Curse

Vnewbie · Oct 19, 2007, 07:40 PM // 19:40

I do realize that the essense of GW appears to be lost. I miss the days of PUGs actually being an option. In fact, my opinion is that Heroes severely messed up the whole concept of grouping. The fact that you can get a hero that can exceed the abilites of some players, then get lots of them seemed to ruin the game for me. Because my favourite thing to do was get into a PUG, pwn/get pwned, and meet some nice people who I could know and become friends with. Now, everyone just loads up their select heroes, fills it in with Henchies (...and don't take this quite the same way, I like the improved henchies) and goes off and masters all the missions. It just isn't a, well, GROUP game anymore. In fact, it's starting to feel like WoW (which I quit so I could play more GW).

Martin Firestorm · Oct 19, 2007, 07:58 PM // 19:58

Heroes definitely killed a lot of GW socializing, but not having heroes ressulted in bottleneck missions where you'd get stuck for a long time until you'd find a decent PUG, and the near impossibility of playing through campaigns as certain professions (mesmers and sins, I'm looking at you) because no one would take you in their PUG. In the end, I'll reluctantly take the reduced socializing in exchange for having a way around the bottlenecks and bad PUGs (I will go through my monitor at the next incident of radar pictures).

And I do get in decent PUGs from time to time, even if overall PUGs are harder to find. Plus, heroes are just more fun, allowing you to assure the right synergies in your team build, etc. I agree about the title grind criticism, but I think heroes is one area where you have to cut anet slack, because something had to be done about PUG dependence IMO.

EPO Bot · Oct 19, 2007, 07:58 PM // 19:58

Fact: I used to play almost purely with hench in Prophecies and factions. Exept in missions, in wich i always pugged.

Ever since NF, i do quests and exploring with heroes and hench, but i still pug in the missions IF a party is available.

So basically, i still play exactly the same as before, only now i can customize my party more wich is great.

If you want to do everything with players, the solution of your problem is finding a guild wich shares your interest. That is maybe the biggest flaw of GW: Finding a guild you like takes a lot of time and talking.

Really, all these complaints have so little merit. All that was added to the game was more freedom, and less forcing.

Freedom = good

Vinraith · Oct 19, 2007, 08:01 PM // 20:01

Quote:

All that was added to the game was more freedom, and less forcing.

Yup. There are always going to be people, though, that want others to be forced to play with them. They're a minority, but a profoundly vocal one.

Asplode · Oct 20, 2007, 12:09 AM // 00:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vinraith

"Support" is fixing bugs, [self-righteous, stockholm bs]

Actually, it's not just limited to that. They also include skill balances, and fixing broken things outside the scope of skills or faults in coding, or exploitable mechanics in tournaments and maintaining the playerbase for their game. Their "cut-and-run" attitude isn't winning them any new fans, I can assure you that. Remedial support for the existing game, dev resources to the future project just makes the community feel unimportant.

Karyuu · Oct 20, 2007, 12:26 AM // 00:26

Oh yay, more blanket statements about the "community" and new fans.

CHunterX · Oct 20, 2007, 12:42 AM // 00:42

I'd be happy if the PvE-only skills reached their cap in effectiveness at Rank 6 (Rank 6 would make the most sense, seeing as you "unlock" access to things in numerical Rank order; Rank 3 = Consumables, Rank 4 = Weaponsmith, Rank 5 = Armor, and adding a new Rank 6 = Max Skill Effectiveness) but still let players grind up to Rank 10 for a max title contributing towards KoaBD.
I'm not trying to make it easy-mode for everyone, I just don't like the idea of having to grind each title to 10 for all 8 of my characters. Requiring only Rank 6 to use these skills to their highest effectiveness would make it more reasonable to play multiple characters and classes. Lets face it, bringing a low-level Title-based skill with the current system is like running a Fire Elementalist with only 8 points into Fire Magic. Didn't need to grind skill points to get the most out of our skills, why are we forced to grind titles to get the most out of other skills?

Lord Sojar · Oct 20, 2007, 12:52 AM // 00:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHunterX

I'd be happy if the PvE-only skills reached their cap in effectiveness at Rank 6 (Rank 6 would make the most sense, seeing as you "unlock" access to things in numerical Rank order; Rank 3 = Consumables, Rank 4 = Weaponsmith, Rank 5 = Armor, and adding a new Rank 6 = Max Skill Effectiveness) but still let players grind up to Rank 10 for a max title contributing towards KoaBD.

