Grind the Bait and Switch
I didn’t keep track of it, because I didn’t need to.
So…
You advertised a ‘clarification of the manifesto’. It was asked for, but was not available. So you provided those other links as a substitute.
Thereby providing us all with a textbook-worthy example of the classic Bait and Switch!
The table is a fable.
I didn’t keep track of it, because I didn’t need to.
So…
You advertised a ‘clarification of the manifesto’. It was asked for, but was not available. So you provided those other links as a substitute.
Thereby providing us all with a textbook-worthy example of the classic Bait and Switch!
Nope. I said there WAS a clarification, past tense. Whether it’s available or not isn’t relevant. A million people probably saw it. Some conveniently forgot about it.
Bait and switch means that I advertise something, you come to get it, and when you get into the store I don’t have it and try to sell you something else. It’s not that you buy a product and it doesn’t do what they said it does.
In my case, I wasn’t advertising the manifesto’s clarification I was stating one was put out there. You’re the unreasonable one here, because you can’t acknowledge that a five minute video that was put out two years before a game’s launch, was then followed by a boatload of information you’re ignoring.
It’s not reasonable.
Okay let’s try this again. In order for bait and switch to work, there has to be a second product involved.
I advertise this tv, I don’t have it in stock. I try to sell you a different tv. That’s bait and switch. It’s the only definition of bait and switch.
If I advertise a product and it doesn’t have the features I said it would, it’s NOT bait and switch. That’s not the definition.
The bait is the ad that gets you into the shop. The switch is the other item I tried to sell you.
Even if Anet didn’t get one thing right in the manifesto (which I don’t believe anyway), it’s STILL not bait and switch. If Anet had opened lied in the manifesto…it still wouldn’t be bait and switch.
Bait and switch is a very specific legal term that has a meaning. Even if the manifesto was a complete fabrication…it wouldn’t be bait and switch.
Vertical progression means after you get to level cap, you still get more powerful. Getting more skills doesn’t necessarily equal vertical progression. Getting a new skill and then having to level it, does equal vertical progression.
It’s entirely possible the dev was talking about gear only and not skills when he made that statement, but no one can say having to level a skill to get a specific build to work that everyone is asking for is not vertical progression. If you try to argue it, you’d be wrong and everyone can see that. Other people in this thread have already agreed it was vertical progression
And it took far longer to level Save Yourselves to a usable level than it does to get a set of ascended gear…maybe not in time, but certainly in actual hours played.
I was worried about you, but killcannon stepped in for you and did a fine job on debating whether GW1 had VP or not. We left it at, no, it did not have VP as there was simply no VP post max level gear at max level. It didn’t hurt that Mike O agreed that there was no VP, ever, year after year in GW1. He was not talking about gear or skills he was talking about vertical progression. Vertical: the power level of the game rises. Progression: it continually rises over time. This is usually accomplished through gear, but how it’s accomplished is irrelevant to the question. As I mentioned to killcannon it could be accomplished, theoretically, through potions—it really has no bearing on whether it’s vertical progression or not. The important takeaway from this is that GW1 had no VP whatsoever post max level gear at max level. The acquisition and leveling of skills, btw, is an example of horizontal, not vertical progression.
Vertical progression means after you get to level cap, you still get more powerful. Getting more skills doesn’t necessarily equal vertical progression. Getting a new skill and then having to level it, does equal vertical progression.
It’s entirely possible the dev was talking about gear only and not skills when he made that statement, but no one can say having to level a skill to get a specific build to work that everyone is asking for is not vertical progression. If you try to argue it, you’d be wrong and everyone can see that. Other people in this thread have already agreed it was vertical progression
And it took far longer to level Save Yourselves to a usable level than it does to get a set of ascended gear…maybe not in time, but certainly in actual hours played.
I was worried about you, but killcannon stepped in for you and did a fine job on debating whether GW1 had VP or not. We left it at, no, it did not have VP as there was simply no VP post max level gear at max level. It didn’t hurt that Mike O agreed that there was no VP, ever, year after year in GW1. He was not talking about gear or skills he was talking about vertical progression. Vertical: the power level of the game rises. Progression: it continually rises over time. This is usually accomplished through gear, but how it’s accomplished is irrelevant to the question. As I mentioned to killcannon it could be accomplished, theoretically, through potions—it really has no bearing on whether it’s vertical progression or not. The important takeaway from this is that GW1 had no VP whatsoever post max level gear at max level. The acquisition and leveling of skills, btw, is an example of horizontal, not vertical progression.
