Curse

Cally · Jun 02, 2005, 03:00 PM // 15:00

Good Job A-net! It is an excellent (and big!) update

Just 1 "bug" that you may want to look into - the runes found before the patch all have the icon of a minor rune. This is potentially confusing and may lead to errors during trading... I would hate to sell my superior vigor by accident, thinking it is a minor given the icon

Cnegurozka · Jun 02, 2005, 03:13 PM // 15:13

I got the 15k Geo armor, but i didn't notice any difference, too.
I gotta rebuy the whole set for 60k?

Devil's Dictionary · Jun 02, 2005, 03:26 PM // 15:26

Quote:

Why sell them to the vendor for 1 k when you can sell them to another player for 60 - 70 k?

I heard that many guilds prefer destroying Sigils instead of selling them to Sigil Traders/players to make the prices go up again.
Before the patch, the Sigils were 0 gp at merchants. Now I guess the people who destroy the sigils may simply sell them to merchants, thus diminishing the supply and getting at least something.

Shadow_Avenger · Jun 02, 2005, 03:40 PM // 15:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by gwden

If you actually looked, we already discussed that.

If you're sick of "hearing" it, don't read the threads. Also, you seem to be an expert on what ANET meant. Tell us more, mr. expert!

On point one, right you are, srry and i apologies, on point 2 I am no expert, but I do possess common sence and have a very very good knowedge of games design and implementation.

Now Gwden lets not get personal it benefits nobody, an leaves a bad after taste.

Shadowsting · Jun 02, 2005, 03:41 PM // 15:41

Quote:

I don't think they will change the armor on you... instead, they only change the armor in the newly made one.

Well, all of the runes have the new artwork, including the ones I already have. I dont see why this can't be done for the "same" 15k armors.

And why was the artwork changed. Honestly, I think the new rune design is rather ugly. It didn't need to be changed in my opinion, so why was it?

Mountain Man · Jun 02, 2005, 04:20 PM // 16:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zorlag

They also "removed" easy air drake and flesh golem farming (both creatures were laughably weak for their level before)...

This change also had the curious side-effect of breaking a bonus quest. You have to save a ghost from some lightning drakes, but now that the lightning drakes do mega damage, the ghost dies after a single hit and you have zero chance of saving him. ArenaNet is apparently going to address this in the next day or two.

Ensign · Jun 02, 2005, 04:45 PM // 16:45

One bug with this patch is that preexisting superior runes got the new minor rune artwork, not the superior artwork. Hopefully this'll get fixed or I'm going to be getting a lot of grief trading the things.

A lot of these changes are pretty minor or cosmetic, and some were needed changes. While the grind issue has been addressed somewhat, I hope they realize that band-aid solutions are not going to cut it. They need a fundamental change to mechanics to deal with skill and rune unlocking. Hopefully they understand this and one is in the works.

Peace,
-CxE

Sausaletus Rex · Jun 02, 2005, 06:08 PM // 18:08

Another depressing and discouraging update that shows that while the developers might be aware that a large segment of the people who've bought and played their game are extremely unhappy with it, they show little understanding or appreciation for the reasons why that displeasure exists. Fixing drops rates, tweaking monster difficulty, boss locations, and a host of cosmetic changes don't make things any better. They're merely attempts to bandage increasingly gaping wounds thanks to the underlying problems.

Guild Wars used to be a game of exploration, a game of skill and not of skills, where it was your choices and your experimentation of your limited resources in a sea of options that made up your experience. Nothing was ever too far out of reach, it was simply a matter of having the gold or the skill points or the refund points to have it. Now, it's a game where most of a character's options, most of the skills and runes and the rest, won't be, cannot be obtained by a character until well into the game. You have to slog through the early levels, the early areas, the early game with a paucity not of resources but of access. Things are arbitrarily deemed to be too good or too powerful for characters in the early goings for them to have flying in the face of the idea that this game is balanced and one skill, one item, is worth just as much as any other. You won't find elites until you get to the desert because....why exactly? You can't test out skills because....why exactly? The game's become not a place to explore and invent but something to rush to get to that next mission to get one step closer to getting more skills, more runes, more armor, and more options.

