Guild Wars 2

Glov.5342:

Galphar.3901:

Mada.5319:

The build diversity is the same in both games.
GW1 had more skills, sure, but the majority were underpowered and never even used in the first place.
GW2 has less skills, but makes up for it with traits and expanded gear compared to gw1. If two builds used the same skills/utilities but had different traits/gear, those two builds would be played very differently.

Additionally, gw1 and gw2 were made by completely different people. Don’t let the ArenaNet name fool you. Almost everyone who set the foundations of GW1 had left the company by the time GW2 got into the picture.

Uhm, no. In GW I could choose to use my pet or not, choose to run traps or not, I could even choose which skills I used to DPS. GW was waaaaay more diverse in builds than GW2, and that’s just Ranger. Each profession had 5-10 builds they could run and still do well(even in HA/TA/RA). Yes there were “prefered” builds for PvP but you still had 3-4x the builds you could choose from.

Technically you are right, but you also forget that, while GW1 probably has around 500 skills, AT LEAST 60% of those were complete garbage, and some classes (Paragons, to be more specific) had ONLY 2 or 3 viable builds.

Sure, I miss scythe rangers/assassins, E/Mo Ether Renewal healers, splinter barrage ranger, crit barrage assassins, healer necromancers, etc.

but, like it’s been said, GW2 makes up for it due to traits and that every single skill is useable (good is debateable)

60 % were complete garbage in your opinion.

Maybe because they were situational, and you did Not Know what situation to use them in?

Maybe because you did Not Know what other skills synergized with them? Guild Wars more than gw2 was a game about synergy.

Maybe you were just less effective? I do not say this to be insulting. I had no problems with the skills in Guild Wars. And the fact is, that I do not remember “60 % being complete garbage.” I Just remember 80 to 90 % of skills being situational.

Situational is not useless. Just useless is the wrong situation.
Guild wars required players to do more homework. Either online or by studying what skills said they did, and How they worked with other skills..and builds.

I can see How that might be a turn off for some players. I can also see How that may discourage some players from ever exploring the situation when skills would be effective.

That doesn’t mean that the skills are garbage, just garbage for players that don’t know when and how to use them.

Vayne.8563:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Vayne.8563:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Over the past couple of years (ever since build templates were added to the game), I have saved around ~500 builds in my template folder, 90% of which are monk builds.
And I am a pvp player first.

Fact is GW has a gozzilion builds you can opt for (though admittedly, you were/are more restricted in pvp, depending on your team and their general level of skill and playing habits, yet the diversity was still insane on both micro and macro level), and more you could create from scratch when feeling inspired or just wanted to farm a certain zone/mob group/bossie.

Out of curiosity how many of those builds are still viable?

From a pve standpoint all of my builds in GW are still viable for what I built them to do.
I have 320 builds. Some are single situation builds. Some are idiot proofed for Heroes.
Some are enemy specific, ie destroyers. Some are for solo.. some for VQ, some for VQ in 4 member group areas. I have NM builds for goofing off, and HM builds. RoJ is awesome in NM, in HM.. not so. Meteor the same.

I have builds simply for DoA to synergize with LB skills. Builds changing up 2nd profession. on and on.

And I have idiot builds so I can run 8 heroes with pets, because it is amusing. Not optimal at all.

If you want to blather about Meta only, well Meta is Meta, in all games, and always restrictive and undiversified.

I cannot see how anyone can shrug off the fact that GW has far more builds and variety.

That’s odd, because when I cleaned out my build folder I found about 80% of my builds, while perhaps viable, where no longer optimal due to changes that had been made in the skill sets. Of course, no changes have been made for a couple of years now, but prior to that, I had to adjust builds and after I did I found the old builds to be far more meh.

Just because your builds stop being effective after a while does not mean that others have the same issues. Your experience though relevant for you, doesn’t answer the question of the thread. Did Guild Wars’ game mechanics lead to broader build diversity.

Players prove over and over and over to you that " yes it did." and each time they do, you try and find some excuse to say " well, that didn’t count." Now it’s " Well, My experience doesn’t match yours so your experience doesn’t count."

I think your posts are saying more about you, and your willingness to actually conduct a dialogue with an open mind, than about Guild Wars or Gw2.

