Curse

Mekkakat · May 23, 2007, 03:04 PM // 15:04

no no, dont get me wrong, im not bashing her or anything, just this weird fanclub she gets as though she's the GWs master, where i doubt she's even played the game past 20 hours. just cause shes the ambassador, doesnt mean she has to experience what its like to be in the general public... she just has a job and does it.. to me, its doing what makes the dollar, she could probably care less (along with anet) about us. they gotz teh c4$h!

Frantic-Sheep · May 23, 2007, 06:10 PM // 18:10

Ooooh the misinterpret (spelling?) of words... I mean, no they arent PUSHING anyone to play HvH. But they are pushing the format down the pipeline and giving new stuff instead of fixing old stuff.

Zui · May 23, 2007, 06:36 PM // 18:36

Translation:

Gaile Gray: We're not physically pushing Hero Battles anywhere, although we are trying to promote it as much as possible. We are offering it, as we offer many other options, but we're offering this option with lots of cool prizes and a ladder because we're pushing it.

Gaile Gray: No, not all PvP resources are going into Hero Battles. Just most of them. We're probably working on a new PvP format for GW:EN, and we're absolutly working on World PvP like World of Warcraft has for Guild Wars 2.

Gaile Gray: GvG is part of the ATs; skill balances effect everything, but like, we've said in the past (pre HvH) that skill balances mostly revolve around GvG, because it's not like we've ever done a skill balance update for other forms of PvP like TA, HA or any of the factions 'pvp' content, and lastly ra. PvE got a balance or two, though! But only because we don't want bots to make lots of money farming... But that's another issue... However, with the addition of HvH we've said we'll be offering the same support for them too, so like, this means we'll be balancing for HvH too. Back to the original question, though. Skill balances effect everywhere, because everyone everwhere has the same set of skills to pick from (excluding PvE Only skills).

Gaile Gray: I think we are not as single-minded as you may believe. We're entirely aware you think we can only focus on the next release, and can't focus very well on actually fixing broken things. I assure you, we're totally aware our game is going to hell, although we don't know why it's happening, even though the community has been telling us exactly why for quite some time now. Occationaly, we get the courage to go change some random skills along with targeted skills to see if that will fix all of the problems with this game. A prime example would be Antidote Signet, and the Conjure Flame/Lightning/Frost skills. Sometimes we're successful at actually changing somthing with our random changes, other times, we're not. Apparently the community doesn't like them very much though. They should appreciate us more, and stop acting like things that are obviously broken are really obviously broken before testing them out for an extended period of time.

x-stunt-x · May 23, 2007, 07:02 PM // 19:02

did that tell anyone anything?

Gosu · May 23, 2007, 07:37 PM // 19:37

Ahhhh hindsight is a powerful tool isn't it?

I see you guys totally berating HvH now, but where were you when you actually had a chance to get theses things to A-Net directly.

Everyone remember the A-net Question time which, we were allowed to have a few months back.

As before I brought this subject up months ago I wanted some serious questions to be served up to A-net when Billard went over there, as I felt this was our only real opportunity to do so.

I wanted to bring this very format of PvP into question.

Instead the people we had going over there were just brown nosers, who were just thankful to be in there presence as if the people at A-net were celebrities.

But as usual I don't get backed up by you people, as usual my very predictions come to pass and as usual you people only realize and complain until it's too late.

It's very easy to talk about how crap it is now but why didn't you say this and back me up when I was saying this before nightfall was released.

Go on flame, Spam, Troll, Mod delete.

(You know you want to and I don't care anymore)

Skuld · May 23, 2007, 08:04 PM // 20:04

Personally, I didn't think it would completely replace all the attention and support the other stuff was getting...

Creeping Carl · May 25, 2007, 01:43 AM // 01:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gosu

Ahhhh hindsight is a powerful tool isn't it?

I see you guys totally berating HvH now, but where were you when you actually had a chance to get theses things to A-Net directly.

Everyone remember the A-net Question time which, we were allowed to have a few months back.

As before I brought this subject up months ago I wanted some serious questions to be served up to A-net when Billard went over there, as I felt this was our only real opportunity to do so.

I wanted to bring this very format of PvP into question.

Instead the people we had going over there were just brown nosers, who were just thankful to be in there presence as if the people at A-net were celebrities.

But as usual I don't get backed up by you people, as usual my very predictions come to pass and as usual you people only realize and complain until it's too late.

It's very easy to talk about how crap it is now but why didn't you say this and back me up when I was saying this before nightfall was released.

