Guild Wars 2

Simplicity.7208:

If I made a post all in caps with “kitten” for every third word. I guarantee you wouldn’t read it either. I don’t read rage posts. They’re not full of constructive criticism. Constructive criticism is organized, grammatically correct, emotionally neutral, and usually with a tldr; version at the bottom capitalizing on key points. If OP goes back and revises his post to be more calm. I certainly will hear him out.

There aren’t any caps in OP’s post, and not that many ‘kittens’. It’s also pretty odd that you can even comment on his negative tone if you’re proudly not bothering to read it in the first place.

tl dr; Even incoherent rage posts (which this thread is not) contribute more to discussion than posts like yours complaining about them.

(Of course you may argue I’m complaining about your complaint post but I’m only doing it in an attempt to keep the discussion constructive, which – your post aside – this thread mainly has been. Ironic given your alleged complaint that OP wasn’t being constructive :p

I don’t mean to be personal btw, but hopefully you can see why a post proclaiming something you haven’t even read is not constructive is unhelpful and why I’m defending the OP here.)

I really like dungeons, but agree that this would be a great use for badges, and would sort out the overpricing of dungeon runes – particularly for WvW only players who need the runes and have an excess of badges.

Simplicity.7208:

If it makes you mad…Don’t play it. No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to play this. It is a game. In fact, it’s a game where you can do whatever you want, moreso than any other game I’ve ever seen. If you desperately want the back skin. Buy it on the TP. If you don’t have the money, farm one of the other mini games that are out. Regardless of win or lose, they do give money that’s comparable to CoF p1 farming. If you want the Gnashblade mini, do the other achievements. Pretty simple.

PS. I am not reading your block of text. I don’t have the time or patience. I can already tell what it says for the most part anyways.

This is a fairly asinine post. You’re saying that if someone doesn’t enjoy something they shouldn’t point out ways they think it could be improved? Why be so against legitimate criticism?

And even less impressively you’re not even bothering to read his points to see if they’re reasonable or not, but you’re going to respond anyway?!

To the OP – seems like fairly reasonable criticism. Hopefully it will help the devs fine-tune future content (although personally I hope future content contains far fewer minigames – am exhausted by them now!)

I have to confess, I saw the words “Null Field” under the word “Mesmer” and went into full panic mode…

“OH GOD, THEY’VE NERFED NULL FIELD TOO – IS NOTHING SACRED?!”

Took me a full few seconds to release this was actually… a buff?! I didn’t know how to feel.

Admittedly the rest of the classes got a tonne of changes – mostly buffs – but still, not being actively directly nerfed felt really good.

It’s the difference between getting a pay cut, and getting a pay rise that’s too small to cover inflation, but psychologically it’s a huge improvement.

\o/

A lot of nonsense in this topic. As usual people who can’t beat mesmers are whinging for nerfs (even totally insensible ones like limiting illusions by type) rather than just learning how to beat them.

Mesmers were beatable at launch. Since then they’ve been nerfed, nerfed, nerfed, nerfed, nerfed and nerfed again. And now they’re still beatable… in fact, even more so!

In a final effort to get something constructive out of this topic, how about the OP plus that other guy who complained about mesmers post some videos of them losing to some phantasm mesmers?

We’ll give you some advice on what you’re doing wrong and maybe you’ll realise they’re not overpowered you were just making some mistakes.

(yes, yes, I know that will never happen because everyone who politely requests nerfs is a perfect player and only loses because other classes are overpowered… but we can dream of a day when players are willing to realise that perhaps the fault maybe lies elsewhere and you don’t need to request a nerf everytime you lose a fight!)

Agreed with the majority here – this is an awful idea.

Not really much point responding as obviously ANet would never actually do this and it’s clear that no matter how many people point out the flaws OP will continue his one-man crusade, but there you go!

Anyway OP hope you have fun in WvW regardless of the gear system

Arganthium.5638:

I think none of you are getting the point here. According to the numbers, demand hardly changed whatsoever. It did go up, certainly, given the higher value on buy offers, but only by a few silver. On the other hand, sell orders went up nearly fivefold. Somehow, in all of the rocks that you guys call brains, what happened is that demand went up significantly because of the new armor, and then went down after a few hours. And yet, the fact of the matter is that buy offers went up by so little, that this explanation is not only ridiculous, but it reflects an absolute abyss in place of what could have been even the slightest amount of economic knowledge. It’s getting hilarious, really. Somehow, in all of your minds, you are convinced that it could not have possibly been one person buying up the majority of the dyes; that’s just absolutely impossible. And yet, somehow, it’s as if all of the sellers were controlled by some kind of Hivemind that told them all to increase prices significantly while the buyers’ offers hardly went up, in some sort of massive unconscious cartel agreement.

It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense whatsoever.

Hypothetically, if a large number of users went to look at a particular dye and lazily clicked ‘buy now’ because they all suddenly had a reason to instantly want that dye, what do you think would happen to:

a) The buy offer price
b) The sell offer price
c) The number of buy orders

I put it to you that you’d see a) and c) remain completely unchanged and b) would go up, which is the exact situation you described.

Whether or not that is what actually happened only Mr Smith can know, but it’s up to you which explanation you think is simplest.

Personally I think that a super-popular un-dyeable skin being released is a great explanation for lots of people buying similar dyes on the same day, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a large amount of those people hit ‘buy now’ rather than putting in buy orders that would struggle to be fulfilled due to the sudden spike in demand.

In fact it would be shocking to me if that hadn’t happened.

