An Idea towards Balancing Over-powered Skills

I know there's been a lot of discussion about the best way to deal with over-powered skills like Shadow Form, Cry of Pain and Ursan Blessing (back in its day that is). Anet has been slow to find solutions, causing lots of QQs on both sides of the issue. Additionally, their "solutions" have generally been to just nerf the specific skill and ignore others (i.e. Ursan gets hit, but SF and CoP are made better around the same time... then CoP gets hit while SF gets left alone, etc). In some respects I understand Anet's position on this... they don't want to make the game less fun by taking out the over-powered skills, but they also can't ignore the fact that these things speed up things like farming way too much. So to that end, I present a potential solution which I haven't seen discussed before.

The biggest problem is that these over-powered skills can be used at any and all times after they are acquired. There's really no reason someone should use Ursan in Kryta or most of PvE, but people did because they could and it made things easy. Same with Shadow Form, CoP, and a host of others. My solution then, is to make it so that these skills must be "purchased" for a limited time.

For example, with the new z-quests used as payment, we could have a system set up whereby players can purchase a, say, 3 hour long (time is open to discussion of course) usage of the original Ursan Blessing or SF or whatever for something like 2 gold z-coins. The skills would be unusable at any other time. This would allow for people to still enjoy using these OP but fun skills without letting people use them all the time. In other words, it would slow down the farming to the point where even though the individual runs of a certain farm might be faster, the number of runs being completed would be significantly reduced. It would also encourage people to do more various forms of the Z-quests. I must confess, I don't see a lot of downside to this idea, other than the time and effort it might take for the live team to implement it. However, a similar coding idea exists already with the trial keys having limited time only usage, so it might not be so hard to adapt it. Of course, I'm no programmer, so I don't know. Anyway, just thought I'd put the idea out there. Feel free to discuss.

No. This would encourage grind and make time > skill.

How does the current usage of SF for UWSCs and the like involve any concept of "skill" ? It may have eluded you, but near total invincibility and "skill" are mutually exclusive.

Make OP skill get less effective when you use them alot and let them become better (till a certain point off course) when you don't use em. done

He's talking about people grinding out zquests/missions just to use SF.

It's the same as people grinding out their Norn title so that they can Ursan better.

Allow me to clarify:

GW has often prided itself on being a game that favors skill over time. If this system was implemented, a mediocre player that grinds Zquests would have an easier time finding groups/making money than an above average player who can't play as often.

I am in favor of changing/nerfing/destroying OP skills and speed clears, just not in this way. And no, I don't think SF requires skill.

You don't hear people whining about smite/600's when they can run dungeons for guaranteed mass monnies,so the only real problem in your list is apparently SF which only causes a problem through UWSC.That's all that needs to be hit and your idea is clearly retarded.

The concept of skill being more important than time is, of course, a good one. However, its fair to say that GW hasn't been that way for a while... really ever since people were able to just carbon copy builds and use them without being able to understand how they work. Over time the devs have slowly and progressively lowered the curve, both by making things easier and by adding new/more powerful (often too powerful) skills.

I know that grind sucks, but this would at least make that grind more bearable as there would be a good reward... (currently grinding is only for titles and additional storage... yet many many people do it anyway).

As for your comment about this making it easier for grinders to make money... well in case you hadn't noticed grinders are already the ones making more money than the casual gamer... and it will always be the case. Any game is going to by default favor the players who spend more time, as those players can accomplish more.

You make a decent point. Here is something I would like to say though. There is no need to nerf any overpowered skill anymore. Ursan will eventually end, it doesn't last forever. SF reduces damage by 33% and limits your second profession to either a ele or Mesmer. CoP, (what is this used for?)

Thing is that ANet wants to keep farming options out there for players so the high end items' prices don't skyrocket. They do this by allowing farming builds but reducing effectiveness. I mean if your talking about nerfing farming builds then why not 600/smite/QZ? It can farm anywhere but you insist on targeting assassins/mesmer/people who use ursan.

Basically you are saying to limit the use of good builds in GW because they are too good?People it's a GAME. People want to have fun and using crafty combinations of skills rather than complaining. Every game is ganna have some exploit that makes the game fun. Without this the game will lose repetative play and GW will die in the
dust.

