Curse

zwei2stein · Oct 01, 2007, 10:32 AM // 10:32

Thing is ... title were shifted from being reward to being achievement.

Its like:

Goal: Explore Tyria
Reward: Title

to

Goal: Grind reputation titles
Reward: Some imba power.

while correct and "in spirit of GW" would be:

Goal: ?
Reward: Reputation title.

glountz · Oct 01, 2007, 10:38 AM // 10:38

The playerbase has changed. It changed from casual adults with a job to no-life kids, students, unemployed, housewives. With lot of time but no money (thus why they play GW instead of WoW: low cost MMORPG).
They are pleasing their playerbase.
Thus they enhance and reward grind. At least for PVE.

LethalHands · Oct 01, 2007, 10:52 AM // 10:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rahja the Thief

The threat of being banned is daunting, with many of the good natured players having to think twice about what they type for fear of it being offensive to someone.

Good natured people don't usually have to think twice about what they have to say if they're good natured.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rahja the Thief

They stand by their product, but they change the thing they stand by so radically, it no longer resembles what they started with. It is like standing up your your best friend who is a woman only to turn the next second to see a man standing there beside you.

That made me laugh so damn hard I almost spit up my drink. You're taking a simple comparison of a game far too radical/dramatic here. I get what you're trying to say, but LOL.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rahja the Thief

Appealing to the masses isn't always the best route. Quite the opposite really, finding a niche can truly be rewarding. Many people dislike the final fantasy series, yet it is one of the most successful franchises because Square Enix stands by what they originally developed; a turn based well rounded balanced RPG with a dynamic story line and a brilliant design. Certainly, a few things they improved on were disliked, and they made further changes to those to appeal to their audience. However, the core of the Final Fantasy series remains. Rather then revising the basis on which a game is founded on, Arena Net needs to change simple dynamics. Several improvements they made were very well done, but ill conceived based on the fanbase. It is too late to change Guild Wars, which is where Guild Wars 2 may "save the day."

Now you shoot yourself in the foot really bad here. Final Fantasy is indeed a niche RPG franchise but they have changed it in some iterations, the entire foundation of the series, to a more severe extent then you seem to claim Guild Wars has done. You even acknowledge this, but claim the "core" of the series has remained the same. The catch-22 is the exact same thing can be said about Guild Wars.

Guild Wars has changed relatively little from it's beginnings. You cite titles as the ruin of the game, but titles from their conception in Factions were never required for anything. They've always been optional. Titles serve no purpose in EoTN other then getting optional title blessings, elite armor, unique weapon skins, PVE only skills, and consumables. None of these things are needed for anything other then self-gratification or further ease of the PVE side of the game exclusively.

This applies not only to EoTN, but to the entire game. You're free to partake in a grind-free game, anytime you sit down to grind for a title for any reason is of your own desire alone for one of the stated optionals that certain titles bring with them. Not any single thing tied to a title is necessary to progress through the game or is needed to beat the game. I just want to add though that the main titles in EoTN especially are stupid easy to get, and you can achieve rank 5 in a day of casual playing. But it's entirely optional what you pursue in Guild Wars, and if you want a grind-free game that option has always been there from the beginning and it's never went away.

Honestly when GW2 comes around the trinkets that GW2 characters can inherit from GW1, if GW1 is any indication of the kind of balance that will be used, won't be anything more then a pretty version of something you can get in the game without a HoM. I do believe that's been said somewhere.

Really though the OP astounds me with their great disdain of the /report system, yet makes really insightful and thought out opinions on the anti-social c-type personalities that linger about. You can't tell people in any format to be good without there being a consequence to doing bad. The community isn't dead, but there are these people who do ruin it for some. There are a bit of them too, but that's the burden that a no monthly fee game carries. The community has to look at itself and it is to blame, that much I agree with you on. Some people are real pricks. Now with the /report system the community can probably fix itself. The results in PVP, AB, and CM were staggering. It's a couple years late, but welcome none the less.

Now you can report the racist/sexist/ect pig sounding off in all chat, the clever fella who got rape, incest, and infant death into their character name and all the ever-loving bots that plague certain areas of the game. To name a few. This isn't a bad thing and with the few bad apples who will abuse it, many more will use it for the benefit of the community. Quite frankly I don't give a damn if Nervous Jim is going through pre-depression anxiety over being reported in game. There's a right way to act in a social setting and a wrong way. A /report happy 12 year old is just as likely to report Nervous Jim 50 times as he is me, so Jim needs to get over himself. Have a little confidence. Let's see what happens first.