Vayne.8563:

Nerelith.7360:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think saying these things is insulting to anyone. Put it this way. In order to really get the most out of Guild Wars 1, you really had to think about what you were doing. It meant familiarizing yourself with a lot of skills. But skills kept changing and the meta kept changing and the build of the month kept changing. You could go away for a couple of weeks, and have to learn things all over sometimes. That’s great for people who play every day, not so good for people to come and visit. It’s not an insult. It’s a fact of life.

Even less insulting is the comments on balancing. Anet bit off more than they could chew with the old system. There were always problems trying to balance it. They’ve admitted as much themselves. How is agreeing with them insulting?

I actually agree with you. I think they went too far. Anet has a habit of over-reacting to things in my opinion. The complains about Prophecies was that the pace was too slow and it took forever. So they came out with Factions. Where the pace was too fast and you could breeze through the game in a weekend. It was an overcompensation. They did pacing somewhat better in Nightfall, which was somewhat between the two. It was like a pendulum swinging.

I sort of expect the same thing to happen here. We’ve seen the swing to too simple and there’ll be an update at some point (maybe the first expansion), where the pendulum swings the other way. It might be one of those “big” projects they’re working on.

But I don’t think being honest about the limitations of the old game to appeal to a wider audience due to complexity is particularly insulting. Not everyone is looking for complexity.

The topic under discussion is… Guild Wars is it more diverse. The implication raised was that no, it wasn’t more diverse, which to many of us Guild Wars veterans seems to be an interesting position.

Now the OP tries to say that because BOTH have " as many optimal builds" that Gw2 is as diverse as Guild Wars.

To me this is nonsense. I have explained why. Now you want to derail the issue to " Gw2 made the game less diverse than Guild Wars, and had awesome reasons."

That is not the topic of this thread.

Someone that feels Gw2 is as diverse has basically said that the game many of us enjoyed playing was " full of useless skills." And that that is why gw2 is “as diverse” because it has the same number of " optimal " builds.

As I said…Nonsense. If one defines " Optimal" as" The absolute best for a given situation" then they obviously have the same number of “optimal” builds..since that = " the best build for a given situation" and that will be 1. By the definition of “Optimal”

MY position has always been that Guild Wars had more viable alternate builds that lent themselves to play…where content could be experienced, without having to play “the meta”.

THAT is the topic. Does Guild Wars having more viable alternate builds, that could be enjoyed " for fun" without having to " do the meta" or " only do the optimal"
provide more divergence in playstyles , so that If you have 2 Necromancers, could you have each play a totally different playstyle and still be viable? I say that since each necromancer had anywhere from 5 to 9 sub-classes, and each combination had hundreds of skills, and 9 " trait" lines…. THIS meant that each necromancer could play totally differently from one another and STILL be viable. STILL complete content.

Not whether the devs had reasons for making gw2 less diverse.

Seems that you agree with me, Gw2 is less diverse. WHY it’s less diverse is a topic for another thread.

Well according to that logic this thread should have been closed. Guild Wars 1 had more build diversity. Discussing why it’s a good idea to or not to have that is perfectly on topic, or close the thread. Those are pretty much the only options.

I agree. Close the thread.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

Zardul.3952:

we lose the Scale of Guildwars with all these WayPoints..

if we had mounts we would truely see how big and wide this world map is.

no more silly instant teleporting waypoints.

make people use mounts and stop being lazy.

But I already know it’s kinda large. I’ve run around the map on a couple of characters. Took a while.

If you don’t want to use waypoints you don’t have to. You can just run around as you want.

Also as the world is all instanced how annoying would it be to mount up ride to the next map sit through the loading screen, mount up again, ride on again to the next map, sit through another loading screen, rinse and repeat. For me that would get pretty tiresome pretty quickly.

THIS. I hear many mount proponents say " If I had a mount the world would seem larger, as I ride on my 150 % speed boost mount."

Umm…. I can see that riding a 150 % speed boost mount makes the world seem larger thkittening waypoints….but using waypoints is voluntary.

If what a player wants is to experience the world of tyria without waypoints, they can choose to stop using them. It just seems that they want it to be their way…for everyone….. even people that are happy to use waypoints.

second thing….. if what they trully wish to experience is a larger tyria…doesn’t walking ( and the game doesn’t need to be changed to take advantage of the walking mechanic… look at that.) make it seem larger than a speed boost mount?

