Did ANet predict the affect ursan have gotten?

My sense is that they did not see this coming. Almost nobody did.

A couple weeks after EOTN came out, I started a thread saying "whoa, this Ursan thing is going to go way overboard someday". My post was met with a chorus of folks saying I was overreacting, etc. Many of those people are posting that Ursan has broken the game.

Call me a prophet. lol....

Pretty sure they did know. I mean, Ursan is the main reason to buy GWEN right now, isn't it? Maybe they'll wait till they can't milk more $$$ out of GWEN and then they'll nerf it.

That sounds very reasonable!

Probably half right, I doubt they'd nerf it though. Not after all this.

(I have no opinion on the goodness or evil of Ursan. It's just another option to me)

I think Ursan was put in as the "easy button" for PvE. I think they knew it was overpowered. That's why it became an elite. Heck, Pain Inverter and several other PvE-only skills are stupid powerful, but Ursan gets the elite tag.

^ Truth. Its why Ursan never got nerfed. To be honest, I also do not think they anticipated full UB groups and tested it thoroughly, or considered what it would do to actual varied group play in various areas. Its simply now a great selling point for EotN, so they wont touch it.

They were hoping that since you didn't actually turn into a bear, folks wouldn't use it.

In seriousness, I also think Anet knew what they were doing, when they put that skill in. They needed to open up some of the more difficult PvE areas to the folks with bad bars without seemingly force feeding a build on them. Ursan did that, while making those folks think they thought of it themselves. So now, a lot more players that thought the game was too difficult are back again and grabbing additional campaigns, char slots, kept interested in GW2, etc...

It is to open Elite areas to casual players with HoM they want your average joe gamer to be able to beat DoA/UW/FoW, plus SF allows people to farm massive amonts of money for elite armor/titles for HoM, They just want the "casual" player to be able to get something in HoM. Plus why does it matter to you if someone has money/easy elite armea clears? You cant go there with your exped grp and make tons of money? Its simple MMO style, new areas only really exped ppl can do it becomes more and more open as cookie cutter builds arise and them Ursan.

I used to think that Ursan was just an oversight or something. I didn't think that Anet could make a skill to beat so many areas when their design has so many skill combinations. But the lack of nerfs to ursan over the past months makes me believe otherwise.

We have three options.

1) ANet had no idea what they were doing, and attempted to surpass D/Mos for most ridiculous design imbalance.
2) ANet knew exactly what they were doing, and are willing to muddle their own game design to get more games sold before GW2.
3) ANet are some of the greatest trolls of online gaming.

None of them are particularly good.

Yes, I think so. They had been moving towards this for a while and they made it an elite for a reason (as mentioned above the other PvE skills are just as imba - Pain Inverter is probably the strongest damager in the game).

They have been trying to move the game such that the top end players are not much more than the low end (loot scale, easier access to areas, nerfing normal mode, etc), I notice that the main complaint is that it makes it where anyone can play the end game/elite missions. Well, if that was their goal (and I am nearly sure that is) then it is Working As Intended. Any such complaints that "now any one can do it" is just telling them they did what they wanted.

Now, if that is a good idea or not - dunno. They have their server logs and sales charts to see. Since they have been strongly moving towards and given the vitriol flung at them from the hard core players I suspect that it isn't driving "everyone" away. In fact, from my own experience in game I see more players in later areas than ever before (and yes, most are Ursan groups). Were I casual PUG'er then this would be great - especially if I had a lesser liked class. Were I a hard core gamer that felt I needed my own special play ground, items, and show off an especially large bank account then I would be ticked. However, since I am the most hated class of all - a pure H/H player that tries to avoid the player base outside of boards - I don't care much at all either way.

The only thing from the devs I could find was a post on Wiki, and that was a month ago:

So there are "don't like it don't use it" guys at ANet too?

No, I don't think they foresaw this. Yes, they knew it was the strongest blessing, because it's the very icon of the norn. But they didn't see how far they went.

The day Ursan entered the game is the same day things like Seed of Life and TNTF got hit for PvE balance. It wasn't until sometime after GWEN's release that Anet decided PvE didn't need any balance at all.

The plethora of bugs in GWEN skills is enough to show that things were not thoroughly playtested. Heck Ursan used to be doing ranged damage. I don't think they ever got a team of 6 bears together to do things. Some of the quest design, like the charr homelands, makes you wonder if they even tested multiplayer at all.

It works and does exactly what it was meant to do.

Simple as that.

Those in Anet who think it's fine are the marketing and sales boys.

