Curse

cellardweller · Feb 19, 2008, 02:50 AM // 02:50

Difficult areas of the game are the "mountains" in guild wars - they provided gamers with with significant obstacles to overcome. DOA was a great example of this - sure there were holy trinity pugs completing the zone in 4-6 hours, but you could always take your mesmer/assasin/whatever, grab a freind and 6 heroes and finish it in a similar amount of time.

With the advent of PvE skills and consumables, anet have turned the mountains of guildwars into small hills where failure is an impossibility. It is still possible for players to deliberately gimp themselves by not using them, but the experienced is lessened as pveskill, consumable using grannies pass you while you waddle up the hill with your hands and feet tied together.

Div · Feb 19, 2008, 04:33 AM // 04:33

The big question is why? Ursan opened up new doors to new zones for bad players who are willing to use it despite knowing it's gimmick. If Anet wants to open up PvE and make it easier, then that's their choice.

bluemoonxia · Feb 19, 2008, 06:14 AM // 06:14

1. UB is part of the un-balanced PVE problem. I don't have to hide this point.
2. UB is not the only part of un-balanced PVE problem. The problem exist even before the GWEN came out. The tank-ele-monk only PuG profession discrimination exited before that, and became worth when it changed to UB-monk only (don't tell me you are still playing mesmer when you run UB on your mesmer).
3. There is no way I hate pve skills. Many of those skills add depth to the game, and enable new ways you can build your char. Variety is always a good things to this game. It only became a problem when some of the skills are way more powerful than others, and have 1 skill that replaced over 1000 other skills is killing this game.

And my whole point for this post is ----We need a balanced PVE. I state and defend this point from different approaches, such as why a balanced pve is good for the long life of this game, why it is not necessary to make everyone to be the best regardless of their skills, and what are the problems exited......

BTW, as long as there is a problem, you will never see the arguement went away. Yes, it's been talked before, and Yes, it will be talked long after this.

bluemoonxia · Feb 19, 2008, 07:03 AM // 07:03

About DOA,

Yes it WAS designed to be the the "mountains in guild wars" for those who looking for ultima challenge. It WAS meant to have 90% of the team fail here. But all have changed since the GWEN, with UB and consumables.... The point I don't get is if Anet think DOA should be doable for 90% of gamers instead of only the top of 10%, why don't they just simply nerf the DOA?

Having harder and harder zones on one hand, and introducing more and more powerful skills and items to offset it on the other hand. This is not the original Guild War. GW was all about skill of players and creativities, not the endless increasing power and difficulty. This is why there is a level 20 cap in the game that only take few days to reach the max level.

Why Anet has to shift away from the original concept of GW that made this game so successful? GW sold so well due to it's structure and well balanced skills and items when compared to other similar games. We should stick to this concept, and make every thing in this game more balanced, not the other way around.

the_jos · Feb 19, 2008, 12:35 PM // 12:35

Quote:

but you could always take your mesmer/assasin/whatever, grab a freind and 6 heroes and finish it in a similar amount of time.

Sure, or I could ask my guild who wants to join.
However, playing PUG is still fun sometimes and most of the PUGS that are able to complete an area won't take an assassin or mesmer.
Leaving only the unorganised PUGS with higher chance of failure for those.

Quote:

don't tell me you are still playing mesmer when you run UB on your mesmer.
....
This is not the original Guild War.

No, you are playing Ursan, unless you are in 'human form' to fire some spells/skills.

Agree that GW changed a lot and while some of the change was good, the elite areas were a failure from a balanced gameplay point of view.
Not because they can't be played balanced but because unbalanced play pays out more.

Richardt · Feb 19, 2008, 08:32 PM // 20:32

About DoA, they already nerfed it for NM.

And you seem to keep flipflopping back and forth on your issue....first it was no UB, then no PvE skills, to keep PvE skills but change PvE structure itself.

And as for the mass acceptance of the tank-monk-nuker trinity, that's not a failure of PvE. It's simply one of the easier ways to assure victory within a PuG group. It's also one the reasons DoA died out. Ursan simply just replaced it as a quicker method to get things done, and it created a renewed interest in it.

I honestly don't see an imbalance in PvE-whenever I find NM to easy, I just switch it to HM-keeps things interesting and me on my toes.

Draginvry · Mar 04, 2008, 10:10 AM // 10:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by bluemoonxia

And my whole point for this post is ----We need a balanced PVE. I state and defend this point from different approaches, such as why a balanced pve is good for the long life of this game, why it is not necessary to make everyone to be the best regardless of their skills

I agree. PvE is unbalanced. The fact that there is any class preference at all proves this.

For some people, this is not a problem. They don't care about the strategy or tactics necessary to romp through the game, as long as they get to romp through the game.

The problem is that people like me like a little variety to my game. If I can defeat every monster in the game by spamming Flare randomly, this is not an interesting game. This is the same reason I stopped playing Diablo 2 for a lengthy period of time. It's because just about every sorceress skill but orb was useless, and that's why you saw everyone run orbs. Thunderstorm? It hardly hit anything. Fireball? It hardly did any damage when you could meteor/hydra spam. Back then, Frozen Orb was the Ursan, and a Whirlwind Barbarian was like your monk.

