ON the efficacy of ANET’s PvE skill rebalancing & high end area PUG team formation …

NOTE TO MODERATOR: please move this thread to a forum you feel is most appropriate. All comments welcome/encouraged

The following text is merely generalization. There are always exceptions to generalizations. Accordingly, examples can be shown as contradictory to the observations & inferences in this text. Still, the author urges readers to got to any high end outpost and observe the ads in party formation window…

Premise:
Unless you’re a farmer or Hero Battle player, Guildwars is inherently a Co-op game & there is ACTUALLY a community of part-time players that rely on PUG teams to play high end areas.

As this article relates to PUG team formation, ALL PvE skill rebalancing reference to farming (solo, 2 man, 3 man etc) is INTENTIONALLY excluded & accordingly focuses on FULL PUG teams for high end mission completion solely. Excluding farming, a PRESUMED “primary” intent of PvE skill rebalancing is to create a balanced game where ALL character classes/professions can form a team with a “reasonable” chance for mission success. Team formation either occurs either within friend/guild/alliance structure or via PUG. Examine the recent history of skill changes on the effect of PUG formation & assess some interesting observations to verify whether the following hypothesis has ANY validity.

Hypothesis:
Skill rebalancing impacts PUG team formation, specifically for high end areas (UW, FOW, DOA, SLAVERS, TOMBS, etc…). For the sake of efficiency, the “player community” subsequently responds to rebalancing by limiting builds to cookie cutter structure. By inference, the rebalancing effect ANET has introduced is to discourage variety in high end area PUG team formation. The author presumes this effect is either intentional or that ANET doesn’t really understand the nuances underlying “player psyche” and impact on PUG team formation.

PUG Team Observations:

Pre-URSAN era (or before it became commonplace)

High End Area UW
Typical PUG Team make up Holy Trinity: 1terra tank, 2 heal, 5 nuker
Typical NM Clear duration about 2 hrs
Notes/comments Oodles of solo, 2 man, 3 man farming, trapping etc…

High End Area TOMBS
Typical PUG Team make up Barrage Pet: 5 BP, 2 N, 1 Mo
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 ½ hr
Notes/comments Balanced PUGs virtually non existent

High End Area SLAVERS EXILE
Typical PUG Team make up Holy Trinity: 1 OF tank, 2 healers, 5 nukers (with FS)
Typical NM Clear duration less than 2 hrs
Notes/comments Full Run virtually non existent, most PUGS were focused on one boss at a time

High End Area DOA
Typical PUG Team make up Holy Trinity: 1OF tank, 2 heal, 5 nuker
Typical NM Clear duration about 2 ½ hrs
Notes/comments Many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high LB rank



During URSAN era

High End Area UW
Typical PUG Team make up 6 URSAN & 2 Healers
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 ½ hr (with cons)
Notes/comments (NOTE ALL PROFESSIONS COULD JOIN AS LONG AS THEY RAN URSAN). However, many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high Norn rank & high armor &/or stonefist insignia

High End Area TOMBS
Typical PUG Team make up 6 URSAN & 2 Healers
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 ½ hr (with cons)
Notes/comments (NOTE ALL PROFESSIONS COULD JOIN AS LONG AS THEY RAN URSAN). However, many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high Norn rank & high armor &/or stonefist insignia

High End Area SLAVERS EXILE
Typical PUG Team make up 6 URSAN & 2 Healers (with FS)
Typical NM Clear duration less than 2 hrs (with cons)
Notes/comments (NOTE ALL PROFESSIONS COULD JOIN AS LONG AS THEY RAN URSAN). However, many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high Norn rank & high armor &/or stonefist insignia

High End Area DOA
Typical PUG Team make up 5 URSAN, & 3 Healers (Usually HB)
Typical NM Clear duration Less than 2 ½ hrs (with cons)
Notes/comments Many “elite” players only wanted to team with those having high LB rank &B cons were pre-requisite




Post URSAN era & emergence of PERMASIN

High End Area UW
Typical PUG Team make up 7 Perma-sin & 1 N/Rt
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 hr
Notes/comments No balanced PUG observed forming

High End Area TOMBS
Typical PUG Team make up 3 Perma-sin
Typical NM Clear duration less than 1 ½ hr
Notes/comments No balanced PUG observed forming

High End Area SLAVERS EXILE
Typical PUG Team make up 1 Perma-sin 2 Mo & 5 Cryers
Typical NM Clear duration NONE
Notes/comments Only VS farms observed forming, most party ads require r9 sunspear

High End Area DOA
Typical PUG Team make up ?
Typical NM Clear duration ?
Notes/comments No non-farming PUG observed forming


Conclusion:
PvE skill rebalancing minimizes occurrence of multiple character classes in high end PUG team formation & promotes the formation of specific builds for PUG. Guild/Alliance team formation is unchanged.