Go on flame, Spam, Troll, Mod delete.

(You know you want to and I don't care anymore)

Before you open your mouth to spout stuff you don't know about, let me tell you that there WERE people that didnt like the idea of HB even before it was implemented. Heck, most of the PVP community was divided on this issue. And I was actually someone who was all for the idea.

Besides, there really cant be much to complain about BEFORE something is implemented because no one knew specifics. Just because you happend to be right doesnt mean you have some special insight. Anyone who complains all the time is bound to be right some of the time.

Hindsight has nothing to do with this. Not all problems can be foreseen and you talk as if though HvH hasnt gone through changes since it's implementation.

I agree though that HB is a craphole. It CAN be fun in small doses just like RA. But the metagame is terrible and the design that makes you split your forces into 1v1 skirmishes is the worst idea in PVP.

Gosu · May 26, 2007, 10:48 AM // 10:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by Creeping Carl

Before you open your mouth to spout stuff you don't know about, let me tell you that there WERE people that didn’t like the idea of HB even before it was implemented. Heck, most of the PVP community was divided on this issue. And I was actually someone who was all for the idea.

Besides, there really can’t be much to complain about BEFORE something is implemented because no one knew specifics. Just because you happened to be right doesn’t mean you have some special insight. Anyone who complains all the time is bound to be right some of the time.

Hindsight has nothing to do with this. Not all problems can be foreseen and you talk as if though HvH hasn’t gone through changes since its implementation.

I agree though that HB is a craphole. It CAN be fun in small doses just like RA. But the metagame is terrible and the design that makes you split your forces into 1v1 skirmishes is the worst idea in PVP.

You claim that I have spouted off with things I don't know about, I am actually quite bemused by these comments. You can say this despite fact that I have consistently made deductions and predictions about this game and they have all come to pass?

Wouldn't that indicate to you that maybe “said person” has a modicum of intelligence and knowledge of "said" subject over the average game player?

Later on in your post you try to insinuate that it was basically just down to dumb luck I got these things right. Let me tell you now that none of the things I have said about the state of pvp over the last year and a half have been dumb luck. I have observed the direction which the pvp game has been heading in for quite sometime, as well as having very enlightening conversations with high level players and low level players in the pvp community.

Liken it to a journalist doing some investigative research before he writes his report and presents it to his/her editor.

If you read my post a little more carefully my dear boy, I am not saying there wasn’t Pvpers out there that didn’t like the idea but my post is directed as to why they didn’t make their voices “more heard” before impact struck.

I adequately gave an example of the occasion A-net gave us the community the opportunity to meet them in person (namely our chosen representatives from different websites).

This would have been a great chance to really hit home our grievances to them in person, doing it like this in person has a more pronounced impact and is more likely to be remembered.

As there is a sense of detachment when reading others views from a website on the Internet over a forum such as this. Instead if you read my post sonny bob my main comments are directed not just at the community but also at those that squandered the opportunity due to their inherent nature to butt kiss those they clearly idolize.

I read Billard’s little report he put up I must say I was very disappointed, all I could think was of a great opportunity squandered simply because they wanted to butt kiss and brown nose their idols.

But you know what over the past few days I have had an Epiphany, there are more important things to do than waste my spare time and energy playing computer games of any nature with complete bozos full stop.

I think I will just leave you people to your dream turned nightmare and do something more constructive for myself and the abilities I possess.

Maybe some of you should do the same.

As usual flame, spam, troll, whatever yada yada yada

linh · May 26, 2007, 03:58 PM // 15:58

One last solution : Someone shows ATI people how to play HvH, and after finding it so bad that they want to kill themselves, they will quit sponsoring HvH ATs and hopefully it will vanish from the game.
Well, but seriously, HvH is killing the game. ( no, wait : "Killed")

kvndoom · May 27, 2007, 07:20 PM // 19:20

I took time to watch a few of these battles in obs mode this weekend. Anet should rename this to AvA (assassin vs. assassin) battles. 90% of the matches seem to be an assassin, a monk, and 2 spear-chucking beastmatsers. I didn't think anything could be less one-dimensional than HA, and I found myself to be wrong. Shameful.

Servant of Kali · May 27, 2007, 10:08 PM // 22:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvndoom

I took time to watch a few of these battles in obs mode this weekend. Anet should rename this to AvA (assassin vs. assassin) battles. 90% of the matches seem to be an assassin, a monk, and 2 spear-chucking beastmatsers. I didn't think anything could be less one-dimensional than HA, and I found myself to be wrong. Shameful.