And, for the time, it wasn't so bad. Because the game was designed so lower level skills were less usefull. But the game became less interesting. This is why we saw all the dramatic changes to items and gameplay during the 1.07-1.10 phase. It's because Blizzard knew they would lose a substantial amount of gamers if the game stagnated. People wanted more skills to use than just whirlwind/FO/CE/Zeal/Multi. And that's why now you can realistically use those skills that were less usefull before. You can make a viable javazon, a lightning sorc can actually do some damage, and you can make a viable necro based on bone skills. The game became FUN again, because Blizzard implemented the skills that were previously sitting around and doing nothing.

The same thing is happening to Guild Wars that happened to Diablo II back then. Some skills are obviously unbalanced or not usefull. And that's why nobody uses them. Some skills have even been gimped for a long time. The solution to this is not to make the game easier, or introduce more Ursans. The solution is to bring all the original skills and concepts on par with the way the current game plays. Ursans should be an addition to the game, not a way to cover up its imperfections. If Anet "needs" to introduce overpowered PvE-only skills to "balance" the game, THEY ARE DOING IT WRONG.

The problem isn't the Ursans. I couldn't care less about Ursans. The problem is when game balance has been ignored to the point where I feel I have to run Ursan to do anything effective, because the rest of the skills have been washed down the pipe in Anet's pretending that there isn't an imbalance.

Some people don't care, and that is ok for them. They will still be playing regardless. But some of us do. And those of us who do are the ones who won't be buying GW2, and will go back to playing Diablo or Achaea, or wherever we came from before discovering the glory that was Guild Wars. But the last thing I want to see is a screenfull of Ursans. I already did that dance. It was called Frozen Orb, and it was prevalent in earlier versions of Diablo II. And a screenfull of orbs was no more interesting than a screenfull of Ursan.

There is a point at which strategy becomes mindless clicking of the mouse. A point in which a single skill can eradicate every monster in the game with perfect ease. When that threshold is crossed, people like me will go find another game. Perhaps the rest of the community will rejoice. I don't know.

blockkiller · Mar 04, 2008, 03:45 PM // 15:45

there will be always proffesions and skils that are better then another in pve, a ele is most of the time more wanted then a mesmer or so.
this is because the ele does direct damage and the mesmer uses hexes that affect foes, so they can't do damage or die slowly, but when the mesmer has the foes hexed the ele has already killed them.
ursan is not good because everywhere u go the only thing people want is ursans with high ranks and monks, so everyone goes for a high rank and on the box says "where strategy, not just hours played proves your worth". but i'm useless if i don't have a high norn rank. so thats why the pve-only skills fail. A-net lies on the box. in every high-end area all the teams want ursan, and ursan is no strategy. but if i want to do DoA without ursan the problem is, i need a friend or a guildie that also doesn't wants to use ursan, but it's hard to fiend them, thats why i want the opportunity to have 7 hero's so i can manage my team on creativity.

Richardt · Mar 05, 2008, 03:15 AM // 03:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Draginvry

I agree. PvE is unbalanced. The fact that there is any class preference at all proves this.

Now is this a problem with PvE or with the community mindset?

I'm betting it's mostly the mindset.

skanvak · Mar 05, 2008, 07:11 AM // 07:11

Richardt, the answer is both.

But the mindset cannot be changed, it is the same in nearly all the game I played.

So let's address the game part. Personnaly I am not a balancing person, but the problem describe by Bluemoonxia is true (and others).

But the class discrimination can be address otherwise : remove H/H, group size limitations and, very important, class/caracteristic flexibility. Then player will have to play with whoever is here with whatever their speciality is, and if they feel underpower, they will take another one. Special tailored group will take too much time for class discrimination in PUG.

Richardt · Mar 05, 2008, 05:38 PM // 17:38

But there already is Class flexibility-by thinking outside the box you can make some pretty powerful team builds.

Problem is (one that I am guilty of myself) is that when you're getting a team together you often don't have time to think outside the box 'cause you just want to do whatever you're wanting to do, so you fall back on the standard tank-ele-monk scenario.

To get back to the OP's concern about Ursan Blessing. Personnally when the power of this skill was brought to the attention of the community I loved it-promptly took my warrior through areas like DoA, Urgoz and Deep-and I could bring people that have never been there before. In short, it was alot of fun.

However, it got stagnated-the fun turned boring, and we were suddenly falling into the trap of "being standard" and having that class descrimination.

Now let me ask you:

1) Is it ANet's fault for making the standard tank, ele and monk class or is it the community's fault for heavily relying on that combo?
2) Is it ANet's fault for introducing Ursan Blessing, or the community's fault for heavily relying on it?

