Curse

Red Locust · Jun 30, 2005, 10:44 PM // 22:44

Yeah, all these analogies people are throwing around are terrible. The best one is probably Dunmorgan's Magic: the Gathering.

You could also think of it as a game of chess. Both players have the exact same pieces and play under the same rules as each other. Let's say one player spent the last year playing chess with his buddies. He learns new moves, new tricks and new skills to better his chess game, while the other guy doesn't practice at all.
It's still fair game. They still start off on the same footing, with the same pieces, and noone has an artificial advantage over the other. Except, one player has access to many more moves than the other due to the time he put into the game.

This is equivalent to the current situation in GW. The more time you put into the game, the more different skills you have access to. But when it comes down to the game, you still have the same 8 skill slots and the same equipment as the other guy.

Kali Ma · Jun 30, 2005, 10:48 PM // 22:48

Quote:

Being the best takes work, i'm sorry its true but nobody would want it if everybody could have it at a moments notice.

I agree with everything in your post, completely. I just don't feel that the currect PvP design in GW reflects this, and that's really all it is. A more organized and professional guild will be akin to the Lakers in your description, and rightfully so. The difference here is that once on the court, no team has access to special shots that the other doesn't, or different rules of play because they earned them, or has gear that dramatically improves their health and stamina over the other team - steroids and drugs are illegal for that very reason. Regardless of what happens in practice, behind the scenes and offcourt - regardless of the technologies at their disposal - once on court, it's all about the skill of the players themselves, not the tools they take with them.

But that's all I'll say about this now, and will respectfully bow out. I do think that this whole discussion would be more prodcutive if each side would be more open to listening to the other's point of view, rather than just jumping on each other's case for being whiners or flamers.

toastgodsupreme · Jun 30, 2005, 11:00 PM // 23:00

postive comments come from happy players who are, well, busy happily enjoying the update

Tutompop · Jun 30, 2005, 11:10 PM // 23:10

I agree that the extras available to those who farm pve more than others do infact have an advantage over those who do not even if it is marginal at best. However, this group did put more effort/training into attaining these items. Which in a very loose connection (i don't like comparing real sports to games since its a sacrifice on the part of the real life players to compete at a decent level.) relates to the real life attributes of the player. Hey, that guy can shoot a 3 pointer every time! Wheres my unlock instant 3 point shot ability button?

Strength/speed/agility/endurance for basketball players was not a god given right to these individuals of team sports. They had to work for them. Those of us playing hoops on the street however did not train and did not work for it, but we still have fun even if we suck compared to the pros.

I consider myself one of those who play pvp for fun and would get blown out of the water playing against the "top" guilds. I like fighting other similiarly skilled players and winning or losing. Again, the best are the best not because it comes naturally to them, it's because they work hard for it and "earned" it. Personally, I don't think its worth alot of sacrifice to "win" at a game but to each his own.

Vermilion Okeanos · Jun 30, 2005, 11:15 PM // 23:15

I believe the true reason you get to read more negative comments than positive comments are:

-All those negative players tend to use their time on the message board complaining about the game and refuse to play it.

-The positive player are playing the game just fine so they use most of their time in the game instead of on the message board.

Loviatar · Jun 30, 2005, 11:22 PM // 23:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by stumpy

sorry for the bump ... but read my above post ... thats gotta be a silver platter handed to you ... that means someone with no pvp skill no tactics ... no knowledge of what to do or how it works ...

used a template and progressed faster than anybody here? he says its easy as pie ... and hes gonna unlock all his other elite skillls this way THIS weekend lol. so if anyone really has any issues with the faction system they got no skills.

that is because he is willing to use it instead of saying how inferior a template is

congratulations are due him

arredondo · Jul 01, 2005, 12:00 AM // 00:00

Some of you really don't understand logic in comparisons, lol.

I'll make my a general response to those who don't understand analogies... if your are better than someone in a competitive activity because of your SKILLS, that is commendable. If you are better because of your GEAR, then that is a fault of the system you're competing in.

No other serious competitive contest is heavily influenced by some having better GEAR (i.e. a better tennis racket or shoes) except Guild Wars. Everyone has great gear from the get-go. Please don't lump improving one's SKILLS into this category (i.e. having a better outside shot from hard work and practice). Skill is what competition is all about.

