Curse

HigherMinion · Jun 30, 2012, 07:56 PM // 19:56

No subscription fee= kids will buy.

Coordinated PvP= adults will play.

No mystery who is right; it's both of you!

Sentinel Guardian · Jul 01, 2012, 03:16 AM // 03:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Junato

I think what Fireflyry was getting at when you said Guild wars was originally marketed to adult players, you didn't source your reference.

On the contrary, I posted the whole disagreement sequence, showing that fireflyry made the initial unsourced claim regarding player ages. His whole argument is one of projection and fallacy.

I was there from the beginning, I saw the advertisements and interviews as they rolled out. Guild Wars was originally marketed to adults, then did a back flip with Factions to try and cater to everything. I can't find any videos still around, since this is going back to 8 years ago. Adults were the target audience nonetheless. I remember their central point. It revolved around Guild Wars being a game where skill mattered and time played didn't. That's why you have access to PvP gear. Their argument was that an adult with previous gaming experience could enter PvP on equal terms, instead of getting wiped out instantly by a 16 year old who didn't know how to play, yet spent all day every day farming all the best gear for an overwhelming advantage. The not so apparent philosophy behind this was that Arenanet wanted everyone to have an equal chance of winning in PvP, regardless of time played or skill. They wanted to bridge the gap between players, punishing those who had earned an advantage while giving the underdog casual player an unfair advantage. Back then, Arenanet had little networking resources and expertise. They were counting on casual players to use up minimal bandwidth. The MMO scene was already dismal at that point, they didn't expect so many players. Three months in, the servers overloaded and Arenanet eventually had to move them to NcSoft. They changed their target audience once they realised how many kids had infested the game, and how profitable it might be to cater to them. They even changed the eula, to adapt to the problems it caused. They made it so anyone under 18 could be banned for any reason, without the right to appeal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Junato

However, the game requires a certain skill level that most adults have compared to the youngins in which Fireflyry disagrees.

While skillful play in Guild Wars has always been an option, that option has significantly decreased over the years. Arenanet not only cater to cheap shots and unfair advantages, they encourage it. The reason why the game balance has been so unbelievably poor, is due to that. The game is actually balanced well, it's just not the type of balance you think it is. The balance Arenanet refers to is not a balance of skills and professions. It's a balance of your chances to win, regardless of your level of skill or experience. The ever present infestation of cheapshot/griefing builds that require no skill, are there for that reason. It's there on purpose to allow poorly talented players an easy option to win with. I quote an Article I once wrote regarding the misuse of knockdown.

Quote:

Originally Posted by an article I once wrote

The smackdown on knockdown.

Knock down - causes a target to temporarily fall down. While knocked down, the target cannot move, cannot activate skills with an activation time, and cannot switch weapons, effectively removing them from the game for 2-4 seconds.

Unconditional knock down - [backbreaker][devastating hammer][earth shaker][grapple][hammer bash][Magehunter's Smash][shove][spike trap][Signet of Judgment][earthquake][dragons stomp][gale][lightning surge][meteor][meteor shower][shock][Entangling Asp][grasping was kuurong]

Conditional knock down - [coward][none shall pass][bulls charge][bulls strike][counter blow][enraged smash][Griffon's Sweep][leviathans sweep][heavy blow][Irresistible Blow][shield bash][yeti smash][bestial pounce][savage pounce][tripwire][balthazars pendulum][bane signet][Shield of Judgment][psychic instability][signet of clumsiness][churning earth][gust][mind shock][slippery ground][stoning][whirlwind][teinais wind][unsteady ground][water trident][horns of the ox][iron palm][mark of instability][scorpion wire][trampling ox][wastrels collapse][reapers sweep][shield of force]

Knock down prevention - [Balanced Stance][dolyak signet][steady stance][aura of stability][balthazars pendulum][ward of stability][brace yourself][fleeting stability]

