Of course. High end pvp can't be sustained with such crappy skill balance, and stuff like RA/AB are swarmed with idiots that would melee train my HH/bonetti's defense/riposte tank and die from it. HB is basically a joke of a runfest.
Losing talented teams hurts interest in pvp. There is no KOR, no EViL, and no Te to measure up to anymore.
KOR quit long ago, before even the GWWC, which is regarded by many as a golden age of GvG. EViL quit because half their core went into the army, not because they lost interest. 90% of Te formed Honk.
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Name any one other game which was motivation for so long
Maybe another MMO, but that's it.
Newsflah: Games do get old over time and people stop playing them. All of them. There will be no exceptions. That's the way of the world. That does not mean that anything is wrong with the game. Even Koreans will eventually stop playing Starcraft and apply for real jobs.
That's why there are expansions, sequels, knock-offs and remakes.
My main gripe and idea of concern is lack of build diversity, where basically Guild Wars is turning into a click-fest. Everyone uses the same build, 3 monks, 2 warriors or so (1 being hammer one being eviscerate), a me/mo, and a e/rt flag runner, and a burning-arrow ranger.
Everyone running the same build isn't a problem, a long as the metabuild rewards skill with better results, which the balanced build you mentioned does.
What becomes a problem are builds that allow for bad play and give good results, such as Paragon spike and Ritspike. When skill is no longer rewarded, skilled players tend to quit more. This is the situation you're seeing in PvP now, compounded with other frustrations such as AT delays.
What frightens me is absolute lack of people who would say "oh noes, doomsday thread, PvP is just fine, stop whinig." in this thread.
It seems like boserver mode was really mistake.
OM Spreads unblanaced builds and ideas like wildfire, thus it breaks any meta instantly. That leads to harsh nerfs that disrupts PvE people and make em hate PvP.
1. UAX was removed at game release which killed off about 50% of the pvp community.
2. Grind to UAX killed about 40%
3. Worthless Skill Balancing about 5%
4. Too many Chapters that led to too many skills which in turn led to even more worthless skill balance, 4%.
5. What the last 1% is still doing here i don't know.
I can make up percentages too you know.
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While its incredibly disheartening to see the same builds over and over rampaging through HA, I think if Anet did a very pro-active "knee-jerk reaction" type attitude to skill balance, people would get just as pissed.
Some players have protested before when Anet made hasty balances, claiming that players weren't allowed to come up with their own counters, etc (MM nerf in AB), and instead Anet comes down with the nerfbat hard and fast. Some things, like fixing exploits immediately (Golemway), i can understand.
Rigid skilbars and ditto players kill some of the fun for me. Go to TA with, say, an ele and getting into a team will take a while. Roll a thumper and you're invited before you even finished loading. Heh I did a few matches with two E/A dagger spikers. Now don't roll over me and tell me how much that sucks because it was great fun actually. I would cripple them and the eles would stick on them and burn them to shreds. There's probably a 100.000 better choices but tbh. I don't care much, all for the sake of fun.
I like doing stuff like that more then once tbh. AB-ing with 4 touchers for example. Dual attuned eles with mystic regen in arenas with enchant removal and symbiosis just to see if it worked (it didnt, lol, but I enjoyed myself). My biggest gripe with PvP is also what makes it interesting, people play to win. Hell, the times I joined a random pug in HA and people will actually make a big thing out of losing, like, what did u expect? to win halls?
HA is actually worst, people are advertising with cookie cut builds to get in teams to begin with, the more skills this game has, the less build diversity there seems to be. and without certain cookie cuts your win chance is indeed decreased pretty much. Nu fun going somewhere only to get lost in a forest of spirits or to get burned to a crisp by SF spike. I have no idea how GvG is hanging, I rarely play it, I liked the idea of having some room to move (unlike crammed HA) but my guild is too small.
My PvP experience is not 'High End', but it's most cetainly not dead either.
Problem being, that the pace of updates has slowed down, not sped up to keep pace with the community. Before it took everyone months to understand what was going on, so it wasn't a problem if it took the devs a month to implement a change. Now, a lot of balance problems become clear within a week of a change, but still nothing is done for several months - and even then, the balance updates miss the mark as often as they hit.
[...]
GvG? It's still a great format in general, but has been poorly supported for a while. Remember back in December when Arena.net said 'get into your guild now, automated tournaments are coming!' because of the waiting period? Well, guess what, it's taken four months and counting for them to get that going, and what we've had in the meantime is a 5k ladder to play on. That really encourages people to stick with the game.
[...]
Basically, the game had (and, in some ways, still has) a lot of potential, if the developers would actually take the time to support their product after release. But without support it's just been left to a slow death, which hasn't been fun to watch. It's sad really, since it really wouldn't have taken that much to make this game's popularity go through the roof.
