Curse

jazilla · Mar 22, 2011, 08:57 PM // 20:57

I only play RA nowadays and I don't play that much anymore, but I am wondering if the best way to find balance in this game is to just get rid of secondary professions. So, for PvE you can use your profession's abilities and use PvE only skills. For PvP you can use your primary profession skills and that is all.

If this isn't the answer, what about an arena format where you can only use your primary profession attributes? I would play it.

What do you all think?

Our Blood · Mar 22, 2011, 09:13 PM // 21:13

naaaaah, Secondary professions is what make Guild Wars well.. Guild Wars!
it sets the game apart from all the Wow Clones and free to play games.
using the secondary profs makes finding skills that have a good synergy fun!
even in pvp i just can't see a monk, warrior, ranger, sin, ele,... only use there primary professin attributes. That just would be boring

MithranArkanere · Mar 22, 2011, 09:18 PM // 21:18

Yes. Secondaries give too many options, so it's too hard to balance them, so they are more trouble than they are worth.

So the best is to get rid of them altogether. And give each professions ways to cope with the things they can't. For example, a way for warriors to lose conditions.

But that's been done already! It's called GW2.

jensyea · Mar 22, 2011, 09:36 PM // 21:36

Im really like... hmmm dunno

read the title and was like roflmao whose this kid most likely just joined etc but saw it was like you, veteran poster read lot's of good and intellegent stuff from you on here so I gave it a thought and read your arguments and mithrans. you're right, secondaries make this game too hard to balance, makes it unbalanced. but it is what makes the game the game you know! have a blast in GW2, it will defo be a better game then 1, but I won't be playing it, 1 has my heart.

Cuilan · Mar 22, 2011, 09:46 PM // 21:46

The game is made around secondaries, so you would have to change a great number of skills. I don't see how mentioning some other radically different game will help Guild Wars players.

jazilla · Mar 22, 2011, 09:49 PM // 21:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by MithranArkanere

Yes. Secondaries give too many options, so it's too hard to balance them, so they are more trouble than they are worth.

So the best is to get rid of them altogether. And give each professions ways to cope with the things they can't. For example, a way for warriors to lose conditions.

But that's been done already! It's called GW2.

So you are saying ANet should tie-in our GW1 characters losing access to secondary professions with a lore update? Brilliant!

R666 · Mar 22, 2011, 10:01 PM // 22:01

would totally screw all the hero builds use by most teams tho

Sabway & Discord are the 1st that spring to mind

Steps_Descending · Mar 22, 2011, 10:03 PM // 22:03

I'll agree the secoundary prefession is more an artefact of the original design, but this far in history? espesially with GW2 looming around... No just a bad idea.

With their marketing plan, I think they just didn't have a way to make PvP-focus+2class combos and keep it balanced. But yeah, GW2 is rolling around for that.

Bright Star Shine · Mar 22, 2011, 10:12 PM // 22:12

Very, very bad idea tbh. Secondaries is what makes the game so strong. Ok, it's hard to balance, and there is a lot of abuse, but that's just ingenuity if you ask me..

gremlin · Mar 22, 2011, 10:22 PM // 22:22

The game is broken and to fix it would need some drastic action and to be honest its not worth it.
PVE works fine or at least well enough for many players to have fun playing. its pvp that seems to have problems.
I don't think secondary skills are a problem but too many skills might be.

Balancing the effects of 50 skills is a lot easier than balancing 100 skills, am not going to count just how many skills we do have in the game but its too many to ever be able to stay ahead of the game play and keep things running smoothly.

The festival pvp games seem to go without too many problems so reducing the overall number of pvp usable skills could have a lot going for it.
But as I say its not worth the huge time and effort to do anything.

I think several variations have been suggested in the past with limited skills but don't remember if the discussion reached any conclusions.

jazilla · Mar 22, 2011, 11:25 PM // 23:25

The reason I brought it up is because many of the devs from ANet have said it's a broken mechanic. That is why they changed GW2. How's the saying go, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."? If the devs of GW1 say that it's broken, doesn't it need to be fixed? If this is too drastic, then can't we just get an arena like I mentioned in my OP where secondaries are disabled? I feel like we would all be pleasantly surprised at the change. With an arena addition, you don't mess with PvE and we get a new arena in PvP. If nobody plays it, well then it wouldn't be an issue. No one plays Codex and that isn't an issue.