Take, for example, the Mesmer skill Phantom Pain which is a skill that causes a bit of health degeneration but also inflicts a Deep Wound when it's removed. It's not a staggeringly wonderful skills, costing 10 energy with a fifteen second recharge, but it's a solid skill and, since it's in Illusion Magic a natural pair with Conjure Phantasm for a quick degen combo with a nasty DW kicker. It can be put to good use, especially in those areas where degeneration and percentile health reductions can be most effective - against those opponents that don't have a lot of health to begin with and have no way of countering hexes. Degen's best when pitted against low level folks because that 2DPS for every pip is a lot more leathal to a creature with 100 health than it is to one with 480. It all makes Phantom Pain a natural for any Mesmer interested in exploring Illusion Magic but a skill that tails off quickly as the game progresses. By the time you get to the Northern Shiverpeaks the enemies are too hardy and too quick to remove things for you to find much benefit from a hex-based degen strategy. So where has Phantom Pain been placed? In Yak's Bend as the one skill you can buy that you couldn't learn from quests in Ascalon.

With that skill, with countless others, to say nothing of the elites, the choice of when to use it has been partly taken away from the players. The exploration, the fun, the challenge of being able to try out this skill and that skill and mix and match them together - to test them and see how they work before commiting to learning them - to make choices about which skills to spend a skill point on because it's your last one and you're not sure if you're going to like Phantom Pain or Ethereal Burden better but it's okay because even if you make a mistake you're not stuck with that skill on your bar and there's another skill point a bit of XP away, that's been done away with. The game's been dumbed down, simplified and robbed of the idea that it's us, the players, who are making the decisions and figuring out our options - not gaining in power but adding more and more options - and instead we're lead around by the hand, rushing from place to place, never learning about the trial and error that comes with filling out a skill bar, never getting enough options that we can head in any direction we want until the game's nearly over. People who enjoy PvP don't want to have to run through everything in order to get the options they need. They want to pick and choose and skim back into things later on if they find something's lacking. And people who enjoy PvE don't want to be stuck with limited options and gimped characters as they're riding a railroaded path. They want to tweak and play and explore and discover - areas, skills, strategies, friends, quests, and everything else.

And this latest patch has done next to nothing to address those concerns. Honestly, if this game had a monthly fee I'd have cancelled it and moved on by now because a series of cosmetic updates and minor tweaks are missing the entire point.

So there are going to be more bosses around so that instead of having to rezone constantly to find the one boss you're looking for - if, of course, you know which boss you're looking for - a half dozen times you only have to do it once of twice? The problem's not that I have difficulty tracking down bosses, it's that I have to track them down in the first place. The Signet of Capture is an awful mechanism. It breaks the flow of the game. When you find a boss it's not "Ah, a challenging foe, let's work together and take it down to keep going", it's "Wait, wait, this guy has a skill I need, everyone back off while we set things up to force him to use it and then we'll finish him off." Monks stop watching the rest of the party in order to catch the boss using the skill they want, people do things like bring along Heal Area so their henchmen don't finish off a boss before they can cap, parties stop fighting, the game bogs down and suspention of disbelief is lost - just as it's been for months and months and months. Bosses have been tweaked - breaking the principles of the game's design that a skill is a skill and a level is a level and they affect everyone and everything the same way from PvE to PvP from the most powerful player to the lowliest monster - in order to "cheat" by giving them more health and shortened hex and condition durations just so they're a little tought so they can live long enough to have their skills captured. Capturing stances is a nightmare because they don't show up. Heck, capturing any quick skill is a pain because it's usually quickly covered by something else. You have to be slamming on the SoC to have a prayer of getting them - not too fast, though, because you'll cancel things - and you need to be just as quick to cancel if you stumble across a skill you don't have and don't want. It's just a stupid idea and one that should have been changed or given up on a long time ago. But the big innovation since it was introduced? Well, it's no longer elite and you can slot it multiple times to capture more than one skill per zone. Great, so it takes up more valuable space on your skill bar. Now you can run around to those areas where there are more bosses with two, three, even four SoC slotted leaving yourself with precious little room to actually *do* anything when you're not capturing skills from a boss so that you can spend less time capturing. It's not that finding elites is a tough process it's that the mechanic for getting those elites is so hideously implimented. The mechanic needs tweaking if not outright disposal rather than the devs to keep trying to toss a new coat of paint on it.