EPO Bot · Oct 01, 2007, 10:52 AM // 10:52

PVP on an equal footing still doesn't require any grind.
But i never cared about grinding, the only thing that got me into this game was the no fees aspect. That i could only be level 20 was a bit of a dissapointment initially, but it's not a big deal.

They better leave out the level cap in GW2 or i get bored.

Longasc · Oct 01, 2007, 11:00 AM // 11:00

Huge wall of text, let me summarize some of the things that I personally feel felt wrong - they might get lost in your very long posting.

1. Titles
Not a bad thing per se, it now encourages a title grind style of play. Why: Titles are now connected to the effectiviness of skills. Even if some scale very flat. It also encourages focus on one char only. The solution would be more account-based titles, which is a good idea for GW2 if they REALLY want to keep this system. This criticism can be expanded to the char-based Hall of Monuments.

2. PvE skills
I wanted them initially. Some were very nice additions, I like Necrosis for Necros e.g.. But now we have a slew of skills that are either imbalanced or useless. PvE needs balance, too. Solution: More specialized PvE skills like Light of Deldrimor and less cross- profession skills like in EOTN - and less PvE skills in general. This also applies to PvP. Quality > Quantity. Better a few meaningful than a lot of weak and a few imba skills.

3. Consumables
Your personal cheat button to compensate for mistakes and bad builds. Essence of Celerity make IAS stances superfluos, Powerstones DP a liability and HARD MODE infinitely easier, you will never DP out. Solution: NO consumables in Hard Mode! They should not even exist for EZ/normal mode IMO.

4. Heroes
Curse and Blessing at the same time. I like the restriction to 3 heroes. There needs to be a little incentive to group with other players, GW already has a low level of social interaction due to the instanced nature.

5. Wurms, Devourers and similar "mounts"
They need to add anti-tank mines and bazookas if they introduce stuff like that. Sorry, being able to get an unlimited number of Devourers makes Sacnoth boring easy and causes degenerate gameplay. Same for Wurms. These concepts are cool, but need a lot of tweaking!

6. Community/Social behavior ingame
GW always had a touch of a single player game. The instanced nature is to blame. Then everyone can play GW. No fee, parents not seeing monthly fees cannot keep their children in check, big drama. Solution: Maybe the larger instances of GW2 will solve this. Also, the report feature might become useful after some tweaking, at the moment I fear a slew of reports that might be too much for the support to check properly.

Hengis · Oct 01, 2007, 11:03 AM // 11:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Thing is ... title were shifted from being reward to being achievement.

Its like:

Goal: Explore Tyria
Reward: Title

to

Goal: Grind reputation titles
Reward: Some imba power.

while correct and "in spirit of GW" would be:

Goal: ?
Reward: Reputation title.

Wow! What an incredibly astute post!

I knew something had changed, but I could not put it into words. Your post has put it into words for me.

Probably the best example of this was Tyrian Grand Master Cartographer. Even before titles came to be, I enjoyed exploring. When the title was introduced, I was suprised to see that I had only uncovered about 86%. Having the title tell me what % I still needed to do was great. I doubt that I would have found all the missing areas without it. However, my aim was to explore Tyria fully and getting the title was because I explored it, - if that makes any sense.

Now, as you say, the PVE buffs are given because you grind the titles. This is totally a reverse of the original situation.

Thanks again for the post.

Esan · Oct 01, 2007, 11:27 AM // 11:27

Rahja, please take this as a friendly word of advice, but I think you're due for a vacation from Guild Wars. I think you are overthinking it. You probably feel the community's lack of cohesion more than most, given your penchant for organizing events, but it's still only a video game.

kmburton · Oct 01, 2007, 11:31 AM // 11:31

[QUOTE=sindex]

Take for instance what happened after Nightfall came out; one of the developers (interview^1) talked about how everyone actually loved the new title grind and PvE only skills. However we as a community talked about it time and time again, how we despised the grind but did enjoy the PvE only skills. The community begged and pleaded on these forums not to pull the same stunt again in EotN, for that was the majorities fear.

QUOTE]

It is always amusing to read posts like this. When I compare this site and GWO they are pretty much the same in attitude. And, fgor some reason they think they speak for "most" of the GW community when in reality put together they are less than 1% of the community. When I compare them to the forums for my guild and alliance they are as different as night and day. For some reason things are a lot more negative here??? I guess it has just gravitated to where a certain type of player are drawn to each other???
Hmmm? That's scary!! What am I doing here....