Up to you what you choose to believe though, like I said only Anet can know for sure.

StinVec.3621:

Your thinly veiled statement of opinion is actually a personal attack. I will only ask this once. Stop attacking me. I’ve stated my request just as many others have, that dungeons and fractals scale down for the number of people in the party, even if that party is one person. You have now delved into attacking my views and reasons for playing this game and are now telling me to go play another game. No, I will not. Cease your attacks.

I can assure you it was not intended as a personal attack of any sort.

While I would be very happy to back up everything I said (and perhaps to point out that you may have somewhat overreacted in interpreting a disagreement of opinion as a personal attack) I’m very happy not to continue the discussion as you have requested.

Hope you have fun doing whatever you enjoy and that the rest of your day is lovely.

StinVec.3621:

I did not request it to be made into only solo content. I requested that it be made solo-friendly. You can have your group content as well. If I found dungeons to be fun in this game I’d be doing them…I love dungeons in many MMOS, but they’re terrible in GW2, in my opinion. I just request that this lore related content should also be just as available to those not interested in sharing their adventures and experiences with other people as to those who enjoy group content.

… but pretty much -everything- is lore-related content. If I run CoF I’m seeing the lore of the Flame Legion, etc etc. They can’t make a single player version of everything they make, and how else would they make lore-related content solo friendly?

Not to mention that if they somehow did add solo content as well you’d still have other group content you’d miss out on, so you’d always have lore related content you’re missing?

I think that if you’re “not interested in sharing adventures… with other people” you might be playing games in the wrong genre and can’t really complain when parts of the game aren’t accessible to you.

Arbitrarily applying the rule to yourself that you won’t play with other people means you miss out on content, unless you’re willing to solo it all. I saw a video the other day of a thief soloing fractals – if you don’t want to play with people then that option is always open to you.

StinVec.3621:

I would love to have an interactive story (similar to our personal story or a living story) that reveals and allows us to experience all of this lore (Abaddon and Thaumanova) firsthand…but not as a fractal where I need to experience it with other people if I want to experience it at all. Make fractals solo-friendly, or make this lore available outside fractals for solo-content only players.

This entire thing just disappoints me.
I vote for: Lore Content Via Soloable Instances
Not: Required Group Play To Experience Lore Content

I’m sorry, but this is an MMO.

If everything in the game was single-player content this game would die fast. The most fun I (and I imagine the majority of players though I’m open to stats on this) have in this game is playing with my friends.

Solo content lacks the excitement and wonder of exploring something together which is the unique feature MMOs provide. If you want solo content there are a vast number of single player RPGs that will cater to your tastes, but let’s keep MMOs multiplayer!

I’m not opposed to there being some solo content, but the vast majority of endgame content needs to be multiplayer for the health of the game.

Dungeons, fracs, guild missions, WvW – people play all of these together, over and over. Personal story you do once and forget about it.

I don’t mean to come across as antagonistic so apologies if the tone is harsh, it’s not meant to be. Out of interest why would you play this game at all if you don’t like playing with other people? Surely you can’t just endlessly do world completion and personal story..? Haven’t you ever met other people you like to play with?

Envy.1679:

Player Character.9467:

Envy.1679:

Player Character.9467:

The point it to not make racials OP.

Some racials definitely have room to be buffed without becoming op atm.

Racials can be used by any class so their capacity for synergy with every single build in the game has to be considered before making them stronger.

… ok

i think youre missing the point.

some racials are very weak and do not have any synergy with any class whatsoever at all due to them being much much better options available for every other class.

I’m afraid you’re missing the point. Racials have too many possible combinations with other classes to ever balance them properly. As it is Radiation Field is really strong with certain builds, giving an unfair advantage to asura when playing a class vs class duel.

If they buffed more racial skills this would be even worse. Racials are meant to be slightly weaker to avoid problems like all rangers being charr because of some crazy synergy with ranger traits and charr racials.

They’ve specifically said they don’t want people to build around racial skills, they’re just there for a bit of flavour.

Eldrake.1543:

This is probably the worst minigame I’ve ever seen in a MMO. Disgraceful.

Someone’s not done enough Moa Racing…!

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Hyung.6140:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s basically the same game. GW1 and GW2 are connected by lore. GW1 HoM is in fact a part of the GW2 map, since it’s the same Tyria we’re talking about. So the counter point of “this is a different game” is invalid.

You do realise that it is quite literally a different game?

I bought GW2, have never played GW1, and currently can’t… without going out and buying another game. Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 are different games, and saying they’re “basically the same game” doesn’t make it so.

Clearly they’re similar games, made by the same company and set in the same world. But they’re so obviously not the same game that claiming they are makes me think you’re trolling (although the whole “give me a precursor now pls” thing is another hint in that direction I suppose!)

Having never played GW1, I can understand why you don’t realize that it’s the same game world. The Hall of Monuments was made so you could transfer your past achievements to the current GW2 world, 200+ years in the future. The day that Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 has a continuous lore that’s connected by a mechanism that allows you to transfer your scores between games, then your argument would hold some value.

Er, I did explicitly say that it’s the same game world. But it’s a different actual game. This isn’t some debatable point. They are different games.

I agree with you that they’re set in the same world. I also know that ArenaNet promised to link the games via achievements from GW1 giving rewards in GW2.

I’m not debating either of those things.

I’m just pointing out that they are different games, which is one of those things you can’t have an opinion on because it’s a measurable fact. Saying “they’re basically the same game” doesn’t make it so.

