Guild Wars 2

Nova Stiker.8396:

Guys, guys, guys! Settle down.

Lets get this out of the way, both design and mechanically Guild Wars 2 has a massive amount of room for improvement and it NEEDS improvement.

Just one problem, I’ve been suspended calling ArenaNet out on this. Calling this combat design experience novice.

The thing is, you cannot blame them for their closed mind. For 3 years, for 40 hours a week or more, they walk in, work on Guild Wars 2 and go home.

---

Guild Wars 2 is ArenaNets baby, tell them their baby is flawed and needs improvement and you might as well /resign no monk. There has been countless threads on this and I even made a video regarding this. But I doubt ArenaNet would even click the link let alone watch a single second :\

I hear you guys but ArenaNet need to get to the point they need to step back and ask themselves, this isn’t the future of Guild Wars 2 combat.

Yeah somehow I doubt you were suspended because you called the game flawed. Look around, the forum isnt short on players who point out stuff they believe is flawed and post on a daily bases. Its more likely you used a tiny bit too much colour in your post. For example this post includes a lot of taunting which basically breaks various rule of conduct rules like: “Be respectful or Do not engage in staff call-outs.”

anyhow regarding the video.. some constructive critisism about it… it should be about combat and how to improve it but up to the 6:30 mark you only criticized anet for not receiving feedback in a manner thats satisfactory for you.

Then you name a lot of things you feel are bad but never explained how. Example the Necro death shroud. Your issue with it is it doesnt give the necro identity? how so ? and why is it bad? You also mention skills that make you temporary invulnerable are bad.. .again why? Conditions and boons are bad mechanics? Then you said you’re replace boons with buffs how specifically would your buffs be different apart from the name for example. Also first you mention in gw2 you have weapons, traits, sigils and utility skills and that is not enough but then you criticize them for adding more to them?

17 minutes and you dont specify a single issue and then you’re surprised you dont get a good reaction to your feedback?

Feedback isnt made up from statements like this is bad and i would remove it entirely, you need to specify why it is bad, ideally what you would do differently. But stuff like conditions are bad I would remove it is not feedback Its nothing more then an opinion.

So perhaps you can elaborate more on what you mean by the above? cause honestly I cant see what possible reasons you could have for wanting skills that give temporary invulnerability, boons, conditions or class unique mechanics like dead shroud gone (especially for a reason like it doesnt give a class identity when thats probably what i does the most)

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Nerelith.7360:

They did a good job with Guild Wars, although I really think this is a different Anet from the Anet that produced Guild Wars, maybe this Anet may not be up to the task? I mean they cannot balance the limited set of skills they have now.

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Nerelith.7360:

Opinion is a personal observation, and cannot be wrong. it can be agreed with or disagreed with.

I’d have said that an opinion is a personal truth – it doesn’t necessarily need to be based on observation. It’s neither, objectively, right or wrong, unless backed up / challenged with hard factual evidence.

Changing/altering/adding code(which must be done) is programming.

Rieselle.5079:

Whilst GW2 never had the disastrous launch that FF14 had, nevertheless it was a disappointment to many people and never lived up to its true potential, nor the legacy of the first Guild Wars.

The shame of it is, GW2 is not a terrible game, which means there’s little incentive to fix the very serious and fundamental problems the game has. FF14 was a total wreck, and that was enough to force Square to bow their heads and remake it into FF14:ARR. Sure, you may or may not like the type of game FF14:ARR is, (I don’t, really) but from everything I’ve heard, it’s fulfilled its potential and the people that like that kind of thing really think it’s a great game.

Now that we have “Living World Season 2” coming, it’s maybe a good time to think about an expansion pack or reboot, that really FIXES the problems that have been there from day 1.

Sure, you might care about these things less or more or not at all, but I’m pretty sure everyone agree that “There’s room for improvement here.”

- Combat needs an overhaul.
Currently GW2 is an unhappy hybrid between action games and MMOs.

On the action side, the mechanics are too shallow, and there isn’t a proper risk/reward system in place. Even something as simple as “Powerful attacks and defensive skills use endurance too”, would mean that you have to make the difficult choice between using your endurance on offense, or saving it for dodging/defense. Rather than just hitting every skill on cooldown 90% of the time.
Also, too many of the traits are passive, minor and invisible. It would be much better if (like Diablo 3), choosing traits produced visible and game-changing alterations to how some of your skills worked. (eg. The elementalist trait Evasive Arcana is a good one.)