So the different rune levels are now going to be distinct in appearance (and apparently extremely ugly, too) so that you know you've got a Major Monk rune or a Superior Warrior rune? Now people don't have to spend thousands upon thousands buying up unidentified armor pieces in the hopes of unlocking, right? Not exactly because unidentified is still unidentified. If you salvage before identifying then you'll get that unidentified rune but if you're still looking to unlock things yourself why would you do that? People that have unlocked everything and routinely salvage with identifying can now sell specific levels of runes for people looking to unlock but that's it and they can set up a market and use that money to buy....what exactly? They've unlocked everything, a perfect weapon won't cost much, neither will a good set of aromr, what do they need to salvage and sell runes for? What it means is that instead of having saying a one in 16 chance of getting that Mesmer Superior rune of Domination you've been wanting you've got a 1 in 4, if you can find someone selling unidentified Mesmer runes. Otherwise, nothing's happened. Runes are still a random process where it's more a matter of how lucky you are or how much time you put in than of any choice and decision on your part. You're still just rolling the die and thanks to rising inflation those runes are going to get more and more expensive and difficult for the average player to come by.

What needs to be fixed here is the whole idea of having to identify and unlock runes and items in the first place. The whole system needs to be less random so that someone looking for a specific rune can find it as easily as they can find a specific skill.

And there are other, minor changes that are just woefully misguided as well. Consider the change to the skill trainers. Now every skill you've learned from them still shows up in their list so when you go back you have to skim over that many skills to find the ones you might be interested in. Not a major problem, not even a minor annoyance, just a few more slivers of time and effort you'll need to take in order to interact with the game. But why? Why change that? Was not knowing what skills a trainer had sold you somehow harming the game? Was it a problem for people because they couldn't tell so and so that they'd got Phantom Pain from Yak's Bend and not Beetlerun by running back and checking? It's nothing but a cosmetic change, one that's not addressing the core functionality of the game. It, and the other changes like it, are either not doing anything or are actively making things worse. Maybe not in a big way but in small, discrete ways. Worse yet they take time and attention away from the real problems and real issues. Why bother with adding that new coat of paint when rust's eating away at the frame?

And as for things like the balance updates and changes to skill descriptions those are all well and good but not something I find worthy of praise. Those aren't some sort of amazing and unprecedented action, those are simply what's expected of a company that's working to support and maintain its product. These changes, largely, are things that have been known and needed since release if not before. And they still haven't gone far enough. Okay, so you can no longer get infinite energy for anyone with Essence Bond in a Bond chain. But Life Bond still triggers Balthazar's so that's infinite energy for the bonder. And it still triggers Healing Seed so that's infinite healing, too. Things are still broken, things are still in need of fixing, and expecially the things we don't know about yet. Who knows what someone's goign to come up with that's broken and abusive down the line? We should *expect* if not demand that ArenaNet be quick and timely about fixing and addressing such issues rather than encouraging them to rest on their laurels by believing things are somehow perfect and in balance. Winter wasn't working right, it should have been from the start and that it slipped through and took nearly a month before it was corrected is indicitive of how rushed and slap-dash things were before release. And skill descriptions, overall documentation of things in-game in general, are atrocious. They're misleading and inaccurate at best so you'll forgive me if I don't sing the praises of the developers for simply making sure to tell us what exactly things do.

