Guild Wars 2

offence.4726:

People have yet to realise that this in-game feature is OPTIONAL , you never have to partake – nor will it affect you in any way ( ever ).

There are dozens of posts in this topic pointing how you are wrong. If you ignored all of them, what makes you think I would bother repeating the same thing again?

Ravij.9856:

Dear Anet.. Why do all player characters sound the same?

Because doing otherwise would be too expensive.

Others above have already mentioned how it would be too expensive to give new voices to each race/gender combination, so I won’t go in details about that.

But there’s one thing you haven’t realized – it’s not that voice acting would be too expensive, it already is too expensive. ArenaNet already cut too many corners to make do with the current voice acting.

See Traheanne? Do you notice how he does most of the talking at the end of the personal storyline? How he is the one to give the pre big battle speech and so on? Guess why? Because it’s far cheaper to record all those lines a single time than record them 10 times.

Same with the Order storylines. If you pay attention, our characters never actually say the name of their orders during the order missions (such as the ones about helping lesser races) – they just say “my order”. Again, guess why? Because that required less voice acting than having to record 30 times (one per race/gender/order combination) similar lines.

I really dislike the toll we pay in order to have the current voice acting. The only thing that could be worse would be if ArenaNet released a new race and then used it to recorded voice dialogue for all currently existing content. This would make a new race into incredibly expensive content, for very little gain. The current personal storyline should stay only for the five current races, and new races should be kept only to new content.

I think there’s an entire guild of ArenaNet people in SoR. At least there used to be, around release.

Linnael.1069:

The amount of annoyance that people might suffer from it is miniscule compared the positive effect this would have on people who want it.

Not really.

You want dueling. You would be happy if it were in the game.

We don’t want dueling (see reasons mentioned in previous posts). We would be happy if it were not in the game.

Would your happiness be bigger than ours? Nah. Saying our opinion is “miniscule” compared to yours isn’t doing you any favors.

Yaos.4528:

There are 2.5 million active players per week.

On average 508,428 hours of GW2 are played every day. This is 3.5 million hours per week, or only 1.4 hours per week per player.

Which tells us how the “2.5 million players” number is probably describing how many times people log in the game, not how many unique players the game has. If we were to guess that a single player logs once per day (which IMO is actually less than average, but let’s use that number for the sake of the argument), we would fall to around 400 thousand unique players per week. That’s more or less how many subscribers Rift had more or less 6 months after release, isn’t it? It’s the range I would expect modern MMORPGs to stabilize on.

The front page of their forum looks better than ours, but each topic looks worse – between avatars and signatures, it looks too polluted. Also, what are those pictures...?

One more example of how the GW2 design philosophy has changed over time: when the dungeon token system was introduced, ArenaNet told us it meant to avoid the feeling that you could go through a dungeon and get nothing for it, while someone else could do the same dungeon and get the same reward. Here, they said:

ArenaNet

Fun impacts decisions. Every time you finish a dungeon you get tokens you can trade in for reward items that you want, rather than having a small chance of getting it as a drop, because it’s more fun to always get rewarded for finishing with something you want to have!

So they clearly understood how frustrating it is to rely on a RNG reward system that gives “a small chance of getting it as a drop”.

However, that’s exactly what they have been adding to the game. All weapon skins acquired through the RNG boxes summon exactly the feeling of frustration given by having a very small chance of receiving a given drop. In many ways it’s worse than in the raids seen in other MMORPGs, considering how we are meant to pay real money for the RNG here.

Vayne.8563:

I’m an editor by trade. I turn off my agenda when reading something. Most people can’t do this.

I think everyone who has read your posts realizes you have a very strong agenda of trying to make up as many excuses to defend ArenaNet as possible (with the little token criticism here and there to save face). That’s probably why so many ignore the way you try to defend the Manifesto – your arguments are biased due to your own agenda.

And no raids, either. If that’s really the kind of content you want, I would suggest other MMOs. Big ones like Rift are now free to play and they have everything you are asking for.