On the MMO side, there isn’t much depth in the way players cooperate in battle at the moment. Support skills are usually PBAoEs, that encourage everyone to stack on a single point (which is silly on many levels) and there aren’t any meaningful Roles.
ANet needs to rework a lot of the skills and traits so that they have strengths and weaknesses that depend/interact with your team. For example, give each class some support skills (ie. skills that heal/benefit others) that are very strong, but have a casting time that is interrupted by any attack. Then add more skills to every class that can knockdown/knockback the enemy and create projectile shields.
So, without pigeonholing any class to a role, we can allow players to build defensive and supporting roles, in addition to the usual offense.

There’s a whole bunch of other stuff, but I’ll just list them quickly since it’s already a wall of text.
- Enemy AI also needs a lot of work.
- Some fundamental features are missing from PvP and WvW – Like observer mode, build templates, etc.
- The metagame mechanics of WvW is quite broken. When the best rewards come from karma trains rather than epic combat, your Epic Combat mode is not designed properly.
-The personal/living story system, and the story of the game, is not sustainable. Personally I think it would be much better if you weren’t Saving The World, and instead Personal Stories could be shorter episodes about your character, like “My quest to find my sister who was captured by a circus and the adventures I had along the way.” There’s a potential for a huge variety of such Personal Stories, whereas you can only really Save The World a couple of times before it gets really silly.

Anyways, time for a reboot.

They need to reboot – they need to knock off LS. It’s a waste of time and resources. The game as released was great – that’s what they need to continue doing. That doesn’t require a reboot. The stories could be broken into campaigns, by attacking the Elder Dragons. They need storylines for the Orders – they actually need to expand upon the foundation they set. The combat, of all things, is the best. The only thing they need to improve is actually giving classes more defined roles.

im near positive build templates are in the works now

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Changing/altering/adding code(which must be done) is programming.

Changing the functionality of a skill and balancing numbers isn’t anything to do with the programmers.

Tool programmers make tools to allow other devs who don’t program to do these things. If I recall correctly, before launch in an interview lost to time, Colin said that they create and change skills using such a tool.

Saying that the balancing team are programmers is like saying the content developers are programmers, when in fact the game designers don’t actually need to program.

They don’t actually have a job description up now for game designer, but it made mention that you only really needed experience in design and scripting.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Changing/altering/adding code(which must be done) is programming.

Changing the functionality of a skill and balancing numbers isn’t anything to do with the programmers.

Tool programmers make tools to allow other devs who don’t program to do these things. If I recall correctly, before launch in an interview lost to time, Colin said that they create and change skills using such a tool.

Saying that the balancing team are programmers is like saying the content developers are programmers, when in fact the game designers don’t actually need to program.

They don’t actually have a job description up now for game designer, but it made mention that you only really needed experience in design and scripting.

It still takes altering code whether by an actual programmer or by an employee with a tool set up to do this alteration by a programmer, so, programming.

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Changing/altering/adding code(which must be done) is programming.

Changing the functionality of a skill and balancing numbers isn’t anything to do with the programmers.

Tool programmers make tools to allow other devs who don’t program to do these things. If I recall correctly, before launch in an interview lost to time, Colin said that they create and change skills using such a tool.

Saying that the balancing team are programmers is like saying the content developers are programmers, when in fact the game designers don’t actually need to program.

They don’t actually have a job description up now for game designer, but it made mention that you only really needed experience in design and scripting.

It still takes altering code whether by an actual programmer or by an employee with a tool set up to do this alteration by a programmer, so, programming.

While I agree adjusting and adding to a tool is programming – which isn’t actually doing any of the balancing work, it’s changing the tool to adapt to the needs of the balance team – an employee, say, typing 0.9 into a box labelled co-efficient, or 1 into a box labelled activation time isn’t doing any programming and doesn’t need any knowledge of programming.

To say so is just plain wrong. It’s like saying a person can do HTML because they used a website building tool.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Changing/altering/adding code(which must be done) is programming.

Changing the functionality of a skill and balancing numbers isn’t anything to do with the programmers.