No, there's very little to be happy about here and much cause for concern. There's still no word, no inkling, that the serious problems are even being looked at beyond a few vague words of PR assurance. If the sorts of changes and fixes being made now are any indication then any attmepts are going to be kludges and half-measures while the structure continues to rot away.

Where's the concern about the economy? Where are the high-end gold sinks to combat rising inflation? Commodizing sigils is actually harmful to the economy because it means there's always going to be a bare minimum price and that sellers won't have as easy a time getting away from that. Sigils are a bubble market in the best circumstances, eventually demand's going to drop off as people get their halls, but there aren't very many other top-end items to trade. There's unidentified runes and perfect weapons but that's about it. Those, too, will face a drop-off in demand as more people gain them. And at the same time people are playing and farming away and gaining more and more wealth. Those items are serving to distribute that wealth right now, to make sure that no one's hoarding too much. But once the demand starts to fall then no one has a reason to spend significant amounts of gold and the economy's shot to hell as the most basic of things will be priced far ut of reach of the ability of anyone to get them or people simply give up on trading because there's nothing to gain there. It needs correction *now* (actually, it needed correction a long time ago) before the bubbles burst but what's happening is that the economy's being worsened because people can't get what they want when they want it. Gambling should be in game, wagering on the outcome of PvP contests like unranked guild battles or a match-up Arena, customizations for guild halls, craftable high-end weapons, and on and on, so that wealth can be siphoned out of the system at a small but steady rate.

Where's the concern about the difficulty of obtaining skill points? Once you've run through the game and gotten all the easy skill points and quest rewards there's a steep dropoff in the rate at which you'll be able to find new skills - you'll have enough, if you're careful to get just about every skill from one profession along with the SoC to capture all its elites, but that's about it. So you can switch professions. But since you start with no skills from that profession you're forced to run out and buy them and that costs skill points. Each level past 20 costs more and more XP so you're faced with the prospect of spending more and more time leveling to get that next skill point or starting over with a new character. But investing more time in getting another skill isn't exactly an enticing proposition - you've run all the missions, it's a pain to get a group together for a decent WaW run, and you've explored all over the place, so it's just finidng a good spot and wacking away at monsters until you're too bored to continue - and recent changes to monster balance have made it even harder. Starting a new character means going through all the areas you've already been through and giving up on all the skills you already know. The game's nice and all but I don't think I want to play through it six or seven times. Skill points need to be easier to come by (Skills, in general, need to be easier to come by, but one step at a time...), profession swapping needs to be a valid mechanic and not something to do just to get an elite for your PvP build. Starting up a new character should be a nice and easy thing to do rather than a chore. Why not have it so that unlocking things - the skills and such - works not just for an account's PvP characters but for the entire account? When you unlock a skill then all of your characters of that profession can use it. If you've run a Warrior to the end of the game and you start a new low-level Elementalist when they go through the tutorial and unlock Flare and Fire Storm and GLE when your Warrior switches professions to Warrior/Elementalist then they'll be able to use Flare and Fire Storm and GLE without having to blow skill points on them. And if that Elemenatalist picks up Warrior as their secondary then they can use any skill that your high-level Warrior's uncovered right away. Cap an elite with one character and they can all use it. You build your skill list for your account not just for your PvP characters. And make maps account-based, too. If you reach Lion's Arch with one character, you can travel there with any other. That way your new characters won't have to run through the same missions and areas all over again - you can do it if you want to and it's probably a good idea because you'll want the skill points and XP but it's entirely optional.

For that matter, it shouldn't take so long before you can switch professions. There should be a way of changing your secondary long before Ascention just as you can test out and try things in the tutorial you should be flexible and variable the whole game long.

There's skill acquisition, there's finding an alternative for capturing elites, there's the possiblity of PvP rewards, there's encouraging people to start playing GvG, there are lots and lots of problems and they're calling out for fixes. And I, for one, am not going to be satisfied until I see some glimmer of hope that they're on the way. And this latest update is most assuredly not it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eclair

I thought flesh golems didn't drop armor very often, thus very rarely would you get any rune from them?

