is the AI does exist to do these things and actually add the challenge of players having to out-think the machine. I don't, however, see the game mechanics of GW allowing for the implementation of such AI.

As I said there is no variation to how mobs react and what skills they use. Once you've tried something once on hardmode, you know exactly how it will go the next time and you can adjust accordingly. You may think having access to hundreds of skills means there is strategy and skill involved, but how much player skill is there in swapping out skills until something works? And even if you can't figure it out, its as simple as coming here to guru or going to gw-wiki to look up how to do it.

Fril Estelin · Jul 21, 2009, 09:03 AM // 09:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

Sure, Guild Wars PvE is pretty difficult if I balance a cat on my head while eating dinner and juggling at the same time as moderating Guru and punching myself in the testicles, but that doesn't mean GW succeeds in 'proving everything it has to do to give any challenge you want'.

It's the job of the competition, not the competitor, to provide the setting. Perhaps I should slam my head into a wall until I'm qualified to find the Special Olympics a challenge? From what I dredge out of your post, that's the equivalent of what you suggest good players do in order to try to find challenge in GW. How exactly is this the better option than implementing challenging areas intelligently?

Or perhaps you should stop trying to speak for the 'good players'. Not wanting ridiculously overpowered nonsense in the game is not 'gimp[ing] the players', and not finding DoA-style statpumping an interesting challenge is good taste.

Come on Avarre, I know you can post better stuff than that (very funny though

). I don't think that Kashrlyyk's post was very reasonable, "good" players bought the game the same way the others did and can expect Anet to give them something for their money (I mean via updates).

trialist: you're right, the "numerical" part of the game led them to this corner where they can't design a game like WoW. There's a "ceiling" where numbers are not supposed to go above for players (while monsters go above it for their challenging part), yet they've moved this limit via pve-skills and consumables.

AI can be improved, and it has been improved indeed, but the fact that the "intelligence" of the game is on the server means smart AI is going to cripple the servers (it's well known that AI is the computationally expensive stuff in games, even worse when a server has to run it for thousands of servers...). Together with skills finally doing what they're supposed to do (you can't blame the "average" player to have a "good" build which doesn't work due to, say, winter not converting damage to cold and not knowing it because he doesn't read Guru or the wiki). I guess the Live Team is simply too small to do something significant here (I was thinking this morning that re-programming a game like GW1 must be a painful job and very unrewarding since the devs can't talk about their hard work of fixing things, putting new pipes, etc.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: this is not a "how would we redesign GW1?" thread, although it's very interesting, but rather a "what was the design intention?" thread.

Kashrlyyk · Jul 21, 2009, 09:21 AM // 09:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Come on Avarre, I know you can post better stuff than that (very funny though

). I don't think that Kashrlyyk's post was very reasonable, "good" players bought the game the same way the others did and can expect Anet to give them something for their money (I mean via updates).
....

Are some things "good" players don´t get that the "average" players do get?? Some files missing in your version of the game? No? Then no you can not expect anything from ANet. You already got everything you paid for.

And crying to ANet like a little baby that doesn`t get its way is "reasonable" compared to making it challenging yourself? People do it every single second of the day (Party games finished with a single character, speedruns, making specific very hard enemies( which would be the equivalent to not using max equipment and certain skills), etc), but in GW that is just too much brain activity for the "good" players?? Of course they are exhausted from all the whining! And THAT is reasonable????????????????? No, you are just lazy and whiny!

If the game is too easy, stop playing it OR make it more interesting for yourself. You know, try something new.

Fril Estelin · Jul 21, 2009, 09:26 AM // 09:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kashrlyyk

Are some things "good" players don´t get that the "average" players do get?? Some files missing in your version of the game? No? Then no you can not expect anything from ANet. You already got everything you paid for.

And crying to ANet like a little baby that doesn`t get its way is "reasonable" compared to making it challenging yourself? People do it every single second of the day (Party games finished with a single character, speedruns, making specific very hard enemies( which would be the equivalent to not using max equipment and certain skills), etc), but in GW that is just too much brain activity for the "good" players?? Of course they are exhausted from all the whining! And THAT is reasonable????????????????? No, you are just lazy and whiny!

