Curse

Kaon · Jan 27, 2008, 03:03 PM // 15:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by deya

Sinsplit is not overpowered, it's just direct counter to metabuild.

Sinsplitters did adapt their gameplay so that they can win everyone running metabuild, how did metabuilds react?

IZZY PLS NERF CAUSE WE CANT BEAT THIS WITH OUR PRECIOUS BUILD!!!

Exactly. Just like in november everyone is crying like a baby because they lost. As i've said countless times before the build is absolutely managable (Me actually lost games you know?) and i'd go as far to say that against a good team it will NEVER stand a chance of winning. It relies on a single "trick" to win the game and if dont allow them to pull it off then they won't win.

The difference was that in november there were guilds like DF and vZ, DF had much more training back then. Both guilds farmed sinsplits without many problems, also on wurms and corrupted.

Yes i'll agree that the npc update made things worse, but i've been complaining since day 1 it's retarded and then THAT is the problem, not the sins.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neo-ld

This begs the question, what is good for the game? I submit that things that are good for the game make gameplay interesting and make the outcome significant. Things that reward player skill, especially. Sineptitude is the manifestation of all things that dont.

Sinsplit, like any other split, does require quite a bit of experience and skill. I agree i'd much rather see a metagame where we don't need all that to split, but that's not going to happen. I'd love to see gole, WoH, aegis, partygons and powerleak, nerfed and lod, Mantra ofrecall/energydrain, and ward (10e) buffed. But face it: Izzy is working on gw2 and has no clue what's going on in gw1 and therefore it's not going to happen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

First of all, hats off to Me for winning a tourney, all while just running one build. I don't understand your point about "A sin does things well that a war cannot, but a war does many things well that a sin cannot do as well." A sin is able to press 123456 without adrenaline and have a chance to get a kill. A warrior is able to, with his skills and decision making, pressure, switch targets, and then adrenaline spike a third or fourth target. A sin is by far easier to play than a warrior.

A sin is a totally different role than a warrior. And if you think it doesn't take any skill to play you're RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing stupid. Ganking is much harder than it seems and requires a LOT of team coordination and tactical insight.

Quote:

You can buff hex eater vortex to a playable level again, so you can aoe the shit out of their archers at vod

Hex eater vortex is one of the worst designed skills ingame, delete it.

Right now the game is stuck in boring linear 8v8 situations. The only differention we now have is sinsplit, it requires people to adjust their playstyle to win. I welcome this skill with open arms. Most people don't, because they suddenly realize they fail at guild wars.

Even if sinsplit or vod would be nerfed, i know that at least 75% of the guilds that lost to sinsplit would lose again.

Neo-LD · Jan 27, 2008, 03:50 PM // 15:50

Sinsplit is not a counter to any metabuild except rawrspike. Its just a beneficiary of broken game mechanics - namely VoD.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

Just like in november everyone is crying like a baby because they lost.

No, its not that at all. The dust has settled, hats off to [Me]. Now lets go fix the game so it can be played the way it was meant to be played.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

Sinsplit, like any other split, does require quite a bit of experience and skill

All it requires is an extremely basic level of understanding of how GvG and VoD work, and some primitive self-preservation instincts. Other than that, all sinsplit is, is a bunch of spamming and button mashing, requiring almost no skill to play whatsoever. Serious competitive games are supposed to be balanced with the goal of rewarding player skill, and this build does exactly the opposite. If you cant see that, you're lost.

Personally I dont care if its Sins, Illusion Magic, NPCs, or VoD that changes, but something needs to change. That build is just not good for the game.

lacasner · Jan 27, 2008, 03:53 PM // 15:53

Telling people how a game is supposed to be played is absolutly absurd, we cannot change the fact that nightfall and factions were introduced into this game, and shouldn't try to revert how the game was before they introduced, as the game has evolved.

Yue · Jan 27, 2008, 08:14 PM // 20:14

Quote:

A sin is a totally different role than a warrior. And if you think it doesn't take any skill to play you're RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing stupid. Ganking is much harder than it seems and requires a LOT of team coordination and tactical insight.

You're dumb.