For what it's worth, my answers are:

1) The blame lies on the community-this is something we're all guilty of. By even changing your healer from monk to say Rit, Necro or Para you can get away from this. The question remains how to get the community at large to accept these changes, but if you have a good build that you use with guild/alliance mates, it'll get around.
2) The fault lies in both here. ANet provided the community with a powerful skill. But then again, it has also provided us with alot of other powerful skills-like Dragonslash and Save Yourselves (there's others I'm sure-those are just my favs lol). Now here the fault lies more with ANet as UB is really overpowered-don't get me wrong, I'm glad that it's there and that there's a renewed interest in elite areas like DoA.

So in short-the blame for UB lies mostly on ANet's shoulders-now whether or not they should nerf it, I'm not saying. Why? 'Cause I don't really care-the only time my guild uses it is when we PuG for DoA, and even then we're thinking of ways of ways not to use UB.

As for the heavy use of class discrimination-that's the community's fault.

skanvak · Mar 06, 2008, 07:09 AM // 07:09

Just a point Richardt. I think you misunderstand what I said aboout class flexibility : the "remove" was for all three proposal. So I meant "remove class flexibility".

azzer20 · Mar 06, 2008, 02:45 PM // 14:45

Who plays GW anyway? only ones are people who use Ursan Blessing because they got no skills, and Bots,

Richardt · Mar 06, 2008, 03:42 PM // 15:42

But if you remove group size limitation it would only great more imbalance.

And removing class flexibility won't help much. By forcing the classes into specific roles (which by and large has already happened), you would only enhance class discrimination. Consider for example the mesmer. Lets say we remove class flexibility and the only thing they can do is energy denial.

With that scenario, who'd want to take a mesmer into a melee heavy area now?

By removing class flexibility the only classes that would be useful across the board would be warrior, ele and monk-which is pretty much how everything is viewed now a days.

In order for there not to be class discrimination, we need to maintain flexibility.

FoxBat · Mar 06, 2008, 03:59 PM // 15:59

There's at least two problems here though. There's

1) Keeping the most optimal skill choices balanced with each other

2) Keeping the *easiest to use* skill choices balanced with each other

A good Warrior bar can do everything Ursan does except better, since you can optimize it for the particular foes you are facing in an area. Area KD, mass AoE attack, mass single-target DPS, armor/health, you name it, a well-built Warrior will do it better, especially if pumped up by the proper support spells (barbs, mark of pain, orders, etc.)

But what Ursan does do that is potent, is it puts a pretty good Warrior build in a box, and it's mindlessly easy to use. You don't have to deal with the 9 out of 10 chance that your pug has a /fail warrior bar, because they can just pop on Ursan, and they don't need any ability to use it correctly. UB becomes ubiquitous for Pugs then because it works no matter how good or bad the player using it is.

For most places, the "tank and nuke" mentality since the beginning of GW presented a similar dichotomy. PvE pugs were running around FoW with book tanks and SSing mobs, while the GvG guilds with half-decent monks just steamroll with mass warriors. PuGs gravitated to the "holy trinity" because it let you succeed despite bad teammates, not because it was the most efficient way to clear with 8 people.

DarkSpirit · Mar 07, 2008, 04:22 AM // 04:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

The big question is why? Ursan opened up new doors to new zones for bad players who are willing to use it despite knowing it's gimmick. If Anet wants to open up PvE and make it easier, then that's their choice.

Maybe the "bad" players are suppose to enjoy PvE as they want it. And the rest who dont and want more challenges are suppose to do PvP?

This is the trend ANet seems to be moving to.

By the way, PvE is suppose be unbalanced. Otherwise, monsters would be immortal like us and keep on ressing from shrines. Whenever there is a difference in important capabilities like between one team and the other, there is already an imbalance.

Can you imagine if one PvP team can keep ressing from shrines and the other can't? Would you say the match is balanced? Of course not! Such is already the case in PvE. To be balanced both sides must have roughly EQUAL capabilities.

skanvak · Mar 07, 2008, 07:26 AM // 07:26

Yes, I agree.

Let's remove the shrine and groupe auto rez. That would really raise difficulty. I am seriously for this move.

Mr Pink57 · Mar 07, 2008, 10:07 AM // 10:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Songbringer

PvE is about your own accomplishments. Who cares how you got that crystaline sword or the GWaMM title? You got it awesome! In the end it is just PvE and no 1 really cares how you beat uw or how you got ur 10 million ectos.

It is the same thing as HA. You are rank 14 awesome. O you got it doing iway/sway/hway/*insert a spike*. O well you are still rank 14. It doesn't matter. Any accomplishments you have are yours and no 1 elses. You got them doing this lameway build. Who cares. It in no way affects anyone else but themself. (I posted this PvP example cause well. I am tired of people raging on lameway builds. All it does is spam up local chat in HA.)

If what you say is true about titles then why do we even play online? If it matters to no one else then turn this into a full NPC game.

I would post more but I am mobile.

pink

arcanemacabre · Mar 07, 2008, 10:19 AM // 10:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Pink57

If what you say is true about titles then why do we even play online? If it matters to no one else then turn this into a full NPC game.

Short answer? Because it's not about bragging rights, it's about having fun with others. Or did you forget it was a game?

Wildi · Mar 07, 2008, 10:19 AM // 10:19

Quote:

why should we just let people play the game any way they want ?

stopped reading there