Yah, I checked HvH obs a week ago, and a week before that. All the time it's A+Mo+2R/P. When i would find a match which did not have such a setup, it was "wow just wow"

I dont have anything against HvH, if people wanna play it sure. But giving rewards for this is bad.

drekmonger · May 28, 2007, 01:20 PM // 13:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by kvndoom

I took time to watch a few of these battles in obs mode this weekend. Anet should rename this to AvA (assassin vs. assassin) battles. 90% of the matches seem to be an assassin, a monk, and 2 spear-chucking beastmatsers. I didn't think anything could be less one-dimensional than HA, and I found myself to be wrong. Shameful.

That's not a fair sample of the last seven months of HvH, or of what a 1v1 mode could be in the future.

There was a mechanics change last month that hasn't work out well. There hasn't been a successful skill balance since NF shipped, certainly not one geared towards fixing the problems of 4v4 play (such as the relative strength of spirit farms). The hero AI has had only token improvements, remains severely limited in some spectacularly obvious ways.

HvH in it's current state is shameful. No it shouldn't have prizes, but neither should GvG with the current sorry state of the AT system. PvP in general is a state of decay.

wuzzman · May 28, 2007, 02:06 PM // 14:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blame the Monks

More like:

PvP: Add reconnects, tweak balance a bit, and give us free UAX! GW is close to being be the best pvp MMO ever!
Anet: Have some AB, conceptually flawed classes, and spirit spam.

PvP: RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO this shit is awful. And its just fragmenting the pvp community. What we need is to fix balance please. And we still need better pvp support, more than ever now.
Anet: afk brb....

PvP: No seriously, this needs help. GW is now build wars.
Anet: RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO you. By feedback we meant "yes men" and lots of lemontarts. We don't want to hear you don't want to use what we want to make.

PvP: Balance MUST be fixed. PvP barriers to entry MUST be lowered.
Anet: Have roughly 3634523452345 more imba skills and two more imba classes.

PvP: Balance is horrid. Even top 20 tournament play is now dominated by gay maps and gimmicks. We are only here because of what GW was in the past. It must be fixed. Game balance prevents any real competition. On top of that, AB sucks, no one cares about HvH, and the community resents what you did to HoH.
Anet: Don't worry, we will fix this when ATs come out....in 9 months.

PvP: ....
Anet: Woot! We added an HvH ladder, ATs, and more minipets! PvPers rejoice!
PvP: ....
Anet: Wha? Where did everyone go?
Anet2: I think they are playing wow with izzy.

__________________________

How many times can we beg anet to fix game balance? Did they think we were kidding the last 14 months? Now its just a matter of finding something to do as we wait for Fury, SC2, and/or Warhammer because GW is dead because of the mismanagement of anet. And I, for one, won't be coming back. I gave anet some props for great game design in the early days and good support. But it just got worse over time. Bad management, bad focus, and poor communication. Its diablo2 1.10 all over again.

GW was a great game was wasted by refusal to adapt or respond to the pvp community. It could have been the next major franchise. Now it will be just another footnote.

......I think anet paid too much for customer support. Anet balances this game on average 2-3 times a month. At best reconnects and UAX have never been a large game ending problem. The introduction of the dev, para, assassin, and rit, has not done anything to what would have been a very stale metagame even several months after release, to even make it the "issue" alot of players zomg over. Most former HA players are gvgers now. HA was dieing if not dead at least a month before factions. FACTIONS thats 1 year ago, at best Anet kept HA on life support for 1 year since it died 1 year ago. Thats a great achievement considering that game mode should have been burning in hell 1 year ago. Fury, SC2, and/or Warhammer, in order; jumping???, grind, grind. Guild wars is still the best pvp game around, the pvp community is still one of the worse in mmo existence. Oh and for future reference, pvp'ers, the vocal under r500/r6-12 type, cared nothing for lowering the barrier for new people coming into pvp. Didn't even see it as a problem...guess what happened to HA? GW2 doesn't even have HA that should tell you alot.

Patccmoi · May 28, 2007, 03:52 PM // 15:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

......I think anet paid too much for customer support. Anet balances this game on average 2-3 times a month

It is very hard to read further than that. If that was the case, i think every1 would be very happy. More frequent and gradual skill balance is the #1 thing PvPers ask about before everything else.

But in fact, after NF was released, it took something like what, 3-4 months before ANY real balance change was done?

