A few observations from pve

Hmm , i personally rarely use anything to remove dp , i do have stacks of candycane an 2 stacks of clovers but candy is for mesmers sweet title where i purposly die for dp an use candy for points.But in general i never use dp removal , usually cept rare times i regain zero dp via fighting .If the event where i do die an its 60% dp then i restart.
Dp shud be left as it is and the removal cons left as well - as stated by others there are times where dp removal is needed - like a party wipe as 1 person has 60%.
If your doing an elite area and got hit by lag and died thru no fault of your own its needed.
Next things gonna be someone saying remove res shrines and res skills and when you die thats it - end of chr and re-roll which im sure if anet did that say bye to 99% of players.
pve skills are gd in most cases and the mes bit i lol`d at , i cant assume how long you`d been playing gw for but 600/smite i always went smite as a Mesmer not a monk and when myself and a few guildies did stuff as 600/smite funny enough they had my mes as bonder.
Often mes are overlooked thru bad skill ideas by anet and yes if mes have only 2 gd skills which are pve only then hell why not use them 2 skills.Mes have a use and ppl use them - wheres the problem in that ?
Why not just remove all player classes , armor , weapons , skills and have 1 type with a sword and no skills etc and then try and play gw ( infact make all professions into mesmer with mes pve skills only :P ).
( above is pure sarcasm so dont take literally )

DP removal came out at, iirc, the second Wintersday. It's been a part of GW for a long time now, much longer than HM. I don't think you can really pin the "decline" of GW on DP removal.

True, but In some instances when one is unprepared, does not have the funds for anti dp, or something of the such, DP can be quite the problem. One example of this would be in the Wurm area, many people do not bring cons/anti DP on these Vanquishes, but as soon as the wurm parts are finished, the group will be flushed out by the DP and large mobs not acsessible by the wurm.

Every game has to walk a fine line between "too easy" and "too hard". Too easy, and whatever you achieve will not matter, since it was too easy to get. Too hard, and you'll eventually ask yourself "Why am I doing this, again?".

For me, a major part in gameplay is to avoid frustration. DP is the perfect example of this isue: Once you accumulate some, it becomes easier and easier to get more. Eventually it locks you down to the point where it's almost impossible to finish the task. And suddenly, you find that you have wasted hours of time for nothing. Litterally frustrating (frustra being latin for nothing, in vain).

How long would I play this way? How long until the game is not worth playing any more because hours of work can be wasted for nothing? Eventually, I'd move away, and play something else.

Or, I could pay the price of failure in some other way.

Now look at the best DP removal method: the powerstone of courage. It's a price, and not a cheap one. The granite and dust and gold actually amount to quite a large amount -several thousand gold. Something a farmer with thousands of gold per hour earnings may be able to ignore. For me, earning 5-10k per day of play, it's not. A powerstone is a large price to pay.

Do note one thing, too: you only get DP if there's actually a resurrection shrine around. In many cases, there isn't one, and it's good that most of those cases are things to do in half an hour. Two hours wasted on one TPK? I'd play something else...

In the days before quick DP removal, people quitting the team was a rampant problem. If you remove the DP, you at least only ruin the "DP experience" for yourself. All the quitters back in the day ruined the run for the entire team. I'd say DP removal improved at least that situation.

It is also worth noting that the norm in games has always been death being a loss of progression. Not only the player is reset to a spawning location, but also the level. Games such as Guild Wars and Bioshock removed that, one can chip away enemies one at a time. One solution is as arbitrary as the other, we are merely used to the tougher one, because old games used to be a lot shorter, requiring those drastic losses to occur in an effort to stretch out the game. Just think of Gradius, which basically became unplayable once you died too far in and had no strategy there to fight your way back up.

For a long game, such as MMOs, it makes sense to have death be only an inconvenience. Because the game is more than six levels one could complete in 60 minutes, if one was not constantly reset to the beginning. No need to turn GW into MegaMan, simply because GW has more content to throw at the player.

Actually, mesmers and rangers were the one thing Guild Wars got right. These two classes make PvP a lot more interesting than in many other MMOs where the holy trinity of pve dominates.

It's been around for a long time, but it was a special event item. It wasn't as readily available as it is now (which is the point I made).

[edit]
Consumables are another class of pve only items that I feel lower the bar for players to actually get better.

Everyone's speaking about frustration with being kicked out after being 60'd out. That's the point of DP though. It seems the point of DP as a punishment for ducking up is lost on a lot of people. Yea, you get booted. Yea, it's a pain in the ass. Yes, you will fail. That is the point of Death Penalty is it not? In pvp, if you get 60'd during a GvG, you don't res at the shrine. You are punished for your mistakes.

I was vanquishing Serpent Lakes about 80% through, and was pretty close to 60%, but managed to work my way to a 4% morale boost by the time I was done. This stuff is not insurmountable, but it certainly makes life tougher, which is the point of death penalty as a punishment mechanic. It just seems that with the flood of dp removal, a large part of the reward/punishment system is negated (specifically, the punishment part).