With 1,235 skills to PvP with, 55 of them are knockdown skills, while 8 of them are knockdown counters. Of these 8 counters, they cover only 5 of the 10 professions in the game, 3 of them being from the Warrior profession. 2 of them are an Elite, 2 of them cannot be used on self, and none of them (by design) provide an effective counter for knock down. Only 4% of all skills are knockdown skills, while 0.6% are knockdown counters. Yet these knockdown skills are the most popular. Most of the skills you see above have been around since the beginning of Guild Wars, but they weren't always as popular as they are now. Once upon a time, players looked upon the use of knockdown as a tool to be used in rare situations. But as time went on, bad players resorted to overusing knockdown in order to stand a chance against better players. The truth is, Arenanet have a very misguided philosophy of favoring the underdog and turning the tables in order to give him the upper hand. It's the equivalent of playing a game of chess, and modifying the game so that you can have an option at the start of the game to replace any of your chess pieces with a 'free move' card. What this does is allow the underdog to have a cheap alternative to win through, without interacting with his opponent. A bad player would sacrifice many of his pawns and free move his way to victory, while a good player would not resort to such a tactic, knowing that it destroys the spirit of the game by removing the interactivity from competition. One might argue that this cheap option gives bad players a chance to survive long enough to learn the game through interacting with better players. But the history of Guild Wars and the degeneration of its community has shown that it just doesn't work that way, and such a misguided philosophy is out of touch with reality. Rather than learn to interact with their opponent, and out-manoeuvre them through builds, strategies and tactics, bad players resort to this cheap tactic of spamming knockdown, repeating a simple sequence of commands over and over. These builds are designed to limit player interaction and simplify the game in a series of free shot moves. This is why most Melee players have no clue how to play their profession, totally clueless how to position themselves and change tactics. They prefer instead to chase a single target and repeat the same knockdown sequence over and over until it eventually dies.

This graph shows the progress barrier caused by these cheap options, giving bad players an incentive NOT to move on and learn the game.

Leading to a mentality like this.

When you encourage shameful play like this, what do you expect is going to happen? Forest Gump could figure this one out. It isn't like this by accident, this has been a deliberate attempt on behalf of Arenanet to dumb down the game for bad players, and give them a chance against good players. They only have themselves to blame for the shameful and untalented troll/griefer community they've nurtured. You can see another clear example of this mentality in rollerbeetle racing. The underdogs are given an option to stop the race leader in his tracks, by spamming knockdown on them. This leads to everyone parking on the boxes, spamming knockdown on anyone who runs ahead until they get god mode.

The bottom line is this - bad players resort to knockdown spam, good players don't. If you can't win without knockdown, you need to stop using training wheels and learn how to play. Just because you're given a choice to use an underdog cheapshot, doesn't mean you should use it.

I also refer to a story I once wrote as a comparison to the history of Guild Wars.

Imagine a chess competition. It's very popular, everyone plays. A couple of children are in the competition, as well as the local village idiot. There are no restrictions to join apart from the $100 membership fee, and with the rare exception, it's of a high standard of competitiveness and sportsmanship. Now lets say one of the children complain that they keep losing, and threaten to pull out of the competition, withdraw their annual $100 membership fee and go on a public rant about how tough the game is. Now the head management only has an interest in money and couldn't give a damn about chess. They take this loss of income seriously. They tell the guys running the competition to cater to this child and let them win, so they will stay and hand back their $100 membership fee and not rant about how tough the game is for new players, which would discourage new membership profits. The solution they came up with was to change the game rules so that you could trade your chess pieces for free move cards at the start of the game. The vast majority of the chess community was outraged, and never considered using such a disgraceful move. At first, only this child used this tactic, allowing him to free move his way to victory every game, or almost. Because this child was so bad at chess, he still lost a lot of games even with his free moves. Eventually, he won a competition with his 'free move strategy', which caused a lot of the top end players to leave in disgust. The management, seeing their error, decided to do nothing about it at first, in fear of making things even worse. Due to there being no consequences of using this cheapshot strategy of free moving your way to victory, the other children picked up on this and began doing it as well. Much to the satisfaction of the management, the problem seemed to fix itself. The children that used this cheapshot strategy in the competition were talking about it in school, about how they beat the adult chess masters at their own game, with this cool megacard move. The competition became swarmed with other children wanting to have a go at beating the 'pro chess players', so many that it began to offset the mass exodus of genuine players in the chess comp that left in disgust. Having so few 'pro' players to beat anymore these new children looked upon the first children as the new 'pro's' to beat, trying to learn how they beat the old pro's and made their way to the top. Even the village idiot was in on this, and soon there were as many village idiots in the competition than there were villages. Sales were up, the clueless management was happy with the new amazing chess game they invented. But it didn't last long. After a doing a survey, they realised that although they had an unflux of new players, these players didn't stay long enough to renew their membership in the following years, unlike the original players. They decide, 'RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO it, the game is dead, lets do it over and syphon what we can out of this before its gone'. They add more cheapshot options to constantly give the bottom end players a chance, trying to appeal to new casual players by giving them a chance against the so called 'pro's'. Unfortunately, most people saw through this scam and refused to join. But some did, enough for the management to get enough profit to repeat the same scam a few times. By the time it all ended, it wasn't even recognizable as the game it was originally.