(To be clear since we possibly may be using varying definitions for “different games” I’m claiming that if you gave people a massive pile of retail game boxes of GW1 and GW2 and paid them to sort them into piles of the same game you would end up with two piles – one of GW1 and one of GW2. Nothing more complex than that – and clearly anyone doing that job wouldn’t ask “are these games linked by lore and by a meta-achievement system?”)

Regardless of this pointless diversion, I’m quite happy for Anet to reward people for achievements awarded in their other games. It’s a good business practice from their point of view and is nice for the players.

But the fact they’ve done that doesn’t make them both the same actual game.

Hope that’s all clear and that you’re having a lovely day!

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s basically the same game. GW1 and GW2 are connected by lore. GW1 HoM is in fact a part of the GW2 map, since it’s the same Tyria we’re talking about. So the counter point of “this is a different game” is invalid.

You do realise that it is quite literally a different game?

I bought GW2, have never played GW1, and currently can’t… without going out and buying another game. Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2 are different games, and saying they’re “basically the same game” doesn’t make it so.

Clearly they’re similar games, made by the same company and set in the same world. But they’re so obviously not the same game that claiming they are makes me think you’re trolling (although the whole “give me a precursor now pls” thing is another hint in that direction I suppose!)

Surely giving only one precursor to the GW1 master race is not going far enough..?

I think we should also get Anet to reward us for our difficult achievements in even more games. I’ve got a 100% save file in Super Meat Boy which has to be worth at least an underwater precursor, if not a Dawn.

Trolling aside, this is an insane suggestion. You’ve already been rewarded in GW1 and GW2 for these achievements. You have an inbuilt 500 point advantage in achievement points, a bunch of titles, cosmetic items and minis.

Just enjoy it

Grimthagen.6019:

Hyung.6140:

Not sure if you’re talking to me or not, but I’m not sure any of that is applicable to what I’ve been saying.

It’s not about ‘feeling superior’ – I’m just going to miss the friendly competition with a couple of guildmates.

I’m also not screaming about it… I believe I’ve just made a couple of level-headed posts pointing out that I’m a little sad a small source of friendly fun has been removed as it’s no longer close to a level playing field between us (us being people I actually know and joke with about achievement points).

I’m definitely not saying people shouldn’t be rewarded for their GW1 achievements. I’m sure they’re very difficult and everyone who has them should be very proud.

I agree with you that it’s bad that people who start now can’t get a whole load of past achievements, in the same way that it’s bad that people who’ve never played another game can’t get everything in this one.

If it’s genuinely a problem for you, I don’t see why you and your friends couldn’t come to an agreement that, for sake of your AP competition, the HoM points simply don’t count. If it’s a friendly competition I’d imagine you can set your own rules and standards.

Of course! I expect I’ll just tease them forever for their dishonorable cheating by getting points from a completely different game ;p

I guess I’m just someone who likes a level playing field… I think if you buy a game you should be competing (on all levels, even unimportant stuff like achievements) on a level field with all other players, regardless of whether or not you or they have played other games in the past.

And the same goes for temporary content – I think that should be available to all players too, even somehow for latecomers.

I don’t think that should be particularly controversial, but some people seem to disagree.

I’m sure some will whine and QQ about these changes, but not everyone who disagrees with the changes is whining and QQ’ing… I think some of us have a reasonable point

VOLKON.1290:

It’s also sad that my kids will never see Elvis in concert live. Such is the way of a living story though.

Heh, I’ll email the Universe developers and ask them to reinstate temporary content if you will!

Frosch.7809:

It ruins the fun for some people because they think those 500 points are the reason why they can’t feel superior to those who have them.

I already said so, what about people who started playing GW2 recently and can never catch up in AP to you, or never get a Fused weapon?

People who have HoM points or GWAMM title are being rewarded for considerable effort in a game that is linked to this one. This was announced years ago, long before GW2 started. And unlike temporary content in this game anyone can still get achievements in GW1.

But i think some people will just not get it and scream “unfair” if it’s something they do not have but others do.

But hey, people can always go back and look at their WoW achievements which they did while others played GW1.

Not sure if you’re talking to me or not, but I’m not sure any of that is applicable to what I’ve been saying.

It’s not about ‘feeling superior’ – I’m just going to miss the friendly competition with a couple of guildmates.

I’m also not screaming about it… I believe I’ve just made a couple of level-headed posts pointing out that I’m a little sad a small source of friendly fun has been removed as it’s no longer close to a level playing field between us (us being people I actually know and joke with about achievement points).

I’m definitely not saying people shouldn’t be rewarded for their GW1 achievements. I’m sure they’re very difficult and everyone who has them should be very proud.

I agree with you that it’s bad that people who start now can’t get a whole load of past achievements, in the same way that it’s bad that people who’ve never played another game can’t get everything in this one.

displacedTitan.6897:

Tell me how them getting another box hurts you… I will wait.

HINT: It doesn’t

I think I’ve pretty clearly said that it doesn’t!

The sadness for me is that it ruins a bit of casual fun between friends comparing achievement points, that’s all. A very small thing, but still a negative very small thing!

Hope that clears up where I’m coming from

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I don’t really see what’s unfair about this. You are more than welcome to go play GW1 and get those points. They are still available for you to earn if you want to compete.

I think the point is that it’s a whole different game. Presumably people were already rewarded in GW1 for their achievements there – why do they need to be rewarded twice, and in a whole different game to boot?