PvP in Guild Wars should be purely 100% about skill, tactics and strategy - not unlocking GEAR. PvE should be about exploration, adventuring and discovery. That's where you build on the 'unlocking' play mechanic. I don't want skill to be a requisite for PvE rewards (i.e. 100 PvP wins to get to the two new areas coming out), and I don't like gear-hunting in PvP being a requisite for the ability to access all your strategic and tactical options. This is true for any competitive activity.

Khift · Jul 01, 2005, 12:49 AM // 00:49

It takes longer to improve your performance through better equipment than through improving your build quality and your personal skill. The brute still loses to the intelligent, and now, the intelligent gets the best of both worlds seeing as while improving his build quality and his personal skills he gets the added bonus of unlocking new equipment, whereas the brute only gets to unlock more equipment, albeit at a slightly faster rate.

In layman's terms:

Guild Wars is the first MMORPG to make it to where the intelligent, that being the person who spends his time thinking up new and better strategies, can easily beat the brute, that being the person who focuses solely on item acquisition, and still remain an MMORPG. This is what Guild Wars was advertised as -- "intelligence beats time played." It was not advertised as a CS in MMORPG form. If that is what you want, then you are playing the wrong game. It was never intended to be a MMORPG clone of CS, and it never will become that.

Siran Dunmorgan · Jul 01, 2005, 12:58 AM // 00:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by arredondo

PvP in Guild Wars should be purely 100% about skill, tactics and strategy - not unlocking GEAR. PvE should be about exploration, adventuring and discovery. That's where you build on the 'unlocking' play mechanic. I don't want skill to be a requisite for PvE rewards (i.e. 100 PvP wins to get to the two new areas coming out), and I don't like gear-hunting being a requisite for the ability to access all your strategic and tactical options. This is true for any competitive activity.

Really? Any competitive activity?

Like, say, war?

Which—I would claim—is the ultimate human competitive activity.

Arredondo, the point that you make here is well taken, and accurate: you're posting about what you want, and why you think that what you want would be good for all of us, I accept that, and applaud your willingness to speak out.

But Guild Wars doesn't end with a status quo: part of the point of the weekly updates is precisely that we have a living, changing world. The aspect that—as far as I can tell—you find uncomfortable is that there is a game beyond the specifics of PvP battle.

What you—and a great many posters over the last year, here and elsewhere—seem unable to grasp is that Guild Wars differs from various popular PvP gaming titles in that it blurs the distinction between preparatory work in the real world and preparatory work in the game world.

A few years ago, I used to play Sierra/Dynamix's Tribes, quite a lot. It's pretty easy in the context of that game to see what a difference the various levels of equipment can make. I remember spending the better part of two months grinding for a speed upgrade, and the month after that trying for the accuracy upgrade, and some time after that going for the vision enhancements.

Now, Tribes isn't normally addressed in those terms: you're probably thinking that I've somehow mentioned the wrong game. But I didn't. I meant Tribes. But by speed upgrade I mean making the jump to a faster computer (I was still using a PII 200MHz, at a time when most processors had gone to 400 or 450), and upgrading my connection from 128Kbps ISDN to 1.5 Mbps aDSL. By accuracy upgrade I mean getting a Razer 'Boomslang' instead of the default 'generic' mouse that'd come with the new box. By vision enhancement, I mean getting a monitor that could handle higher refresh rates, so I didn't get headaches staring at a flickering screen.

And—believe me—the work I was doing at the time was absolute grind. But I did it happily in order to 'unlock' those upgrades to Tribes. And my record in the game improved significantly, as is appropriate to my investment.

All that ArenaNet has done with Guild Wars is to move that activity—the 'grind' by which one unlocks enhancements to the game—into another layer of the virtual world.

In the real world, dedicated Magic: the Gathering players 'grind' at their daily jobs simply to buy additional packs of cards, and, though Magic tournaments are some of the most intensely competitive environments you'll find off of an actual battlefield, no one seems interested in the notion that simply because this player has more cards than that player, that the game is unfair. It's true that players with more money have more options. It's also true that they don't win tournaments any more often than players who are verging on actual poverty.

At what level of abstraction do you play the game? Let's look at a football team: not from the perspective of the player, but from the perspective of the owner. From the owner's perspective, the players are effectively, cards, i.e. collections of statistics, that, in combination with other statistics, may or may not produce a win for the owner.