Tool programmers make tools to allow other devs who don’t program to do these things. If I recall correctly, before launch in an interview lost to time, Colin said that they create and change skills using such a tool.

Saying that the balancing team are programmers is like saying the content developers are programmers, when in fact the game designers don’t actually need to program.

They don’t actually have a job description up now for game designer, but it made mention that you only really needed experience in design and scripting.

It still takes altering code whether by an actual programmer or by an employee with a tool set up to do this alteration by a programmer, so, programming.

While I agree adjusting and adding to a tool is programming – which isn’t actually doing any of the balancing work, it’s changing the tool to adapt to the needs of the balance team – an employee, say, typing 0.9 into a box labelled co-efficient, or 1 into a box labelled activation time isn’t doing any programming and doesn’t need any knowledge of programming.

To say so is just plain wrong. It’s like saying a person can do HTML because they used a website building tool.

How is that not programming? It’s altering the code which IS PROGRAMMING.

Im Mudbone.1437:

How is that not programming? It’s altering the code which IS PROGRAMMING.

From the perspective of the balance team, it’s really not.

It’s like saying you’re scripting JavaScript and HTML because you’re using formatting tags and clicking the quote button – tools created by the web developer to make certain tasks easier for us by automating it.

It’s entering information into a program to adjust the properties of the skill. The balance team themselves don’t interact with the actual code of the tool. They put information into the program, and the program adjusts the code for the user.

In no way is entering information into a program and having the program do the rest of the task programming.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

How is that not programming? It’s altering the code which IS PROGRAMMING.

From the perspective of the balance team, it’s really not.

It’s like saying you’re scripting JavaScript and HTML because you’re using formatting tags and clicking the quote button – tools created by the web developer to make certain tasks easier for us by automating it.

It’s entering information into a program to adjust the properties of the skill. The balance team themselves don’t interact with the actual code of the tool. They put information into the program, and the program adjusts the code for the user.

In no way is entering information into a program and having the program do the rest of the task programming.

Keep thinking that. I digress.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

How is that not programming? It’s altering the code which IS PROGRAMMING.

From the perspective of the balance team, it’s really not.

It’s like saying you’re scripting JavaScript and HTML because you’re using formatting tags and clicking the quote button – tools created by the web developer to make certain tasks easier for us by automating it.

It’s entering information into a program to adjust the properties of the skill. The balance team themselves don’t interact with the actual code of the tool. They put information into the program, and the program adjusts the code for the user.

In no way is entering information into a program and having the program do the rest of the task programming.

well, it kind of is, every programming language we use is a tool created by a programmer to automate or make it easier for a user to create outputs. But the question really is, does it matter?

phys.7689:

well, it kind of is, every programming language we use is a tool created by a programmer to automate or make it easier for a user to create outputs. But the question really is, does it matter?

A programmer will use them languages to create a program. For example, Microsoft creating Windows.

If the user uses that program to make a change in the code, that doesn’t necessarily make them a programmer. For example, changing the colour scheme of the desktop.

The person has changed the code, but it in no way makes them a programmer.

Going back to the previous example, the programmer makes the program for the user to use in order to create and edit the number component of skills.

The user enters the details of the skill (Name, description, range, coefficients, activation time, channel duration ect) and clicks a button that creates that component of the skill.

However, they didn’t actually do any programming in the sense of writing a program, or coding the skill. The program they used did all of that for them, and therein lies the difference.

Now, if Mudborne was talking about programming in the sense of altering how the skill works i.e programming it’s attributes, they’d be right.

However, they specifically mentioned about altering the code. Using a tool such as that to alter the code, when the person doesn’t have any interaction with the actual code itself, is not programming.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter on our end. At the same time, they made a comment about how they don’t think the programmers are qualified in a discussion about balance, without fully understanding how the balance teams go about balancing and altering skills. If you don’t need any programming knowledge to do that job, it kind of makes his comment wrong.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

I’d like to attempt to stop this derail once and for all. On the internet I like to pretend I’m a former games developer (actually I’m a teenage girl…. or is it the other way around? You decide!)

There’s no question at all that ANet have very talented programmers. Their technology is top notch, and their game is incredibly ambitious. Their engine runs well even on my low-end laptop, and looks beautiful on my high end desktop. GW1 had the server-less technology that was bounds ahead of most of its competition, and whilst GW2 took a step back from that, they’ve since fixed it with the Megaserver stuff.