Here's some reviews of Arenanet at glassdoor.com, made by Arenanet employees themselves to show how far they've fallen:

'"Trim the fat". A few people that have no place working here.'

'Must be thick skinned to work here - lack of leadership professionalism and respect'

'The loss of two of the three company founders left a tremendous void in the company's leadership that was never repaired, and the alternate perspectives they offered are sorely missed when the time comes for high level strategic decision-making.'

'There was a lot of office politics and people holding grudges against one another. Most of it kindled from unwise, unexplained and/or downright shady decisions from produced by upper management. Also, they had several permatemps making well below appropriate industry standard wages.'

Quote:

Originally Posted by Junato

In most part for people who haven't read all of what sentinal is saying please post TL;DR (too long; didn't read)

I would prefer if people took the time to read. It doesn't take long, and the contents of the thread are very informative.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Junato

Sentinel interesting topic came up as I was watching TVO when they were talking about IQ (Intelligent Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient). They were talking about how intelligence is based on emotions. If you have a high IQ you have a better understanding of matters, but the reason for that is that the emotional quotient is at a degree that supports the IQ for being where it is.

EQ comes as a realisation that IQ testing is very inacurate at best, and only covers a small area of real intelligence. EQ is the same, both are small pieces out of a much larger puzzle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Junato

It is very interesting, its as they say if you like math you will be good at math. If you hate English you will do bad in english. The emotions sets the bar for intelligence.

I would say the reverse is true. When you get good at something first, you start liking it more later, since it empowers you to do many things you previously couldn't. When people like something they aren't good at, it's because they see a potential in it. But not all potentials are seen by those in the process of learning. You don't always see a light at the end of every tunnel. That's the original philosophy behind education systems in its uncorrupted form. For example, most children have little interest in learning how to read and write. But once you gain those skills, you start liking them due to the cool things you can do with them.

Emotional quotient isn't about following what you like. It's about doing what you need to do regardless of what you like. It's about self control, harnessing your emotions instead of being dominated by them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HigherMinion

No subscription fee= kids will buy.

Another myth, as I've shown already. No subscription fee = more players of all ages.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HigherMinion

Coordinated PvP= adults will play.

PvP tournaments = more kids trying to prove themselves. Take a look at every advertisement made for PvP tournaments, even gaming hardware with decals. They're aimed at kids. In Guild Wars, War Machine and The Last Pride were used as the poster children for tournaments, to promote people into competing, as as well as promoting the myth that Korean players are 'pro gamers'.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HigherMinion

No mystery who is right; it's both of you!

There is no middle ground between the truth and a lie. Even a half truth is still a lie.

Princess Ko · Jul 17, 2012, 03:54 AM // 03:54

First of all, Sentinel Guardian, marry me.

I guess I game to escape what is my reality. There have been times in my life where I have delved deeper into gaming to escape from the horrible things beyond my control, but always there is a need to escape.
In any medium of gaming, I know I am good at it, and I feel powerful. Things are much more in control when I'm shooting magic missiles at foes.
There is also the appeal of the anonymity. I'm female and have a career in the sciences, where real life appearances really do matter. In the gaming world, people have no idea what my real name or gender is, and honestly don't care. Here, the thing I say and advice I give are taken at face value and not through the filter that comes with having boobs and trying to publish research.

However, I only play games that have significant achievements to unlock, involve intense strategy and are intellectually engaging, which is my idea of fun. Also, research says that people who do activities like games and puzzles are less likely to have memory problems. I figure it's guild wars, table gaming and poker today, and 50 years from now, it'll be bridge, crossword puzzles and nightly episodes of jeopardy. Thanks for posting this thread