They didn't balance during a ladder season, and those lasted months.

Just watching skill balance in the last months:

Last real one is April 5th, with small tweaks on April 10th and 13th to correct bad changes. That's nearly 2 months ago.

There was a small balance before that on March 7th which fixed a couple of abuses. It was actually a good patch cause it didn't insert broken stuff in the game.

The major skill balance before was on January 20th, finalized on February 1st. While there was a lot of nice skill changes, it also introduced Rt spike which is still fairly retarded today though more manageable now. But it took more than 1 month and a half before any change was actually done to it while everyone was running Rt spike the very day the update came live in January and saying it was broken. This should've been fixed in days as it was a VERY obvious problem during a TEST period, and it took 1 month and a half.

In December, the only balance change worth mentioning was lowering Shiro's Blade req to 13. Oh wait, that's not worth mentioning.

In the end of November, there was a small balance to nerf Paraway (still very viable today) and Jagged Bones in HA and the absolutely retarded Energizing Finale Paragons in GvG.

October 25 or around that is when NF came out.

So on average, since NF came out, the game was balanced 4 times. In 7 month. That's only slightly more than once every 2 months. That is VERY VERY far from 2-3 times a month.

For a lot of broken NF skills in PvP, think of 5E Blinding Surge, Spiritual Pain spikes, Searing Flames, Rampage as One, etc. it took from Oct 25 to January 20th to be changed at all. That's nearly 3 full months. 3 full months of insanely overpowered NF skills. And when they fixed it, they introduced Rt Spikes and buffed SP sins seriously which was retarded for a full month and a half before they did something about it. It felt like game balance was going downhill, not improving, from the release of NF till March 7th when they finally did a patch fixing more stuff than it broke, 5 months and a half later. 5 months is a HUGE duration in a competitive game life cause many players are just not that patient. Most competitive players quit.

Imo all the rest that's being asked is secondary to decent skill balancing, and for PvP that's what was mishandled the most. That's why people are annoyed. Because it often felt like an eternity before obviously broken stuff was fixed.

wuzzman · May 28, 2007, 05:19 PM // 17:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patccmoi

It is very hard to read further than that. If that was the case, i think every1 would be very happy. More frequent and gradual skill balance is the #1 thing PvPers ask about before everything else.

But in fact, after NF was released, it took something like what, 3-4 months before ANY real balance change was done?

They didn't balance during a ladder season, and those lasted months.

Just watching skill balance in the last months:

Last real one is April 5th, with small tweaks on April 10th and 13th to correct bad changes. That's nearly 2 months ago.

There was a small balance before that on March 7th which fixed a couple of abuses. It was actually a good patch cause it didn't insert broken stuff in the game.

The major skill balance before was on January 20th, finalized on February 1st. While there was a lot of nice skill changes, it also introduced Rt spike which is still fairly retarded today though more manageable now. But it took more than 1 month and a half before any change was actually done to it while everyone was running Rt spike the very day the update came live in January and saying it was broken. This should've been fixed in days as it was a VERY obvious problem during a TEST period, and it took 1 month and a half.

In December, the only balance change worth mentioning was lowering Shiro's Blade req to 13. Oh wait, that's not worth mentioning.

In the end of November, there was a small balance to nerf Paraway (still very viable today) and Jagged Bones in HA and the absolutely retarded Energizing Finale Paragons in GvG.

October 25 or around that is when NF came out.

So on average, since NF came out, the game was balanced 4 times. In 7 month. That's only slightly more than once every 2 months. That is VERY VERY far from 2-3 times a month.

For a lot of broken NF skills in PvP, think of 5E Blinding Surge, Spiritual Pain spikes, Searing Flames, Rampage as One, etc. it took from Oct 25 to January 20th to be changed at all. That's nearly 3 full months. 3 full months of insanely overpowered NF skills. And when they fixed it, they introduced Rt Spikes and buffed SP sins seriously which was retarded for a full month and a half before they did something about it. It felt like game balance was going downhill, not improving, from the release of NF till March 7th when they finally did a patch fixing more stuff than it broke, 5 months and a half later. 5 months is a HUGE duration in a competitive game life cause many players are just not that patient. Most competitive players quit.

Imo all the rest that's being asked is secondary to decent skill balancing, and for PvP that's what was mishandled the most. That's why people are annoyed. Because it often felt like an eternity before obviously broken stuff was fixed.