Apart from the problem with players not appearing when encountering large groups (esp. in WvW) which was also mostly fixed, there hasn’t been too many serious technical problems with GW2, as far as I can remember.

Anyways, what we’re talking about here is -game design-. That’s the thing done by game designers. Game designers are a little bit like artists, a little bit like technical writers. I don’t feel that there is any formal qualification possible to make a good game designer, any more than going to music school can make you a genius composer.

It’s clear that I don’t agree with many aspects of the design of GW2, particularly combat. Ultimately, these are the questions that I have:
- What is the central vision of the combat for this game? What kind of tactics, strategy, and feel are they aiming for?
- What’s their audience? Who do they imagine will enjoy their combat?
- Did they achieve their vision? Were they forced to stop short due to technical, political or budgetary limitations?

I hate to use the word “casual”, but I can’t escape that the basic gameplay seems to be designed for an audience that doesn’t value skill and isn’t interested in improving their ability to play the game.

ANet stripped out the Collectible Card Game aspect of GW1, to make the game easier to balance. I think that’s ok. But they lost a fair bit of RPG-complexity by doing so.

They took away Monks and gave everyone healing so there wouldn’t be any mandatory classes. That’s ok too. But that (along with removal of body blocking) reduced the concept of “Frontline, Midline, Backline” from GW1 to almost nothing. The complexity of positioning relative to your party is almost zero in GW2. Most of the time, you all just want to stack on top of each other. In PvP/WvW there is a bit more, but usually it’s more of a personal (stay in the correct range of my weapons, etc) rather than based on your teammates.

Ok, so ANet took away a lot of MMORPG combat mechanics when going from GW1->GW2. What did they add? The main thing is dodge, and evasion on certain attacks, which adds an action combat element to the game. But they didn’t adopt any other gameplay mechanics from Action Games, some of which are really important. If we ignore the MMORPG and just focused on the action combat with 2 identical players dueling, then we can see that GW2 falls -really- far short of good, dedicated action games. (The extra MMORPG stuff helps make up for the lack, but it only goes so far.)

Anyways, like I said. It all depends on the target audience. I’m gamer who’s used to playing games like fighting games, Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, etc. I like having lots of combat mechanics to think about, tinker with, get better at. I don’t need content – I’m happy with playing the same levels, fighting the same enemies, over and over again. But give me a good combat system and I can do it forever.

But maybe I’m not the target audience for this game. Maybe the target audience are those who don’t care that much about the intricacies of the combat system, and instead care about more maps, more stories, more gear. (but not player housing, mounts, or guild halls, cause we’re probably not getting those!)

So anyways, like all calls for game changes, my OP boils down to a request to make the game more suitable to me. I personally don’t care about precursor drop rates, player housing, or Trehearne. But it’s ok if other people do.

I made this thread so like minded people can contribute their thoughts too.

TheDaiBish.9735:

phys.7689:

well, it kind of is, every programming language we use is a tool created by a programmer to automate or make it easier for a user to create outputs. But the question really is, does it matter?

A programmer will use them languages to create a program. For example, Microsoft creating Windows.

If the user uses that program to make a change in the code, that doesn’t necessarily make them a programmer. For example, changing the colour scheme of the desktop.

The person has changed the code, but it in no way makes them a programmer.

Going back to the previous example, the programmer makes the program for the user to use in order to create and edit the number component of skills.

The user enters the details of the skill (Name, description, range, coefficients, activation time, channel duration ect) and clicks a button that creates that component of the skill.

However, they didn’t actually do any programming in the sense of writing a program, or coding the skill. The program they used did all of that for them, and therein lies the difference.

Now, if Mudborne was talking about programming in the sense of altering how the skill works i.e programming it’s attributes, they’d be right.

However, they specifically mentioned about altering the code. Using a tool such as that to alter the code, when the person doesn’t have any interaction with the actual code itself, is not programming.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter on our end. At the same time, they made a comment about how they don’t think the programmers are qualified in a discussion about balance, without fully understanding how the balance teams go about balancing and altering skills. If you don’t need any programming knowledge to do that job, it kind of makes his comment wrong.