If the game is too easy, stop playing it OR make it more interesting for yourself. You know, try something new.

Can you please stop derailing the thread? You've made your point clear I think and we'll have to agree to disagree I guess. Ty.

Kashrlyyk · Jul 21, 2009, 09:29 AM // 09:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Avarre

..........
.....Not wanting ridiculously overpowered nonsense in the game is not 'gimp[ing] the players', and not finding DoA-style statpumping an interesting challenge is good taste.

I am not talking about that, I am talking about Fril Estelins assumption that GW doesn´t provide "a difficult challenge" for "good" players. I don´t like the stat pumping too.

4thVariety · Jul 21, 2009, 10:00 AM // 10:00

I do not think there was a single design intention. If there was, it got destroyed. When we played Prophecies the stats grew very very slowly and the game is most reminiscent of traditional RPGs. Prophecies was also difficult because the skills were scattered around the world and you had to find them. Your build changed with each new outpost.

With each expansion that trend changed. Factions had to introduce more powerful skills so players kept changing the only variable in their game. Searching for them on sidequests was also gone. Nightfall did the same, at the time the skills were ludicrously powerful. EotN had to introduce high power PvE skills for player builds to change at all. Just like WoW added its +10 levels, GW added new skills which were more powerful. Both games raised the impact of their variable on the game. A level 20 mission for Prophecies is just as easy for a fully skill-geared GW character as a Lvl25 raid is for a bunch of Lvl80 dudes.

The ability to always import your main at full power proved to be a liability for the design. Newbies thought Nightfall was simply too hard, while owners of older chapters were already so strong it broke Normal Mode. Characters even grew so strong, it broke HM as well.

It's the classic basic state of any RPG . Progression leads to the overall difficulty being easier, because the variable of RPGs is player power; which is constantly added. Non-RPG games limit the power of the player early on, the players effectively grow weaker over time and more reaction time, strategy and joystick coordination are demanded. Those three aspects are absent in GW. You never really have to react, playing Mesmer is merely an option and meaningful IR in HM is near impossible. Strategies are depleted, since the player is allowed to use any means anywhere. So it all boiled down to Sabway, SF-Tank&Spank and Imbagon Coletrain. We are able to throw anything at any mob anytime, that is a big no, if you want strategy. ArenaNet should remember the days they created Starcraft. When many missions were all about making due with what the developers gave you and not about unleashing the same old Turtle-Rush.

If there was the wish to maintain the design intention of Prophecies, then each new chapter should have wiped the character back to Lvl1 with no skills. Only then would the pacing of Prophecies been maintainable. After completing the new chapter, the character can have all his old power back to tackle HM and use cross chapter builds. But how would you explain that to people? Right, you don't, you announce GW2. Done, there is your hard cut. There is your wait out from implementing a steady power increase breaking the game more and more with each addition. The problem is being solved as we speak.

Avarre · Jul 21, 2009, 10:29 AM // 10:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Come on Avarre, I know you can post better stuff than that (very funny though

).

I was at work and lazy, plus I can't be bothered.

If Kashrlyyk considers my posts 'crying', then continuing to reason is pointless. It's not like I've made extensive analytical posts on the topic or anything, after all.

Fril Estelin · Jul 21, 2009, 11:32 AM // 11:32

Food for thought: the SS/LB/EotN title were in fact additional "attributes" for the new PvE skills.

(looking at Mindbenber yesterday, I realised that at rank 9-10 it's IAS 75% of the time with 50% increased casting time, pretty OP)

EDIT: interesting read: http://www.guildwars.com/events/trad...7/gcspeech.php
Pay close attention to complexity creep. Don't assume that most of your players are reading your website and consuming information about your game. Most of your players will never read your website, never visit fansites, and never participate in forum discussions. We are often immersed in the community forums and rants and raves posted to game fansites, and it is easy to lose perspective about the knowledge level of most of our players. Players who participate in fansites and send six-page emails to your community team are experts at your game – they probably know more about it than you do – so it's important to realize that they do not represent the average player. The vast majority of your players are not digging into every detail of every spell or creating lists of animations so that they can react when they see the basilisk twitch its nose. They want to play, not study, so take care to create a game that allows them to do so.