Actually if you first click the / key, you can switch from default running….to even slower walking. Imaging how large the world would seem then?? All without a single change to the game, all without imposing mounts On people that do not wish to see them.

They need to be consistent.

psyckos.6893:

Does anyone remember Star Wars Galaxies? It had:
Mounts
Player Housing
Player ran economy
Crafting
Pistols
Rifles
Swords
Two Handed Swords
Hammers
Armor
An emulator years after it shut down
[Edit] Dancing….a whole profession for dancing

The relevance of this post? None. The relevance of this thread? ……

I Loved Star Wars Galaxies. I was actually a Master dancer/Image Designer. One of the few games i didn’t play to “Play” but Roleplayed quite a bit. Purely social.

Eric.6109:

I too would like a mount (a doylak, perhaps? ) that has a movment buff, like +25% run speed. I know that there are buffs you can get from traits or skills, but for me it’s a pain – as a warrior I get a +speed buff when wielding a melee weapon – but it takes away a spot for an adept trait which I would rather equip with something else. So yeah, I think mounts have a place in GW2.

And why would having mounts mean you need to remove waypoints?

These reasons have been given and repeated In Mounts threads #1- 12,542… do some research.

Behellagh.1468:

Anyone else notice that this it the 12th thread titled “Mounts”?

Really? I Kind of Lost count. All I Know is for the past 2 years, we get a new Mount thread a week, and especially after a content update…or a new LS episode is unvelied.

Then they are all merged, ALL the same arguments pro- and con- crop up… and the devs are given BOTH sides of the issue. And after much due consideration by the devs they continue their policy of no mounts.

take that for whatever meaning you can get out of it.

Nerelith.7360:

ProtoGunner.4953:

Dusty Moon.4382:

ProtoGunner.4953:

FFXIV has moutns and waypoints. So the waypoint argument is null. There are areas with a lot of contested waypoints. A mount with 100% speed boost would be awesome for travelling.

WvW-counter argument: just remove it from WvW or give a mount to everyone on entering WvW.

Mounts have nothing to do with WoW. Mounts are pretty standard in many high fantasy games. Just see your argument: I don’t need my Horse in Skyrim, be cause there is fast travelling. Stupid argument.

I just feel a very negative vibe concerning mounts in the GW2-Forum. There is no real counterargument, I assume they fear a WoW-ization of GW2. That’s all.

There are plenty of counter arguments, but pro-mount people ignore them.

1. LORE – there are no mounts in GW lore.

2. We already have speed boosts and don’t need more of them.

3. Mounts have not been designed, so they would be a lot of work and people have interests in other things (Guild Halls, another profession or 2, another Race (come on Tengu!!).

That is plenty of reasons.

People that are pro-mount say:

1. It would be cool.

2. Need speed boost (we have that already)

3. other games have them.

Those are the big reasons and not very viable at that.

1. Lore is something that develops over time. Do you think Akira Toriyama though how Dragon Ball would develop as he wrote the first few books? Besides that: they could ride a Dolyak, it’s possible physically.

Nowhere in the Gw Lore does a person use a mount for personal transport. It is the Lore. I Know you want the Lore to change. Because you want mounts. So the Lore needs to be changed because you want mounts? Or maybe we suddenly have an archeological dig…( uh oh..sounds Like WoW Archeology…) And we see a stone carving of a charr riding a moa. So suddenly it’s ok? The technology of the time, makes mounts totally useless.

2. Not every profession has the same speed buffs. Some have easily accessible signets, others not. It’s not really ‘fair’.

Whether you feel it is not fair that every speed boost is not the same for every profession, no one ever said it has to be fair, this is the decision made by Anet because they feel it keeps the classes either balanced, or fits the theme they feel the profession should have. For whatever reason, this is Anet’s decision. If you like it awesome, if you don’t you have to either accept it, keep complaining hope they listen..( they may not.)…or move to a game that has mounts. There are a TON of games with mounts.

3. Granted. I’d rather have another race or profession. It’s not a high priority.

Ditto.

Just for clarity, you want a mount with perma speed boost? How much speed boost?

Ashen.2907:

Saying, “most reasonable players,” aren’t opposed is saying that some reasonable players are opposed.
Your definition of reasonable contradicts Merriam Webster. Keep in mind that the suffix is “able”, not a conjugation of is. Your definition would mean that essentially everything is reasonable.