It's interesting you mention this. ANet wants to keep people in the game. If people are constantly failing and being booted for not playing up to par, they'll simply leave the game. Do you guys things GW's HM is easy simply because people would be fed up with losing all the time?

I get it, losing isn't fun. But what is enjoyable when you just steamroll through everything mashing 2 buttons? Seems that people like me could be considered "purists", in that we don't use PvE skills, or consumables, simply because it feels like cheating to me.

HM is easier because the skills made it easer with every chapter, with every balance update. Especially the PvE/PvP split did not balance, it unleashed.

What's not fun about losing is the loss of progress. Take a game such as CoD4: 50% of player there lose all the time, but they stick with it because winning is not their goal, progressing towards more unlocks is. You can do that still while you are losing, winning only accelerates it moderately.

In GW losing means being denied any progress and the table scraps of monsters do not count in this context. That makes more people log off permanently than any wipe. That is what WoW has over Everquest, no denial of progress due to a player screw up. If you spend and hour only to be where you were before starting spend that hour the game has a problem. It needs to reconcile every time investment of the player, not just the successful run.

GW PvP is hilariously oblivious to that and its players usually defend that notion to the grave, even in the absence of people to play against.

But you do progress when you fail. You pick up something called experience. And I don't mean +xp for skill points.

Guild Wars has always been a game that engaged the player more so than games like WoW or other MMOs. My character has an upper limit. After that, it becomes a problem that's between the chair and the monitor.

Is that why people don't like to fail in GW? Because it takes them down a notch? I mean, that seems to be the fundamental. "The game won't let me win unless I actually try, so I'm leaving."

If I spend an hour and RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO something up, I will know not to do that again. Perhaps I'm vanquishing and I took a bad route. Maybe I went too fast and double aggro'd, sealing the deal. Does it suck? Yes. Did I learn from my mistakes? Hopefully. What happened? I developed as a player.

Guild Wars has always struck me as a different game. The game put the focus on player development over character development, and the introduction of DP removal, cons, and PvE skills (for the most part) has shifted the focus of GW from player development to character development. And to me, that's the most unfortunate development of all. Games will decline with age, that's a given.

On an idealistic level that might be true, but it is true for all games. Which results in GW still rewarding considerably less than its competitors.

"Player action acknowledgment" might be the single most important psychological factor to drag people to your game in the last five years. At least among the self-proclaimed "hardcore crowd". The 360 made it its core online feature with the player score, the PS3 was engulfed in hateflame until they patched it in (Trophies), the Wii avoids this market as best as it can, aiming at totally different mindsets among target customers.

What is the difference between UT3 and CoD4? Between 360 and Wii? Between Farmville and any other dumb Sim? Between a utterly failed Quake Wars and a rather successful Bad Company. It is not the carrot, it is not the quality of the game, the lack of bugs, or the technical perfection, or the age of the players. It is the game acknowledging the player did something even after he basically did nothing and allowing him to resume from there next time he logs in.

In GW PvP you can have four victories in a row, only to be told by the game that you still suck and do not deserve "a point". Compared to other games that is a major turn off and the idealistic truth of me getting better in both games by losing a lot is valid either way.

Losing needs to be fun, because you will lose a lot! Winning, that is seldom enough for most players that it does not require a reward on top of it. Because winning being its own reward is accepted in society, learning through failing is not.

The problem with GW is that if you use optimal builds and imba skills then GW is too easy, but if you don't use those builds it's too hard. It's no good dealing with one and not the other, both the builds and the areas need bringing back to a happy balance.

The problem is that the developer made easy buttons and used them to sell expansions. Remove the imba garbage and semi-casual players don't buy EotN, which costs ANet money. If Nightfall skills aren't ludicrously OP at release, the expansion doesn't sell as well. It's that simple.

Given the business model, I suspect that the problem is intractable.

For those who complain GW is too easy......No one is forcing ya'll to use the "easy button" builds and or skills. Some people restrict themselves while playing to counter this "easy button". Try HM Elite area with only 4 party members using non-gimic builds if u want some challenge. Don't use the cons that make it easier if u want a challenge. The level of difficulty is entirely up to you. Evidently from this thread and some others there are ppl that enjoy self-inposed restrictions....find them and play with them if you need more than one person. You always have the option....and complaining that a game is too easy when you have the option for it not to be is........well you know what I mean.

You hit the ball on that one. IMO DP allowed characters to do an important thing, develop as a player. However nowadays that doesn't matter, as people can be as degenerative as they want and still aimlessly progress.

ex: Someone keeps finding themselves constantly being killed. After realizing partly what they're doing wrong, they add defense capabilities to their template providing more survivability.
Even though they are dying less frequently, the amount of deaths they receive are still an issue to them. That player then realizes that at times they tend to rush enemies head on and take the most initial damage. As a result they decide to be more careful when approaching enemies and if they find themselves taking too much damage, instead of just standing there, they've came to the conclusion that they should get out of immediate danger to relieve pressure on themselves and on their healers

The end result is someone who has just learned simple tactics and will later thrive as a player as they encounter other people who learned from their mistakes. DP represented a great Trail and Error scenario for people to actively understand their flaws and build off of them.