Trakarg.2095:

So, I wonder, why did Arenanet implement legendaries in the way they did? They don’t want us to grind, so why make us grind? Why not make legendaries have legendary, lore-rich quests that involve difficult content? Oh, right, because Anet can’t design such things due to laziness, unwillingness, or simply an inability to design meaningful content in a game without the trinity.

Kinda. If you watch the Manifesto, it’s there clear as day – “We don’t want players to grind. No one enjoys it”. The issue is that Legendaries were rushed – a lot of preview articles during Beta had a list of items needed for the Legendaries, and it was significantly less grindy than it is today (the Gift of Fortune did not exist, for example).

There was clearly a moment during the later stages of development when ArenaNet decided to add more grind to the game. The change to Legendaries, turning dyes from account-bound to character-bound, requiring more tokens per armor piece in dungeons… All of those point to a huge philosophy shift from what was stated in the Manifesto, and from what ArenaNet had originally told us what the game would be.

The kind of content you say you want does not exist in GW2. It’s either PvE, WvW or sPvP. There is no “arena” or “BGs”.

Gnat.9405:

From reading PvE forums I noticed that there are some players who are concerened about what this means for PvE content. I understand that it is not wise to take this comment too dramatically, but I think some clarification is in order.

Uh… There is no need for clarification. He clearly states that he’s in another country, with a bad connection, at late hours well past midnight, after working the entire day, and in that circunstance he prefers to read the sPvP forum, which is easier to grasp, than the dungeon forum.

Anyone who takes this as a “OMG, ArenaNet hates PvE!11!!!!” post is being ludicrous. If anything, Mr Sharp should not even bother reading the forum under that circunstance, and rather go do something pleasing with his free time.

Nightmare the Quick.9284:

Ok you might want to read things before you go off m8 the gate is only closed when the event is going on right in front of it! I think it was back in Oct. that was changed.

You didn’t even have the trouble to look a the screenshots, did you? The first screenshot shows the first step of the Arah event – you know, the one with the Champion Giant you exploiters were resetting – locking both the waypoint and the dungeon. In other words, yes, you were preventing people from entering Arah.

When the Pact begins charging Arah, the dungeon locks. It used to be that the dungeon would be locked all the time unless someone had just opened it. That’s what has been changed a few months ago.

Nightmare the Quick.9284:

as long as we are not stopping you from enjoin the game the way you want

You were stopping people from opening the Arah dungeon, as proved at the previous page.

And for the records…

Nightmare the Quick.9284:

And ty for saying that you may have been wrong about it, takes a big man/woman to say I am wrong!

I guess it’s “do as I say, not as I do”, right?

Nightmare the Quick.9284:

Before you get all cranked up! doing that event in cursed shore did not stop anyone from getting in arah, so don’t go there

Mustafa.7684:

With that event, Arah was accessable. We were not hindering anyone’s progress or anything.

morrolan.9608:

The dungeon waypoint doesn’t get contested at all by the arah event.

And, lastly, so hopefully no one comes again with the excuse of “we were not stopping anyone’s progress” – yes you were – here’s a screenshot of after the Priest has been defeated, with the gate now open and access to the dungeon:

Nightmare the Quick.9284:

Before you get all cranked up! doing that event in cursed shore did not stop anyone from getting in arah, so don’t go there

Mustafa.7684:

With that event, Arah was accessable. We were not hindering anyone’s progress or anything.

morrolan.9608:

The dungeon waypoint doesn’t get contested at all by the arah event.

Now, following the series of “let’s prove how the exploiters are wrong”, we have one more screenshot showing the waypoint contested and the gate to Arah locked during the last stage of the Cursed Shore event:

Nightmare the Quick.9284:

Before you get all cranked up! doing that event in cursed shore did not stop anyone from getting in arah, so don’t go there

Mustafa.7684:

With that event, Arah was accessable. We were not hindering anyone’s progress or anything.

morrolan.9608:

The dungeon waypoint doesn’t get contested at all by the arah event.