Suggestion:
Does ANET even care about this issue? If so, how does ANET actually create incentive for PUG team formation? Here’s an off the wall idea: Improve drop rate &/or triple the number of chest spawns based on variety ie the number of different primary profession HUMANS in party? Is that really far fetched? Is it doable? Would that adversely affect other parts of the game? Does that REALLY penalize the existing “specialized” Post URSAN nerf builds? Does it steer/force each char class to run a specific bar in order to join a PUG? Is it a huge programming effort to implement? Does it slow down instance loading?

Oh well, I guess this is really just 1 opinion is a SEA of gamers (each with their own agendas). So it’s time I stopped sniveling & just wait to see what ANET does next…

I agree that skills "rebalancing" afects PUG formation. However, i belive PUG formation, nowadays, is dead since people dont know how to use their skills. I belive ursan destroyed this game, since people only had to press 123 skills to have sucessefull runs in the minor time possible. People got used to press 123 and take quite few time to complete a high-end area, now since that is gone, people dont know how to use the real game skills and cant even think for them selfs. Being so, people cant play whith human in pve and PUGing is something that is unthinkable nowadays.
The problem, imo, is not a matter of profession variety, but a matter of comon sense that seems unixist among guildwars players. A-net only guilt was to create Ursan and when they realise it was too late.

But...i must confess, i relly on pugs to do High - end areas (i'm in a pvp guild) and its quite sad when i go to a high en area and see it almost empty. Besides of that, people in there is rather to take heroes to take human people...its just sad...

I hope things come better since i'm sure Guildwars has much to offer, if people open their minds, learn how to listen and how to read.

gl hf

DOA still does pugs, though now you need to speak german to do it.
I have no idea why nobody else is interested in such runs.
they run 1 terra warrior 1 bonder 1 hb and 5cryers

And for the rest, you are completely right, people need to read more

Bad thing Germans dont accept english spaeking people....

First, well written post. They're so few and far between on Guru anymore that it's refreshing to see someone express a coherent thought.

Second, you got to the real problem. The real problem is people. It's the psychological need that most gamers have to "win", by collecting the most titles, having the most money, the biggest bling, et cetera. There is nothing that forces people into the tank/nuke/heal traid other than their belief that it leads to the greatest reward. Of course, for some, the greatest reward is to have fun, but that's another topic.

Your suggestion is a good one as it would incent people to actually play with other people, which is the intent of an online game. I'm sure you'll have lots of people complain on this thread as it doesn't meet their individual needs or style of play, but that's the risk you always take when you challenge the status quo.

/signed

Totally /signed, Guildwars needs to wake up, and implement ideas that can allow all pugs to use Balanced teams to complete elite areas without them having to use their brains to much :P

But as mentioned above it is peoples choice of 'fun' that effect there choice of play style, they may enjoy and quick gimmicky cry way over the rewarding full balanced team style play !

Reading optimizies your chances aswell !! Theres more than just german people that run DoA, only problem is that most teams form in the GH now not GoA =(

Good Luck Tho !

Ursan was very bad for the game, removing it was very good for the game, but perhaps it was removed too late - it had already spoiled the high-end content for a huge proportion of the guildwars playerbase. Also there's still plenty of idiotic PvE skills and Shadow Form which are almost as destructive as Ursan was and should also be nerfed.

True, there's been degenerate FOTM farming builds pretty much from the start (invincimonks and geartanks started it), but I blame the fact that no-one runs anything but FOTM farming builds any more on the fact that GW is an aging game: everyone's long since completed the content, and are now simply killing time by grinding mindlessly.