4thVariety · Jul 21, 2009, 01:33 PM // 13:33

For a game in which it is that important to have learned game, the "teaching materials" are still very underdeveloped. So it's no surprise people insult each other as newbies. There is no place to turn to. One can cope with that in PvE, but for PvP it's the end, trial & error not really an option.

Prophecies and Factions had accompanying Prima Guides. Those were considered the best shot at "educating" the normal user. Too bad those guides mainly offered story spoilers and pretty pictures. Opening such a guide for help was a disaster, you just wiped not knowing what to do and all the guide offered was the succession of spawns and bits of Lore. Nothing in that guide was really trying to pitch you an idea which skill might be useful. One of my favorite "anti-strategies", pulled from a section with the title: "Tips and Strategies": Eventually, your shenanigans awaken Zhu Hanuku, whom you dispatch in the second phase to ultimately end the mission. It all reads as if some testers simply dragged the writers through the game and they wrote about the scenery.

Not surprisingly Nightfall never got a guide. An easy to use option to trade builds was introduced and the Wiki project marched forward. But still the original flaw remained. If a player needs help on a mission, most wiki guides are written in a a way that they describe what is happening in more detail, than to explain how the actual hurdles are best overcome. Only some short bullet points, that are easily missed really give the sort of hints people might need. On top of that if you tell people just to push F10 and search the wiki, they believe you are trying to trick them into quitting the game or something.

At the high end, though, the PvX Wiki especially rules supreme. Once more, the devices that are in place help those the most that need help the least. One more thing for GW2 to address.

englitdaudelin · Jul 21, 2009, 05:49 PM // 17:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Food for thought: the SS/LB/EotN title were in fact additional "attributes" for the new PvE skills.

(looking at Mindbenber yesterday, I realised that at rank 9-10 it's IAS 75% of the time with 50% increased casting time, pretty OP)

EDIT: interesting read: http://www.guildwars.com/events/trad...7/gcspeech.php
Pay close attention to complexity creep. Don't assume that most of your players are reading your website and consuming information about your game. Most of your players will never read your website, never visit fansites, and never participate in forum discussions. We are often immersed in the community forums and rants and raves posted to game fansites, and it is easy to lose perspective about the knowledge level of most of our players. Players who participate in fansites and send six-page emails to your community team are experts at your game – they probably know more about it than you do – so it's important to realize that they do not represent the average player. The vast majority of your players are not digging into every detail of every spell or creating lists of animations so that they can react when they see the basilisk twitch its nose. They want to play, not study, so take care to create a game that allows them to do so.

I think your quote answered most of the questions you've posed here: the operating assumption is that the average player has a limited understanding of the game and its mechanics; that the average player may not understand the synthesis of skills across several players; that the average player may not understand the strengths and limitations of the monsters and mobs s/he faces; that the average player barely understands aggro, DP, pulling, the mission designs (durrrh, I just go in and hit stuff), the side quests, the lore; that the average player is not participating in this or any other discussion of the game; but is instead looking to "Play the Game--" a phrase itself clearly loaded with potential conflict.

So the game HAD to evolve: The small percentage of people who claim to like a challenge, who are engaged in ongoing discussions about deep parts of the game and its experience; the people who do have an understanding of mobs, monsters, HM, DP, whatever--they needed an evolution of the game that looked like Nightfall, Urgoz, the Deep, DoA, Sorrow's, and Hard Mode. They needed an evolution of the game that posed challenges to which they could react in ways that allowed them to "Play the Game'" meaning, learn, adapt, vary builds and strategies, and experiment their ways to success.

But as those parts of the game came out, the game had to address the needs of the mass of people who DON'T play that way--for whatever reasons. So we get consets and PvE skills.

One thing worth recognizing about PvE skills, especially, as they relate to the evolution of the game: as people spread out more across the continents and modes of the game, fewer people are available to fill a party. PvE skills essentially allow a player to add another class to their bars--a class that their heroes and hench may not include, or may not use well. All the Ebon Standards are pretty much PvE paragon skills for players who may not understand or carry in party a paragon. Norn Skills are warrior skills for casters to throw down with. Radiation field is a strong necro well. Cry of Pain is a strong non-elite Energy Surge for any caster to max--or the mesmer version of a Searing flames.