Even saying Most Reasonable players would not be opposed is a stretch. You have no idea what most reasonable players would object to. Unless you had a survey done, you are assuming. You are right about one thing only. SOME reasonable players ARE opposed. Some are not. But whether MOST are opposed or most are not, you don’t know. I don’t know. The difference is, i know i don’t Know. You assume, and thing your assumption is correct.

1) They might very well add to the clutter. I would certainly not want them usable in combat.

I would not want clutter anywhere. Combat, or non-combat. I would not want clutter in towns or outside of towns. Your responce seems to imply that some clutter is acceptable, as long as you get your mounts. Mine is the very opposite..Any clutter is reason to continue to have zero mounts…even cosmetic ones.

2) On average in other games ? Mathematically so ? Am I wrong in assuming that you would not use a mount, particularly one with clipping issues ?

Depends On How aggrieving the clipping. And the opportunity cost of NOT using that Mount. This is not about me. This is about reasonable players. Which might or might not include me.

3) I would certainly expect that some effort would be put into optimizing mounts so that they do not increase lag.

This does not mean that optimization would be effective. Especially on lower end machines. Would it be fair to tell players playing on lower end machines that it sucks to be them, but some players wanting mounts come before them? Or just expect them to upgrade so some charr can see himself ride a Moa?

4) Are you assuming collision detection for, “friendly,” forces ? Right now a swarm of Charr couldn’t block my access to an NPC. I would definitely be opposed to mounts having collision detection when other characters in the game do not.

There are games where the graphic of some mounts is such so that the NPC cannot be seen, so therefore it is hard to click or select them. Has nothing to do with collision. Sometimes you cannot click what cannot be seen.

5) Remove Asurans so that those of us who do not like them do not have to look at them ? Do not add any more armor or weapon sets to the game because there will be people who do not like or want to look at them ? Give immersion players veto power over all character names so that they/we do not have to look at some of the lore inappropriate names ? There is nothing that could ever be added to the game that will not be disliked by some players.

Ridiculous argument. No one is asking that parts of the game the developers put in be removed. We are saying we are perfectly ok with the developer’s decisions to NOT include mounts. And One of them comes from us not wanting to see them. Just because you dislike that we dislike mounts doesn’t mean you get to impose them on us. You want to say " +1 to mounts" ans we say “-1 to mounts.” This is one of the reasons.

6) Plenty of other games have magic, swords, bows, dragons, etc. Guess those should not be included in GW2 either.

Except that almost all of those are already in this game, and we knew they would be when we bought the game. We knew there would be magic, swords, bows, dragons, etc. We also knew there wouldn’t be any mounts.

Now if any of the above were missing from the game and i KNEW they would be before I bought the game ( similar to how i knew it would not have mounts)…I would have decided then…. whether to play this game or another.

There are plenty of games with magic, if this game lacked magic, and I knew it would lack magic, I would decide whether I wish to play it without magic, or play something else instead, since there are Plenty of other games with magic.

Fact is, I might treasure the uniqueness of an MMO without magic, especially when so many of the rest seem to all have magic all the time. For example, I would Not want magic In a game that is sci-fi based.

Same here. There are plenty of games that have mounts, Gw2 is playing without, and I feel that since it is pretty unique… that it should be left as is, without mounts. Players that bought this game expecting mounts..made a bad purchase.

Ashen.2907:

Nerelith.7360:

it is possible you missed all the Mount threads i read

My apologies for being unclear. I was not referring to responses but rather to the starting topic/OPs because it seemed that was what the individual I quoted was saying.

Irrelevant. Just because you did Not read them in the original post doesn’t matter. They came up in the subsequent thread. So simply because the original poster, did not say " remove the waypoints" or " we want perma-speed boost " is unimportant. It came up in the subsequent conversations In the threads. So are part of the thread.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I did say “topics” not “original posts” for that very reason, actually

It gets bogged down quite a bit, and the dissenting opinions get loud and messy. In general, I think most reasonable players aren’t opposed to mounts . . . as purely cosmetic things for fun.

You’d be wrong. I am very reasonable, and against purely cosmetic mounts.

Even without speed boost:

1. They add to screen clutter.
2. They on average have crappy clipping.
3. They will add to lag.
4. They will afford griefers an oppurtunity to Block access to The NPC’s
5. Players that do not want them in this game would be forced to look at them, because some players want them.
6. There are PLENTY of other games that have mounts, they can play those.