As to why pople keep doing something they claim to hate just to own another mini panda or another monument, instead of going to another game, I will never know.

Wrt the suggestion of increased droprates for more primary professions & human players: sure, why not. It wont stop the degeneration, just create new FOTM farming builds, but wont really hurt anything either.

People gravitate toward "easiest and fastest." Ursan was easy (for sure!) and reasonably fast. When it went away, players glommed onto the next easy thing, which is Perma-sin or Criers.

It's not so much that these builds couldn't have existed before, it's just that nobody was looking for the next "easy" alternative. Now they have it. It won't go away until the skills involved are nerfed enough to render the builds unworkable. Then people will just move onto the next gimmick.

The game has aged. Many people have "been there, done that" enough to not want to think and strategize about how to conquer an area or enemy.

You want balanced builds, with players that need to think? Wait for GW2. You need to reset the mental frame of the players, and the only way to do that is to start all over, where nobody knows nothing...

You made your bed, now sleep in it.

The guru community hated ursan and I assume pressures from it, and other sources lead to its eventual nerf. Now you are complaining that elite missions are returning to holy trinity builds that it used to be. Did you not see that this was going to happen?
Honestly I think your ideas are dumb, forcing people to run multiple class groups is not fair. At least with loot scaling it had economic reasons that justified it, there was too much inflation in pure gold market, this is punishment on people's play style. What about the people who run all warrior group in FoW, that isn't cookie cutter, but it get punished more than cookie cutter group with your system.
Live with the fact that class specific cookie cutter groups are now here because of the nerfs to ursan.

Unless every gimmick and bug is removed there won't be room for any profession to show their worth to a pug. Kill earth magic, kill Shadow Form, kill Cry of Pain, change the AI to spread out around one target and your pugs will be looking for new ways to approach their problems. Remove every exploitable aspect abused by the common player and you might actually see a change.

Or they quit the game entirely, possibly try to get in a guild and understand the mechanics of Guild Wars. In turn the playerbase becomes more educated, smarter players and the quality of pugs will actually improve as the stubborn players tied to their old ways leave while the dedicated aim to overcome.

Enemies with random builds or different builds that make impossible to have a single build working against all of them should easily fix that.
Crowds of monsters that can be killed with a single build are always a mistake, they make players go for Farming builds instead parties.

Not going with Heroes has its rewards already. Although each single player drop is the same, the overall drops of the party are increased, so if party members share rewards, they'll have more chances of good stuff each one, since no drops vanish when they are assigned to Heroes. Not a big reward and requires people to be 'fair', but still a reward.

But punishing people to use different professions is not a good idea. If a bunch of people want to fool around as a full-Dervish team, they are in their right.

People use what works, so what you must do is stop "what works" from working, not just treat those that do not use what works.

extremely well said. as for anet being too late, thats why they buffed the pve only skills so now you dont even have to work to have overpowered skills, they are just given to you. they knew they messed up, and messed up bad. the players were so dependent on ursan for easy killing that they had to up the power of pve only skills so players wouldnt just pug and get wiped instantly. instead of having that gold ring around the skill that kills stuff really good, they gave you 3 slots that kill really well. then players who dont know what actual game skills do only need to learn 5. its a sad thing what happened.

Admittedly, the game we all enjoy playing is NOT called PUG WARS, it’s called GUILD WARS. Thankfully ANET structures the game with THAT THEME as a primary goal. Even the introduction of Kurz/Lux factions strengthens the entire Guild philosophy (even if it simultaneously fragments the player base). Still, ANET introduced the party formation window ENTIRELY to facilitate PUG formation (& yes HH too). So clearly there IS a “faction” within ANET that recognizes a viable player community need to form PUG’s. The player community also recognizes the inherent weakness with in-game PUG formation as players can only form an in-game PUG if they are in the right town at the right time with the right people LF the same goal. Hence the emergence and proliferation of forums on this fansite, there is an entire section/forum created specifically to schedule non-guild or PUG formation activities.