I disagree. Because some of those skills we’re talking about where added game after game and they did affect, not your stats, but the amount of damage you could output.
For example, the skills that came with Factions weren’t nearly as powerful as the skills that came with Nightfall and the skills that came with Nightfall weren’t early as powerful as the skills that came with EotN.
What I love is that people saying it didn’t have vertical progression haven’t actually played the game. You have one dev quote, during an interview talking about gear to back you up. I bet if we took him aside and asked him the question, he’s say there was a power shift in PvE in Guild Wars 1. And if he didn’t, I’d call him a liar.
Because those skills got more and more powerful expansion after expansion, the game got easier, to the point where I stopped playing because it was too easy. Now part of that was knowing the game like the back of my hand, but part of it was the skills were getting more and more powerful.
Anet also increased players power by increase skills like Aura of the Lich and Signet of Spirits, which after they changed, became all but indispensable.
There was a clear progression of PvE power as Guild Wars 1 advanced. You can say it wasn’t vertical progression but power creep (if not stat creep) was 100% present in that game. No one who played it can deny it…in PvE anyway.
Vertical progression means after you get to level cap, you still get more powerful. Getting more skills doesn’t necessarily equal vertical progression. Getting a new skill and then having to level it, does equal vertical progression.
It’s entirely possible the dev was talking about gear only and not skills when he made that statement, but no one can say having to level a skill to get a specific build to work that everyone is asking for is not vertical progression. If you try to argue it, you’d be wrong and everyone can see that. Other people in this thread have already agreed it was vertical progression
And it took far longer to level Save Yourselves to a usable level than it does to get a set of ascended gear…maybe not in time, but certainly in actual hours played.
I was worried about you, but killcannon stepped in for you and did a fine job on debating whether GW1 had VP or not. We left it at, no, it did not have VP as there was simply no VP post max level gear at max level. It didn’t hurt that Mike O agreed that there was no VP, ever, year after year in GW1. He was not talking about gear or skills he was talking about vertical progression. Vertical: the power level of the game rises. Progression: it continually rises over time. This is usually accomplished through gear, but how it’s accomplished is irrelevant to the question. As I mentioned to killcannon it could be accomplished, theoretically, through potions—it really has no bearing on whether it’s vertical progression or not. The important takeaway from this is that GW1 had no VP whatsoever post max level gear at max level. The acquisition and leveling of skills, btw, is an example of horizontal, not vertical progression.
I disagree. Because some of those skills we’re talking about where added game after game and they did affect, not your stats, but the amount of damage you could output.
For example, the skills that came with Factions weren’t nearly as powerful as the skills that came with Nightfall and the skills that came with Nightfall weren’t early as powerful as the skills that came with EotN.
What I love is that people saying it didn’t have vertical progression haven’t actually played the game. You have one dev quote, during an interview talking about gear to back you up. I bet if we took him aside and asked him the question, he’s say there was a power shift in PvE in Guild Wars 1. And if he didn’t, I’d call him a liar.
Because those skills got more and more powerful expansion after expansion, the game got easier, to the point where I stopped playing because it was too easy. Now part of that was knowing the game like the back of my hand, but part of it was the skills were getting more and more powerful.
Anet also increased players power by increase skills like Aura of the Lich and Signet of Spirits, which after they changed, became all but indispensable.
There was a clear progression of PvE power as Guild Wars 1 advanced. You can say it wasn’t vertical progression but power creep (if not stat creep) was 100% present in that game. No one who played it can deny it…in PvE anyway.
In other words, they didn’t affect the power level of the game. That’s the distinction between vertical and horizontal progression and why acquiring and leveling skills is an example of horizontal progression.
Look, let me save us some time: I just googled “horizontal progression system” and the first thing returned was http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/strangesands/122012/24271_What-is-Horizontal-Progression-Really
Under horizontal options you have Ability Progression. I don’t quote mmorpg.com as a specific authority as everything written by any knowledgeable source will have ability progression as an example of horizontal progression and not vertical. Anything that systematically raises the power level of the game as reflected in stats would be an example of vertical progression. Practically anything else would be an example of horizontal progression.