Do you people really think no one is going to point your nonsense? How you obviously have no idea of what you are talking about?

Here, I did the event chain just to take screenshots. Here’s one showing the first step of the event, with the waypoint contested and the gate to Arah locked, showing how people can’t do the dungeon while the Champion Giant is up:

Jski.6180:

Examples please.

Everything. Can you point a single MMORPG released in the past few years in which most of the world map requires people to be in a group, as opposed to being soloable?

All those statues look ugly, IMO. I don’t like the CE’s Rytlock, but it looks far more polished than the Rytlock statue seen in the link. The Shatterer looks faded, and it appears to be eating the ground (???); it’s hard to discern its head’s details from the pile of rocks it’s on.

I have the CE’s edition of GW2. I regret getting it – the only good thing there was the Making Of book. But I would rather get it than the Chinese limited edition, it seems.

Jski.6180:

In most mmorpg most things you cant solo and you MUST have a pt.

That’s not true.

Sure, today all MMORPGs have endgame focusing on raids and etc. But all modern MMORPGs realize most player actually play solo most of the time, so they have made most areas of the game soloable. In fact, other than the end game instances, most parts of MMORPGs are soloable.

People like the option of playing with others. People don’t like being forced to play with others all the time.

Serophous.9085:

So, instead of blaming mmos for that expectation, we should blame DnD.

Not really.

Take a look at Final Fantasy VI. What is the goal of the game? To reach the level cap and then try to get powerful items? Or to play through the storyline?

Take a look at Lunar: The Silver Star, or at Phantasy Star, or at Chrono Trigger. Was the level cap something people actually even bothered to try to achieve in those games, or was it just ancillary to the experience of playing through the story, the world and the gameplay in those games?

Until MMORPGs became popular, the level cap in RPGs was not a goal, it was something people didn’t even bother to reach. Games were played to have fun, not to reach some kind of reward that would become meaningless anyway once the game had been finished.

MMORPGs have fooled players into believing that time sinks are good. This makes sense – pay to play MMORPGs want people to play as long as possible, preferably stretching existing content as much as possible, ergo time sink after time sink.

What is surprising is how many people fell (and fall) for that. Ideally, people would be smarter than Skinner rats, pressing their levers for their little rewards over and over again. Or smarter than a donkey, dutifully walking ahead perpetually trying to reach a carrot strapped in front of its face, that it will actually never eat.

I think the main lesson from MMORPGs is how low humanity can actually go, choosing to become no better than small animals. When that NPC in the Zephyr Sanctum says, “Watch out! Here comes… A sucker!”, it appears he’s more right than we could have guessed.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

The game isn’t ‘all about grinding’.

Often it appears it is.

Vayne loves saying “I don’t grind”. Which is great. But does he matter to ArenaNet? The designers, when making the game, have to consider what most players want. When there’s a scenario in which a bunch of players want X and a bunch of players want Y, any developer has to priotitize who they will please (unless you know a developer with infinite resources).

So, what do most players want? To play to have fun, or to grind for rewards? I don’t know. No one here knows, other than ArenaNet.

However, looking at the forum, there are a lot more topics asking for rewards than topics asking for more complex dynamic events or better storytelling. In game, I see a lot of people farming the World Bosses, but significantly less people exploring the middle level maps.

And what has ArenaNet been doing? Are they focusing more on content for those who just want to have fun – better dynamic events, improved storytelling – or in rewards for grinders? They have just published a new blog post speaking about their incoming plans. There, they said:

ArenaNet

One of the main areas of focus for our blog at the start of the year was rewards

Uh…

What else have they been doing? We have the latest iteration of Southsun, for example. Did it feature improved dynamic events and a better, more complex way for ArenaNet to tell stories? Not really. Dynamic events were so poor that they basically recycled the same event twice in the same area (the instigator event), storytelling was so poor that the reveal of who was behind all troubles in the area came as a very small dialogue after a random event. Did it feature content for grinders? Sure, a 200% buff to Magic Find, repeteable events giving an infinite amount of chests, and so on.