People don't really farm Flesh Golems for the drops. They gave nice drops, in terms of value for the effort, true, but rarely would you get a rune or an upgrade worth talking about. It was most just a lot of things you could salvage of liquidate and earn money with. No, the thing people liked about the Golems was that they were easy XP. For their level and as long as you could figure out a way around their Faintheartedness+Lingering Curse combo they were unchallenging enough (For example, my Warrior had good enough armor with a -dmg while hexed shield and an Absorbtion rune that the Golems couldn't scratch me. It was a string of 0 damage as long as I stood there and even for people with lesser armor they weren't taking much more damage. The big threat's the 6DPS from Faintheartedness - about 210 damage over the 35 seconds it lasts - but that's going to take a while to kill a lv20 character. I haven't tried them since the past because I'd rather gouge my eyes out than have to wade through their corpses again but if they do more damage then it's going to be a lot harder to take them down before they can kill you.) that you could go out and solo them and earn enough XP in the process to crank out a skill point in a matter of hours. As I stated above, once you get to the end game it's the opposite of the early game - getting skills isn't a matter of finding them, it's a matter of having the skill points to get them. And you run into a brick wall in getting new skill points about the time you start running out of them. But Flesh Golems, when you kill them by yourself were a good 168XP a pop. Meaning you only had to go and solo one or two hundred of them (not as hard as it sounds because they come in packs and if you can AoE them you can take them all out quickly) to "level".

So, basically, unless there's another group of monsters out there that people can easily solo then it just became a lot harder to eke out those additional levels and get enough skill points to get even one profession's skill list finished off to say nothing of developing a character that can hop from one secondary to the next and be a well-rounded contributor to any party.

Olfin Bedwere · Jun 02, 2005, 06:17 PM // 18:17

Still haven`t made it where I can dye my Targa Shield.

Kyo Yuy · Jun 02, 2005, 06:46 PM // 18:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sausaletus Rex

So, basically, unless there's another group of monsters out there that people can easily solo then it just became a lot harder to eke out those additional levels and get enough skill points to get even one profession's skill list finished off to say nothing of developing a character that can hop from one secondary to the next and be a well-rounded contributor to any party.

That's probably my biggest gripe for almost any update. The grind, farming, whatever you may call it, continues to change. It gets continually more difficult to find a way to earn enough money to be economically competitive with other buyers and sellers. So who suffers the most from this? New players. Many of the older players, who were farming Jade Scarabs in Prophet's Path long before they were backed up by Devourers, have saved up hundreds of thousands of gold, whereas newer players will struggle to even get a few platinum pieces.

The end result is that the newer players are put at a SERIOUS disadvantage. Older players can easily shell out a few thousand gold for that major rune or rare weapon that's being sold in trade channels. Newer players, on the other hand, will have to work VERY hard just to get enough gold to get a few minor runes or halfway decent weapons for their inventory. The latter also comes with the "balanced drops" - if a newer player is in a party of 6 or 8, he or she will have to be EXTREMELY lucky to find a decent weapon or rune in adventuring.

If the grind continues to be more difficult, or farming continues to be nerfed, or drops continue to be decreased, I fear that Guild Wars will create for itself the very same situation it wanted to avoid: the best players will not be the ones who have the most skill, but they will be the ones who have played the game the longest. The ones who kept up with forum talk and exploited the farming locations before they were nerfed, they may end up being the dominators of the game, and the newer players can only struggle to even TRY to come close to that.

I am not saying that farming is either good or bad; I am saying that newer players, who like playing the game THAT way, are put at a disadvantage when compared to the older players. This can become a hassle for the former group, sadly.