So you wanna say that for example editing my own website with the help of a wysiwyg html editor (because I lack knowledge of an actual programming language) isnt actually programming?

Schtizzel.5497:

TheDaiBish.9735:

phys.7689:

well, it kind of is, every programming language we use is a tool created by a programmer to automate or make it easier for a user to create outputs. But the question really is, does it matter?

A programmer will use them languages to create a program. For example, Microsoft creating Windows.

If the user uses that program to make a change in the code, that doesn’t necessarily make them a programmer. For example, changing the colour scheme of the desktop.

The person has changed the code, but it in no way makes them a programmer.

Going back to the previous example, the programmer makes the program for the user to use in order to create and edit the number component of skills.

The user enters the details of the skill (Name, description, range, coefficients, activation time, channel duration ect) and clicks a button that creates that component of the skill.

However, they didn’t actually do any programming in the sense of writing a program, or coding the skill. The program they used did all of that for them, and therein lies the difference.

Now, if Mudborne was talking about programming in the sense of altering how the skill works i.e programming it’s attributes, they’d be right.

However, they specifically mentioned about altering the code. Using a tool such as that to alter the code, when the person doesn’t have any interaction with the actual code itself, is not programming.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter on our end. At the same time, they made a comment about how they don’t think the programmers are qualified in a discussion about balance, without fully understanding how the balance teams go about balancing and altering skills. If you don’t need any programming knowledge to do that job, it kind of makes his comment wrong.

So you wanna say that for example editing my own website with the help of a wysiwyg html editor (because I lack knowledge of an actual programming language) isnt actually programming?

IMO, I call that pre-programed programing, if that makes sense.

Rieselle.5079:

Ok, so ANet took away a lot of MMORPG combat mechanics when going from GW1->GW2. What did they add? The main thing is dodge, and evasion on certain attacks, which adds an action combat element to the game. But they didn’t adopt any other gameplay mechanics from Action Games, some of which are really important. If we ignore the MMORPG and just focused on the action combat with 2 identical players dueling, then we can see that GW2 falls -really- far short of good, dedicated action games. (The extra MMORPG stuff helps make up for the lack, but it only goes so far.)

Anyways, like I said. It all depends on the target audience. I’m gamer who’s used to playing games like fighting games, Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, etc. I like having lots of combat mechanics to think about, tinker with, get better at. I don’t need content – I’m happy with playing the same levels, fighting the same enemies, over and over again. But give me a good combat system and I can do it forever.

Sounds like what I had to say about Monster Hunter. (Seriously, try that if you liked things similar to Devil May Cry and Dark Souls.) Though, while I might find the combat method for that game really something to emulate in GW2 as far as the possibilities . . . everything else can go jump off a cliff. Punishingly tough bosses (hi Golden Rajang) and really laughable drop rates (Heavenly Lao Shan Scale) and the utter cheese of Flash Bombs and Shock Traps . . .

Regardless, that sort of combat is actually more on what I was expecting before BWE2 and my crack at GW2. It’s close, but there’s . . . how do I put this . . . there’s not enough attention required to timing. But that’s mostly okay, since a lot of limitations from MHFU (maximum four players, and often times really hard to get them all into the fight at once) are dropped in GW2, in favor of more open-world play.

(By the by, if they ever make a persistent open world, MMO style Monster Hunter game and it’s not grindy as a peppermill, I’ll be the one camping the ’Los . . . )

Does the combat need fixing in GW2? I don’t know, the basis of it seems fine but the implementation of some aspects don’t move up the difficulty well. Specifically, in open-world it’s still easy just to pile-on a boss and get picked up by other people without dodging. In dungeons, as aforementioned, stacking is massively important to people due to various limitations meant to encourage not spreading out too much . . .

And in WvW, well, it’s all about the arrow carts and ninja captures when the zerg is elsewhere. And stacking.

Dardevilmon.6702:

Dont touch the combat that is the best part about this game the thing they need to touch is the balance of skills no the combat.Combat is incredibly fluid and responsive and non other mmo or rpg or mmorpg have combat as good as this 1.

Indeed. When I tried out FFXIV:ARR I was impressed by how slow the combat system seemed compared to GW2’s.

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Changing/altering/adding code(which must be done) is programming.

Changing the functionality of a skill and balancing numbers isn’t anything to do with the programmers.