I don’t own GW1, and had enjoyed casually racing with my friends to see who could get the most achievement points. Now suddenly they’re pushed 500 points up, a gap I’m never going to realistically close (we have around 8000 points now so all the easy pickings are gone!).

I wouldn’t mind if they went off and did a bunch of stuff in GW2 and raced ahead of me. I’d be impressed and pleased for them.

But the fact that they’ve been rewarded (again) for things they did in a completely different game is a bit sad, and has removed the fun of that race for me.

I don’t want to give the impression I’m incredibly bothered by this – like I said this was just a little bit of extra fun, and it won’t affect my life too much at all. It’s just a pity that that extra bit of fun has gone!

(to those saying I should go buy GW1 and grind out the achievements there… that’s really not an option – why should I have to grind out stuff in a different game just to have a level playing field with my friends in this one? There’s plenty else to enjoy in this game so I’ll just enjoy all the rest, but I’ll no longer enjoy the friendly achievement race and that’s disappointing.)

It kind of makes me sad that a few of my friends I compete with for fun have leapfrogged me due to things they did in an entirely different game that I’ve never played

Not taking anything away from your GW1 achievements, but presumably you got rewarded for those already in GW1. Not sure why they should carry over at all, but 500 points seems massive for a whole different game, especially given that after hundreds and hundreds of hours in WvW I have a total of around 70 achievement points to show for it :p

darkace.8925:

- Less “click F a bunch of times” busywork.

For me this would be the biggest improvement.

Have tried playing a couple of times in the last 24 hours – each time I get the ‘Play’ button greyed out a lot on the char select screen, and often get kicked within the first minute or so with “could not contact the login server”.

If I survive past that it seems to work ok, but it’s been very unstable.

Anyone else seeing this?

Ayrilana.1396:

Once those that love to post builds (Kyliaa/Pyro/etc) start doing so, things will settle down.

Pyro is one of the biggest critics of the patch, however. Sure things will settle down, but it won’t change the fact that we’re making the best of a bad lot.

Paifas.3196:

Carighan.6758:

Aeolus.3615:

Best way to balance is to make all players use same build.

And i was thinking quiting from guardian(game demands 2h weapon now).

Well, we have at least four prominent builds now based around four quite prominent features of Mesmers:

• Shatters
• Phantasms
• Interrupting
• Stealth

The jury is still out how viable speccing around Confusion is now, with the added damage from Retaliation and Torment as the main pressure while Confusion delivers the spikes.

But anyhow, that’s 4-5 builds. Not bad comparing other MMOs. Not perfectly ofc, far from, but also not bad for such a young game.

4/5 builds? I’m sorry but I cant agree with that and i cant stop sharing my unhappyness about this.

• Shatters -> nerfed BF
• Phantasms -> completly butchered
• Interrupting -> this will never be viable, the interrupts dont reset the CD and its near to impossible to interrupt a race like asura because of the low visibility.
• Stealth -> one elite skill and one 3 secs skill. Yea, I can see you make a build aroud this.

One more thing, retaliation? You are a LIGHT armor you are not supposed to take damage, you are suposed to avoid that. So how the hell can you see retaliation as a good source of damage? Oh and Tourment i already explained why it sux.

Yeah, sorry, but I have to agree with this as well. Of those four builds only one is close to complete, the other three are crippled in at least one way.

Carighan.6758:

Bloodgruve.6038:

Build diversity? Every build now has 25 fewer points to work with because of the Illusionists Celerity change. All has been said already. My Mesmer is sidelined until something else is done.

Blood~

Or you simply play without that trait. It’s not necessary, and builds work mighty fine without it. Ofc it’s a very strong trait, but hey, that’s why it’s 25 deep into one tree.

Technically it’s 20 fewer points!

And also the trait isn’t inherently strong. If the cooldown on all our skills was 24 hours this trait wouldn’t be considered strong, the cooldowns would be considered (very!) weak.

Pre-patch mesmers would fairly universally say they felt underpowered without this trait, which is why it was seen as reasonable that it was only 5 points. Some would say we were forced to throw away 5 points just to reach a reasonable starting point, so we only had 65 points to play with!

Of course that’s all debatable, but the trait in-and-of-itself is neither weak nor strong as it’s all relative to our cooldowns, which we’ve both agreed before are problematic.

tl dr; please stop referring to the trait itself as powerful as it depends on other factors. Arguably the trait forms a baseline by which mesmers have previously been judged.

Carighan.6758:

It’s the eternal FOTM-Train, Nadeen. Every game has it. It also has a nice confirmation bias, because people go “It’s always my class getting the PvP nerfbat! ;_;”.
Well yes, duh, if you keep going to the currently considered-overpowered PvP class, sure it will be!

I think I said this to you earlier today but there a lot of people who have played exclusively (or almost exclusively) mesmer who are upset with these changes.

In fact I’ve seen far more of them complaining than I have of any FotM class-switchers!

Generally when we’ve talked about these changes we have tended to agree on the substance but disagree on whether or not we like them, so I’m not bashing you, but I don’t think you should tar all the people who don’t like it as class hoppers.

ArcticRed.3068:

Carighan.6758:

You still haven’t answered how you know the skill-level of your opponent.

Neither did he.
He asked me how i knew that the player was better or worse than me….
Then he went on to say, and i quote; I expect to still lose to better players (and occasionally to worse ones) and to beat worse players (and occasionally better ones).

So ill just say this, it is quite obvious when you are playing a skilled player by their reaction times, their correct use of CC breakers and CC tools. Their correct use of dodges and heals. The way they don’t use rotations but react to what is happening at the time. That my friend is how you can tell.