Spyle · Jun 02, 2005, 06:57 PM // 18:57

I started off as a W/R. It wasn't long before I decided I wanted to be W/Mo. I had heard you could change your subjob later in the game, so, seeing as things were "unlocked", I also started up a Monk for when I could change my Warriors subjob. It made sense.

But alas, when I finally get to the point of being able to change my subjob, I find that I have no skills for it whatsoever and that I have to buy them with skill points, I could get 7 at the time... Even though I had "unlocked" many of them with my Monk already. Plus it seems you can't repeat past quest for these skills, you are forced to use skill points and to earn those you have to get exp. Yay. Sorry but I quit EQ years ago.

I mean talk about extreme punishment for making a mistake in the very very beginning of the game where you barely get a taste of things to come. It's absolutely rediculous. Sure you can sample a tiny bit of each class before making it your subjob, but it's not nearly enough to make a solid/smart decision.

Shiris Heartilly · Jun 02, 2005, 07:33 PM // 19:33

Anyone know if you have to re-buy the geomancer armor to get the graphic? Or will people who already bought theirs be changed automatically?

Cnegurozka · Jun 02, 2005, 07:42 PM // 19:42

I have an old Geomancer Armor, i didn't notice any difference. But to be sure, a pic of the new would be good.

Mercury Angel · Jun 02, 2005, 08:03 PM // 20:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spyle

But alas, when I finally get to the point of being able to change my subjob, I find that I have no skills for it whatsoever and that I have to buy them with skill points, I could get 7 at the time... Even though I had "unlocked" many of them with my Monk already. Plus it seems you can't repeat past quest for these skills, you are forced to use skill points and to earn those you have to get exp. Yay. Sorry but I quit EQ years ago.

There will be a couple of new quests that're devoted to a specific profession that you won't have completed prior to that time. Such as switching to ele secondary, you'd have some in old ascalon and yak's bend at the least. I'm unaware if there're any profession specific [quests] past that part though, as it seems I unlocked most skills in the future with a guild member using the quests that anyone can do, and I missed very few.

Not too helpful, but at least it'll get a small handful of starting skills for you if you haven't yet.

Ninna · Jun 02, 2005, 08:06 PM // 20:06

theres "profession specific" quests at Yaks Bend also

but I agree its not enough

Warison · Jun 02, 2005, 08:34 PM // 20:34

I continue to read threads like this about game balancing and nerfing farming spots which seemed to be of no concern to me until recently. I am a casual game player (despite what my wife thinks). I probably have less than 200 hours of total game play. I am in a small guild of players that have played online games together for going on five years now. I have fun no matter which game I am playing. However, after some discussion with guild mates, I see that I will never have a 60K set of armor for my warrior; I won’t buy and sell numerous fantastic gold items and superior runes. As a casual gamer, when I’ve reached sites where purportedly abundant loot exists, game balancing has occurred, thus keeping resources just out of reach of myself and my guild. It seems that the lords of game balancing have smiled on a relatively chosen few. Now there are “haves” and “have-nots” in the game and there will always be a clear distinction among them. No matter what is said about skill, winning PvP and GvG battles is still tied to individual and collective armament. Everything else being equal, the individual with the better weapon will win a fight every time. Fortunately for some people that had access to areas with higher than average drop rates, they and their guild mates are ready to engage anyone in PvP or GvG contests. Unfortunately for others, in my opinion, balancing has seriously affected casual gamer’s potential competitiveness in PvP. On the fly balancing seriously affects equity and fairness in game play. It’s like having minor, major, and superior versions of the retail game. They all cost the same and are all packaged exactly the same and you don’t know until you install it which one you got. I bought a superior game, but due to “balancing” the game is transforming itself through “updates” into a minor (mediocre) version of the superior game. I paid for the game…just because I can’t devote 100’s of ours a week to game play should not affect my ability to find the same loot at a similar rate to anyone else that has played the game since day one. The game as it was shipped does not exist any more. Some might argue that it is getting better, I’m not sure. I do know that it is just as dissatisfying to me to hear that an area or monsters have been nerfed as anyone else. Just because I have not fought the “flesh golems” yet does not mean I was not looking forward to it’s rewards. To ANet: please thoughtfully consider the impact to all game players before streaming updates that have significant impact on gamer’s satisfaction.