With DP removers, that doesn't exist. Dying is no longer an issue and DP means absolutely nothing as they can easily pop a consumable to remove the DP and carelessly continue with their playstyles. That coped with OP builds that require no coordination/thinking to execute has resulted in the development of PvE to deteriorate.

DP should never be an issue if you and those around you are actually developing in regards of abilities to learn and adapt to situations. Otherwise you are just refusing to actually stop for a moment and actually analyze the 8 skills on your bar and possibly of those in your group.

i dont think HM was a mistake. poorly designed and implemented would be more like it. 33-50% faster activation time, movement, and attack speed as well as raised levels(taken from the wiki) while doing nothing else shouldnt of been considered HM. at the minimum with all the time since HM has been around alot of things could of been done to fix or improve it. rebalancing of mobs, random skill bars, random spawning mobs would of been a huge improvement.

i was for the skill split and felt the skill split was needed shortly after factions release. Anet was having a hard time then trying to balance PvP and the extra skills from factions, nightfall and EoTN didnt make it any easier. Anet just waited too long and by the time the split happened, it was too late. PvE skills were a staple on most bars by then so giving us normal skill with more damage in the PvE versions was too late. had the split been done sooner, PvE skills may of never been needed as long as a more balanced HM was done at the same time.

Heros were nice to an extent at first. before heros, yeah people played with other people more, mainly because there was more people to play with and the henchie bars for the most part were bad. as factions came out, then nightfall and later EoTN, the henchies got no love. would we of really needed heros with the release of nightfall if the henchies had gotten skill bar improvements as skill balances happened? probably not but most of the community were screaming back then how bad the henchies were and wanted something different so we were given hero's, a customizeable henchie. my only gripe towards heros really is that why, after nightfall, were we given more yet still only able to run 3 at a time. i would love a whole party at times but really at the minimum i would like even just 1 more.

Apropos DP and consumables. I remember a hard mode run through the Ooze Pit with my guild. In normal mode one of the easy dungeons, in hard mode one of the nasty ones. Usually, I carry my "Dungeon Survival Kit", which is a selection of consumables for self- and party-buff. I use it seldomly, but in rare cases an armor or salvation makes us succeed even if we went with a bad team setup. So it happens that I forgot it, and my party members forgot their DP-removing consumables as well.

Usually someone immediately throws four-leaf clovers or honeycombs if someone died. But not this time. After the first few ooze mobs everyone had some DP and our 3 heroes had between 45 and 60%.

We continued - only much more careful. We remembered the tactics we learnt long ago but forgot about. Better team coordination. I flagged my heroes better. We let the warrior tank better. We regenerated better between fights. We proceeded slower. Used the landscape. We chose and called targets better. In the next 20 minutes, my heroes went from 60% DP to 0% or even 5% morale boost. At the end, we succeeded comfortably.

For me, it tells that consumables allows inferior play style and promotes it. They somewhat dumb players down. They allow players with less patience and skill to succeed where they usually cannot succeed.

But it is not a bad thing, in my opinion. We want to succeed and be the victor. This is fun. Failure is annoying and no fun. We play for fun, not to be annoyed. So there is no point in asking to remove (DP-removing) consumables. For me, it is even more fun when I succeed without consumables where others cannot. For others, it is already fun when they succeed, no matter what it took. Live and let live.

If you want to take a challenge, simply don't carry consumables. But don't force others to drop theirs as well.

Sure they were. You think people only stock up on these things now? I got a stack the first wintersday they came out, and I'm not really a big farmer, because I knew right away that they'd be useful. Everyone else did the same thing, and so people were selling stacks of candy canes for months afterwards (pretty much until people started to look at the calendar and realized they'd be back soon enough). Compare the price of a powerstone to any other DP removal out there; they're not exactly "readily available" when you can buy pretty much any other kind of DP removal for cheaper from players.

Because the game is fun?

I've been playing for 57 months and most of that has been in Nm, not to mention the game did fine (arguably better, and im sure most will agree) before Pve skills and HM.

HM imo is a joke in itself. They made HM in the laziest way possible (huge stat buffs to npcs) and then made a bunch of Pve skills to make HM easier. Imo a lot could be fixed with the game by simply disabling Pve skills in HM.

That's just one part of the mistake.

The other part is making a challenging mode, and then giving people OP tools to walk over it like it's normal. What's the point? Might as well leave things easy but balanced. Yeah I'd like a well done, challenging balanced HM, but it's evident most don't, so its a non-starter.

That's why people can beat the game with no skills on their bar with just basic henchies, right?

GW is not in any way "too hard" if you're not using the best builds. You probably won't be able to beat the elite content without using the best builds, since build creation is a large part of what counts as "skill" in this game, but you can lulz your way through NM with whatever you want, and with some difficulties you can get through most HM with almost anything that you put some thought into.

Been through this a hundred times before, but heroes didn't kill PUGs. I, and many others, were mainly using henchies before Factions came out to get our alts through the campaign, and all throughout Factions I loaded my party up with henchies too after the first time or two through the game.