The fact that this needs explaining to you speaks volumes

The difference is that I wasn’t claiming to know the skill level of any individual opponent. I will win and lose a large number of fights, and of those I expect that sometimes I’ll have lost to poor players and sometimes I’ll have beaten better players.

You were claiming that you were losing specific 1v1s to “bad players” pre-patch and now that’s not happening any more.

So I was wondering how in the 20ish hours since the patch you’ve identified these bad players that used to beat you but you are now beating, and how you know it’s the patch that helped.

Obviously this only counts for phantasm mesmers since shatter spec is mostly unchanged. Were you losing a lot to phantasms? How did you try and counter it before, and how is that easier now? How do you know it’s because the mesmer nerfs have made the class ‘balanced’ and not because of the many buffs to necro we all know have happened too?

Of course I’d be even more interested to know how you know “same gear” is now more balanced. It’s impressive you can judge an opponent’s skill level so accurately during combat with all the factors that are included, but judging the rarity and stats of their gear is pretty godly. I’m guessing you take careful note of all the damage numbers you receive from each skill and do a reverse analysis in your head to figure out what gear they must be running? Really impressive stuff.

I get what you’re saying about looking at how players play (of course that’s how everybody judges their opponents) but it’s not like mesmer before was some faceroll easy burst class where you could get lucky and kill a better opponent, or just spam ‘2’ on enemies and get a reasonable amount of kills that way.

All the mesmer nerfed builds certainly took skill to execute previously, and now they’re harder to execute.

Glad that makes you happy, thanks for coming here and sharing!

PS I’m not claiming necros are op, or mesmers are up, or anything of the sort. It just seems like you can’t possibly have evidence that phantasm mesmers are still viable or that ‘same skill’ fights are balanced now, but that confirmation bias is leading you to think so because you’ve beaten a few mesmers since the patch.

ArcticRed.3068:

lol
You gotta love these threads.

Half you guys want to reroll because you have been brought more in line with other classes. You are still the best WvW class in the game, hands down.

Same skill level, same gear and mesmer wins, the only difference is that now bad mesmers can be killed by classes like Necro for instance.
I was in WvW today and yesterday and for the first time ever i can actualy kill mesmers that are worse players than me, the same or better players still beat me….. maybe i should go start a thread in the Necro section " we can still be beat by same better skilled players – are you gonna re-roll?"

LOL Grow up for chr!st sake

… how are you determining the skill level of your opponent?

I mean that seriously. It’s not like you can tell just by looking at them how skilled they are.

The point is that the class is now less fun to play. Not because it’s harder, but because you have these options:

1) Go cookie cutter shatter build
2) Have longer cooldown on lots of your skills. Less options during combat = less fun.

I expect to still lose to better players (and occasionally to worse ones) and to beat worse players (and occasionally better ones).

Rerolling is not a search for more victory, it’d be about making your leisure time less unfun.

Personally I’m going to try and find a build that works but it’s not unreasonable to be sad that a combat style you enjoy has been made a lot less enjoyable.

Carighan.6758:

Hyung.6140:

This is it exactly. You could debate endlessly whether they were needed, and I would say no – mesmers were very much beatable, you just had to know how to counter them. Some would say yes.

But what isn’t debatable is that these changes definitely reduce fun.

Well, duh. Nerfs to a class make it less “fun” to play for players of that class, and more fun to play (well, to play against) for players of other classes.
That is… a given. In competitive gaming at least.

Balancing as a whole cannot exist if we are to never decrease how much “fun” a class is, because for us, fun is largely winning.

I remember an article early after SC2-release which talked about how if the game is balanced, you know because everyone thinks it’s not fun & not balanced.
The issue is that a 50/50 win/lose balance, to us humans, feels like we “lose too much”. It’s a perception issue, but generally this leads to the crux that players will always have to feel that their side is “too weak”, when it is actually balanced.

Nerfing is never fun, but usually unavoidable and has to happen a lot in multiplayer games. The idea that buffing instead is a better idea only sounds good until you try to use it.

But really, how would you nerf without “reducing fun”, if apparently the loss of power is exactly what’s causing the reduction in fun?
You very rarely see a player state “Geez, thanks for the nerf, it’s much more fun to play this char now that I’m hitting 30% weaker.”, no matter how warranted the nerf was in the first place. In essence, no player derives fun from their own class being balanced. However as someone fighting that class, their nerf is your quality of game increase because you no longer feel marginalized. In short, their nerf is your “more fun”.

While you are indeed correct that nerfs reduce the fun – usually – it’s utopian to think this can be avoided.

Well, no, for me the fun is the combat. If they’d nerfed damage numbers I’d still have fun – all my skills are available to use, I can use my own skill in using them to maximise my potential, I’d just hit less harder.

Nerfing cooldown lessens the fun of actually playing your class.

I’m not talking about winning at all.

For example: nerfing all skills cooldown to 10 minutes vs nerfing all damage to 10% of its former value… one literally removes all the fun as it reduces you to doing nothing, the other still allows you to play, albeit with the frustration of hitting like a sponge.

Make sense?

I well understand the SC2 comparison and am used to the idea that balance means around a 50% win rate against players of your skill level. I’m not complaining that these changes mean I’ll lose more fights (though that will be frustrating!) I’m complaining that I have less options both during those fights (my skills are on cooldown for longer so I have less to choose from, and choices are what makes games fun) and outside those fights (fewer viable builds as all but a couple of builds got nerfed).

