Curse

Cale Roughstar · Mar 01, 2008, 02:29 PM // 14:29

Guild Wars is fun for me, it isnt for others. I play a lot, they don't play at all.

As for this entire thread, I am impressed by your use of a pop-culture reference, but it is still pointless. Make less threads, kthxbai.

upier · Mar 01, 2008, 02:49 PM // 14:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

But then that begs the question: Why, after so long a time, does ANet now decide to add such a manuever to the game that decreases effort in a relatively drastic and speedy fashion - and still make balances to other portions of PvE to provide "fairness"?

To be a bit more on point: Opinions hold little water, that is correct. However, we attempt to do our best at having them do so by providing the best and plausible evidence we can. It's also less a matter of "I like Ursan" (I could like using bots but as stated it's against the EULA) and more "I believe Ursan is overally good for the game" - the latter which requires reasoning.

The same reason why the ban bots - to not lose revenue?
What the overpowered skills enable is for the newer players to jump in and play at a level that enables them to finish the game without needing to play it for months before getting good enough - which would be needed because of the insanity that is the current PvE (I've been playing since ... July 05? And I was TRASHED to bits when I first entered RoT! And I REALLY doubt I was worse after some 2 years of playing then a complete beginner would be!). So the players get to the point where they can complete the game and possibly buy previous chapters.
That's the point imo.
And because we have instances - they can get away with it!

CHannum · Mar 01, 2008, 03:17 PM // 15:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by cellardweller

...in hindsight its pretty easy to see that this was the first misstep that has spiraled into the title effect bonus/pve skill mess that has turned GW from a great and unique game into the mediocre rubbish that we're playing today.

If this is mediocre rubbish then I wish 95% of the games I've played over the past two-plus decades were more mediocre and more rubbish

I think most people are just too dense to move on after they've effectively seen and done it all. Their own refusal to admit they've gotten all they're going to get out of the game leads them to delude themselves into thinking that the game would still be great if not for X. It's not X, it's not even Y, you've just gotten all the entertainment that there is within the core game mechanics for you. At the point you're complaining about how bad a game you've put hundreds or thousands of hours into is/has become, you've lost perspective.

The bonuses from the titles are absolutely no different than levelling effects in other games. Ironically, even though I find the system fairly brilliant since they allow you to target what you want to improve, it misses the mark with two of the major camps of players out there. One camp can't figure out that these title related skills and bonuses are post 20 levelling and bash GW for it's "stupid" low level cap. The other camp wants the "glory days" where there really was a L20 cap and it was just your skill, only they can't realise that 3+ years after the game launched it would be as dead as three out of four of my grandparents. Without the power creep of the expansions and modifications to the core game rules the average player would have little incentive to play for more than a couple of months and the only people still around would be the PvP'ers and the same couple of thousand hard core players who thought GW peaked with pre-Factions Prophecies.

If you want to sell expansions, you've got to give players a reason to want to spend money. In the "perfectly balanced" game universe so many vocal board denizens imagine, there would have been no incentive to continually buy new expansions nor keep playing. If people think the player base and economy is bad now, imagine playing in a game world where the average player only invested a month or two into each edition because there was nothing to keep them interested.

I see no evidence that the series jumped the shark. That it's been a work in progress where the game developers continually played around with different game mechanics is obvious, and some work better than others, but the key point is that they work.

quickmonty · Mar 01, 2008, 03:17 PM // 15:17

GW has not "jumped the shark", players have.

I've been reading these forums for nearly three years.

people pay for runs to skip content
people pay to have others run missions for them
people constantly ask for changes that make the game easier
people want easier ways to get elite armor
people want easier ways to get max weapons

There is a lot to do and enjoy in the game, but a lot of people don't want to actually bother playing the game. They are in a hurry to get to the end and have all that uber stuff.

zwei2stein · Mar 01, 2008, 03:29 PM // 15:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by upier

The same reason why the ban bots - to not lose revenue?
What the overpowered skills enable is for the newer players to jump in and play at a level that enables them to finish the game without needing to play it for months before getting good enough - which would be needed because of the insanity that is the current PvE (I've been playing since ... July 05? And I was TRASHED to bits when I first entered RoT! And I REALLY doubt I was worse after some 2 years of playing then a complete beginner would be!). So the players get to the point where they can complete the game and possibly buy previous chapters.
That's the point imo.
And because we have instances - they can get away with it!

Dunno ... i was helping this newbie who go gw around xmass about month ago - giving out advice how to improve his builds, showing him some efficient stuff in action on istan.

Two weeks after i helped him with that he asked me to check if some loot he got is worth selling to players. Among purple shit and some r13 golds were two tomes. Yep, he somehow managed to complete game and tackle some hardmode.

Point is, newbie today can suceed where veterans fail. That was beauty of inital GW philosophy. You can be veteran, but still be ... i dont want to say sucky ... ineficient and struggling.

Hell, newbies today are in paradise even without Consumables and titles: Perfect gear for dime, wiki for dealing with hard situations, eficient builds they can pick up and play without figuring them out.