And saying " I am sure that Anet would do a wonderful job" doesn’t mean that

A. They would do a wonderful job.

or

B. That those of us that do not wish to see them, with or without reasons. Should be forced to see them Just because SOME players want them.

Again, there are plenty of games that have mounts, if you must ride a mount, there are tons of games that would afford you the opportunity.

So just because YOU do not think a reasonable person would object to purely cosmetic mounts doesn’ mean a reasonable person will not object.

This is simply a way to …discount the objections that players that do not want mounts have. By saying :

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

In general, I think most reasonable players aren’t opposed to mounts . . . as purely cosmetic things for fun.

basically you try to paint any person that objects to purely cosmetic mounts as unreasonable, even when they have reasons. Which is the definition of reasonable." has reasons"

You do not have to agree with their reasons, or even accept that their reasons are rational, for them to be reasonable. You do have to accept that they have reasons, even if you disagree with them.

Ashen.2907:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The thing is, most of these topics don’t ask for purely cosmetic mounts. They ask for the Waypoints to be taken out and mounts put in to replace the fast travel we have.

Over the last two years I have seen more threads just requesting that mounts be added without any reference to removal of waypoints. For the most part the people requesting the addition did not seem to have put sufficient thought into the consequences of their request to need game mechanic justification such as the removal of WP.

Recently that seems to be changing.

Whatever the case, as much as I am not opposed to adding mounts, I am opposed to removing waypoints this late in the game.

Strange. In every Mount thread I have read, many players ask for either..

1. Waypoints be removed.
2. Mounts have perma-speed boost greater than 150 … some want 185 some over 200 %

or ..

Both.

it is possible you missed all the Mount threads i read, because both of the above are prevalent in all the mount threads I have read.

It usually works Like this..

Pro-mount Player: I think we should have 150 % perma-speed boost mounts.
Anti-mount player: Well, we have waypoints we do not need 150% perma-speed boost.

Pro-mount Player: Remove the waypoints then.

Anti-mount player: Also, we have temporary speed boosts, any type of permanent speed boost would be Unbalanced…

Pro-mount Player: They can remove that as well.

Anti-mount: I sincerely doubt they are gonna remove either, having Put them in to begin with.

Pro-mount: Oh? show me where they said they weren’t going to ever remove waypoints, show me where they said they would never revamp temporary speed boosts to allow Perma-speedboost mounts…show me where Anet said they were never going to include perma-speed boost mounts…. I am sure if they really Pit time and energy into it they would do a wonderful job with perma-speedboost mounts."

Yes I exaggerate… but this is How it sounds from this side. And yes…when someone is told.’ we do not need perma speed boost mounts because of waypoints/" they have replied." remove the waypoints"

luxymonsteri.1078:

Are you REALLY sure you want mounts in a game that has small maps and loading screens every 5 minutes? They would literally add nothing to the game except 10 more loading screens when getting from point A to point B. GW2 is not tailored for mounts at all.
No mounts. Go back to wow. Or wildstar. I don’t care.

See this is How I feel. It’s interesting because I also happen to play World of Warcraft. With it’s mounts.

World of Warcraft needs mounts, I happen to enjoy mounts On World of warcraft. I do not go to World of Warcraft advocating they add waypoints, and remove their mounts. I enjoy that game for what it is. A game with mounts, flying etc… because mounts makes sense for WoW.

I Likewise accept that mounts make no sense here. So I enjoy this game for what it is.
The developers have too much on their plate to waste time or energy on mounts.

Mounts aren’t simply fluff. They are unecessary fluff that also happens to take time and energy from needed adjustments. Profession Balance, skill balance, trait unlocks need to be revisited , and made more relevant..etc…

All this comes before mounts. Once all of this has been addressed, maybe…. the thought of mounts can be addressed. maybe.

The thing is, with a waypoint system, mounts make zero sense. They make the small world of tyria even smaller. And suggesting " Get rid of waypoints " is a Non-starter.

So you have to accept purely cosmetic mounts, but that comes with crappy clipping, and added lag.

Good luck with that.

Ashen.2907:

Nerelith.7360:

it’s Not me, it’s Anet. These " I want Mounts" threads have been posted for the past 2 years. How many mounts did they add in that time?