The game the owners play is to gather as many synergistic, high-value cards as they can into their hands. And those cards include things like stadium improvements, better trainers and coaches, better pre-game facilities, field technology such as in-helmet communications gear, and anything else they can do to make sure that when the players head out onto the field, everything is tipped as far as possible to ensure victory.

Sure, from the player's perspective, the playing field might be level. But let me aske this question:

How many of the last, say, five Superbowls have not been won by the New England Patriots?

Now, Arredondo, I sympathize. The world of computer gaming is changing around you, and you feel uncomfortable at the change; that's okay. But looking at the game solely from the perspective of the single match, the single field of battle seems to me to be a bit short-sighted. Guild Wars is as much about the gathering of resources as much as any Real-Time Strategy game, but one in which the resources persist from session to session. And it has a detailed 'battle mode' that state-of-the-art RTS games can only envy.

I understand from your claims that you believe that Guild Wars should be more like 'CounterStrike: Fantasy' than like 'Dragonshard: Persistent & Online'; well and good: you're persistent, and vocal, and you seem reasonable and literate. I can assure you that your perspective is shared by people to whom ArenaNet listens, and I am certain that your comments, specifically, are heard as well.

But we would all do well to try to understand that we—and in this I include the developers of Guild Wars as well—are faced with a living game, subject to the same 'growth pains' of any living thing, and, like a living thing, we cannot be wholly certain into what it will grow.

—Siran Dunmorgan

Vorlin · Jul 01, 2005, 02:12 AM // 02:12

Quote:

Originally Posted by arredondo

Some of you really don't understand logic in comparisons, lol.

I'll make my a general response to those who don't understand analogies... if your are better than someone in a competitive activity because of your SKILLS, that is commendable. If you are better because of your GEAR, then that is a fault of the system you're competing in.

No other serious competitive contest is heavily influenced by some having better GEAR...

Apparently you've never seen a car race. Or a yacht race. Or a bobsled race. Or any of a number of other competitive events where both skill -and- gear are tested. -You- are the one who's decreed that gear must not matter for it to be fair, the reason being is that -you- don't want to deal with getting the best gear but you want to be top of the line anyway.

Here's another analogy for you to digest: you are like a driver showing up at the Indy 500 and claiming that you don't want to bother with a pit crew and car design, so the race should be redesigned to eliminate that aspect of racing.

Dax · Jul 01, 2005, 02:31 AM // 02:31

They have so many negative comments because they make it too easy for the players to find loopholes (trying to stay away from the word exploit)in the game by not having enough rules to keep people in check.

I would guess every negative comment here has to do with somebody feeling slighted because someone has found a way to get by something. So Anet tries to change whatever the problem is and is pisses off someone else because they considered what they were doing right...rinse, repeat.

Everyone hates it when someone has to lay down the rules, but let's all face it if every player had their way people who exploit the living crap outta this game.

Barkam · Jul 01, 2005, 02:42 AM // 02:42

This PvP update is the best so far. And I don't think I am alone because tons of PvP oriented peeps are starting to come back to GW and tombs are getting better.

arredondo · Jul 01, 2005, 02:47 AM // 02:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vorlin

Apparently you've never seen a car race. Or a yacht race. Or a bobsled race. Or any of a number of other competitive events where both skill -and- gear are tested. -You- are the one who's decreed that gear must not matter for it to be fair, the reason being is that -you- don't want to deal with getting the best gear but you want to be top of the line anyway.

Here's another analogy for you to digest: you are like a driver showing up at the Indy 500 and claiming that you don't want to bother with a pit crew and car design, so the race should be redesigned to eliminate that aspect of racing.

You can hire whomever you want in your pit crew without submitting to a mandatory league rule of 10,000 laps before you make them an offer. You can purchase whatever parts you wish without submitting to a mandatory league rule of driving 10,000 laps before you buy them.

He steps to the plate.... a swing and a miss. Nice try though.

PieXags · Jul 01, 2005, 03:11 AM // 03:11

Arredondo I think you misunderstood his comparison there. His "pit and crew" are you "1,000" laps...nevermind. The point is you have it available to you and you're just not doing what you can in order to do better, so you're saying it's unfair just because you don't want to do something.