ArenaNet told us they would rework the World Bosses to make them more fun, hopefully avoiding the “spam auto attacks and Alt+Tab” scenarios. Then they implemented the Karka Queen, a new World Boss. Is she a complex boss, with multiple phases, requiring combat awareness all the time? Not really, you can spam auto-attacks and Alt+Tab. Is she good for grinders? Sure, two rares per kill.

Is it fun to get rewards after playing fun content? Sure it is. So let’s see, what rewards are available to people who play to have fun, as opposed to grinding? I began playing before release, to give an example. Looking at the Golden title track achievement, I have banked less than 100 gold. That’s not enough to buy a set of Cultural armor for a single character, much less for all my 5 characters.

This is when Vayne would come blazing and say, “That’s your problem, I don’t grind and I have money for everything I want!”. Vayne has also said, in the topic asking people their /ages:

Vayne.8563:

3335 Hours over the past 9 months. Mind you, quite a bit of that time I’ve been on the forums at the same time. lol

That’s more than 12 hours. Per day. Each day. 7 days a week. Every week. For each month. For almost an year.

It doesn’t really make the game look any better if the ways to get rewards are grinding, or spending most of your life every day playing a video game.

So is the game all about grinding? It does look like most of the content ArenaNet has been doing is focused on grinders, yes.

I think we got much better videos.

I really like this one:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WBAQiIesrGg

And this one:
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=YEdr8HHJ-zU

And of course the Manifesto, despite how much of it isn’t true anymore:
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

Banono.4597:

@Erasculio.2914
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/So-how-can-I-beat-CND-with-a-necro
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/How-can-you-beat-ilusionary-Mesmer

You mean like this?

Yes, imagine it one thousand times worse once dueling is officially in the game. Thanks, but no thanks (and ironic that both topics are in the Thief forum).

(Banono, does your main happen to be a Thief, too?)

Absconditus.6804:

As others said, it’s pretty obvious that the full sentence is “Dungeons should not close when the instance owner leaves party”.

As mentioned, the OP could as well be talking about how specific dungeons become closed when certain dynamic events are happening near them. Considering this topic was created during the Cursed Shores exploit, in which those trying to do the Arah dungeon often saw players not wanting to open the dungeon, it’s a possibility that the OP would be complaining about this system.

It’s funny how often people who claim something is “obvious” are completely wrong about whatever they are talking about.

Banono.4597:

If they make this a game mode. I do not expect nor want it to be balanced.

It would just be there for kittens and giggles.

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye and fills this entire forum whining about how his Thief always loses to a given profession using a given build. You can claim dueling would only be for feline objectification for you, but you don’t speak for all the dueling players. Considering how often dueling is a matter of ego, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a wave of sore losers claiming that the fact they keep losing is proof of flaws in the game, flaws that ArenaNet MUST fix (with a few 11!!!111!!!! here and there).

Blissified.8369:

This game seams pretty ballenced to me, some classess may need a few tweaks, more so classes need MORE OPTIONS then anything, but right now i;d say the game is pretty ballenced in pvp / wvw / pve.

We have entire subforums here filled with arguments saying you are wrong. Can you counter all of them?

Blissified.8369:

but nothing so bad as to with-hold features that every other game in its genre has had from launch.

Every other MMO has also had quests, the Holy Trinity, etc, etc. MMORPGs tend to be mediocre games, so it’s a great thing that GW2 does not share everything in common with other games in its genre.

Behellagh.1468:

Where’s my jet pack? Where’s my flying car?

Oh sorry, I thought this was the thread where we complain about what was promised someday in the future.

Who promised you a jet pack?

Banono.4597:

So, you think if they add dueling people will QQ

We know for a fact dueling people will QQ – just look at this topic.

Between implementing a seriously flawed feature and not implementing it, the latter is better. Dueling would be something seriously flawed considering how the game has not been balanced around 1vs1. The game developers right now can’t even balance the current skills for the current game modes, they would never be able to balance more skills (which we have been told are incoming) for all the current game modes plus 1vs1.