Friday · Oct 01, 2007, 11:46 AM // 11:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by LethalHands

... You cite titles as the ruin of the game...

No, he said that the grind for the real, performance influencing effects of the skills tied to the titles goes against the original vision that GW was built on. We saw the shades of things to come when the PUGS first called for "LB rank 5 or higher only" when entering the endgame realms of NF.

Quote:

... but titles from their conception in Factions were never required for anything. They've always been optional...

Until they tied the effectiveness of new (PvE only) skills to them.

Quote:

Titles serve no purpose in EoTN other then getting optional title blessings, elite armor, unique weapon skins, PVE only skills, and consumables.

Precisely - skills. And here is where Rahja says the essence of the vision to be an MMO where it is "grind free to play effectively" has gone off-track.

Quote:

None of these things are needed for anything other then self-gratification

GW is about "self-gratification", so is every other game on the market - whether it is about the self-gratification of working through the story line for the self-gratification of finishing a leisure task, or about the self-gratification of gaining shiny baubles for your virtual character, or the self-gratification of doing something with online friends. So this argument, which is used to counter any and all complaints about GW, is actually spurious to the discussion at hand.

Quote:

... or further ease of the PVE side of the game exclusively.

mmmmm, do I hear the hint of a PvP player who has no time for the "boring, easy" PvE side of the game.

Quote:

I just want to add though that the main titles in EoTN especially are stupid easy to get, and you can achieve rank 5 in a day of casual playing...

Please... add the rider "FOR ME" to that and then you are at least trying to be impartial in your views.

I agree on most of the other things you mentioned, by the way

Fight Well
Friday

TabascoSauce · Oct 01, 2007, 11:52 AM // 11:52

Quote:

Precisely - skills. And here is where Rahja says the essence of the vision to be an MMO where it is "grind free to play effectively" has gone off-track.

QFT. I think it is hard for them to grasp that their standard reply of "PvE players are not in competition" is wrong.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Etta · Oct 01, 2007, 11:56 AM // 11:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Esan

Rahja, please take this as a friendly word of advice, but I think you're due for a vacation from Guild Wars. I think you are overthinking it. But it's still only a video game.

QFT.

I know what you're saying Rah, but I still find the game fun. Like Macabre, I play with my partner most of the time and as long as we're having a great time on it, I dont see anything wrong with the game.

I'm not saying that you're wrong though. If they buff up the factions reward for the side quests from a crappy 100 points here and there, to 1000-2000k that would make the side quest worth doing. The skills and sometime green items reward is already a great idea. But if the the faction rewards are better people would only need to do all of the quests to get to R5. 70 points for Charr's battle plan mission is a joke.

As for the communities, let face it, it's getting worst all the time. Most of the old players are just staying in the close circle of guilds and alliances, again I don't see anything wrong with that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by glountz

The playerbase has changed. It changed from casual adults with a job to no-life kids, students, unemployed, housewives. With lot of time but no money. They are pleasing their playerbase.

Blunt but it's a very valid point. Take a break, Rahja. Drink some beers, take your girl out for some sushi, play halo 3 and watch Heroes series 2.

makosi · Oct 01, 2007, 11:56 AM // 11:56

I have to agree about the titles.

I'm made to feel inferior for not adhering to this 'personal grading system' which is not so much a reflection of personal strengths. Titles like the skill hunter, cartographer and vanquisher are more indicative of your time spent playing than skill. Furthermore, if you're a warrior, the skill hunter title encourages you to cap Spell Breaker and Ether Prism and if you're a monk they want you to cap Devastating Hammer. Most titles are extreme gold-sinks which we feel obliged to carry-out otherwise we'll be deemed inferior players - they must have a good psychologist in their offices.

During Prophecies, earning that feeling of completion was a goal that is difficult to achieve although still attainable. It was possible to complete the game, buy fancy armour sets and farma a deer, wolf or tiger if you felt the need to but now there are so many titles that do require grind (and there's no arguing against that) which undermines the fundamentals of the Prophecies at the time of release. I do feel somewhat cheated about that.

Amorfati87 · Oct 01, 2007, 11:58 AM // 11:58

Guys...the grind is there yes, but you do not need to do it.

The rewards you get for topping out those titles are negligible, you do not need those rewards to play and be successful at the game. It is completely optional.

Didn't get the rainbow phoenix? It's meant to be a reward for people who attained a certain level. It's the same thing as FOW armor, it is a lot of work to obtain, should this also not be in the game because it's a punishment against people who don't want to work that hard for armor? Again, you don't need either thing to be successful at this game.