This is why Anet and I don’t believe that GW1 had VP. It didn’t.
snip
And it took far longer to level Save Yourselves to a usable level than it does to get a set of ascended gear…maybe not in time, but certainly in actual hours played.
I was worried about you, but killcannon stepped in for you and did a fine job on debating whether GW1 had VP or not. We left it at, no, it did not have VP as there was simply no VP post max level gear at max level. It didn’t hurt that Mike O agreed that there was no VP, ever, year after year in GW1. He was not talking about gear or skills he was talking about vertical progression. Vertical: the power level of the game rises. Progression: it continually rises over time. This is usually accomplished through gear, but how it’s accomplished is irrelevant to the question. As I mentioned to killcannon it could be accomplished, theoretically, through potions—it really has no bearing on whether it’s vertical progression or not. The important takeaway from this is that GW1 had no VP whatsoever post max level gear at max level. The acquisition and leveling of skills, btw, is an example of horizontal, not vertical progression.
I disagree. Because some of those skills we’re talking about where added game after game and they did affect, not your stats, but the amount of damage you could output.
For example, the skills that came with Factions weren’t nearly as powerful as the skills that came with Nightfall and the skills that came with Nightfall weren’t early as powerful as the skills that came with EotN.
What I love is that people saying it didn’t have vertical progression haven’t actually played the game. You have one dev quote, during an interview talking about gear to back you up. I bet if we took him aside and asked him the question, he’s say there was a power shift in PvE in Guild Wars 1. And if he didn’t, I’d call him a liar.
Because those skills got more and more powerful expansion after expansion, the game got easier, to the point where I stopped playing because it was too easy. Now part of that was knowing the game like the back of my hand, but part of it was the skills were getting more and more powerful.
Anet also increased players power by increase skills like Aura of the Lich and Signet of Spirits, which after they changed, became all but indispensable.
There was a clear progression of PvE power as Guild Wars 1 advanced. You can say it wasn’t vertical progression but power creep (if not stat creep) was 100% present in that game. No one who played it can deny it…in PvE anyway.
In other words, they didn’t affect the power level of the game. That’s the distinction between vertical and horizontal progression and why acquiring and leveling skills is an example of horizontal progression.
Look, let me save us some time: I just googled “horizontal progression system” and the first thing returned was http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/strangesands/122012/24271_What-is-Horizontal-Progression-Really
Under horizontal options you have Ability Progression. I don’t quote mmorpg.com as a specific authority as everything written by any knowledgeable source will have ability progression as an example of horizontal progression and not vertical. Anything that systematically raises the power level of the game as reflected in stats would be an example of vertical progression. Practically anything else would be an example of horizontal progression.
This is why Anet and I don’t believe that GW1 had VP. It didn’t.
The complaint people have is that having higher stats means that players are getting more powerful all the time. I don’t care what causes that power. You can name it whatever you want. People are talking about stat drift. But what’s the problem with stat drift? You keep getting more and more powerful.
That same thing happened in Guild Wars 1. You don’t have to call it vertical progression if you don’t want, but it affected the game in the same way vertical progression does.
Remember this wasn’t just about getting new skills. After you got the new skills, you had to level them through reputation.
So those that fear vertical progression, even if it’s gear-based, should be used to it from Guild Wars 1 because, at least in PvE, the power plateau kept rising. Call it what you want but over the years, your character got a whole lot more powerful.
So those that fear vertical progression, even if it’s gear-based, should be used to it from Guild Wars 1 because, at least in PvE, the power plateau kept rising. Call it what you want but over the years, your character got a whole lot more powerful.
For which you had to do very little. In most cases you only had to do a few quests and that was it. It felt rewarding even.
Can we move on, though? Yes there was SOME vertical progression in GW1, now there is MORE. The question is whether the increase in necessary grind is a good thing or a bad thing.
So those that fear vertical progression, even if it’s gear-based, should be used to it from Guild Wars 1 because, at least in PvE, the power plateau kept rising. Call it what you want but over the years, your character got a whole lot more powerful.
For which you had to do very little. In most cases you only had to do a few quests and that was it. It felt rewarding even.
Can we move on, though? Yes there was SOME vertical progression in GW1, now there is MORE. The question is whether the increase in necessary grind is a good thing or a bad thing.