2… Purely cosmetic mounts…In 2 years.

it’s not me that decided " No mounts" it’s Anet.

So you are welcome to imagine that mounts are going to be implemented …" any day ..just you wait and see.’ all you want.

I am pretty sure if Anet felt Mounts were an awesome idea, they never would have implemented waypoints. They have waypoints so they do not need to implement mounts.

If they were going to, they would have by now, or made an announcement that they were going to add them by now.

Taking Anet’s silence on the issue as Indication that " hey, they might add mounts" is … well, Not sure what the word for it is. But…I sincerely doubt we will see mounts in Gw2.

I saw a post recently that really expressed well my own view of aspects of ANet, GW2, and its direction. I thought I would post it here because it is somewhat relevant and the poster is well worth quoting.

Nerelith.7360:

That is not the issue, the issue is… that many players feel the game took a wrong turn.
Many will say " this is not the game for you." And maybe they may be right. But Anet has shown that they are not above changing direction…

..It may be the execution may be off, but if i remember something about Anet it is, they do not have a problem saying to themselves." Maybe we can do this in a new way, a better way."

So is the game as it is, the game I might wish it to be? No. But does that means I have given up…

The fact that they have not, as of yet, added something that someone wants, or thinks would be a better way of doing things is not a reason to give up on expressing what one, as a customer, would like to see in game.

I agree, I am simply saying it’s ONE thing for Anet to make Traits be unlockable through in game content. That isn’t something that would require them to totally change their game design.

To implement speed boost mounts means turning their backs On the whole WP system…. and I sincerely doubt they will do that for a frivolous mount.

The type of changes I advocate… adding new skills to add diversity… is something that improves the game experience. By giving players more.

Mounts is fluff. Anet has better things to do with their time, energy, and resources.
Fluff is something you do when everything else is going resonably well. Anet has better things to focus on than mounts.

Orpheal.8263:

Nerelith.7360:

See the only reasons pro-mount peopl have are.

1. It would be cool. ( no, it really wouldn’t.)
2. I want it. ( Play a game that has mounts then.)

So the pro-mount people since they are wanting the developers to spend resources, that could be spent elsewhere more effectively, and for better value..( balancing skills), need to provide better reasons.

We that don’t want to have mounts only need to provide one.

1. We don’t want them, because we don’t want them.

Except that is precisely what I accuse pro-mount people of doing. Asking the devs to use resources that can be better used some other more effective, and necessary way… Skill balancing.

I rather they not divert people from skill balancing for unnecessary mounts.

Mounts are a waste of time, energy, money, and resources.

They are not necessary. Just because YOU feel they would " encourage exploration" doesn’t mean they would. I disagree.
You want them, you need more compelling reasons.

And who the hell are YOU to decide about it how Anet should make use of their time, energy, money, and ressources??

~snip~

it’s Not me, it’s Anet. These " I want Mounts" threads have been posted for the past 2 years. How many mounts did they add in that time?

2… Purely cosmetic mounts…In 2 years.

it’s not me that decided " No mounts" it’s Anet.

So you are welcome to imagine that mounts are going to be implemented …" any day ..just you wait and see.’ all you want.

I am pretty sure if Anet felt Mounts were an awesome idea, they never would have implemented waypoints. They have waypoints so they do not need to implement mounts.

If they were going to, they would have by now, or made an announcement that they were going to add them by now.

Taking Anet’s silence on the issue as Indication that " hey, they might add mounts" is … well, Not sure what the word for it is. But…I sincerely doubt we will see mounts in Gw2.

You are welcome to believe anything you wish.

Now as to my options.. I can of course play Gw2 and adapt to the new game if they ever put in mounts…or stop playing gw2 since I don’t want mounts In gw2.

I have done it before. left games that went In directions i didn’t like. As is my right.

but I sincerely am not holding my breath about the mounts, I doubt I need to think about leaving gw2 because of mounts. Anet has better things to do, than implement mounts.

PS: It’s Arrogance. Not Arrogancy. Just thought you’d Like to use words that actually exist.

minbariguy.7504:

Nerelith.7360:

See the only reasons pro-mount peopl have are.