Hope you see what I mean when I say these changes reduce fun now, and can imagine how they could have nerfed these things in a way that doesn’t reduce this fun.

kyro.3487:

But, both of the builds I run in PVP and PVE were not affected by anything they changed.
…

I get your point, but I don’t think ANET is trying to force you into anything.

This is exactly it. Virtually all builds were nerfed except a few that stayed the same – and those few were pretty strong to begin with.

Now do you see why it feels like we’re all being forced into the same pigeonhole?

Carighan.6758:

Though, one addendum to people in general:
If you rerolled to Mesmer because it’s such a powerful PvP / WvW class, did you honestly suspect to not take nerfs, especially where it hurts the most? The idea of FOTM-rerolling is stupid exactly because you’ll end up always being on the class taking the worst nerfs each patch, simply because you keep rerolling to the classes which are scheduled for a nerf.

I’ve not seen anyone in this thread talk about how they rerolled to mesmer. Personally I’ve mained mesmer since pre-release and fell in love with the mechanic and the combat, only to find the style I like in particular get nerfed to hell in a balance patch I was excited about for the “increase in options” it promised.

(seriously, 8/10 weapon skills nerfed if you run sword/focus/greatsword)

As for the whole “games are not for you” argument, not only is it a little needlessly personal and patronising, for me it’s precisely BECAUSE Guild Wars is a pleasant bit of escapism after work that I’m so annoyed.

If the director of my favourite tv show came round to my house and deleted all the best scenes from my DVDs I’d be rightfully annoyed. Guild Wars is a bit of fun escapism for the evenings, and now it’s been made less fun for me.

Even worse, merely expressing this fact leads to patronising comments about how maybe you shouldn’t play MMOs, or pointlessly childish accusations of “crying” (not from you, but you will have seen this in other threads, mainly from players of other classes).

It means it’s impossible to have a mature conversation about how your leisure time just got made worse by an outside force beyond your control! ;p

So. I’m going to play around with a few other builds/classes, though I feel way too invested in my mesmer to properly switch mains, and I hate the shatter style we’re being forced into.

Overall I’m just left feeling genuinely sad, like my favourite footballer asked to come visit me, got me excited to meet one of my heroes, only for him to kick me in the stomach and then leave.

You still want to like him, but really you feel like you ought to find a new team to support or maybe just stop watching football altogether and make some use of all that new free time :p

Edit: just saw this

LordByron.8369:

2 questions/quotes will answer
Were they needed?
Were they FUN?

This is it exactly. You could debate endlessly whether they were needed, and I would say no – mesmers were very much beatable, you just had to know how to counter them. Some would say yes.

But what isn’t debatable is that these changes definitely reduce fun.

Waiting for cooldowns isn’t fun.

Having less options in fights as you have fewer skills off cooldown isn’t fun.

Into the Void being reliant on luck and the mistakes of your enemy (I HOPE he moves back into range by the time this 1s cooldown is done and doesn’t try to run away!) isn’t fun.

Interrupt builds are also pretty luck dependent for much the similar reason – it’s almost impossible to reliably interrupt even in 1v1s and if you have more than one enemy to keep track of it’s definitely not possible except by luck. Luck isn’t fun.

Being pushed into just one spec isn’t fun.

I think you get my point…

Carighan.6758:

Well, I like the changes. Sure, much is nerfs. But really, we’ll need a lot more nerfs than just these ones.

…

The sky is not falling. :P

But to re-iterate the most important point: We need a LOT more nerfs than just these if we want to make the remaining traits / abilities useful without overpowering the class. A lot more.

Quoted for… er… I honestly have no idea. I’m sure we should listen to this guy though because he posts a lot on this theme.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Summary
These changes accomplished nothing positive for the mesmer class. The fact that they were made in the name of build diversity is insulting to every intelligent mesmer player. These changes, far from providing build diversity and flexibility, have significantly lowered the diversity of the mesmer class and restricted the flexibility our builds have. This is far and away the most devastating and most ill-conceived patch since this game was first released.

This couldn’t be better put.

TooBz.3065:

vapour.2916:

This is going to be nice seeing all of the fair weather Mesmers loudly taking their bandwagon boat home.

This is a game played for recreation in people’s free time. It is not a job, it is not a religion, heck, it’s not even like rooting for your local sports franchise, as games are mostly non-territorial. We are all fair weather gamers. If a better game came along or if this one isn’t fun anymore you quit.

If the game isn’t fun and you don’t quit, you may have a problem.

Absolutely right!

Anyone so stupidly devoted to their class that they’ll keep playing no matter how stupid the changes is clearly not worth listening to.

I look forward to playing GW2 when I get home from work. I read the fofrums in free time, chat to friends from my guild, come home and do pretty well in WvW/sPvP and enjoy the rest of the game. I love(d) my mesmer.

Now the playstyle I enjoy has been essentially removed. What am I meant to do?

If I was rewatching a series of my favourite tv show, and the directors came to my house and removed my favourite character I’d be fairly annoyed. If the owner of my local bar removed all the chairs I’d be fairly annoyed.

Now the developers of my favourite game have removed the way I like to play… and I’m meant to say “no worries, I’m not a fairweather mesmer/bar fan/tv show fan – I’ll just keep on going no matter what they do”?

It sounds like you just want to feel superior to everyone else, but really the more balanced attitude is to say “hey, this is my leisure time and you’re making it worse to no-one’s gain”.

Have fun doing whatever you decide to do mr vapours, and enjoy your now happily-emptied boat!