Div · Jan 27, 2008, 08:25 PM // 20:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

A sin is a totally different role than a warrior. And if you think it doesn't take any skill to play you're RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing stupid. Ganking is much harder than it seems and requires a LOT of team coordination and tactical insight.

Yeah, sinsplit is so hard to play that I led a group of some PvErs who have very limited GvG experience before and got to rank 25 and a silver trim in 2 months? O ok. And we didn't even run the ineptitude shit or have the new OP VoD. I guess I'm just THAT amazing at coordinating the team and having tactical insight eh?

Captain Robo · Jan 27, 2008, 08:56 PM // 20:56

ITT: Kaon shoots himself in the foot.

Quote:

A sin is a totally different role than a warrior. And if you think it doesn't take any skill to play you're RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing stupid. Ganking is much harder than it seems and requires a LOT of team coordination and tactical insight.

There was a time where I would have vehemently agreed that assassins took a great deal of skill to play. Perhaps in Factions-era you could have made this argument, but it doesn't really fly anymore because Sins have become nothing but gimmicks.

There's no strategic play whatsoever; the class is wholly reliant on sticking its combo enabler, then proceeding to 12345 the target to death. A perfectly balanced sin would fulfill a role similar to a ranger, except with more split potential and skirmish power. This "perfect sin" would theoretically not use more than 2-3 attack skills; the rest being utility skills designed to increase effectiveness on the split.

But the game has gone in different directions. Sins have no "utility" so to speak of, in the way that Rangers and other mobile classes do. The only "utility" sins bring to the table is the ability to kill people quickly and cheaply. "Utility" such as this will never be good without being broken.

Every sin build that has ever been popular or effective has also been inches away from a game exploit. Unblockable teleporting instagib? That makes even old-school gale warriors look bad. A BFG9000 will make even the worst players look fearsome.

There is no comparison between Sins and Warriors. The Warrior is a very deep class that rewards skillful play, and in order to understand that I actually had to take a great deal of time and master the class. Sins, at best; require an afternoon of practice.

My roomate was curious of Guild Wars, and he wanted to play it. He asked me to hook him up with the cheapest, most broken, quadropeligic-friendly build possible: so I gave him a SP-Expose sin. After no play experience whatsoever, and about 3-4 rounds of learning how to play the game; he was dominating people in RA. Sure, RA doesn't really prove anything... but I also gave him a warrior to play, and he lost nearly every game, complaining: "What are all these damn purple and green things on me!?"

Sineptitude is one of those builds that needed to die. It had the cheapest; most broken aspects of the game all rolled up into one nice little package. Your melee defense PUNISHED melee characters, and simultaneously messed with your opponent's backline; and your frontline instagib-sins just tore right through them. Surprise! you're also just as effective on a split.

It's not fun to play or play against, and doesn't help you improve as a player.

Kaon · Jan 27, 2008, 09:13 PM // 21:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Yeah, sinsplit is so hard to play that I led a group of some PvErs who have very limited GvG experience before and got to rank 25 and a silver trim in 2 months? O ok. And we didn't even run the ineptitude shit or have the new OP VoD. I guess I'm just THAT amazing at coordinating the team and having tactical insight eh?

Or perhaps you didnt face any good opponents. Or perhaps your guildies were talented.

Note that i never said that sins take a lot of skill to play but saying they're skillless if bullshit, you have to coordinate with your team, and have a lot of battle awareness as you're a frail 70armor target inside the opponent base.

And comparing a sin to a warrior is retarded, you cant compare apples and peaches.

moriz · Jan 27, 2008, 09:13 PM // 21:13

there are two major camps in the pvp community.

there's the ones (primarily made up of oldschoolers) who want to win buy outplaying their opponents through skill and tactics.

then there's the ones who just want to win.

as long as the second camp exists, the game can never be completely balanced. there are now over a thousand skills in the game, and allows for an endless permutation of combinations. while it's true that most of those skills are useless, there's always a combination that can be exploited. many of those combinations are (and will be) created when we try to "fix" another problem.

so in conclusion: a perfectly balanced GW is now (mostly) impossible. it's time to accept that as fact and live with it.

dwchang · Jan 27, 2008, 09:22 PM // 21:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

there are two major camps in the pvp community.

there's the ones (primarily made up of oldschoolers) who want to win buy outplaying their opponents through skill and tactics.

then there's the ones who just want to win..