Rank 5 to get armor? Do you think that all armor should be available to you on the character creation page?

The good old days? When rangers were routinely shunned, when MM's were unwanted, when you'd be stuck for weeks at missions because henchies and Pugs just couldn't handle it. Where the holy trinity (Wammo/Monk/Ele) was deemed the "ONLY" professions worth playing. The good old days weren't always good, people tend to forget the bad things and just remember the good.

The game has held your attention for 2+years, is it really fair to expect it to hold your attention indefinately?

Anet never lied to us. The no grind you all refer to is about leveling your character. You do not need to grind to get to the highest level in the game. You do not need to grind to get a max weapon or max armor, there are collectors you can go to, there are drops you can use. Max armor can be purchased for less than 10k with zero grind.

Anet has always said they want you to play the way you want to, and it is not a game that you need to constantly play to be good at. You can leave for awhile, then come back and not really have lost anything.

Not really seeing the lies here...you still see em? Point em out, lets discuss...

Sid Doog · Oct 01, 2007, 12:22 PM // 12:22

I have to say that after reading all this i must say HUMMM....

I have played GW since it launched i have played alot (maintaned a job lol) have alot of titles maxed out, i never pvp just dont like it at all , but i do like the grind of working towards a title for myself nothing more. I play this game for me my money , my grind lol.

As far as needing norn points and which ever yea you need them but if you just play the game through then your level 2-3 on all areas and there isnt much a of a diff in skill level with those points Anet did a great job there i must say. But anything after that is totaly optional and yes it is a grind but that is the fun in it (to me atleast) except for all the purps i keep getting lol

RTSFirebat · Oct 01, 2007, 12:26 PM // 12:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHunterX

Five words:
Make all titles account-based.

Sure, some peoples work is going to go down the shitter, but the way the title/grind system is now, the game encourages you to play only one PvE character, I expect most players have only worked on a single toon, so the loss of work is going to be minimal

I absolutely hate that I have been reduced to playing only my Warrior character simply because so many titles that affect PvE are character based only, instead of account based, and I refuse to go out and re-grind areas 5 more times.

Welcome to my world. I really only have the time to play as my Ranger, because she is the most developed character. As it stands I don't plan to bring any other character to EotN due to it being so annoying doing title grind over and over again.

How anyone has more then 1 character I'll never know. Besides my Ranger I sometimes rarely use my Pre-Searing Mesmer character. That is about it.

Title grind is a joke, and its not just EotN...:

Sunspear
Lightbringer
Luxon/Kurzick Friend Title (10 million the max! what are they thinking???)
3 Race titles of EotN

And since all the above titles are character base, I just see no reason to focus on other anyothers.

Most my other PvE characters have been reduced to mules for my Ranger... its a shame really.

Crom The Pale · Oct 01, 2007, 12:31 PM // 12:31

Personaly I think the Veteran players are as divided on these issues as the new players are.

Time spent playing has always been a factor in determining what skills you had availible for your chars and how much info you had on monsters/misson/map locations.

Skill is still the determining factor in completeing the storyline and in PvP.

The time spent aspect is related to what players who have already completed the storyline are able to do with there max lvl 20 chars. Rather then just force players to redo what they have already done, with no rewards, they have added a reward for doing things more than once. Explore and get a title, clear a map for vanquished title and/or reputation points.

As for the PvE skills, they are rewared in quests/dungeons that also reward points for there title line. When you aquire most all of the PvE skills they are effective, right whenyou get them at any lvl of the title. The fact that they become stronger as you progress is just a fantastic reward for completing quests/dungeons.

Imagine a war skill that dealt +1 dmg for every 5 foes defeated on a map, would you complain that it forced you to kill more to improve the effectiveness of the skill or that you were being rewarded as you progressed doing what you needed to do anyway.

Star Gazer · Oct 01, 2007, 12:39 PM // 12:39

rahja, excellent post man. you have summed up exactly how this game has been falling and falling since the release of prophecies. They effectively split up the community in factions, and even made more so with heros. Prophecies as a BAD ASS game. Perfect content, astounding graphics, the works. Hell, you couldnt even have 8 man parties until near the end!