Bryant Again · Mar 01, 2008, 03:46 PM // 15:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by upier

The same reason why the ban bots - to not lose revenue?

Why punish exploiters?

Quote:

Originally Posted by upier

What the overpowered skills enable is for the newer players to jump in and play at a level that enables them to finish the game without needing to play it for months before getting good enough - which would be needed because of the insanity that is the current PvE.

There's no "insanity" or "overpowered monsters" in PvE. Sure they may hit hard, but they're also dumb as shit ("Ingore the Minion Master! Go straight for the minions!!") Of course this conflicts with Mesmers, forcing them to work a little harder than everyone else to be effective in PvE.

And I too got trumped when I first went into the RoT, but after a bit of training and learning the kill order of the mobs I was able to roll through areas in one go. Practice and knowledge gets you the win, as it should be. And sure, you can call me selfish at this point: I want everyone to experience the game I experienced, a great and challenging game known as Guild Wars, and it %([email protected] kicked ass.

Eldin · Mar 01, 2008, 03:51 PM // 15:51

Although Factions is a MASSIVE FAILURE, I'd say Nightfall is around the time things went downhill.

Aside from heroes killing PuGs, this is when ANet made the idea of GW2 and GW:EN, and gave Utopia the axe.

upier · Mar 01, 2008, 04:21 PM // 16:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Dunno ... i was helping this newbie who go gw around xmass about month ago - giving out advice how to improve his builds, showing him some efficient stuff in action on istan.

Two weeks after i helped him with that he asked me to check if some loot he got is worth selling to players. Among purple shit and some r13 golds were two tomes. Yep, he somehow managed to complete game and tackle some hardmode.

Point is, newbie today can suceed where veterans fail. That was beauty of inital GW philosophy. You can be veteran, but still be ... i dont want to say sucky ... ineficient and struggling.

But this didn't change a bit.
The person in their own instance can still run around without the bear. But the bear is there for the days when they can't.
Nothing changed for the people that don't want it to change.
The big question here is - if the people would keep failing - do you think they would try better to improve until they'd pass? Since we are talking about a form of entertainment here - so the option that they would just quit is a very viable one.
The bear gives them a third option.

(I do wonder how the guy would do without your advice. I am seriously not going on record saying that there is no way that the dude could be a better player then me (the strangest shit happens!

) - but hearing stuff like "Hey protection is good!" or "Fire eles aren't ALWAYS the bomb!" - was like "Dude ...!1!1!!

)

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Hell, newbies today are in paradise even without Consumables and titles: Perfect gear for dime, wiki for dealing with hard situations, eficient builds they can pick up and play without figuring them out.

What you are describing sounds strangely like the bear.
The bear is just ONE step (or a leap) further.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Why punish exploiters?

A.Net punishes exploiters (eg. bots) because they make money (or profit) of their (A.Net's) property.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

There's no "insanity" or "overpowered monsters" in PvE. Sure they may hit hard, but they're also dumb as shit ("Ingore the Minion Master! Go straight for the minions!!") Of course this conflicts with Mesmers, forcing them to work a little harder than everyone else to be effective in PvE.

And I too got trumped when I first went into the RoT, but after a bit of training and learning the kill order of the mobs I was able to roll through areas in one go. Practice and knowledge gets you the win, as it should be. And sure, you can call me selfish at this point: I want everyone to experience the game I experienced, a great and challenging game known as Guild Wars, and it %([email protected] kicked ass.

A.Net disagrees.
You were overruled.
(Better yet - we were overruled ...)

Edit:
Like I said above - one still can. One just has a third option now.

(And the reason why I use insane and overpowered is because skills are balanced on PvP. So if we run into a lvl 30 foe that has half-casting time, double damage - that is overpowered by default.)

Bryant Again · Mar 01, 2008, 04:30 PM // 16:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by upier

A.Net disagrees.
You were overruled.
(Better yet - we were overruled ...)

Hence moi, and these threads! It's an online game, nothing is definate. We can only hope for the best - or worse.

Also I was referring to the exploiters who duped items or did the Mallyx outpost glitch...They might be the same, though.

Issac · Mar 01, 2008, 04:32 PM // 16:32

Ya, gw isn't the same as it used to be. The old days were nice.

Paloma Song · Mar 01, 2008, 05:11 PM // 17:11

That's not even what jumping the shark means. Jumping the shark is what you do when your show/game/book has long since reached its peak and has long since begun to fall - you jump the shark by doing something stupid/ridiculous to try to catch the attention of the viewers/players/readers again. It's nearly always lame, and it pretty much never works.

GW probably hit its peak quality-wise with Nightfall and started sliding after that, especially once everyone found out there weren't going to be any real campaigns after that. GWEN might be a jump the shark moment (given some of the cheesiness and blatant advertising for GW2) but I don't think I'd say so, since their goal was to sell GWEN not keep people interested in GW in general. Anet doesn't seem to care about player retention at all anymore.

Stormlord Alex · Mar 01, 2008, 05:20 PM // 17:20

PvE jumped the shark when titles were no longer just for show, and the guy who spent his entire life grinding had an edge over the casual player.