That's not entirely true either. A lot of the Guilds that us old schoolers think were the top, also played to win. I cite iQ in the GWFC with their Glyph/Meteor Shower and camping till VoD or Te trying Mes Ele Spike in GWWC.

When it mattered, all the top teams played to win. I don't necessarily think that type of gameplay is 'fair' or whatever, but winning is winning both today and a few years back.

moriz · Jan 27, 2008, 09:31 PM // 21:31

perhaps i should elaborate:

camp 1: players who try to win by OUTPLAYING their opponents. their choice of builds tend to feature more flexible templates that can adapt to many situations, and they make up the rest with their skill and tactics. occasionally, if they know who they're fighting beforehand, they'll do a bit of "build wars"ing and specifically counter their opponents. the ability to "build wars" is a pretty key skill itself, though there's a bit of contention here.

camp 2: they will use the most broken build of the day and milk it for all its worth. there's a difference between this and the "build wars" strategy used by the other camp.

winning is the ultimate goal of both camps, but how they achieve it is different.

Ensign · Jan 27, 2008, 09:35 PM // 21:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by moriz

there's the ones (primarily made up of oldschoolers) who want to win buy outplaying their opponents through skill and tactics.

then there's the ones who just want to win.

You miscategorized it. I'll run whatever I need to run to win, and I'll never begrudge anyone for doing the same thing. That's simply how you compete. When a game does not promote winning through skill and tactics, when the game is stagnant and leans more towards build choice than execution, then the game stops being fun and I stop logging in.

Winning is fun in its own right, and if you're winning you can play even a really crappy game for a long time since winning is fun. If the game isn't fun even when you're losing, then it stops being worth it to play.

That's the damning complaint about the metagame. It isn't fun for a lot of people; a few of them voice their displeasure with the state of the game through forums and the like, but most of them vote by simply not playing.

I haven't played enough against the newest version of sineptitude to get a really good handle on it. I know the strategies I've used to beat it before are no longer relevant, and that the VoD changes have seriously reshuffled the balance of the game. I still have a few things I want to try against sineptitude, both build-wise and tactically. If none of 'em work I'll just have to run sineptitude and make someone else teach me how to beat it. I think it's pretty shitty when the game is in that state, but I've gone through it enough times now to know that you just make it clear that the metagame is shitty before hogging it up and rolling around in it.

ensoriki · Jan 27, 2008, 09:59 PM // 21:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

A sin is able to press 123456 without adrenaline and have a chance to get a kill. A warrior is able to, with his skills and decision making, pressure, switch targets, and then adrenaline spike a third or fourth target. A sin is by far easier to play than a warrior.
.

An Assassin can switch targets, what game are you playing?
Switching Targets with an assassin can be harder at times do to the nature of Attack Chains, which allows a warrior to switch targets with better ease.

Some warriors just whack until their adrenaline is full, press tab and then hit the skills on their bar for their spike.
And in case you did not notice the word some, I'll repeat it, some. (As I have said some...I am now hopefully immune to flames)
Your over simplifying a class, and there isn't any real reason to.

Quote:

camp 1: players who try to win by OUTPLAYING their opponents. their choice of builds tend to feature more flexible templates that can adapt to many situations, and they make up the rest with their skill and tactics. occasionally, if they know who they're fighting beforehand, they'll do a bit of "build wars"ing and specifically counter their opponents. the ability to "build wars" is a pretty key skill itself, though there's a bit of contention here.

camp 2: they will use the most broken build of the day and milk it for all its worth. there's a difference between this and the "build wars" strategy used by the other camp.

A lot of people complain without even trying.
The fact a bunch of people are being rolled means somethings going on.
Either the build is so OP that a team can't handle it.

Or people aren't realizing something is popular and adjusting their play accordingly.

A Metagame is a game inside a game and if you won't change with the game it's very likely you will lose.