Yeh, but even r10 isn't hard to get now. The books really alleviated a TON of issues. Seriously, I turned in a finished NM heroes handbook and an incomplete NM dungeon book, took me from r3 vanguard to r6... Granted r10 is quite a bit more, but if you were r0 norn with NO points, and you turned in 2 HM dungeon books to the Norn guy, you would be auto r10... and you get all those nice rewards for doing the dungeons. The books are a blessing, and I am extremely happy with the update, so much so that I decided to try for a complete HoM on my monk now. This is going to take awhile....

EPO Bot · Oct 20, 2007, 06:54 AM // 06:54

It still takes a LOT of time to get a maxed HoM for eight characters, but if you think back to the old school GW, you can see that you were supposed to have just one roleplaying character anyway. The rest of your slots were for PvP. It wasn't actually said by Anet, but you could feel it wile reading between the lines in the manual.

MrSlayer · Oct 20, 2007, 09:19 AM // 09:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

Norn is not a reskin, it just looks very similar to Ascalon armor.

People say the same with Silver Eagle, but it too has a similar shape to Luxon Warrior armor.

I wasn't referring to the Warrior one

I was referring to as a WHOLE, the Norn armor. The Dervish is based off a mix; Mila and I found it (since she has every Derv set to play with)

Zesbeer · Oct 20, 2007, 09:53 AM // 09:53

Rahja the Thief, everything you said in your first post is exactly how i feel about the game right now thank you for expressing it!

william1975 · Oct 20, 2007, 10:35 AM // 10:35

I do agree with the OP with regard to the introduction of grind and the deterioration of PUG's, grinding shoudl never have been introduced, but in that sense most titles should never have been introduced, due to them being purely based on grinding something.

They are a nice reward for those that did do them beforehand. I myself was uncovering all the map before the cartographer title came out, and love having legendary cartograper for continuing to do it. However, with the introduction of the HoM these titles seem necessary to grind in order to achieve more benfits, and some titles are essential to gameplay, Kurzick/Luxon, Sunspear, Lightbringer, and all the Reputation ones.

Heroes destroyed what was left of the PUG, though they declined as chapters came out

I still enjoy playing, as i love the game, and while i go out with my parter and our 6 heroes in most areas i do enjoy that, I wonder how I am meant to do any mission or area that is hard without a decent PUG. Being a mesmer when i started I couldn't get a decent PUG before the introduction of Factions, and certainly can't now with heroes available. heroes are a blessign and a curse, for me it allows me to play in areas i would have found nigh on impossible, but it alos limits the ability to play them, Heroes don;t work as well as real players, they dont talk or have fun with you. This is a MMO, not a single player game. However I seem to be stuck now playign it alone or with my partner.

Its fun, but not as fun as it should be

Miss Puddles · Oct 20, 2007, 04:59 PM // 16:59

this is probably my 8th post saying this in various threads because this topic has been beaten to death but....

titles are optional! the spiffy expensive armor is optional! stop whining that you have to grind to get them! YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET ANY OF IT!!!!

CHunterX · Oct 20, 2007, 07:53 PM // 19:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rahja the Thief

Yeh, but even r10 isn't hard to get now. The books really alleviated a TON of issues. Seriously, I turned in a finished NM heroes handbook and an incomplete NM dungeon book, took me from r3 vanguard to r6... Granted r10 is quite a bit more

Well, Rank 6 to Rank 10 is four times more points.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rahja the Thief

but if you were r0 norn with NO points, and you turned in 2 HM dungeon books to the Norn guy, you would be auto r10...

Not quite, you'd still need 40,000 more points (equal to one NM Dungeon Master Guide) but still, completing every Dungeon 8 times on HM and 4 times on NM still seems like a lot of work for one character. I agree the books are a blessing, but still, reducing the requirement for max effectiveness (even if it was Rank 8) would alleviate the stress of trying to keep 8 characters at their highest abilities.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EPO Bot

The rest of your slots were for PvP.

Haha, no. Three slots for PvP when you can quickly re-roll? And now its even easier to reroll a PvP character. I don't think anyone has three characters dedicated to PvP, unless they are using them for mules possibly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Miss Puddles

this is probably my 8th post saying this in various threads because this topic has been beaten to death but....

titles are optional! the spiffy expensive armor is optional! stop whining that you have to grind to get them! YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET ANY OF IT!!!!