Peace,
-CxE
Great post! I think 2 posts from Gaile somewhere in here or another thread kinda underlined that statement (intentionally/unintentionally). the designers are looking at HA. Go work on it, looking wont fix anything! They should let the players know what they are working on, and update regulary.. and not just announce something with a 5 month delay
On the other hand, people will always cry, no matter what ANet (or any company running a game) does. 100 users posting in a thread looks like alot, but comparing it with the number of people who play the game its not that much. Complaining and negative news is much easier (just look at your local news paper). I just hope some things that are pretty much clear design issues that everyone sees and already posted here are being worked at - not only looked at.
Rigid skilbars and ditto players kill some of the fun for me. Go to TA with, say, an ele and getting into a team will take a while. Roll a thumper and you're invited before you even finished loading. Heh I did a few matches with two E/A dagger spikers. Now don't roll over me and tell me how much that sucks because it was great fun actually. I would cripple them and the eles would stick on them and burn them to shreds. There's probably a 100.000 better choices but tbh. I don't care much, all for the sake of fun.
I won countless Gladiator Points in RA (and won a few TA matches post RA) using a R/Rt Fertile Season, EoE build with Consume Soul and Death Pact Signet. I made it myself for the sake of fun but I took some abuse from team members because they have their mind set on using wiki builds and wiki builds only. After Edge Bombing 7/8 part members and subsequently winning, they eventually saw the error of their ways.
I know RA isn't really the PvP in discussion but the behaviour and mentalities of the players needs to be nerfed. Also, the development team have to respond to imbalances sooner because observer mode means everyone jumps on the same bandwagon and abuses the overpowered builds. /thump
My R/Rt build only works because people are too retarded to kill the EoE.
I partly blame the PvP builds section of guru too. Originality is becoming rarer.
I know it isn't though.
I know because there are still tons of elitist bastards out there with trees stuck up their arses who ostracise the rest of the Guild Wars community so they can spend their whole lives at the top of a few meaningless scoreboards... They spend their whole time grinding away at other people with pre-made builds, trying to refine their motions and basically becoming meat-bots.
They have turned Guild Wars into less of a recreation and more of an unpaid job.... less fun and more work... and work is all they do... when they're not laughing at anyone who actually wants to play the game for enjoyment.
Then again... the obsessive Underworld Farmers aren't much better...
That is why... to me... Guild Wars will always be a single-player game with a bit of chatting on the side.
[That said... my Guild is now full of newbs because I decided to do one of them a favour and let him invite all his friends. I've decided that I never want to AB with them again... as not a single one of them seems to know what "synergy" even means... let alone how to run a viable build! I'm almost starting to regret letting them in since I now spend about half my time dropping what I'm doing and running to lead them by the hand through Canthan missions because they can't do it themselves.]
I partly blame the PvP builds section of guru too. Originality is becoming rarer.
This kind of mentality will always be with us as long as there is an 8 skill limit. There are people who are able to create effective builds and then there are people who aren't. Proven builds will be used by other people, regardless of whether they found them on ob, Guru or all the other sites that offer a similar service. There's a lot of griping about the FotM, but you simply can't ban people from sharing builds. It's the reason there will always be a metagame, even with a perfectly balanced skill-limited game, because there are people that lead and people that follow. It's half to do with balance and half to do with build effectiveness. People want to win, and they know they have a better chance with someone else's proven build. Originality has always been a rare commodity. I can't blame people for wanting to win and looking to better their chances from others, but I don't have to feel sympathy for them when they're annihilated either.
Location: Guild Hall, Vent, Guesting, PvE, or the occasional HA match...
Guild: Dark Alley [dR]
Quote:
Originally Posted by SotiCoto
Am I the only one who hopes PvP is dead?
I know it isn't though.
I know because there are still tons of elitist bastards out there with trees stuck up their arses who ostracise the rest of the Guild Wars community so they can spend their whole lives at the top of a few meaningless scoreboards... They spend their whole time grinding away at other people with pre-made builds, trying to refine their motions and basically becoming meat-bots.
They have turned Guild Wars into less of a recreation and more of an unpaid job.... less fun and more work... and work is all they do... when they're not laughing at anyone who actually wants to play the game for enjoyment.
Then again... the obsessive Underworld Farmers aren't much better...
That is why... to me... Guild Wars will always be a single-player game with a bit of chatting on the side.
[That said... my Guild is now full of newbs because I decided to do one of them a favour and let him invite all his friends. I've decided that I never want to AB with them again... as not a single one of them seems to know what "synergy" even means... let alone how to run a viable build! I'm almost starting to regret letting them in since I now spend about half my time dropping what I'm doing and running to lead them by the hand through Canthan missions because they can't do it themselves.]
Honestly, not trying to purposely flame, but if its a discussion about a portion of the game that you don't take interest in, instead of flaming the topic and comeing in to post some random bullshit to bump your post count, please stay in your single player world mentality, as the useless wad of horse droppings that you posted makes no relevance on the topic at hand.
IMO in ATS is really even making it better, problem is its never going to see a really nice balance with all the skills and professions we have, plus I think there really looking to solve this and not repeat the same mistakes in GW2 while at the same time making everything UAX