Mustafa.7684:

Many players love this because we currently do not a place where we are able to invest our time and get a decent return on investment.

It’s kinda sad that today there are so many people playing a game to get rewards, instead of playing to have fun. I guess that’s the MMORPG community.

I’m happy we have one less farming spot in the game. There are others left, but then again Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Vayne.8563:

People who want to bring up three year old videos to try to call the devs liars are simply wrong.

Of all your arguments against the Manifesto, this has to be the worst of them (which is saying a lot). ArenaNet kept a lot of Guild Wars players interested in GW2 by telling us what the game would be. The fact they stated their plans 3 years ago (which is very little time, as far as game development goes) doesn’t mean they have carte blanche to completely ignore their statements now. If anything, the difference between the Manifesto and the little things that were changed but no one cares about is how the details can change, but the design philosophy – what ultimately is the core of the game – should not have changed, no matter how long ago said philosophy was stated. It did change. In many ways, ArenaNet managed to both break a promise and tell its players a lie with the Manifesto.

(And your third worst argument, for the records, is how GW2 would be as close as possible to the Manifesto with current technology. If ArenaNet stated they would do more than they could possibly do, it’s their fault for overstating their own abilities.)

Travel to Lion’s Arch is free. Travel to other cities is only free if you go to LA first, and that one has all the services available in the other areas, so there aren’t many reasons to endure one more loading screen.

Travel to our character’s starting city should be free, and direct (unlike the detour we need to take in order to go to Lion’s Arch for free).

I wrote a (as usual) very long rant about it in this topic. But I would effectively change the entire personal storyline, so we have 5 different stories (one for each race), following different structures (instead of always “Chapter 1: Racial Story”, “Chapter 2: Racial Story 2”, “Chapter 3: Order Recruitment” and so on), with different ways to end (everyone would be part of the fight against Zhaitan, but each story would see it from a different point of view). More details in the link.

Phantom.8130:

i mean, sure, they could add a new tier of gear, so that everyone ends up on the same page and has to redo all of the content, but that’s pretty much just asking for trouble at this point.

It could be done.

We know Ascended armors and weapons will be introduced. We know they can be crafted, but that they will require new crafting materials.

Make dungeons give those crafting materials in exchange for tokens. Each dungeon would give a different one, for different recipes. They would, of course, be non tradeable. And limit tokens to once per day, instead of using the current system.

We would then give people a strong incentive to play through different dungeons in the game, going through multiple dungeons per day in order to craft a full set of armor plus weapons.

EDIT: not that I would want this to happen – I don’t really like playing in the dungeons – but it’s a feasible way to implement what the above poster suggested.

Vol.5241:

As of this post, the farm is available on YAKS BEND

Wel, I guess that quote is one we won’t see again any time soon ;-)

Cue massive complaints due to the nerf to the Cursed Shore Arah farming in 3…2…1…

A quote from the interview:

Quote

Hence, the Personal Story which, Johanson says, didn’t quite work out the way they had wanted. “I think, in particular, there’s moments in the end of your personal story, where it starts feeling like it isn’t about your character, that it’s about someone else and you just happen to be tagging along.”

Nice that ArenaNet understands that. But it’s an old problem in their games – in Factions we had Mhenlo, in Nightfall we had Kormir, in GW2 we had Salad Boy, and later in the Living Story we had Ellen Kiel.

One more:

Johanson tells me that the art team is in the process of creating a bazaar’s worth of new clothing and armors.

Nice. I hope those are available not through RNG, but rather being sold directly.

The community is Guild Wars 2 is not made by people who want to play to have fun; those players are usually told to go back to single player games.

The goal in the community here, doubly so for the dungeon community, is to farm, grind and exploit. Ergo, what matters isn’t if a dungeon is fun or not, if it has unique mechanics or not, and so on – what matters is the time spent:rewards ratio.

Right now, CoF gives the biggest reward for the time spent, among all dungeons. If ArenaNet nerfs it, people will go to the next best dungeon. ArenaNet could nerf everything, but they won’t, because they are afraid their players would leave.