Captain Robo · Jan 27, 2008, 10:48 PM // 22:48

Everyone would do well to remember is that there is no honor in video games.

Div · Jan 27, 2008, 11:27 PM // 23:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kaon

Or perhaps you didnt face any good opponents. Or perhaps your guildies were talented.

Of our 7 matches, 3-4 opponents went on to get silver, and 2 went on to get bronze, so I wouldn't say it's an easy schedule. So in the end, I'll take it as you saying I'm an awesome sin. And who said sins were skill less? They're just much easier characters to play compared to warriors.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ensoriki

An Assassin can switch targets, what game are you playing?
Switching Targets with an assassin can be harder at times do to the nature of Attack Chains, which allows a warrior to switch targets with better ease.

A sin's main job is to hit 123456 and kill the opponent. You can't switch targets halfway through the combo. Sure you can switch when you're "pressuring" with the sin and play it like a warrior, but a sin's pressure is pretty laughable, so it doesn't matter so much.

wally · Jan 27, 2008, 11:32 PM // 23:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

You miscategorized it. I'll run whatever I need to run to win, and I'll never begrudge anyone for doing the same thing. That's simply how you compete. When a game does not promote winning through skill and tactics, when the game is stagnant and leans more towards build choice than execution, then the game stops being fun and I stop logging in.

I really appreciate reading this, actually. I think it sums up more clearly the rather mixed set of emotions that the mAT seems to be stoking. From my vantage point, also, I would say that historically, in GW, there has always been this delineation by players between "legit" and non-legit wins, i.e. wins that took more player skill and those that took less.

I also feel that it's worth pointing out that although there might be those who are good at GW, perhaps this pool does not necessarily overlap completely with those who are good at GW tournaments. I think random ladder play, or daily ATs, is sufficiently different from the mAT system that a different set of skills are required. It also might be useful to distinguish between player skill in a match and playet meta-skills outside a match (development and adjustment of a build being a chief example of the latter).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ensign

I haven't played enough against the newest version of sineptitude to get a really good handle on it. I know the strategies I've used to beat it before are no longer relevant, and that the VoD changes have seriously reshuffled the balance of the game. I still have a few things I want to try against sineptitude, both build-wise and tactically. If none of 'em work I'll just have to run sineptitude and make someone else teach me how to beat it. I think it's pretty shitty when the game is in that state, but I've gone through it enough times now to know that you just make it clear that the metagame is shitty before hogging it up and rolling around in it.

Out of curiosity, what were the strategies you've used before that are now no longer relevant? Not a leading question, I'm honestly curious. As someone who has never played high-level GW (but has been plenty interested in talking about it and trying to understand it as best as I can short of developing that kind of ability), I'm very interested in your analysis here if you'd care to share it.

I'm not at all qualified to talk about overpowered or underpowered in any significant way, but leaving aside that consideration and just looking at the macro-picture, the most remarkable thing about sineptitude to me is its reconception of the battlefield.

I've been around long enough to remember when positioning in GW was kind of a wash -- when serious high-end gvgers in America, at least, played mixed caster spikes involving orders, rangers, mes' etc. And then along came Korean guilds which introduced warriors, two monk defense systems, and prot-booners. All of which were met with "lulz" at first until 1) people started losing to it all the time and 2) the math was cranked out.

Since that revolution, GW battle theory has kind of stopped. The idea of a frontline, midline, and backline has continued. And the norm became about supporting, shutting down, or otherwise en/disabling warriors.

What sineptitude seems to me is a total explosion of that idea. There is no front line. There kind of is no backline. The midline, if you can call it that, is not meant to deal with frontline hate. I think the underlying build philosophy that sineptitude pushes is a splintering of team interdependence.

The blockway builds are very intricate in their composition. The defense layers are interwoven. The monks support each other and hang together wrapped up in a bunch of other assets, like motigon defense skills and the discouraging threat posed by warriors. By contrast, sineptitude seems to be a bunch of R/A characters that synergize well together but are designed to be just as dangerous (or more so) when the confrontations are smaller. These guys aren't skirmishers, per se, because that implies small battles are a departure from the norm. The whole thing works because they force interdependent builds to sacrifice their "greater than the sum of parts" ness.