1. It would be cool. ( no, it really wouldn’t.)
2. I want it. ( Play a game that has mounts then.)

So the pro-mount people since they are wanting the developers to spend resources, that could be spent elsewhere more effectively, and for better value..( balancing skills), need to provide better reasons.

We that don’t want to have mounts only need to provide one.

1. We don’t want them, because we don’t want them.

I think mounts would encourage world exploration, since by using waypoints you skip over vast distances of the game world without even seeing them. So there is a reason besides “cool” and “want”.

Also, no matter what game feature you ask for, there are always people who don’t want/use/need that feature. Just because I don’t like PvP doesn’t mean that I will accuse anyone who does of asking ANet to “use up” resources creating “unnecessary” content.

I certainly don’t think the game needs mounts, but they could be a fun addition for a lot of people. As for the suggestion to remove waypoints to accommodate mounts, I think that’s a bad move. Let people who like the waypoints use them. More options is always better in my book.

Except that is precisely what I accuse pro-mount people of doing. Asking the devs to use resources that can be better used some other more effective, and necessary way… Skill balancing.

before i hear " but the people that code mounts don’t code skills" the fact is, they can choose to keep people that code skills…or people that create mounts, since they do not have any.

I rather they not divert people from skill balancing for unnecessary mounts.

Mounts are a waste of time, energy, money, and resources.

They are not necessary. Just because YOU feel they would " encourage exploration" doesn’t mean they would. I disagree.

You want them, you need more compelling reasons.

Nick.6972:

Still to this day wonder why GW2 is so against mounts?
I mean, GW2 ir more of a generic MMO than GW1 ever was

Personally, instead of mounts, I’d love to see airships or real ships taking people from one place to another in real time. For example from LA to DR.
Or A ship that takes you from LA to Southsun. Make it a 30 minute drive or something. Good for both afking and role playing;.

This I can get behind. We have Asuran Gates for speed. maybe get Charr zeppelins for roleplay, and for relaxing.

I can hear it now though… " You want Zeppelins? Go play WoW" So, never gonna happen.

nexxe.7081:

This topic always brings out the anti-mount crowd, and they never, ever, have a logical reason as to why it’s a bad thing. Their only major reason, is because, there is waypoints.

In fact, it’s only logical to use mounts to unlock the waypoints, especially for new characters. Which is more tedious? Summoning a mount, or clicking a Swiftness Skill countless times, every 10 seconds? ..or swicthing out warhorns for Swiftness Boons.. or swicthing out traits for Swiftness enhancements? Don’t even bring up convenience, since that argument falls flat every time. Or, perhaps, it’s more immersive to see zergs with 50+ people using Swiftness Boons running from champ to champ.. lol..

We don’t need logical reasons. We don’t need any reasons other than " We don’t Like them."

We are not the ones asking Anet to use up resources to add something unnecessary, just because some people think " it would be cool, and I want it."

See the only reasons pro-mount peopl have are.

1. It would be cool. ( no, it really wouldn’t.)
2. I want it. ( Play a game that has mounts then.)

So the pro-mount people since they are wanting the developers to spend resources, that could be spent elsewhere more effectively, and for better value..( balancing skills), need to provide better reasons.

We that don’t want to have mounts only need to provide one.

1. We don’t want them, because we don’t want them.

No, because in my opinion mounts never add anything to a game that doesn’t need them. The only way this game would ever need mounts is if you remove the waypoints. And Anet is never going to remove the waypoints.

Secondly unless the mount desired is purely cosmetic, it will more often than not provide a speed boost.

We do not need mounts for a temporary speed boost, and Anet will never allow a permanent speed boost.

Thirdly, if there is any additional speed boost or even an extra speed boost, then mounts become mandatory for everyone. It will not be optional. That means that even people that hate them would have to buy them. especially if they do WvW or sPvP.

Anyone that now asks ’ but why would they be mandatory?" is simply being disingenuous. And will not be responded to, at least by me. This has already been covered extensively in each of the gazillion other mount threads.

Lastly… wasn’t there a combined mount thread already? Why are we still getting new ones? By now, the people that want them, still want them, the people that don’t still don’t. and Anet has already read all the arguments on both sides… and we still do not have mounts.

Maybe the pro-mount players need to get a clue?

Brother Grimm.5176:

Tasty Pudding.3764:

Yes, but only bicycles:

NO…..POGO STICKS OR DIE!!!!!

(too soon?)