Swingline · Mar 22, 2011, 11:35 PM // 23:35

TBH I have been thinking about this. With GW2 not having secondary professions it could fit into the winds of change storyline well. Maybe the elder dragons awakening changed it somehow, like locking the powers of the mortal races forever to weaken them for their arrival. Many people may hate it but it would bring balance if some skills were changed. Now lets be honest the secondary professions are what made Guild Wars... well Guild Wars, but that was when the game was new, now it's horribly imbalanced and every effort to balance the game has failed. It would definitely be a nine inch nail through the knee for SF tanks, no more SoS/DwG across all professions, no more necros abusing soul reaping to fuel skills outside their profession and no more ER prot. For heroes it means pretty much running a balanced team, you can still run all the OP elites like discord/SS/SoS but just on the professions they belong to. I can assume people would complain about ANet kicking creativity in the balls but it would just be an excuse. What it would do is awaken people to be creative with their main professions skills. If they did decide to do it I would actually welcome the challenge and this is comming from someone with custod dhuums scythe and q9 storm daggers on my warrior. Seriously though do we even need a second profession with pve skills? XD

Cuilan · Mar 22, 2011, 11:58 PM // 23:58

I don't think players will want to log on to suddenly find all their saved builds destroyed. Countless builds that use two professions are fine.

Bandwagon · Mar 22, 2011, 11:59 PM // 23:59

This is something the design team would of had to decide back in 2005.

Secondaries are integral to GW1's identity at this point, removing secondaries would greatly warp the game (and require even more balancing). Tbh there is more potential in just devaluing secondaries among several (if not all) professions as they each get tweaked with every major skill update (then again, general power creep is the reason for this devaluation).

Swingline · Mar 23, 2011, 12:15 AM // 00:15

Quote:

This is something the design team would of had to decide back in 2005.

Again the reason for doing it now is it fits into the storyline for WoC.

Quote:

Secondaries are integral to GW1's identity at this point, removing secondaries would greatly warp the game (and require even more balancing).

Identities can change as the game progresses. Removing secondaries would make hard mode somewhat hard mode again and would actually restore some of the identities the professions are supposed have such as War as the main tanker of the game, sin as the so called "glass cannon dmg dealer and rits as the true master of spirits. Don't forget online experience may change

Quote:

Tbh there is more potential in just devaluing secondaries among several (if not all) professions as they each get tweaked with every major skill update (then again, general power creep is the reason for this devaluation).

Power creeping of skills is the main reason why this should happen for pvp, for pve it would just be for fun.

Kojima · Mar 23, 2011, 12:35 AM // 00:35

No. Secondaries should stay. Many builds and countless hours were put in by players to get the right combos. I do not agree that the use of secondaries is the broken part of the game. I believe it to be the fact that a couple of brains that created something could not have had the luxury of knowing what a couple of thousands who ended up playing the game would.

jazilla · Mar 23, 2011, 01:08 AM // 01:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kojima

No. Secondaries should stay. Many builds and countless hours were put in by players to get the right combos. I do not agree that the use of secondaries is the broken part of the game. I believe it to be the fact that a couple of brains that created something could not have had the luxury of knowing what a couple of thousands who ended up playing the game would.

That logic has been employed with certain skills for a long time now and it doesn't work. Without naming a specific skill, I will call it "Badow Borm" so it can remain anonymous. People have made a lot of builds and spent countless hours with that skill alone as the cornerstone, and it doesn't change the fact that it should still be changed.

This one change would fix a lot of ails, and would also make skills that previously would have been too powerful in conjunction with a secondary profession viable with a buff. It would free up the devs in skill design too. Heck, it doesn't even affect most of the mobs in the game as most of them already only have 1 profession.

Ayuhmii Shanbwa · Mar 23, 2011, 02:15 AM // 02:15

no thx
my reason(s) has/have nothing to do with those pvx (like discord etc) builds
mine has to do with people being able to make their own ways to play
and they would need to start all over balancing the game the right way

also, it has nothing to do with WoC, as that is a part of the game's story, not its system and such

and should they need to make everything like GW2, they better shut down GW and remake it into GW2, which would be bad
the reason they make GW2's system different, is to make a whole new game with more balanced skills and emeies and such

you really think that removing 2ndary would balance the game, or make it easier?
they will have to make the base of the game around 1 prof again
whetehr its for pvp only or both pvp and pve, that'd take ages (look at GW's age) and i doubt much players will stay

so if you want anet to lose most of the income they get from just GW and let em delete GW2 as they dont have the money anymore, or if they still have enough, they would enjoy with the very few fans left, then yea, lets do it.... i mean, its not like GW needs 2ndary, right?

/endsarcasm (in case you didnt understand)

so: Nooooo... ahum /notsigned

gremlin · Mar 23, 2011, 02:23 AM // 02:23

With hindsight secondary skills are too powerful but no one knew this 5 years ago.
imo a secondary skill line should be nowhere near as powerful as a primary one.
I know the idea was that each characters main skill track would make the difference, well as we all know it wasn't enough.

I would have set them at about 1 quarter the power but then this because I treat gw as a role playing game.
I imagine my characters spending a lot of years learning say elemental magic and a couple of months picking up a few tricks of a mesmer.

The very fact that you can change secondary makes it even more silly that you can be nearly as powerful in 9 secondary classes as you can in your primary.

Rites · Mar 23, 2011, 02:36 AM // 02:36

this late in the game, eliminating secondaries would just kill GW

as stated before, secondaries is what set GW apart from other roleplaying games

the problem is, they should have limited the skills available for secondaries, but its too late for that now.