PvP jumped the shark when Factions was released. And Nightfall made it worse.

6am3 Fana71c · Mar 01, 2008, 05:30 PM // 17:30

There will allways be people who will move the "peak point" closer and closer to start.

Like, if I say this game went downhill since EotN and it's PvE skills, there will be a guy who said it's downhill since NF and it's powercreep that ruined PvP, then some other guy will say, no, it's downhill since Factions when all good guilds left....

There are probably people out there that think this game is going downhill since it's very beta.
Conclusion: PvP is ruined, PvE is a joke, but if you still enjoy the game, then knock yourself out.
Kktnxbai

Sleeper Service · Mar 01, 2008, 05:47 PM // 17:47

GW reached its peak when the first concept sketch was scribbled out on a tablecloth in some dingy bar.

Eldin · Mar 01, 2008, 06:26 PM // 18:26

Wasn't it on the back of one of Mike O'Brien's losing lottery tickets?

Snow Bunny · Mar 01, 2008, 06:58 PM // 18:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by RhanoctJocosa

guild wars pvp went downhill after fac

pve has changed for the better, stop bitching

QFT.

PvE has gotten easier, which most players desire, while PvP has gotten the same, to an extent. It takes less skill to be a top players these days than when it did a year or two ago, but that's me.

roshanabey2 · Mar 01, 2008, 07:20 PM // 19:20

If you think GW has "jumped the shark", dont play anymore simple as that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stormlord Alex

PvE jumped the shark when titles were no longer just for show, and the guy who spent his entire life grinding had an edge over the casual player.

PvP jumped the shark when Factions was released. And Nightfall made it worse.

Actually factions made pvp better, but I agree in the idea Nightfall created an unbalanced game.

PvE has done nothing but go up, yes I know title grinding in Eotn and Nightfall is a pain in the ass, but if you look beyond that, Eotn has given a new level to PvE.

afrika18 · Mar 01, 2008, 07:22 PM // 19:22

[QUOTE=CHannum]If this is mediocre rubbish then I wish 95% of the games I've played over the past two-plus decades were more mediocre and more rubbish

I think most people are just too dense to move on after they've effectively seen and done it all. Their own refusal to admit they've gotten all they're going to get out of the game leads them to delude themselves into thinking that the game would still be great if not for X. It's not X, it's not even Y, you've just gotten all the entertainment that there is within the core game mechanics for you. At the point you're complaining about how bad a game you've put hundreds or thousands of hours into is/has become, you've lost perspective.

The bonuses from the titles are absolutely no different than levelling effects in other games. Ironically, even though I find the system fairly brilliant since they allow you to target what you want to improve, it misses the mark with two of the major camps of players out there. One camp can't figure out that these title related skills and bonuses are post 20 levelling and bash GW for it's "stupid" low level cap. The other camp wants the "glory days" where there really was a L20 cap and it was just your skill, only they can't realise that 3+ years after the game launched it would be as dead as three out of four of my grandparents. Without the power creep of the expansions and modifications to the core game rules the average player would have little incentive to play for more than a couple of months and the only people still around would be the PvP'ers and the same couple of thousand hard core players who thought GW peaked with pre-Factions Prophecies.

If you want to sell expansions, you've got to give players a reason to want to spend money. In the "perfectly balanced" game universe so many vocal board denizens imagine, there would have been no incentive to continually buy new expansions nor keep playing. If people think the player base and economy is bad now, imagine playing in a game world where the average player only invested a month or two into each edition because there was nothing to keep them interested.

I see no evidence that the series jumped the shark. That it's been a work in progress where the game developers continually played around with different game mechanics is obvious, and some work better than others, but the key point is that they work.[/QUOTE

Quoted for Truth

IlikeGW · Mar 01, 2008, 07:24 PM // 19:24

Definitely with Factions. Prophecies wasn't perfect, but it established a game with RPG length depth at least. Factions tossed everything out the window and asked you to pay full price for a game you could beat and never touch again in a weekend or so.

Although if you want to look at PVP then Prophecies itself sank the series with the hilarious "unlocking" system. It turned competition into fruity build copying wars, out of convenience.

HawkofStorms · Mar 01, 2008, 07:52 PM // 19:52

Not really.

Guild Wars has "jumped the shark" like 30 times.

OMG loot scaling, GW is dead
OMG 6 man HA, GW is dead.
OMG inscriptions, GW is dead.
OMG HM is the same as NM just with higher level, GW is dead.
OMG NF/Factions/GW:EN sucks, GW is dead.
OMG green items, GW is dead.
OMG title grind, GW is dead.
OMG armor reskins, GW is dead.
OMG elite missions that require ferry, GW is dead.
OMG nobody is hanging around obscure outposts like Magnumn Shade, GW is dead.

etc etc etc
People like to bitch about jumping the shark and when it occurs. Now, I think GW might be on its downward slide just because it is old and newer more shinner games are coming out. However, I don't think anything specific that GW did is causing that.