GeoX.5046:

i am simply stating that 400 crafting is pretty much worthless aside from making legendary weps, and that basically the money/time/effort you put into getting a lv 400 crafting skill is really just for making the gifts for a legendary

You are wrong.

You are failing to see the obvious answer in front of you – the goal behind the crafting system is to craft items, not to make gold. It’s not worthless, it’s simply a way to make the gear with the stats you want, with your choice among a list of available skills, without needing other players.

That’s what crafting is, and that’s what crafting should be. It isn’t a ticket to free gold – it’s a tool to make the gear you want.

Zacchary.6183:

And the same could be said about Guardians, Rangers, Mesmers, Engineers, Thieves, Necromancers, Warriors, Elementalists, Hunters, Paladins, Rouges, Death Knights, Priests, Druids, etc. because they all have their own strengths. Those who use those strengths effectively will cause those classes to seem overpowered.

Not really.

The issues I’m talking about aren’t just a matter of a given profession being overpowered or underpowered. Assassins in GW1 were given one overpowered skill – Shadow Form – and were left with incredibly underpowered and disfunctional mechanics, as if one overpowered skill were enough to fix them. The same thing happened with Ritualists and Signet of Spirits, and the same thing happened with Paragons and “There is Nothing to Fear!”.

Meanwhile, warriors in GW2 don’t have that kind of issue. Neither do Guardians, or Thieves, for the records.

The answers to imbalanced you described – learn to counter, wait until the meta fixes itself, and so on – don’t apply to the issues those GW1 professions had. Your solutions don’t account for everything. ArenaNet needs to change the game once in a while, in order to fix issues that are big enough.

Zacchary.6183:

I’m talking about balance in general. You however are not and not only are you off topic, you are derailing this thread.

See, you are not talking about balance in general. When you say:

Zacchary.6183:

So, the next time you scream for balance, go back and figure out how to counter it first.

…You are talking about PvP.

When you say:

Zacchary.6183:

The story usually turns out as the original poster recently getting outplayed by something, perhaps multiple times in a row, which irritates them enough to make the player log onto the forums and post their complaints.

…Not only are you talking about a very specific situation, you are also talking about why should ArenaNet not nerf something that people claim to be overpowered.

That’s not balance in general.

Ergo, your entire premise is flawed. You are working from a very simplistic point of view. You are ignoring PvE. You are ignoring situations in which a profession can be both overpowered and underpowered. You are doing all that, and asking people to give up on having a balanced game.

That’s not going to happen.

Balancing the game is far more complex than that. It’s not only a matter of nerfing what’s overpowered or buffing what’s underpowered. It’s not just a matter of making sure everything has a counter. It’s making sure there are multiple viable builds for a given profession, that all professions are desired in multiple aspects of PvE (ideally for different reasons), that no profession has some mechanic that simply doesn’t work with everything else in the game.

I was using assassins in GW1 as an example. The same example could be told using ritualists, paragons, dervishes, or the PvE only skill Ursan Blessing. Your post fails to account for any of those scenarios. You are actually focusing, whether you realize it or not, on why ArenaNet should not nerf thieves.

Zacchary.6183:

This thread is about balance in general. Not another “dis kitten OP” thread. Nice job derailing and enjoy your infractions.

You aren’t a moderator… Nor is it against the forum rules to disagree with you.

Let me repeat myself: you have a very narrow view of balance. You appears to think that “balance” means listening to people when they say that a given profession who beat them is overpowered. That’s far from being all of balance – there are massive issues in PvE that rise from a lack of balance in that game mode, issues that go beyond a simple “profession X is overpowered”/“profession X is underpowered”.

You can’t ask people to throw away the idea of balance due to some concepts that only really apply in PvP.

SoLeciTO.3490:

i Want to test my builds with my friedns, so when i go to take a castle in WvW i already know how my build will behave.

So in order to take a castle in WvW, you are sure you are going to fight players 1 by 1 like in a duel?