Tool programmers make tools to allow other devs who don’t program to do these things. If I recall correctly, before launch in an interview lost to time, Colin said that they create and change skills using such a tool.

Saying that the balancing team are programmers is like saying the content developers are programmers, when in fact the game designers don’t actually need to program.

They don’t actually have a job description up now for game designer, but it made mention that you only really needed experience in design and scripting.

It still takes altering code whether by an actual programmer or by an employee with a tool set up to do this alteration by a programmer, so, programming.

While I agree adjusting and adding to a tool is programming – which isn’t actually doing any of the balancing work, it’s changing the tool to adapt to the needs of the balance team – an employee, say, typing 0.9 into a box labelled co-efficient, or 1 into a box labelled activation time isn’t doing any programming and doesn’t need any knowledge of programming.

To say so is just plain wrong. It’s like saying a person can do HTML because they used a website building tool.

How is that not programming? It’s altering the code which IS PROGRAMMING.

Its just typing in numbers into a database. It doesn’t alter code. It just alters the result of some code.

Is the till girl at Walmart for you also a programmer because she types in numbers into a database ? And do you think she changes code because when she types in 10 +20 its another result than 5 + 15 ?

Beldin.5498:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Changing/altering/adding code(which must be done) is programming.

Changing the functionality of a skill and balancing numbers isn’t anything to do with the programmers.

Tool programmers make tools to allow other devs who don’t program to do these things. If I recall correctly, before launch in an interview lost to time, Colin said that they create and change skills using such a tool.

Saying that the balancing team are programmers is like saying the content developers are programmers, when in fact the game designers don’t actually need to program.

They don’t actually have a job description up now for game designer, but it made mention that you only really needed experience in design and scripting.

It still takes altering code whether by an actual programmer or by an employee with a tool set up to do this alteration by a programmer, so, programming.

While I agree adjusting and adding to a tool is programming – which isn’t actually doing any of the balancing work, it’s changing the tool to adapt to the needs of the balance team – an employee, say, typing 0.9 into a box labelled co-efficient, or 1 into a box labelled activation time isn’t doing any programming and doesn’t need any knowledge of programming.

To say so is just plain wrong. It’s like saying a person can do HTML because they used a website building tool.

How is that not programming? It’s altering the code which IS PROGRAMMING.

Its just typing in numbers into a database. It doesn’t alter code. It just alters the result of some code.

Is the till girl at Walmart for you also a programmer because she types in numbers into a database ? And do you think she changes code because when she types in 10 +20 its another result than 5 + 15 ?

if those numbers in a database alter output, she is programming. This really is an aside, but you understand that programming, and code as you know it, is in fact exactly the type of thing you are talking about?
Programming gets more and more primitive the further down you go, javasrcipt is a program, that allows the user to program more easily, its a step up from another more basic program. then you have assembly which is really basic.

ideally one day, a programmer will make a language that the someone can program complex ideas, simply by talking to it in plain language. I mean someone who programs machine language, are they real, and the javascript guy is fake?

That said, i really dont think the nature of what is programming is really the main point of this exchange.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Schtizzel.5497:

TheDaiBish.9735:

phys.7689:

well, it kind of is, every programming language we use is a tool created by a programmer to automate or make it easier for a user to create outputs. But the question really is, does it matter?

A programmer will use them languages to create a program. For example, Microsoft creating Windows.

If the user uses that program to make a change in the code, that doesn’t necessarily make them a programmer. For example, changing the colour scheme of the desktop.

The person has changed the code, but it in no way makes them a programmer.

Going back to the previous example, the programmer makes the program for the user to use in order to create and edit the number component of skills.

The user enters the details of the skill (Name, description, range, coefficients, activation time, channel duration ect) and clicks a button that creates that component of the skill.

However, they didn’t actually do any programming in the sense of writing a program, or coding the skill. The program they used did all of that for them, and therein lies the difference.

Now, if Mudborne was talking about programming in the sense of altering how the skill works i.e programming it’s attributes, they’d be right.

However, they specifically mentioned about altering the code. Using a tool such as that to alter the code, when the person doesn’t have any interaction with the actual code itself, is not programming.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter on our end. At the same time, they made a comment about how they don’t think the programmers are qualified in a discussion about balance, without fully understanding how the balance teams go about balancing and altering skills. If you don’t need any programming knowledge to do that job, it kind of makes his comment wrong.