Literally baffled by the attitude of a few masochist mesmers who seem to think they have some loyalty to the class regardless of what happens.

I swear if there was a nerf that all skill cooldowns were now 10 minutes and each time you shatter you get a physical punch in the face someone would post about how great it is that this will get rid of all the fairweather mesmers and now Only True Mesmers will be left.

Seriously this is an awful set of changes. From Into the Void, to IC, to Blurred Frenzy there is a set of utterly unwarranted changes that force us into one style of play and a limited couple of weapon sets.

For a patch that allegedly promoted build diversity this is worse than a fail, it’s a charge in the opposite direction.

Sure we now have a potential interrupt build, but the interrupt mechanic is inherently not something you can build around. And in return we’ve lost virtually every build except shatter and had our main MH weapon needlessly nerfed.

I can get the other classes crowing about it, but why mesmers are sitting here talking about how great it is I’m completely failing to get.

Seriously, this is something I do in my free time for fun. If the director of my favourite show deleted all my favourite scenes from my dvds I’d never watch them again. Why we put up with this nonsense in games I still don’t get.

I’m so sad, and it’s all the worse because I was so excited by the blog post that promised great things for this patch.

Thanks anet – you made one of your biggest fans sad after he got home from work tonight!

\o/

Nabrok.9023:

Here’s the thing … the match system hasn’t really changed.

What did change, instead of the system saying “your rating is X”, it says “your rating is somewhere between Y and Z”.

As we play against more varied opponents, the system gets more confident in the rating and the difference between Y and Z will get smaller. Arena-net could also make some adjustments to the calculation to bring the range down quicker.

This means, once the range is small enough, we will be playing the same servers most of the time (as before), but unlike before the colors will swap more frequently and we’ll see the occasional server jump up or down every now and then.

Someone who understands! <3 \o/

Deniara Devious.3948:

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

No, please don’t.

Even if matches were balanced one week WULD guarantees they would be imbalanced the next week.

The old glicko and new random+ glicko the system has given unfair match ups for many EU servers entire year 2013!

E.g. our server hasn’t won a single match up. We have ended #3, last in our tier, for week after week. Yet we are matched against EU #1 and #3.

I am not claiming that WULD is optimal. Every system has problems, but this is very easily understood system.

WULD would be much better for us. At least every second week would have realistic chances for a win. Every 2nd week imbalanced match up is much better than 5+ months of imbalanced match ups in a row.

This is more due to the weakness of Desolation compared to your rating than limitations of the system itself.

Give it some time to drop your rating and hope you get matched against a few lower servers, before long you’ll be rocking it up between T2-4 and having a lovely time.

Probably.

Either way, the travails of one server doesn’t mean we should condemn all servers to an eternity of awful matchups. WULD wouldn’t be “one good week, one bad week” it would be endless bad weeks.

It works for the football league because they have more than three teams so the churn is tiny, but in a league of three you only have ONE member who stays. The one who comes up will get destroyed by the one who comes down (and likely even by the one who stays, given the relative population discrepancies across all the tiers) so you’d have a tiny server, a medium server and a huge server in virtually all matchups.

(all relative to each other of course).

tl dr; no, this is an awful idea and thankfully anet have publically said so for exactly these reasons.

Please don’t. This would guarantee imbalanced matchups week after week as teams from two tiers apart are thrown together.

The current matchup system is exciting, as we don’t know who we’ll fight week by week. Sometimes we get matched up against ludicrously overpowered servers like Piken/Riverside (as a rank 19 server that’s pretty high up), sometimes around our level, sometimes a little lower. Either way we have fun and it’s not stagnant.

One up, one down would be guaranteed awful matchups without even the possibility of a random surprise matchup.

No thanks.

Carighan.6758:

Hyung.6140:

If the cooldown on all our illusion summoning skills was 2 minutes (go with me here) then you couldn’t say this was a high level trait… it would be an outright requirement and as such should be low in the tree.

Exactly not.
If it’s a “requirement”, it needs to be merged. Traits need to be optional things, or there’s automatically no diversity.
Not that this works for any class in any MMO, but one can try to get closer to the optimum at least. :P

I think we actually agree here. My point is that if it’s a given that the skills are going to be underpowered in the first place and you need a trait to make them useful, that trait needs to be low in the tree if your goal is build diversity.

We both agree that the skills shouldn’t be underpowered in the first place.

I’m just saying Anet can’t have their cake and eat it – underpowered skills with a trait that makes them worthwhile buried deep in a tree does NOT mesh with ‘build diversity’.

I’m NOT claiming that requiring this trait in the first place is good design.

But we’ve all pretty much adapted to needing those 5 points in Illusions to not feel like we can’t get enough illusions out on non-shatter builds.

Carighan.6758:

But to be fair Hyung, that trait is one of the reasons our traits are so limited (the other is Deceptive Evasion).

Moving it to 25 might highlight the issue, although the trait feels more placed as a high-level trait.

If it’s such a big issue though, remove + merge baseline. Functionally the trait is no better at 5, it’s still too strong compared to our baseline power. Hrm… maybe reduce all Clone/Phantasm CDs by 10%, and make the trait (still at 25 points) a -10% one.

I’ve heard you say this a few times already!

And yes you’re right, the cooldowns on our illusions are too long, which is why this trait was virtually a requirement for all our builds.

If cooldowns WERE being reduced this would be less disappointing (although still not helpful for build diversity, their alleged stated goal) but there’s no way they’ll reduce cooldowns along with this change as it’d make shatter mesmer even more powerful.