Just looking at the mesmer differences really emphasizes this philosophy. In a pitched battle, 7v7, interrupts and skill disables are valuable because someone else can take advantage of the opening created. But such a traditional dom/insp mesmer can't take advantage by him/herself. So far as I can tell, there isn't a single interrupt in sineptitude, save for the knockdowns. Not a single one. Instead, it deals with threat by separating the character that parries the blow from the character that strikes the rejoinding blow. That's a huge difference in build mentality, I think.

And, I think, sineptitude emphasizes a particular answer to the practice of balling up the opponent's npcs and splintering them up. Whereas most teams either do the same thing to the opposing team's npcs, sineptitude again forces a split such that to ball up NPCs is suicide.

In a lot of ways, it reminds me how trench/guerilla warfare changed the nature of armed confrontation in the real world, whereas before, armies met on fields and fought out in the open, much like the 7v7 slugfests that happen de riguer.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this -- just that I find the build philosophy to be a very interesting departure from the current and accepted design. And it's a big one. I hope something comes of that.

IMMORTAlMITCH · Jan 27, 2008, 11:35 PM // 23:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by holymasamune

Yeah, sinsplit is so hard to play that I led a group of some PvErs who have very limited GvG experience before and got to rank 25 and a silver trim in 2 months? O ok. And we didn't even run the ineptitude shit or have the new OP VoD. I guess I'm just THAT amazing at coordinating the team and having tactical insight eh?

You only got silver cause Izzy can't count to 16.

Playing a sin is obviously easy, but it still requires some coordination and choosing the right targets.

I won't go as far as to applaud people for runing sin split, but I don't understand why no one was smart/brave enough to spec Me when you KNOW they will run sins..

Wyat Hawke · Jan 27, 2008, 11:39 PM // 23:39

Wally's post should be a separate thread IMO, the questions raised there is epic and important.

Div · Jan 27, 2008, 11:42 PM // 23:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by IMMORTAlMITCH

You only got silver cause Izzy can't count to 16.

Playing a sin is obviously easy, but it still requires some coordination and choosing the right targets.

I won't go as far as to applaud people for runing sin split, but I don't understand why no one was smart/brave enough to spec Me when you KNOW they will run sins..

I remember you guys (dT) as well as other guilds raging about how broken sinsplits are and how it requires no skill when you lost to us. And now people are trying to argue that it in fact requires coordination, tactics, experience, and skill. Oh, how fast views change. Or maybe it's just a double standard that when people lose to it, they say it's skill-less, and when they're not losing to sinsplits, they say it takes skill to make others look bad.

Yue · Jan 28, 2008, 12:02 AM // 00:02

Quote:

Or maybe it's just a double standard that when people lose to it, they say it's skill-less, and when they're not losing to sinsplits, they say it takes skill to make others look bad.

This is pretty much it. Even the people who play sinsplit admit to how easy it is.

Lordhelmos · Jan 28, 2008, 01:18 AM // 01:18

I don't have a problem with sinsplit, just as long as people are given time to learn counters for such a build before a MAT. However, the fact that the tournament's rules changed heavily 3 days prior to the event in favor of the sinsplit made it overpowered. Most of the reasons why good guilds lost to sinsplit was because they didn't have the time to learn the physics of the new VoD and develop strategies in order to beat sineptitude. Props to Mistral Edge for winning, but its no surprise that the best sinsplit guild in the GW is going to take home the cup.

Anet should have simply made all the participating guilds draw straws for the cup with such a setup. Now you all know that they are incapable of managing a decent tournament setup. You just don't do stuff like that. I'm sure build counters for sineptitude will crop up, but for the MAT its much too late.

Its not the fault of the guilds who ran sinsplit that the tournament went so bad. It's really Anet's fault, namely Izzy's, for slanting the tournament so heavily in favor of sineptitude 3 days prior.

It's really just bad management that brought this about. Anet pays for mistakes like this when dedicated players in top guilds log out and don't come back.