Also I am in agreement with almost all responses to the original post. However, I must admit that I’m a “glass is ½ full” kinda person not “glass is ½ empty” type. What I mean is: creating incentive to form multi-profession PUGS in high end areas, is not punishment for non-multi-profession teams. There was no mention in the original suggestion of dis-incenting the cookie cutters or even single profession builds like 8 man Warrior or 8 man Dervish etc... These specialized builds & cookie cutters will still have the same level of drops/chests as they have today & are FAST, ergo NOT PUNISHMENT. It’s really a subtle perception about the carrot & the stick paradigm. A carrot is a reward to motivate, the stick is coercion to re-motivate. If someone receives a reward for exhibiting behavior, that doesn’t mean that anyone is punished for not exhibiting that same behavior, it just means they weren’t rewarded.

How does all this relate to skill rebalancing you ask? Everyone’s comments in this thread are perfectly valid & should be read by ANET. But I must admit that I was hoping to see some additional suggestions to promote PUG’s in high end areas. The goal of cookie cutters is efficiency, LET IT BE. The goal of balanced teams is being able to play a variety of different toons so that no character class is excluded, FIX THAT. Skill nerfing & rebalancing isn’t the answer (since everyones replies to this text attest players wil only find a new cookie cutter when the next nerf bat hits), creating incentives is the answer. For example (as absurd as it seems), if Jade Quarry offered 5x more faction than AB, gamers would flock to the quarry instead of AB. That’s our nature as gamers. So I ask: what incentive does ANET offer to form Balanced PUGs in high end areas? Answer: None, other than the FUN which can ONLY OCCUR IF Balanced PUG’s actually form. ANET can’t change the player psyche, it can only create the rules by which we all play…

Unless you're a farmer or Hero Battle player, Guild Wars is inherently a pvp game.




PvE is all about farming. If you don't have friends to mess around with, you're completely in PvE for the money and titles. If you're not, you're not really going to enjoy the endgame stuff anyway.

I fixed this for you.

Ursan presented the illusion of equity. Sure, any profession could run Ursan, but what attracts players to a given profession is usually, well, that profession. Is it really a good thing for the profession system to be distilled down to bears with different outfits?

Plus a) there was some profession discrimination creeping in (before the Ursan nerf, people were beginning to decide that W/Me made the best Ursans, presumably due to the higher base armour of Warriors coupled with the ability of some Mesmer skills to skill matter after going Ursan) and b) Ursan encouraged title discrimination. Personally, I'd consider levelling a 'holy trinity' character to be a lot more fun than grinding Norn - and at least (some of) the areas now have different cookie cutter builds.

That said, largely, I consider removing Ursan to have been a step along the path towards the ultimate aim of encouraging diverse builds. This means the power of the 'holy trinity' build also needs to be broken before victory can be declared (whether through nerfing HT or making balanced teams more desirable) but we were never going to see balanced PUGs while Ursan ran roughshod over everything.

If you cant beat em join em, is it really hard to make one of the characters that are wanted?

Pretty hard if you don't have a primary class that's wanted, and don't want to spend however many hours getting a new character to that place. You have to admit class inclusiveness in PVE has been non-existent, but it's similar to all their balancing in the game, for PVP too. It's a kind of "free market" and what always happens in those kids... someone games it and everyone else has to game it the same way or be left behind.

There are those who are of the opinion that you can pretty easily fit any class into an efficient group. The real issue is pugging - but then again, pugs tend to be inefficient by nature anyways. With the state of Guild Wars, either a good guild or a good friends list is the best thing you can have.

My view regarding this, as always, is that giving stronger skills limits choices because it narrows the options at the highest level of power. Example: In NF your bar was practically 7 skills because everyone ran Lightbringer's Gaze. Why add it? If it was 'necessary' then something else was a problem - all it did was add a generic (and supercharged) skill to everyone's bar while reducing the number of real skills. The same can be observed for other builds and pug structure.

"What Brought About The Downfall of the PUG?"

LOL, seriously though. Guild Wars should have been known as Gimmick Wars. Because in the long run for the most part, if you don't have a gimmick build for a proffesion that is in demand for where ever you happen to be at, you are going to have a longer wait to join a pug. If you can even get into one. Many times I have been in a pug and people would push for the group leader to drop a certain someone because they didn't run what they wanted. When grouping with others, when asked I always tell others to play to their strengths of what they know that works for them. I myself will not conform to a style of play unless I find it fun for myself. You cannot simply tell someone to play a certain style if they don't understand the fundamentals of how the build works.