LoneWolfWinter · Jun 02, 2005, 08:39 PM // 20:39

Ahh first post, i'll try not to embarass myself.

I'm getting annoyed by the way the anet is going about these updates. I really can't stand seeing them nerf farming spot after farming spot for reasons that seem to contradict what the intention of this game is. I'm tired of seeing the 'this game isn't about who can play the longest, its about who has the most skill' (well, it shouldnt be skill, its more who can work as a team the best, isnt it?) rant, and then hearing about how they're making it just that much harder to get those top notch weapons, runes, and gold. Do anet not understand why this is a contradiction? If they want it to be a matter of skill they need to have people on an equal level going into multiplayer, rather than what they're doing, which is giving the people who've been playing longer an advantage (as they were around before the various places got nerfed).

I would rather see them make everything available earlier, and in greater amounts than have them nerf all the best farming spots, and throw in a bunch of utterly useless changes (making the runes uglier isn't helping this game out in any way). If this keeps up im going to have to go back to playing CS:S.

momo2oo2 · Jun 02, 2005, 10:59 PM // 22:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alex Weekes

Yup. That's the way the skill is meant to work (and the way the skill description in-game says it works); it changes any elemental damage into cold damage. You deal the same amount of raw damage, however the damage is now treated as cold damage and will interact with other skills (your Fire Storm can now trigger Spinal Shivers for example) and armour etc as if it was cold damage.

As to whether or not you do the same amount of damage to those golems - that depends on what armour ratings they have. If they are weak against cold, you'll do more damage. If they are weak against fire and strong against cold you'll do less. Most of the time, though, it'll be the same.

Ok thanks! I posted from work now playing and going to check!

BTW, I think I have to separate from my idea of FinalFantasy-esque way of viewing the elements (I mean, in FF if you do cold damage to a ice golem, you ACTUALLY ups his health instead of dealing damage, so was my doubt...)

Ordas · Jun 02, 2005, 11:05 PM // 23:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoneWolfWinter

Ahh first post, i'll try not to embarass myself.

I'm getting annoyed by the way the anet is going about these updates. I really can't stand seeing them nerf farming spot after farming spot for reasons that seem to contradict what the intention of this game is. I'm tired of seeing the 'this game isn't about who can play the longest, its about who has the most skill' (well, it shouldnt be skill, its more who can work as a team the best, isnt it?) rant, and then hearing about how they're making it just that much harder to get those top notch weapons, runes, and gold. Do anet not understand why this is a contradiction? If they want it to be a matter of skill they need to have people on an equal level going into multiplayer, rather than what they're doing, which is giving the people who've been playing longer an advantage (as they were around before the various places got nerfed).

I would rather see them make everything available earlier, and in greater amounts than have them nerf all the best farming spots, and throw in a bunch of utterly useless changes (making the runes uglier isn't helping this game out in any way). If this keeps up im going to have to go back to playing CS:S.

Maybe what they're trying to do is combat farming by making it impossible to farm. You will have to get rares and runes SIMPLY by luck and no other feasable way. That way a rare will really be rare and people won't take them for granted.

Lazarous · Jun 03, 2005, 12:37 AM // 00:37

Yet another nerf (this time to a decent XP spot).

I seriously don't understand the point of these changes. We were getting too many skill points from golems? Huh? Rune drops off rare armors having a minimum level are nice, but there are few if any farm spots for those anymore, so its just returning a bit of functionality that was previously nerfed to oblivion. The rest of the changes in this patch are, as Sausalitus Rex said, cosmetic.

For a patch that was supposed to 'address' grind, it seems like a.net's views on the matter are clear - theres not enough of it in the game yet.

Yay for another promising game being torn to bits.