What are you talking about…a few quests?
I’m talking about the difference between Save Yourselves at Luxon/kurzick level one and Save Yourselves at luxon kurzick level 12. We’re talking months of grinding here.
Edit: If you don’t believe me look up Fast Faction Farming in the Guild Wars 1 wiki.
What are you talking about…a few quests?
I’m talking about the difference between Save Yourselves at Luxon/kurzick level one and Save Yourselves at luxon kurzick level 12. We’re talking months of grinding here.
Edit: If you don’t believe me look up Fast Faction Farming in the Guild Wars 1 wiki.
I thought you were talking about how your character become more powerful with the introduction of the new skills themselves, not the fact you can make those skills more powerful with the title grind.
I’m okay with introducing more powerful skills (although balance is nice) for which you only have to do a single or few quests to get them.
I’m not okay with the title grind to make skills more powerful. We have acknowledged that that was one of the examples of vertical progression in Guild Wars 1, but as Shockwave rightly pointed out, it wasn’t a big part of Guild Wars 1 and it only affected a few skills. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s still BAD and I would have preferred if Guild Wars 1 did not have it.
What are you talking about…a few quests?
I’m talking about the difference between Save Yourselves at Luxon/kurzick level one and Save Yourselves at luxon kurzick level 12. We’re talking months of grinding here.
Edit: If you don’t believe me look up Fast Faction Farming in the Guild Wars 1 wiki.
I thought you were talking about how your character become more powerful with the introduction of the new skills themselves, not the fact you can make those skills more powerful with the title grind.
I’m okay with introducing more powerful skills (although balance is nice) for which you only have to do a single or few quests to get them.
I’m not okay with the title grind to make skills more powerful. We have acknowledged that that was one of the examples of vertical progression in Guild Wars 1, but as Shockwave rightly pointed out, it wasn’t a big part of Guild Wars 1 and it only affected a few skills. Don’t get me wrong though, it’s still BAD and I would have preferred if Guild Wars 1 did not have it.
It affected a few skills that were arguably the most powerful in the game, some of which were required for builds that people asked for to do the hardest content in Guild Wars 1. This is my point.
By comparison, the work we need to put into to get ascended gear is negligible. And the difference in power, at least so far, isn’t nearly as great.
Indeed. He wants to see extreme VP so takes the extremely shallow and optional VP currently in the game and expands that into a flawed argument.
Not even half the gear slots are currently of ascended quality, whereas in other games at the 1 year mark, about 2 full tiers had been released. Furthermore exotic is viable everywhere except fractals.
While there’s a little bit of VP in this game, it is well implemented and I hope it remains at this level for a very long time. After ascended armor comes legendary armor and then nothing.
Yes, in one year you get one, two or even three tiers of gear. Takes about a month or so of grinding raids and rep to gain a near full set of the new tier gear. True.
Takes about a month or so to grind the laurels + ecto to gain an ascended..amulet? Whichever one requires the ecto. Takes about as long to gain that back piece, if you’re not playing 10 hours per day. See where Im going?
Don’t see where you’re going yet. Enlighten me. How can I grind laurels, still haven’t found a way and yet I’m swimming in them. It’s impossible to grind them.
Takes as long to gain one slot of ascended gear than it does to gain a full set of max tier gear in a game like WoW. So tell me, what not grindy and not pure example of verticle progression?
Because you can’t grind them out. Comparing the 20 minutes required for a laurel to a 4 hour raid is simply dishonest.
If I can’t play Guild Wars 2 at work, I won’t work in Guild Wars 2 either.
Delayed content is eventually good. Rushed content is eternally bad. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto
Delayed content is eventually good. Rushed content is eternally bad. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto
(edited by marnick.4305)
For the record, I never got half the tier 1 set even after a year of relatively dedicated play in WoW. Same at TBC and WotLK. A month does not suffice to get BiS in that game if you have anything resembling real life.
If I can’t play Guild Wars 2 at work, I won’t work in Guild Wars 2 either.
Delayed content is eventually good. Rushed content is eternally bad. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto
Delayed content is eventually good. Rushed content is eternally bad. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto
@marnick: One of my followup posts was grind was a bad choice of words. You need to spend a bit over a month earning Laurels to purchase some acsended gear, or a bit over a month of laurels + a large sum of ectos to get some gear. It takes relatively the same amount of time to gain…Id say 3/4 of a tier of gear at least in a game like WoW. and I have a life. My guild was ultra casual, raided 3 hours on Wednesdays and Fridays. Combined with the things you did on your own, you had a lot of gear in a month or so.