So you wanna say that for example editing my own website with the help of a wysiwyg html editor (because I lack knowledge of an actual programming language) isnt actually programming?

IMO, I call that pre-programed programing, if that makes sense.

I think the term you’re looking for is configuration – retool existing code/programs to meet a new requirement. You’re not creating a whole new API or whatever, but you’re making a new product from one.

Dardevilmon.6702:

Dont touch the combat that is the best part about this game the thing they need to touch is the balance of skills no the combat.Combat is incredibly fluid and responsive and non other mmo or rpg or mmorpg have combat as good as this 1.

Gods no. I find the combat in SMT: Imagine to be more fulfilling than here. GW2’s is so spammy and cooldown-based (what with “wow we’re so special no mana system”) that it borders on braindead-easy.

There is no challenge to this combat. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does leave a bad taste in one’s mouth when Anet tries to take this game’s combat… seriously.

Basically you want them to turn GW2 into a typical MMO. People like you are the reason why they made GW2 to begin with.

I still remember legions of people on GW1 forums whining about how PvE sucks, they wanted zerg events and epic battles with raid bosses. Now the very same people want GW1 back.

Make up your mind!

Yes, GW2 is an unhappy hybrid. It’s so because it was a kind of experiment to move away from MMO bullkitten. The only problem is that when you move away from that, you pretty much end up with an action game with some MMORPG elements and that’s fair enough.

The thing is that imo, the reason why MMOs fail is because they want to appeal to the casual masses instead of staying hardcore with massive grind, PK, gear loss on PvP death etc. But the thing is, I don’t think that a company like Anet or NCSoft can sustain such a game.

phys.7689:

Beldin.5498:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Makes me and others wonder if “they” are qualified programers.

What’s programming to do with skill balancing?

Changing/altering/adding code(which must be done) is programming.

Changing the functionality of a skill and balancing numbers isn’t anything to do with the programmers.

Tool programmers make tools to allow other devs who don’t program to do these things. If I recall correctly, before launch in an interview lost to time, Colin said that they create and change skills using such a tool.

Saying that the balancing team are programmers is like saying the content developers are programmers, when in fact the game designers don’t actually need to program.

They don’t actually have a job description up now for game designer, but it made mention that you only really needed experience in design and scripting.

It still takes altering code whether by an actual programmer or by an employee with a tool set up to do this alteration by a programmer, so, programming.

While I agree adjusting and adding to a tool is programming – which isn’t actually doing any of the balancing work, it’s changing the tool to adapt to the needs of the balance team – an employee, say, typing 0.9 into a box labelled co-efficient, or 1 into a box labelled activation time isn’t doing any programming and doesn’t need any knowledge of programming.

To say so is just plain wrong. It’s like saying a person can do HTML because they used a website building tool.

How is that not programming? It’s altering the code which IS PROGRAMMING.

Its just typing in numbers into a database. It doesn’t alter code. It just alters the result of some code.

Is the till girl at Walmart for you also a programmer because she types in numbers into a database ? And do you think she changes code because when she types in 10 +20 its another result than 5 + 15 ?

if those numbers in a database alter output, she is programming. This really is an aside, but you understand that programming, and code as you know it, is in fact exactly the type of thing you are talking about?
Programming gets more and more primitive the further down you go, javasrcipt is a program, that allows the user to program more easily, its a step up from another more basic program. then you have assembly which is really basic.

ideally one day, a programmer will make a language that the someone can program complex ideas, simply by talking to it in plain language. I mean someone who programs machine language, are they real, and the javascript guy is fake?

That said, i really dont think the nature of what is programming is really the main point of this exchange.

I wonder if you personally ever have really programmed in soemthing like C## or Delphi or whatever. I doubt so however.

Heck even posting in a forum is then programming in your logic, because if we post something yoi know what happens ? Oh yes .. it alters the output of the forum.

Or transmute your armor in GW2 .. it alters the output .. hey .. we all are “programming” GW2 ourself.
Killing a mob : programming ..

Hi,

Since this thread is turning into an off topic and non-constructive discussion, we’ll now close it.

Thank you for your understanding.