So these skills are a reaction to the growing complexity of the game and its classes--the wide spread of skills across 10 classes, 4 regions--that's a lot to learn and keep track of. PvE skills simplify the learning process: they REDUCE complexity, they REDUCE what a player needs to learn to build a good team.

And I'm not sure that they're an awful idea. If the quote you cite is accurate in its description of wide swaths of the playerbase--and if the conclusions it leads us to draw are correct--even close to correct--then A-Net has done, as an entertainment entity, what it needs to: allowed the largest possible number of people to access in some way all its content. Is that bad? Should "average" players NOT be able to access all the game somehow? Or is this adjustment on their part ... smart?

Fril Estelin · Jul 21, 2009, 07:11 PM // 19:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by englitdaudelin

I think your quote answered most of the questions you've posed here: the operating assumption is that the average player has a limited understanding of the game and its mechanics; that the average player may not understand the synthesis of skills across several players; that the average player may not understand the strengths and limitations of the monsters and mobs s/he faces; that the average player barely understands aggro, DP, pulling, the mission designs (durrrh, I just go in and hit stuff), the side quests, the lore; that the average player is not participating in this or any other discussion of the game; but is instead looking to "Play the Game--" a phrase itself clearly loaded with potential conflict.

I hear you, but given that this "average player" does not read fansites or wiki, how is he going to know about consumables for example? And even if he does, since he doesn't understand the game mechanics, how is he going to think "I should use more of this stuff to enable me to play better"? Obviously he'll get most PvE skills by doing the quests, but then how is he going to realise how powefull they are?

Quote:

One thing worth recognizing about PvE skills, especially, as they relate to the evolution of the game: as people spread out more across the continents and modes of the game, fewer people are available to fill a party. PvE skills essentially allow a player to add another class to their bars--a class that their heroes and hench may not include, or may not use well. All the Ebon Standards are pretty much PvE paragon skills for players who may not understand or carry in party a paragon. Norn Skills are warrior skills for casters to throw down with. Radiation field is a strong necro well. Cry of Pain is a strong non-elite Energy Surge for any caster to max--or the mesmer version of a Searing flames.

Excellent observation. And case in point: the Asura summon skill, to get an extra team member.

Quote:

So these skills are a reaction to the growing complexity of the game and its classes--the wide spread of skills across 10 classes, 4 regions--that's a lot to learn and keep track of. PvE skills simplify the learning process: they REDUCE complexity, they REDUCE what a player needs to learn to build a good team.

This points follows the comment made by many that Ursan was to allow all classes to get accepted in groups, to avoid class discrimination. It puts all clases on the same level of melee chars with high AL.

Quote:

And I'm not sure that they're an awful idea. If the quote you cite is accurate in its description of wide swaths of the playerbase--and if the conclusions it leads us to draw are correct--even close to correct--then A-Net has done, as an entertainment entity, what it needs to: allowed the largest possible number of people to access in some way all its content. Is that bad? Should "average" players NOT be able to access all the game somehow? Or is this adjustment on their part ... smart?

I think the core issue is not to allow access to most content (HM means you already have accessed all content in NM!), it's the way it's done. By reducing GW to a game where you have to pick the PvE skills, consumables and OP skills, you limit the diversity and thus the potential for people to do a bit of everything, including PvP. Yes, yes, not everyone wants that, and it's fine, but that's also because of the incredibly high learning curve which is made worse by this design approach of giving you the key to getting bigger numbers, instead of giving you the one to understand the numbers themselves.

In fact, this last part of your post points to something interesting: Guru and its discussions are pointless. Most people don't read or benefit from them, (it's almost as if the only reason to be here is the pleasure of discussing

), many of the smart great posts proposing game redesigns would not match this vision that the "average player" gets something completely different from the game from the average Guru-er.