I've gone out and had a chat with many PvP players about this, and most all of them seem happy about it. (Including myself who also plays PvP, I might add.) Just in the arenas in about an hour I got 250 points. I was just testing out a new build too. And that's in the ARENAS, the form in which you get the lowest amount of faction. If it was GvG I'm sure I'd have about 2-3 thousand by now in the PvPing I've been doing since the update, at least that, and I've not even played that much as I've been workin' on my ranger more in PvE

.

I've heard about 5 people say it's unbalanced and that it takes too long, I know of many many more than that, who like the new system. I've had friends come back to guild wars now because of the update.

Vorlin, Siran, Khift, and Red Locust seem to have put it together pretty well.

I guess there's just more negative threads because all of the people who enjoy it are out there enjoying the game.

arredondo · Jul 01, 2005, 03:14 AM // 03:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Siran Dunmorgan

The story about you upgrading your computer equipment. That's YOUR decision to either stick with crappy parts or get the best of the best. The game itself, on its own, could careless what you buy in accessories. The only thing serious competitive activities should focus on (and do, except for Guild Wars) is that grinding for equal gear is not to be a pre-requisite for matching skill against skill.

All the tools you need upfront is a given in any PvP competition, while being rewarded for progress endured is a given in any PvE endeavor. Arena.net is sadly insisting on shoehorning the play mechanic of one system (PvE rewards) into a different one where it fits poorly (PvP being pure skill based). I can hammer a square peg into a round hole, but that doesn't make it a comfortable fit.

Jesse Owens, the great Olympic sprinter from 1936, could've entered his races wearing snowshoes and an overcoat... but that's his idiotic decision for not taking the competitive activity seriously, not the fault of the sport itself. If the rules said he could only upgrade from snowshoes to running shoes by first completing 500 races in first place, we'd have the ridiculous competive system now employed by Guild Wars. It should ONLY be about SKILL vs. SKILL. Everything else (for PvP) is a waste of time. There is no place for a PvE play mechanic in a serious PvP activity.

Quote:

Now, Arredondo, I sympathize. The world of computer gaming is changing around you, and you feel uncomfortable at the change; that's okay.

Bwahahahaha! Save your sympathy buddy... I'll get along fine without it. I've been playing sports and competitive activities my entire life. For almost 10 years I've been a highly ranked fighting game player whose competed and won tournies all around the country. I've been into FPS teamplay for at least five years. I can safely say I likely know a LOT more about what works and doesn't work well when it comes to describing the common traits of serious competitive activities.

No one can go through my posts, whether they agree or disagree, and tell me that I'm not making strong logical points to present my case. Many things I prefer in PvP I don't even mention because I do recognize when my personal opinion may conflict what is obviously best for the PvP game. I wouldn't be writing all of this if, as it stands today, I didn't believe that the PvP portion of this awesome game didn't have a chance to become one of the true all-time greats. It's just sad that Arena.net feels it needs to hold their baby back from reaching full maturity.

Turning off casual players who may have otherwise become hardcore PvP players is a real concern in any multi-play game. The high wall that this current system sets for just getting to the starting line with all your gear on is just plain counter productive. A competition should be PURELY about the skills of all those involved... period. Guild Wars wants to be different in this regard (despite their press kits and advertising quotes). Unfortunately this is one area where all 99.999% of the other competitive activities got it right.

Implement full UAS/UAR and get rid of Attribute Refund Points when in town please. Let Guild Wars PvP grow as far and wide as it can by removing the unecessary 'PvE reward' mechanics and focus on pure skill instead.

arredondo · Jul 01, 2005, 03:18 AM // 03:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by PieXags

Arredondo I think you misunderstood his comparison there. His "pit and crew" are you "1,000" laps...nevermind. The point is you have it available to you and you're just not doing what you can in order to do better, so you're saying it's unfair just because you don't want to do something.

How are you earning each "pit crew member" you want in the Guild Wars PvP environment? Can you just pick whomever you want using all available resources? No, you must take your "10,000 laps", according to league rules, to get the equipment you want. Weak. No such rules should be imposed on contests of skill.

Bring what you want to the starting line and prove yourself through strategy and tactics while playing, not by grinding through the arbitrary league rules hundreds of hours more than the next guy.