The problem was what the players wanted was very different from what anet wanted. NF introduced plenty of overpowered elites especially on the ele side of the game. Anet really wanted to buff rits underused channeling line. What the community demanded, was uber nerf to almost all the ele elites that anet obviously didn't want to change. Anet could have solved the problem in 2 weeks by adding exhaustion to Searing Flames, Blinding Surge, Savannah Heat, and Sand Storm. But Anet prefered to take a softer approach that took much more time. Same with skills like rampage as one, shadow prison, jagged bones, which worked the way that anet attended but the community wanted to destroy those skills totally.

Then there was the newly discovered rit spike, which generated a reaction by the community, that went totally against what anet was trying to do. In these cases, the pvp community learned the hard way that Anet will move very slowly when they are asking something that is totally opposite of what they wanted. It was the same with the rit and the rit lord build, which took 3 months to nerf after factions...and don't forget the assassin. Now the community has been asking for a nerf to necro hex's...something that anet intended necro's to use against warriors. At least 1/2 of all anti-warrior hex's are necro's. Its been nearly over 2 months, don't be surprised.

Patccmoi · May 28, 2007, 05:50 PM // 17:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by wuzzman

The problem was what the players wanted was very different from what anet wanted. NF introduced plenty of overpowered elites especially on the ele side of the game. Anet really wanted to buff rits underused channeling line. What the community demanded, was uber nerf to almost all the ele elites that anet obviously didn't want to change. Anet could have solved the problem in 2 weeks by adding exhaustion to Searing Flames, Blinding Surge, Savannah Heat, and Sand Storm. But Anet prefered to take a softer approach that took much more time. Same with skills like rampage as one, shadow prison, jagged bones, which worked the way that anet attended but the community wanted to destroy those skills totally.

Then there was the newly discovered rit spike, which generated a reaction by the community, that went totally against what anet was trying to do. In these cases, the pvp community learned the hard way that Anet will move very slowly when they are asking something that is totally opposite of what they wanted. It was the same with the rit and the rit lord build, which took 3 months to nerf after factions...and don't forget the assassin. Now the community has been asking for a nerf to necro hex's...something that anet intended necro's to use against warriors. At least 1/2 of all anti-warrior hex's are necro's. Its been nearly over 2 months, don't be surprised.

What are you talking about with that softer approach that took much more time.

It's not like they gradually nerfed the skill, that's what people ASK. Few people actually wanted the skills destroyed. Look at the old threads on Searing Flames, a lot of people proposed various ways to balance the skill, not destroy it by adding Exhaustion. Just like BSurge, raising energy to 10E was one of the various things proposed shortly after NF came out, and many even proposed smaller nerfs than that that would've been acceptable. People were happy that Eles had good elites finally, but they didn't want to face stupid gimmicks all the time because of them either. If they were gradually nerfed with repeated small nerfs every 2 weeks till they seemed well balanced, nobody would've complained with ANet taking a soft approach.

But that's not what happened. They simply didn't do anything about it for 3 months, and then nerfed them to what people suggested or something else, once, with no readjustment. That's not a soft approach, that's a slow approach that often leads to hitting skills with a jackhammer cause they don't take them to actually take a soft approach.

Jagged Bones' synergy with SR was destroying HA totally. I doubt that's what ANet wanted. Mass Searing Flames was everywhere and was an horrible gimmick even dominating for a while in GvG (till so many people ran 3 to 5 Mesmers with Diversion and Spiritual Pain spike that you would have to be stupid to run Eles), not sure that's what ANet wanted.

The competitive PvP community in general hates when gimmicks dominate because it favorize build over player skill. And broken skills/maps lead to gimmicks dominating. And not fixing the gimmicks for too long leads to competitive players leaving, which further annoys the competitive players that remain.

You can't compare the PvP community of GW to that of any other MMO simply because no other MMO was released as a competitive PvP game. They're STARTING to do something close to a competitive PvP in WoW, and it mostly shows that the game isn't designed for it. And players that take part in there have level 70 chars that are well geared which means they spent months hardcore PvEing in the first place. That's hardly a competitive PvP community, and if one starts to stand out, expect it to start asking for severe nerfs on dozens of imbalanced skills that will make all the PvErs whine because they like overpowered skills when fighting big bad mobs. The PvP community of GW is much more comparable to that of games like SC, WC3, etc. where game balance is at the very core of competitive play. And it's not really any worse than those, it's very comparable to what it was when i played those games. It might seem worse now because many people are disgruntled since a very long time.