The time spent in both games, GW2 and WoW, would yield someone the same result: The newest ascended gear slot, or most of a tier of gear.
Karma is as abundant as air, and as useless as the Kardashians.
And so I asked, where is this clarification?
One of the few times Colin “clarified” something on the manifesto, he did it multiple times in the past and this is one I’ve found. This is on the GW2 takes everything you love about GW1 line that is often quoted on these forums:
Colin: It’s really tough. I think that at the end of the day we always have to look at if it’s exactly Guild Wars 1, we already made that game, and if people love exactly GW people should go play GW, right. So it has to be something different or we’re gonna end up remaking the exact same game we already built. So we definitely look at it that way as we know there are some people that aren’t going to be thrilled with Guild Wars 2 because it isn’t GW and it can’t be. It wasn’t going to be successful because we’d be competing with our own games.
Source: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1034-qa-with-colin-johanson-part-ii/
And so I asked, where is this clarification?
One of the few times Colin “clarified” something on the manifesto, he did it multiple times in the past and this is one I’ve found. This is on the GW2 takes everything you love about GW1 line that is often quoted on these forums:
Colin: It’s really tough. I think that at the end of the day we always have to look at if it’s exactly Guild Wars 1, we already made that game, and if people love exactly GW people should go play GW, right. So it has to be something different or we’re gonna end up remaking the exact same game we already built. So we definitely look at it that way as we know there are some people that aren’t going to be thrilled with Guild Wars 2 because it isn’t GW and it can’t be. It wasn’t going to be successful because we’d be competing with our own games.
Source: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1034-qa-with-colin-johanson-part-ii/
Definitely not the clarification that was floating around two years ago. It was very specific.
It said that Colin was talking about dynamic events and Ree was talking about the personal story. Watch it with that in mind and it’s pretty obvious. It’s not like you can’t see this.
It was the editing, where they cut back and forth to make it more “interesting” that also made it more confusing.
@marnick: One of my followup posts was grind was a bad choice of words. You need to spend a bit over a month earning Laurels to purchase some acsended gear, or a bit over a month of laurels + a large sum of ectos to get some gear. It takes relatively the same amount of time to gain…Id say 3/4 of a tier of gear at least in a game like WoW. and I have a life. My guild was ultra casual, raided 3 hours on Wednesdays and Fridays. Combined with the things you did on your own, you had a lot of gear in a month or so.
The time spent in both games, GW2 and WoW, would yield someone the same result: The newest ascended gear slot, or most of a tier of gear.
The difference is you can get those Laurels by doing a variety of activities, including the new achievement chests that have loads of them, while in other MMOs you have to do very very specific tasks to get the best gear, tasks that involve raids usually.
I don’t think it’s hard to see the huge difference here.
And so I asked, where is this clarification?
One of the few times Colin “clarified” something on the manifesto, he did it multiple times in the past and this is one I’ve found. This is on the GW2 takes everything you love about GW1 line that is often quoted on these forums:
Colin: It’s really tough. I think that at the end of the day we always have to look at if it’s exactly Guild Wars 1, we already made that game, and if people love exactly GW people should go play GW, right. So it has to be something different or we’re gonna end up remaking the exact same game we already built. So we definitely look at it that way as we know there are some people that aren’t going to be thrilled with Guild Wars 2 because it isn’t GW and it can’t be. It wasn’t going to be successful because we’d be competing with our own games.
Source: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1034-qa-with-colin-johanson-part-ii/
Thanks, but that’s not the ‘clarification of the manifesto’ touted by Vayne.
Also, here’s the question to which that quote is a response, which does not directly mention the manifesto or the ‘everything you love’ part:
“One of the things I’ve got down here is that there was some quite disappointment from GW1 fans about some of the things put in the game. Things like not being able to play with friends in different regions, asthetic weapons, that kind of stuff. How do you go about balancing the expectations of this longstanding fan community with the vision of the game?”
The table is a fable.
It affected a few skills that were arguably the most powerful in the game, some of which were required for builds that people asked for to do the hardest content in Guild Wars 1. This is my point.