Zacchary.6183:

3 out of 4 definitions scream, “You got your kitten whooped”. It’s something the original posters of those topics almost never takes into account.

Cool story bro, but what does that have anything to do with the example I mentioned, about assassins in the original Guild Wars? I had an assassin character, they were extremely overpowered in a given moment of the game, yet it was not something good for me – even being an assassin player – nor for the game as a whole. What do your statements have to do with that kind of scenario?

IMO, nothing. You are writing a reply to a topic saying “Please nerf thieves, they are overpowered in PvP”. That’s part of balance – but not all of balance, and not even most of balance. Balance isn’t just a matter of nerfing or not whatever people think is imbalanced in a 1vs1 PvP scenario, but rather something that deals with fixing what is broken in the entire game.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

So, what would happen if you wanted to listen to music, but someone was blaring a TV in the same room? Would you put on headphones, or would you flip the breaker in the basement cutting off all power to the house?

Cutting off all the power in the house would do more than prevent me from listening to the guy blaring a TV. It would, incidentally, prevent the guy from watching TV.

Turning off my slider only means I won’t (ever) hear music people play. It won’t prevent them from playing or listening to their own music.

Ergo, your metaphor doesn’t really apply here. The main difference is that the fact I’m muting you doesn’t prevent you from doing anything with yourself, only with me. Why are you even concerned about this?

SoLeciTO.3490:

is all about ego and selfish no sense points of view

Indeed, that’s what dueling is all about.

AgentofChaos.1539:

All I wanna do is play and quest and reach the level cap.

And when I ask if it’s possible, what I really mean is “is it easy.” I’m not really interested in a challenge when I play an MMO, just something fun to pass time. It was possible in WOW and plenty others

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t exactly have “quests”… And it’s very different from WoW. Also, reaching the level cakitten omewhat meaningless in the game – if you go back to a low level area, your character will be scalled back in level as well, so you won’t be that much more powerful than you were before hitting the cap.

Are you sure you wouldn’t feel better playing a more traditional MMORPG? There are a lot of them on a free to play model right now.

MightyMicah.7451:

I’m sorry. Explain yourself. I thought his post was very relevant. You can’t just say it “is about only a very small aspect of balance” and then not back up that statement.

Try reading the rest of my post?

Panda Shepard.1248:

Just let there be an option to be turn off dueling requests and not see duels happening. I don’t care otherwise.

Definitely this. I don’t want to go to a beautiful area of the game and see two random guys there fighting each other for kitten. I would rather not have dueling in the game at all, but if it is introduced, keep it deep down all the way in the Mists, very far from the open world.

Zacchary.6183:

I know people look at my siggy and say, “Omg this guy is a thief” and start disreguarding anything I say because this thread somehow translates into me complaining about my class being UP. I also understand that there are people who will see my name and think “Oh its the trolling thief forum warrior again.”

You are a thief player giving arguments as to why you think ArenaNet should not nerf your profession.

I’m sorry. I truly am, because I don’t think you have even realized it yourself. But you have taken a very broad subject, that of balance in a game, and reduced it to a very small circunstance, that happens to be exactly the state of thieves in WvW (and a bit in sPvP). Most of what you mentioned, if not all of it, does not apply outside that specific scenario.

Let me give you an example: Assassins in the original Guild Wars. Assassins were the profession introduced by ArenaNet to fit the “rogue” archetype; but the issue is, said archetype is basically the ganker, a role that simply does not work in PvE. As expected, the assassin was a very weak profession in PvE, outperformed in nearly everything by the others.

What did ArenaNet do, then, to fix Assassins? They gave the profession invulnerability – Shadow Form -, something that actually goes 100% against the “rogue” archetype, and that also happened to be incredibly overpowered in PvE. This had a massive number of issues:

• Shadow Form assassins became required when playing a lot of the content in the game with PUGs. For large parts of the PvE content that people actually played with each other, Shadow Form was used as a way to make the game easier, or theorically easier even when the assassin actually made it more time consuming, not less. This greatly reduced variety in groups when playing PvE with other players.