And this is probably the umpteenth post saying the whole game is optional! You have to have these PvE-linked skill titles maxed, or its like playing a Pure Axe Warrior with only 8 Axe Mastery and 8 Strength when everyone else has 13 Axe and 13 Strength simply because they spent 20 hours repeating the same quests. That rewards Time>Skill, which the game wasn't based on.

dead man ivan · Oct 20, 2007, 07:53 PM // 19:53

One must understand the reasons why it was important for A.Net to introduce heroes in the first place. I mean I joined the Guild Wars universe about 1.5 years after Proph was released and to be honest it was a real problem even finding pUGs let alone joining one.
I could not get any players to join me since I started out with the easiest class to play with i.e. a warrior.
Now I believe the reason for this was that as the expansions increased the outposts and towns increased and the number of people started spreading out more and more. Now since they wanted to prevent people running to the higher level areas they have to give some options to the lower level players to counter the areas where they start off without other players helping them.
So I don't really believe its Anets falut. The way they have designed this game i.e completely instanced areas causes people to split up and hence the anti-social element to it.
I know that I was attracted to this game by the free play and Anet tells me their design decisions were keeping that fact in mind.
Also I believe the majority of people are casual in nature and thus have incompatible schedules at least in my guild.I think blaming ANet for the consumers i.e the peoples choices is a bit unfair.
I will however give you that Gw:EN is not everything it could have been. I for one am really really disappointed the way they recycled the dungeon maps making it modular and just joining seemingly random pieces together and everyone agrees the HoM just plain sucks.
I however see the changes you talk about and I really think they will try to correct the mistakes of making too many instanced areas(i think they already will) and fix some other problems but lets be honest for people who want to play all the time they have to give some time chewers and ANets version is titles and I dont blame those people expecting some kind of game changing reward for the work they put in. There will be a balance and I dont think its possible to get just one or the other however way a group might want.

Jongo River · Oct 20, 2007, 09:29 PM // 21:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Miss Puddles

this is probably my 8th post saying this in various threads because this topic has been beaten to death but....

titles are optional! the spiffy expensive armor is optional! stop whining that you have to grind to get them! YOU DON'T HAVE TO GET ANY OF IT!!!!

Do you find repeating tiresome schoolyard level arguments rewarding?

In case you're slow on the uptake, I will explain - it was the point where our "options" became bound together that some of us became rather annoyed.

I can't go for armour, without going for a title - FACT, even after the update.

And this optional rubbish could have applied during some rather unpleasent times in human history - don't like the back? Well you don't have ride the bus.

Dr Strangelove · Oct 20, 2007, 09:47 PM // 21:47

I like that the OP is now refuting his own first post, thanks to the book update, yet somehow everyone is still whining.

Karyuu · Oct 20, 2007, 10:03 PM // 22:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jongo River

And this optional rubbish could have applied during some rather unpleasent times in human history - don't like the back? Well you don't have ride the bus.

And what exactly are you being discriminated for here? Regardless of the fact that it's easy to get the armor, you still find your complaint valid? All I'm hearing is "Woe is me, there's a TITLE attached even though I'm gaining it as I play through all the primary missions!"

Maybe I am slow on the uptake myself, as you're rather willing to throw out, but I'd love to understand your stance. Unfortunately however, it's rather beyond me at this point.

Jongo River · Oct 20, 2007, 10:12 PM // 22:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karyuu

"Woe is me, there's a TITLE attached even though I'm gaining it as I play through all the primary missions!"

Not true - you don't get the rank "as you play", you get it afterwards. Please explain to me what you think the point in making all armours accessible at the end of the *final* part of GW1 is? Armours in GW:EN purely for HoM display?

Karyuu · Oct 20, 2007, 10:17 PM // 22:17

Woah there, I never set "get the rank as you play." I wrote, "I'm gaining it as I play [...]", which is quite the difference.

Did you complain just as hard about the Nightfall endgame armor? Clearly it had no purpose once that campaign was finished until something new came along. What do you do once you finish a campaign, anyway? I'm pretty sure you don't throw GW into a dark corner of your computer and forget about it - you continue playing, keeping yourself busy with this and that as you see fit. Why can't people have some new armor sets to keep themselves busy in?