Another side-effect of Anet allowing all "average players" to access everything: they'll play the game solo, team playing disappears, if it wasn't for zquests. It's a bit sad isn't it?

englitdaudelin · Jul 21, 2009, 07:41 PM // 19:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

I hear you, but given that this "average player" does not read fansites or wiki, how is he going to know about consumables for example? And even if he does, since he doesn't understand the game mechanics, how is he going to think "I should use more of this stuff to enable me to play better"? Obviously he'll get most PvE skills by doing the quests, but then how is he going to realise how powefull they are?

Quite the paradox. And come on...isn't this the problem most vaguely educated players have, when they see what appears to be an obvious question: "duhhh, wiki is yer friend!1!!"

Well, it's evident that a number of posters have found US to ask questions of...but not found the wiki, with whom they should make friends.

I think the game has done an adequate job by itself of teaching players AT LEAST to use the stuff that the devs have put in: the quests using the Norn Elites, for example. The basic understanding that "Oh, those are NPCs who sell stuff. Hey, I wonder what consumeables are?" *Reads descriptions of Cons.* "Nice!" And EotN PvE skills follow the logic that Prophecies develops: Do a quest, get a skill. Practice the skill. Maybe fail at it for a while. Maybe always use it wrong. But you get the skill the way Prophecies taught us.

What has happened, of course, is "educated" players...those part of the extra-curricular, I guess, community, like Guru, talk, goof, analyze...and find the (over)power of the skills and use them...and then publicize them, and then criticize them, and then rail against everyone ELSE'S use of that skill while quietly downplaying their own use of it.

So the game teaches SOME of this, I think...but it doesn't teach what most people think separates the average from the good from the great from the pvp: adaptability, curiosity, flexibility, analysis.

I guess what I meant about "game mechanics" includes all of the things that go into planning a HM mission or vanquish, or that go into a serious (or even not so serious) pvp match, or that go into an elite area: things like attributes, conditions and effects, ranges of spells (adjacent, in the area, in earshot, in spirit range), attack speeds and movement speeds, ways to do damage (and armor-ignoring damage), strengths and weaknesses of classes and armors, buffs and enchantments and strips and debuffs and shouts and chants and echoes and weapon spells and item spells and bundles and hexes and spells and skills and preparations and interrupts and degen and disables and lions and tigers and bears oh my!

Just the stuff after the last comma there: I think plenty of people forget plenty of that: that there are all these combinations of classes and skills that react and interact with one another: and that an enchantment-heavy healer/protter is not always the best monk for a certain area (looks at Mallyx). These are some of the "game mechanics" I mean (and if I misuse the term a little, I apologize)...

So, do y'all think that A-Net's basic premise about complexity is correct? That much of the playerbase is...uneducated? Is playing the game with far less thought than many posters here?

And yeah, Guru is ... a talkfest of a small, concerned group who may have no bearing on the game a'tall.

Sorn Xarann · Jul 21, 2009, 07:45 PM // 19:45

You guys gotta stop using bold letters in your posts, it's all I read.

QueenofDeath · Jul 21, 2009, 09:30 PM // 21:30

Before there were heroes I beat Glint with henchies. <smile> Now my 3 heroes and henchies can beat her without even me helping. gah this game has gotten too easy.

Improvavel · Jul 21, 2009, 10:45 PM // 22:45

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kashrlyyk

GW doesn't fail to satisfy the first category. It provides everything it has to to give any challenge you want, but you actually have to do it yourself. But the "good" players don't want to "adapt/change their gamestyle" and instead cry/whine to the designers.

If you want GW to be harder there is a LOT that players can do themselves! Why do the "good" players want the designers to gimp the players and not do it yourself? The latter case gives much more control over the result.

There is a group of players that retires satisfaction from a game like GW by comparison to other players achievements.

I would believe that a group of players that fall in that category would play PvP, but alas, they compete in PvE.

That is why you can sometimes find threads that degenerate in insult wars between guilds/alliances/players and start like "We did DoA HM in 57 min" and go as "we did it in 56, nini you suck so much".

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

People keep saying this but really, eotn offered pretty good bars on most teams, given the AI limitations and the expectation that you aren't going to spend 10-15 minutes per group like you might in HA. That doesn't make normal mode slavers all that challenging even when you take away the pve skills. Unless you're going to just give them tainted, smite builds, and heavy interrupts, they aren't going to get significantly more threatening without a huge AI overhaul.