Those in Anet who think it's too overpowered are probably anyone not in those two depts. =P

I think ANet did have an idea about how UB would be used when they released it....

1 - everyone was saying that you could only defeat Mallyx by using a glitch, and that the devs must have designed him when using their dev in-game bonuses.
2 - mesmers were finding it impossible to get into PUGs, not only in elite areas.

So they introduce a skill that anyone can use, and it works against mallyx....it also requires owning and grinding through EotN.

I used to think of it as a take-it-or-leave-it skill. I never used it as I was perfectly happy using my nuker or earth build in EotN, depending on the baddies I would find there. I got Legendary Master of the North and maxed rep titles, all of my EotN heroes upgraded with deldrimor armour (all of them obtained by myself in Duncans...many of them in HM)...and then a couple of weeks later there was a change in the general players attitude, and it became virtually impossible to get into a Duncans group if you didn't run UB. Shame really...I hate using UB, and I've seen more UB groups fail in Duncans than balanced non-UB groups (and some of them included mesmers and rits).

ursan go added cause all the noobs wanted to do fow/uw/doa

ON TOPIC: No, I don't think they knew about it, otherwise they would've made a bigger fuss about it in game.

There are three norn blessings, and ursan is possibly the easiest to get. I don't think anyone at Anet even looked twice at those skills. They used them a bit and thought they were powerful, but then given the strength of the monsters in EOTN it was "ok". They never tried somewhere like FoW with a team of Ursans and saw how easy it is, I think a lot of testing is done with only a few humans so many areas can be tested quickly. Therefore Anet wouldn't have tested a whole team.

If they had known when they put Ursan into the game that it was going to be THE build for elite missions and overpower any other skill in the game then the quest wouldn't be so easy and it would be stood out from the other blessings. Perhaps gained at the end of a hard norn dungeon or something. If they had known it's potential it would have been singled out more in game.


ON URSAN: I seriously hope Anet get their act together and make it only usable in norn zones.
IMO, not that it will ever happen, I think those three skills need a change (because they've got to be changed together). Their elite status should be removed and they should be changed to just add their effects and not the skills. So ursan would become a skill saying "for 30 seconds you gain XX health and have +XX armor"

ON THE STATE OF THE GAME: GW needs to look back to it's roots of Skill > Time. Titles that boost the power of skills (although incredibly convenient) go against their original plan and mean that someone who has more time can perform better than others. Thus allowing them to gain better loot, faster and given them a distinct advantage.

PvE skills are needed and good fun, but they should be fixed to their maximum values and the rep titles effects maxed out too. This would mean that all players have a level playing field apart from the collection and capping of skills.In the original game the whole point of pve was simply to unlock and collect skills and mods for use in pvp. By making this a more central focus I think the game would be turned back along the right tracks.

The ranks at which armor and weapons and consumables become available should then be raised much higher up for example: consumables at rank 5, weapons at rank 7 and armor at rank 10. This would mean that those who want the mechanic-less vanity armor can have it but they've got to work, which adds that grind the game needs to whole it's hard core, long-term players.

This game isn't too far from going back to skill>time but it will need major changes by anet and they'll have to ignore the whining and QQing afterwards.

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And incase you want to know, making the above changes wouldn't benefit me at all. I'm not max rank on any of those titles, nor have I got all the elite skills capped but it would sort out the game and to me the concept of long-term perfection is more important that the short-term happiness of community.

I think that A-net knew what they were doing when they created the various blessings.
They made a set of skills that could give every player with access to the those skills a build that would be on par with the 'best' builds available for PUG use. This to make areas equally accessible for every profession, opposite to what they were.

I think the same applies for consumables.
They make areas more accessible to not-that-good-players, as intended by A-net.

I'm not sure they have predicted the combination of UB and consumables.
UB without consumables is not as easy to play as with consumables.
Those make a huge difference, even in an UB team.
I've seen UB teams struggle and die and the moment the consumables were up the team breezed through the area.

I think the most powerful of the both are the consumables but many players lack the skill to gain full benefit from them and rely on UB + cons because everyone uses that.

And there's another part to this. I think ANet hope that it will increase sales of GW2. Someone made a good post about this in another thread, but I'd rather not have to go and find it.

It all has to do with the Hall of Monuments. By making the PvE game easier, ANet has made it easier for players to fill up their HoM. If people fill up their HoM and know they will be rewarded for all their "hard work" in GW2, they're more likely to buy it.

Easier to fill up HoM = more GW2 purchasers.