By comparison, the work we need to put into to get ascended gear is negligible. And the difference in power, at least so far, isn’t nearly as great.
The difference in power comes from the basic skill itself, not the power added through the title tiers. I never maxed those but I clearly noticed the incredible power of say, Pain Inverter.
Anyway, it’s BAD, and it’s worse when it applies to something like armor, which you need in almost every aspect of the game. I feel bad when my gear is not BiS, and in Guild Wars 1, my gear was nearly always BiS.
The difference is you can get those Laurels by doing a variety of activities, including the new achievement chests that have loads of them, while in other MMOs you have to do very very specific tasks to get the best gear, tasks that involve raids usually.
I don’t think it’s hard to see the huge difference here.
Compared to other MMOs, the grind is very often muuuuch better. Compared to Guild Wars 1, not so much.
Guild Wars 2 was never a worry depending upon what you wanted to do in it. It was often a worry to me, forced to grind through zillions of levels of PvE only skills to be accepted into a group for DOA.
Again do not confuse the existence of PvE skills with power progression. When you played the game you got to r3-r6 for the titles impacting pve skills. Skills I’ve seen you use examples with like save yourselves and pain inverter were just as effective at those early title ranks as they were at higher title ranks. This is true for save yourselves bcs it was spammable. Its true of pain inverter bcs the damage cap was 80. The skills existing on their own was not power progression. The titles impacting them were, and the impact of that progression was negligible, bcs of reasons such as above.
Sylvari Elementalist – Mystree Duskbloom (Lv 80)
Norn Guardian – Aurora Lustyr (Lv 80)
Mia A Shadows Glow – Human Thief (Lv 80)
Norn Guardian – Aurora Lustyr (Lv 80)
Mia A Shadows Glow – Human Thief (Lv 80)
@marnick: One of my followup posts was grind was a bad choice of words. You need to spend a bit over a month earning Laurels to purchase some acsended gear, or a bit over a month of laurels + a large sum of ectos to get some gear. It takes relatively the same amount of time to gain…Id say 3/4 of a tier of gear at least in a game like WoW. and I have a life. My guild was ultra casual, raided 3 hours on Wednesdays and Fridays. Combined with the things you did on your own, you had a lot of gear in a month or so.
The time spent in both games, GW2 and WoW, would yield someone the same result: The newest ascended gear slot, or most of a tier of gear.
Still dishonest in that you can chop up your playtime in GW2 to accommodate to life, which is not possible in WoW. You’re still stuck with an impossible 3 hour dungeon run, two fixed days a week. Casual isn’t the right word for that. You were not in a casual guild, that’s borderline hardcore.
And OK I understand you have a job. No problemo. I’ve got more than that. If the baby cries, I can’t ask him to wait because I might get kicked. If the girlfriend wants some, I’m not saying no. If friends call, I won’t drop them for anonymous guildies. I simply won’t.
And this:
The difference is you can get those Laurels by doing a variety of activities, including the new achievement chests that have loads of them, while in other MMOs you have to do very very specific tasks to get the best gear, tasks that involve raids usually.
I don’t think it’s hard to see the huge difference here.
If I can’t play Guild Wars 2 at work, I won’t work in Guild Wars 2 either.
Delayed content is eventually good. Rushed content is eternally bad. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto
Delayed content is eventually good. Rushed content is eternally bad. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto
(edited by marnick.4305)
It affected a few skills that were arguably the most powerful in the game, some of which were required for builds that people asked for to do the hardest content in Guild Wars 1. This is my point.
By comparison, the work we need to put into to get ascended gear is negligible. And the difference in power, at least so far, isn’t nearly as great.
The difference in power comes from the basic skill itself, not the power added through the title tiers. I never maxed those but I clearly noticed the incredible power of say, Pain Inverter.
Anyway, it’s BAD, and it’s worse when it applies to something like armor, which you need in almost every aspect of the game. I feel bad when my gear is not BiS, and in Guild Wars 1, my gear was nearly always BiS.
True to some degree of pain inverter, not so much true for technobabble and specifically for Save Yourselves, which was, as I’ve said, pretty much a required skill for DOA.
Also if you never saw people spamming chat for R8 ursans, you weren’t playing that much. And I’m pretty sure the permasin build didn’t work with that Sunspear skill at lower levels.