Try to kill those mobs without PvE only skills, consumables, tank builds, titles, builds that abuse soul reaping, spirit spamming and avoid abusing AI downfalls.

Yes, you can do them, but those charrs and those dwarfs in slavers are a bit more challenging now.

Of course, once you beat them, you will beat them always, since they never change and improve, opposed to human teams.

Now try to get a PuG to do that (well you won't be able to convince them in the first place). I bet the average group would have difficulties if not outright fail.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've recently bought another account, factions collector edition was really cheap.

So I'm playing it with my regular mate (she bought a faction CE too). We didn't transfer any weapons, money, materials, etc. We not asking any help just playing the 2 with henchmen.

It is quite enjoyable.

Still, if we didn't know how to play it would be quite hard do some stuff there. And we just did Tahnnakai Temple, masters, and we still on 45/65 armor (I'm warrior, she's mesmer) and max weapons/insignias/runes, lol, where where?

The skills we have access to, didn't change that much from what they used to be. Main change though, was the nerf to Watch yourself - for those that don't remember, this skill used to give +20 armor for 5s at tactics 0!

If a new player would start like that, I bet he would feel that GW was one of the most challenging and complex games he/she ever played.

And that is what I think most veteran players suffer from - they remember a game where everything was new and challenging, mostly because they didn't knew the game the way they know now.

Remove the consumables, remove the PvE-only skills, remove the heroes - veteran players will juggernaut nm even if the things they say killed the challenge aren't there.

And again, previously, there was also no scatter in nm.

Yes, consumables, shadow form, pve-only skills made areas like UW, urgoz, doa, HM a laugh!

BUT THOSE AREAS DIDN'T EXIST IN THE "GOOD OLD DAYS"! (or most of them, although UW could be 55'ed, so that was a laugh).

The things some veteran players insist killed the game, only killed areas that didn't exist in the times those same players remember.

What killed that game was experience and time.

Martin Alvito · Jul 21, 2009, 11:35 PM // 23:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

Pay close attention to complexity creep. Don't assume that most of your players are reading your website and consuming information about your game. Most of your players will never read your website, never visit fansites, and never participate in forum discussions. We are often immersed in the community forums and rants and raves posted to game fansites, and it is easy to lose perspective about the knowledge level of most of our players. Players who participate in fansites and send six-page emails to your community team are experts at your game – they probably know more about it than you do – so it's important to realize that they do not represent the average player. The vast majority of your players are not digging into every detail of every spell or creating lists of animations so that they can react when they see the basilisk twitch its nose. They want to play, not study, so take care to create a game that allows them to do so.

That attitude is the problem. You don't want to pander to the masses. You want a game that is simple to pick up but remains complex to master. That was the original point of this game.

Adding optional complexity to PvE was the whole idea behind adding endgame content, right? It wasn't THAT hard to complete Prophecies. THK ate people early on, and the last three missions took a few attempts to get right, but decent players got through it all and probably didn't fail much before Aurora Glade, or often until THK. The point of UW/FoW was to give the hardcore PvE crowd a goal that required teamwork.

Of course, that got broken within a couple of months by Prot Bond. But the devs did a much better job with Urgoz, the Deep and DoA. The trouble is, as noted, the problem of iterations over time revealing superior strategies.

Still, things didn't get out of hand in Hard Mode until the PvE skills and the SF buff. Why? Well, these things slaked envy in the player base in the way that ANet wanted - by compelling players to buy EotN, and later ALL of the expansions during the SF era, in order to convert that which previously required skill to something that required time.

Now, there are ways to address the problem without pandering to the masses. The trick is to limit the envy. One wonders why the Bonus Mission Pack paradigm wasn't used earlier. If the endgame content is customized, you can't get rich doing it, but you need to do it on every character for every item that you want.

Later on as players find new and better tactics, you can introduce new items that require the players to complete the endgame content while completing additional objectives (time, keep NPCs alive, HM, etc.) yet remain non-transferable in order to avoid blowing up the economy and creating envy.

However, you have to start with that approach, or you end up merely creating a new economic problem - the sale of services rather than goods. Of course, we have had that problem anyway in GW. Players have figured out ways to sell just about every title there is.