• Assassins who wanted to play in PvE with a build other than Shadow Form were nto accepted. This greatly reduced variety for the assassin players themselves when playing with PUGs.

• The Shadow Form assassin was the most efficient farming tool in many areas of the game, allowing people to make small fortunes by using this. Needless to say, this didn’t exactly help the game’s economy.

• And, ironically, assassins were still completely broken outside of Shadow Form. This is by far the worst issue here – ArenaNet’s single fix to assassins was to give them Shadow Form, instead of trying to fix everything else that was wrong with the profession. This means that everyone not using Shadow Form still had the exact same issues to deal with – finding yourself unable to use a lot of your skills due to them being sequential combos that required hitting the same enemy in order to progress through the chain, for example, only to see that any half decent group of heroes would kill your target before you could use even the second skill in your combo, and the AI was not smart enough to allow you to tell them to go kill an enemy while you dealt with another.

This was, in many ways, a massive imbalance in the original Guild Wars.

What does your post tell us about this situation?

Nothing.

Balancing for 1vs1? This is PvE, 1vs1 is irrelevant. Players should learn counters? This is PvE, the enemy AI won’t suddently learn a counter to Shadow Form nor will it become dumber to deal with any other assassin build. “Cyclical Imbalance”? That’s as relevant to the scenario I described as “banana pie”.

I could give multiple similar examples using the original Guild Wars – Ritualists and Signet of Spirits, Paragons and “There is Nothing to Fear!”, dervishes and their overhaul, Ursan Blessing, and so on. Issues that had significant impact on all players of a given profession through the entire story of the game. And all issues that your post has absolutely nothing to do with.

Everything you said – is about only a very small aspect of balance. It’s only about the specific kind of scenario such as thieves currently are in WvW. It doesn’t cover most of the game, or why balance is required for all of Guild Wars 2.

So, let’s end this idea called “Balance”? No, let’s not. Due to reasons that go far, far beyond what you covered in your post.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Mouhappai.5406:

I have a genuine question for those who set the volume slider to off forever; what is it about in-game street performers and musicians that make you hate them so?

I don’t hate them but here is why I turn the slider to mute:

1. Many of the people that think they play good music don’t.
2. Many that are fairly decent at it play the same song over and over.
3. Often I just don’t like the songs being played.

Definitely the above. When I want to listen to something, I will listen to that something. When I don’t want to, I won’t. I have never seen someone in game asking people if they wanted to listen to their music – they just played, even when they were not trying to be annoying. Now, we can choose to listen to their music or not, just like we can choose to listen to a music or not in the real world.

Pure Heart.1456:

You could liken The Chinese factory workers to be the hardcore dungeon speed runners and farmers, or you could liken them to the average gamer casually dipping into a bit of everything over and over—their wealth varying accordingly, but they will never be as rich as the TP flippers (Steve Jobs).

You could liken the farmers to a potato and the TP flippers to a tomato, wouldn’t make your point any more valid. Saying the average game is “dipping into a bit of everything over and over” is a rather strenuous argument that doesn’t hold much weight; negating how a Chinese factory worker is almost the perfect example of MMORPG grind is just nonsensical, considering how obvious that metaphor is.

I do agree with your point about the TP players, too bad they are basically exploiting other players to get rich. If not for that, they would be better than the grinders.

Arkham Creed.7358:

Erasculio.2914:

Arkham Creed.7358:

You’re delusional. I’ve been tested as above average intelligence, have a natural “gift” for science and mathematics, and a college education. Know what I do for a living? Wait tables at a Mexican restaurant. The real world doesn’t reward skill; it rewards prestige.

Of course, the real world rewards more than skill; it rewards beauty, influence, status. But it also rewards skill. There are multiple examples of this – a look at Time’s list of influential people shows many examples of skilled people who have been rewarded for it.

I think the point is that the world rewards real skill, not self delusional skill.

And how many of those people got their start in the last twenty years? The real world used to reward skill.

You didn’t read the list itself, did you?