Siren · Jul 01, 2005, 03:26 AM // 03:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by arredondo

You can hire whomever you want in your pit crew without submitting to a mandatory league rule of 10,000 laps before you make them an offer. You can purchase whatever parts you wish without submitting to a mandatory league rule of driving 10,000 laps before you buy them.

He steps to the plate.... a swing and a miss. Nice try though.

Arredondo, just listen for a second. Think about what you've been arguing here.

You brought in Chess as an analogy to help buffer your point, but what you fail to realize (and what many here have realized and stated) is that Chess sucks as an analogy. Chess has absolutely nothing to do with how Guild Wars functions. Its design purpose is different. Its design execution is different.

The only similarity--the only parallel one can draw between Guild Wars and Chess--is movement (the importance of positioning) and nothing more. And even then...the positioning in Chess only matters in how your pieces can move and attack in combat; positioning in Guild Wars has a much deeper impact on combat.

You get all of your pieces in Chess for a reason: so they can all die. lol. The purpose of the game is to outmaneuver to more or less permanently kill your opponent's pieces (the King is dead). Pieces don't come back in Chess unless you march a Pawn to your opponent's back row.

Chess is a rigid system that's structured around a mildly fluid approach.

This isn't the case in Guild Wars, because when you have a game like Guild Wars that could be considered a digital version of Magic: The Gathering, to expect Chess in the game design (or to expect to be able to successfully support your argument by using the Chess analogy) is like John Milius thinking he can actually convince people he based Apocalypse Now off of The Odyssey and Heart of Darkness...meaning...utterly naive.

Like M:tG, you build a deck in Guild Wars. That was the entire idea behind the game: a deck of a limited number of skills (aka cards) that you would revise as you acquired more and more skills (aka cards).

Guild Wars is a fluid system that's structured around a fluid approach.

Quote:

No one can go through my posts, whether they agree or disagree, and tell me that I'm not making strong logical points to present my case.

Your statement here would only be true if that wasn't happening, but as it stands now, people are going through your posts and whether or not they agree with you, telling you that you aren't making "strong logical points," because you aren't. lol

So I start to wonder why there's this adamant denial (or perhaps unintentional ignorance?) coming from you. arredondo, I read your sentence there and I don't see any type of valid rebuttal. I see a cop-out--and a thinly veiled one at that. You're trying to claim that you haven't been making stretchy comparisons and haven't been using stretchy logic? Comparing GW to Chess is making a stretchy comparison and it is using stretchy logic.

PieXags · Jul 01, 2005, 03:34 AM // 03:34

Alright...Arredondo I'm going to ask you a relatively simple question because by this point I can't even tell anymore.

What are you arguing?

Are you arguing that it takes too long to unlock the skills?

Are you arguing that it's not skill over time played?

Are you asking for a UAS/R

Are you asking for smaller faction requirements...?

I honestly can't tell because there's mixes of all of it.

Judging from personal experience and from the general feeling of everyone I've spoken to/read posts from, it doesn't take too long to unlock the skills so long as YOU'VE got the skill to get the faction.

It IS skill over time played because EVERYONE starts off with EXACTLY what you did when they created their accounts, they had to use their SKILL to get their gear. Now you have to use your SKILL to get the gear that you want.

UAS/R---would NOT make the game more skill based if the gear depends so much that you have to have it, it would always be simply the one with the better skill set wins. The skill, is to see if you can overcome the challenges in order to GET your gear.

And smaller faction requirements don't seem to be necessary, as good PvP players seem to be getting faction with their characters, just fine.

arredondo · Jul 01, 2005, 03:35 AM // 03:35

Siren:

I've compared it to dozens of competitive activities... I've talked more on tennis than chess, lol. The thing they all have in common, that GW shys away from, is that you don't have to jump through hundreds of hoops to have access to all options from the beginning.

That design is anti-competition at it's very core. Goal oriented play for starting with what you need to succeed belongs in PvE only, not as a pre-requsite to having access to the same gear as your competitors. What does chess have that GW doesn't? Like all the rest I've mentioned, competition based purely on skill developed, not on top gear grinded for.

Dax · Jul 01, 2005, 03:35 AM // 03:35

I'll never use another metaphor in this forum....spend more time picking them apart that discussing the issue