Then they started to nerf all the things people did for fun that had already beaten the game. They nerfed the first 105 monk build. Sure, it probably hurt the botters more than any, but alot of people did this for fun. They then nerfed Griffon farming. Ok, another stab in the back. But the nerfs just kept coming and kept coming, and made it unfun to do stuff after you beat the game. I have done what I can with the current system. I don't have the patience for doing HM with heros and henchies...I have cleared a few zones, but it quickly became unfun to see my team reach -60. Its just not fun.

Halloween, while I am looking forward to it (BIG TIME!!), I know it will be disappointing. I remember the first Halloween, and how fun it was with the new surroundings, the quests, the candy corn henchies! But then the 2nd year just had the same surroundings.....wow. Couldnt even design a new moon face eh? So this year, I am sure everything will be the same.

Anet, if you could, please just roll the game back to the beginning of prophecies. Your players were actually happy because you stood by your principle: Play how you want, when you want.

LethalHands · Oct 01, 2007, 12:40 PM // 12:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by Friday

No, he said that the grind for the real, performance influencing effects of the skills tied to the titles goes against the original vision that GW was built on. We saw the shades of things to come when the PUGS first called for "LB rank 5 or higher only" when entering the endgame realms of NF.

This isn't the fault of the people who made the games grind completely optional, but the community who is demanding this of you. This is like demanding a rank 9 party to take you as a no-rank in HA. Just won't happen. A friends list or a guild is usually the answer, but it's a community issue who is unaccepting of anyone they deem inexperienced and many PUGS or strangers in general won't take the time to show you the ropes. Many will tell you so. In mean ways. </3 community? I agreed with him on this point. :P

By the way, the end game NF areas went from easy to stupid easy in normal mode these days. Give them a try. They don't even have enviroment effects anymore.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Friday

Until they tied the effectiveness of new (PvE only) skills to them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Friday

Precisely - skills. And here is where Rahja says the essence of the vision to be an MMO where it is "grind free to play effectively" has gone off-track.

You're missing my point entirely. PVE skills are a nice little addition; not needed. You can go on without them. You don't need fancy armor, or fancy weapons to win at this game. If you want these things, you do the grind for them. You can't have your cake and pie and eat it. No ones forcing this method on anyone (save for maybe other players..), it's merely an option. People strongly against grind can choose the no grind plan. If you don't want to grind for fancy armor, then don't. You are not at any disadvantage if you do not do so, as someone said... PVE isn't a competition. Right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Friday

GW is about "self-gratification", so is every other game on the market - whether it is about the self-gratification of working through the story line for the self-gratification of finishing a leisure task, or about the self-gratification of gaining shiny baubles for your virtual character, or the self-gratification of doing something with online friends. So this argument, which is used to counter any and all complaints about GW, is actually spurious to the discussion at hand.

Self-gratification doesn't mean elite armors, fancy weapons, and PVE skills to some people. Some people think getting their set of 1.5K armor is gratifying, or pwning that noob heroway team in HA is self-satisfying. It's a question of personal preference, but it's subjective to whoever you ask. But yeah.. thanks for pointing out that all games do that to an extent. I kind of figured. That's wasn't my point though.

Harmless · Oct 01, 2007, 12:45 PM // 12:45

To the OP: Well stated. I agree with the points you made also.

I've played guild wars since they had the first demo at E3 long ago. I played in the betas and got each new preorder and campaign as soon as it was available. There are many things I still love about the game; the scenery, the quests, the humor, and much else.

Unfortunately, the game as it is now encourages people to play alone, develop one character, or at the most two, and achieve titles. If that appeals to you, great, you are happy. If it doesn't too bad, cause that's just the way it is.

I used to play on several characters regularly. I stopped and now only play on my ranger. Why? Too many titles are character based. I don't want to do the grind or in some cases spend the money to get the titles on all my characters. With each campaign I stopped playing a couple of characters. Now I only have one that’s been thru everything. The end result of that is, I've lost most of my interest in playing. I like variety, playing only one profession all the time is boring to me. So I'm playing less. Where I used to just switch to another character and continue playing, now I just go play another game.

I'm sure the titles were to reward people for what they achieved. Unfortunately, for most it’s more of a task that has become irksome.

And the community, yeah. I leave local chat off. I don't like the unfriendliness, the put downs, the arrogance, the just plain meanness that is around so much. There are really nice people out there playing still, they just keep to themselves avoiding the ugliness around them as best they can.
It just encourages you to become more and more isolated. It definitely isn't community building.

Lord Xeshm · Oct 01, 2007, 12:51 PM // 12:51

Well thought out and well written post. I remember when it was fun to create different characters and just "have fun". Now, it's better just to have one character and acquire titles on them almost exclusively.