Anyway, the point of my post wasn’t to discuss whether or not we’re under/overpowered before or after this change. It was just to state my utter disappointment at the fact that this goes entirely against their state aim of diversity, which had previously had me excited.

Oh, and I’ve heard this argument a lot that it “feels like a high level trait”… which doesn’t make sense, these things don’t exist in a vacuum. If the cooldown on all our illusion summoning skills was 2 minutes (go with me here) then you couldn’t say this was a high level trait… it would be an outright requirement and as such should be low in the tree.

The cooldowns we have now are much closer to making this trait a requirement than a nice-to-have, which is why so many mesmers took it in their builds – I think we all thought “ArenaNet must expect us to take this trait, that’s why our cooldowns are so long”.

Given our class mechanic destroys the things we produce we need to have a way to produce them rapidly!

serialkicker.5274:

Patches are seriously something you shouldn’t be looking forward as a mesmer.

The saddest bit is I was SO excited when I read the blog post about increasing build diversity.

“Finally!” I thought. A lot of interesting build options! It looks like they’ve heard us loud and clear and are going to give ALL classes some variety.

Since then all info about the patch seems to indicate they never read their own blog post, because it looks like 99% of us are going to be going 30 into Illusions forever.

Unbelievably disappointing.

Still hoping it’s all an elaborate troll and the real patch notes are going to contain amazing build diversity options… but not holding out much hope.

I’m loving necro atm. Depending on how bad these changes turn out to be I’m seriously considering switching, as I hate being forced into a style of play I don’t like.

Luckily the style Anet are pushing onto necros is actually a fun one!

Will spend a while trying new builds after this patch but the leaks aren’t giving me any confidence at all that build diversity for mesmer is going any way but down.

TooBz.3065:

I don’t think anyone is really saying this helps build diversity. I think some people are saying that we have 5 more points because there’s no reason to go into illusions.

Kind of like looking at a plate full of garbage and saying “at least the silverware is nice”

Not in this thread admittedly but I just saw this on reddit. This kind of idiocy is everywhere!

http://puu.sh/3nvp4.png

Worst bit is there are people genuinely arguing that this HELPS build diversity!

You can argue forever whether it makes us under/overpowered, but arguing that it promotes diversity is just madness.

30 in Illusions is borderline mandatory now, which is just sad.

athuria.2751:

It wouldn’t even be that big of a punch of it was something that only hit Phantasm recharges but IC affects so much more (Phase Retreat, iLeap which remember is buggy as kitten, Mirror Blade, etc), so it punches our main mechanic and a lot of our weapon’s utility by stretching them out. Anyone using Decoy (Or Mirror Images, if anyone not a shatter build does that) just got a longer CD on it as well.

Yep, I absolutely agree. It’s more than a straight up damage nerf. 5 points in Illusions was always a complete necessity for mesmers, now 25 points in Illusions is a necessity.

Yay diversity! \o/

athuria.2751:

shimmerless.4560:

It probably wasn’t intended that you’d get fantastic uptime on phants without speccing into Illusions. My real worry is that Celerity is still too integral to the class because almost all of our weapon skills and utils are tied to clones.

If only the Illusions line wasn’t otherwise by and large useless for Phantasms. Even Haste is a give or take since it doesn’t even work properly on a lot of them. \o/

Exactly. There’s a reason most phant builds only go 5 into Illusions. Putting 25 into Illusions basically means it’s not a phant build anymore…

Chaos Archangel.5071:

athuria.2751:

“The Minor Adept trait “Illusionists Celerity” has been made the Minor Grandmaster trait and the other Minor traits have been pushed down.”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGHHHHH

At first I read that and said “Oh thats not so bad.. no one used the speedboost anyways.” (Compounding Celerity)

Then I stopped, did a double-take, and kitten ed myself. =[

Yeah I read that as Compounding Celerity first.

This is massive. Rip ALL mesmer builds that don’t go 25 into illusions

So much for increased build diversity – build diversity for mesmers has just been crucified.

TooBz.3065:

Well, as long as it’s good for PvP I guess that’s all that matters.

It’s terrible for WvW. You can’t use it to pull back fleeing targets, they will be out of range before you can catch them. It was already difficult, now it’s impossible.

Yup this is the exact scenario that bothers me about this Into the Void nerf.

It’s our only pull, and now we can’t use it to stop enemies escaping – which is surely the main point of pull skills in the first place.

All because a few tPvP premades abuse it from stealth. Why not just make it so you can’t use Into the Void if you’re stealthed? That wouldn’t break it in WvW/PvE but would prevent this PvP problem that’s the alleged reason for the nerf.

Rest of the patch notes are interesting, and I’m looking forward to playing with some interrupt builds, but this TC/ItV nerf is awful.

To be honest there’s no reason it should be difficult to reset your ability points at all. Why not just be able to reset them along with your traits, and for a similar price?

There’s nothing fundamental about wxp abilities, it’s crazy that they’re so locked down, and there’s no advantage to making them expensive to reset either.

If they HAVE to do it via the gem store then fine, that’s preferable… but that would be a needlessly greedy move and I have a higher opinion of ArenaNet than that!

Richard Nixon.6573:

Actually, I’d bet money that the temporal nerf is because of the episode of State of the Game where someone asked when it’s being nerfed and said the meta revolved entirely around it.

Regardless though, the nerf makes some sense for pvp, where an aoe interrupt is pretty strong.

Sigh. This is what happens when all the sane people stay quiet just playing a game while a few vocal idiots stir up a cry-storm about this or that.