(No offense to anyone, just expressing my opinion)

Just nerf them already.

the op needs a nerf as his thoughts are too powerful!

but honestly, think about what this would bring around if you could 'top up' skills. would anet have to make options for every skill that was ever nerfed or buffed and have it in that state?

your thinking is too narrow minded. how would anet justify which skills should have the ability to be buffed. as far as i can see, all your asking for is to bring ursan back even if it has to be grinded in order to use it.

and how are you going to form groups and be aware of how much time a player has left on his buffed ursan? would another system have to be implemented, so that when you show your skill bar it also comes up with how long each skill has left on activation?

imagine if you could buff all 8 skills? some farms would be overpowered ridiculously. again, as ive already said, very narrow minded thinking

[QUOTE=Thenameless Wonder;4807500]You make a decent point. Here is something I would like to say though. There is no need to nerf any overpowered skill anymore. Ursan will eventually end, it doesn't last forever. SF reduces damage by 33% and limits your second profession to either a ele or Mesmer. CoP, (what is this used for?)


Actually I have to disagree with you there. Sf is still way too over powered. As a Sin primary you do not need to be ele or mesmer if you bring cons. As for that you can still run perma on any character as long as you have cons/boosts golden eggs etc. Shadow form imo does need a nerf considering that the past week I have done 34 SoO speed clears which are 1 a/n 1 a/p and 6 a/mo. Takes less then 10 minutes to do all of SoO on hm. Now what the statement u said is that we can not maintain shadow form on a assi/mo? Hmmmmm ya ok.

Seriously though. Ursan is still a really good skill people just found something more op now. 600/smiting actually takes some sort of skill to make it semi profitable. (if u argue with me take someone that has never done it before and have tehm to Kathandrax) Sf takes no skill as long as you know how to push 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. (trained my little bro who is 4 to uwsc for me while I am at work)

Cop isn't really used anymore.

Biggest problem effecting the gw economy right now is the amount of uwsc that are going on. Granted 95% of pug teams do not finish them but by sheer numbers of them going in I would say at least 1-2 mil ectos drop a day.


As far as the skill of time played arguement is still in effect I will put in my 2 cents. Skill has been absent from this game for about 3 years. Time spent in game usually means you have more skill. Not all the time but most of the time. To do a test of this for a weekend anet should remove Shadow form from the game. I garuntee that close to a mil mil and a half accounts will not log on during that weekend because they only know how to run perma sin.

Really its sad.

Peace

34 Runs? So you do like SF to accomplish this right?

Lol that's funny.

That i would leave up to Anet. Really, they don't have to do it with existing skills at all. They could add some new OP skills under such a system and simply fix all the currently OP skills. Keep in mind, a SF is coming sooner or later... this would just be a system to meet both sides of the debate halfway.

No, I'm not asking for the old Ursan back. I'm suggesting that instead of nerfing skills, OP skills can be left alone and instead slowing them down by limiting their usage.

Again, I'd leave that to anet to sort out. But one possibility would be that the skill activation occurs through the use of an untradable consumable of some kind.

I completely agree. That's why there would have to be practical limitations on this idea. Honestly, just because I don't have all the answers about how this idea could work doesn't mean that it couldn't be set up to work in a well balanced way. The current system of Nerf/buff/nerf/buff usually doesn't work because it simply takes too long to figure out whether the nerfs work as intended. Think how long it took for us to get the Ursan nerf... look at how long its taken to make SF balanced (we're still waiting)... Cry of Pain was hit pretty quickly, but not before the whole universe learned how to do the VSF (and now they still do it using SF + RoJ, etc). Clearly there are not enough ppl on the live team to focus on balance as well as all their other duties.

Pic or it didn't happen (ignoring the question of whether you made enough back from the runs to net you a profit after using 34 essences)

Bad idea
The game is fine as it is now, why would you want things slowed down?
Not all players would be able to afford "the old OP'd skills".. All skills should be equal to everyone.
This would not make anything in the game better.
+ I worked hard for Legendary Skill Hunter.. wth would I want to pay Zcoins for something that I've already earned?

the game hasn't been about skill>time, however, that doesn't mean we should take steps toward the opposite. it makes more sense to try to fix it by making skill>time.

many people in the game want to play the game to have fun. weird, i'm sure. getting owned or tweaking 8 builds to vanquish an area is not fun to many - especially to players who don't have every skill of every profession memorized. some people want it to stay a game - something you do in your free time, not something you study and solve, since some of us have to do enough of that at work/life. if people really want to solve something, go solve the clay millenium questions and win a million actual dollars, seems better than all the ectos in the world.

Buying time for skills, worst idea to solve this problem yet -.-

why do ppl keep posting these threads.

I think the game is generally setup to be skill > time. But at the same time was have that time x 5 > skill. A game where you have to be very skilled to advance isn't fun for most people (as most are not that skilled). What people enjoy is setting out to accomplish something and actually being able to do so.

As for the Clay prizes... lol... When professional mathematicians have been working on solving those problems for hundreds of years with limited success, I doubt anyone reading the Guru forums stands much chance. Why take my word for it? I suppose you don't have to... but as a published mathematician I do have some authority on the subject At least more than the average guru reader anyway.