Ok, I would vote yes, but only if the Mount is a pogostick, and slows you down, and you occasionally fall off.

I have always been anti-mount. My position has not changed, this game has waypoints to get around, and all the classes have some way to obtain a temporary speed boost.

The devs are not going to remove the waypoint system to give players mounts.

There are plenty of games that have mounts. I think it is more productive to play those.

I play World of warcraft, and that game has mounts. I do not post on the World of Warctaft forums that they remove mounts and institute a waypoint system.

This game has a waypoint system. They are not going to, nor should they remove their waypoint system for mounts.

PS mesmer get a speed boost it’s in their focus.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t think saying these things is insulting to anyone. Put it this way. In order to really get the most out of Guild Wars 1, you really had to think about what you were doing. It meant familiarizing yourself with a lot of skills. But skills kept changing and the meta kept changing and the build of the month kept changing. You could go away for a couple of weeks, and have to learn things all over sometimes. That’s great for people who play every day, not so good for people to come and visit. It’s not an insult. It’s a fact of life.

Even less insulting is the comments on balancing. Anet bit off more than they could chew with the old system. There were always problems trying to balance it. They’ve admitted as much themselves. How is agreeing with them insulting?

I actually agree with you. I think they went too far. Anet has a habit of over-reacting to things in my opinion. The complains about Prophecies was that the pace was too slow and it took forever. So they came out with Factions. Where the pace was too fast and you could breeze through the game in a weekend. It was an overcompensation. They did pacing somewhat better in Nightfall, which was somewhat between the two. It was like a pendulum swinging.

I sort of expect the same thing to happen here. We’ve seen the swing to too simple and there’ll be an update at some point (maybe the first expansion), where the pendulum swings the other way. It might be one of those “big” projects they’re working on.

But I don’t think being honest about the limitations of the old game to appeal to a wider audience due to complexity is particularly insulting. Not everyone is looking for complexity.

The topic under discussion is… Guild Wars is it more diverse. The implication raised was that no, it wasn’t more diverse, which to many of us Guild Wars veterans seems to be an interesting position.

Now the OP tries to say that because BOTH have " as many optimal builds" that Gw2 is as diverse as Guild Wars.

To me this is nonsense. I have explained why. Now you want to derail the issue to " Gw2 made the game less diverse than Guild Wars, and had awesome reasons."

That is not the topic of this thread.

Someone that feels Gw2 is as diverse has basically said that the game many of us enjoyed playing was " full of useless skills." And that that is why gw2 is “as diverse” because it has the same number of " optimal " builds.

As I said…Nonsense. If one defines " Optimal" as" The absolute best for a given situation" then they obviously have the same number of “optimal” builds..since that = " the best build for a given situation" and that will be 1. By the definition of “Optimal”

MY position has always been that Guild Wars had more viable alternate builds that lent themselves to play…where content could be experienced, without having to play “the meta”.

THAT is the topic. Does Guild Wars having more viable alternate builds, that could be enjoyed " for fun" without having to " do the meta" or " only do the optimal"
provide more divergence in playstyles , so that If you have 2 Necromancers, could you have each play a totally different playstyle and still be viable? I say that since each necromancer had anywhere from 5 to 9 sub-classes, and each combination had hundreds of skills, and 9 " trait" lines…. THIS meant that each necromancer could play totally differently from one another and STILL be viable. STILL complete content.

Not whether the devs had reasons for making gw2 less diverse.

Seems that you agree with me, Gw2 is less diverse. WHY it’s less diverse is a topic for another thread.

Dusty Moon.4382:

iphaded.7308:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Galphar.3901:

I think most GW veterans(myself included) thought that we would be getting about the same number of skills that we had per profession when Prophecies was released or at the very least the same number of “Core” skills.

Please speak for yourself. If you did ANY research into the GW2 development and/or participated in any beta events, it was quite easily apparent the simplification of the skill system was intentional and this game was NOT going to be GW1+. I’m not overly thrilled with the results, but I accept the game for what it IS, not what I think it should be to suit my individual tastes.

I loved GW1 but I’m intelligent enough to look at it’s eventual complexity to realize NO sane developer would go down that road a 2nd time. I seriously wonder why all those that claim this game is the results of “lazy” design and “dumbing down” continue to play it? Hold tightly to your negative views and just move on……or go back and play GW1….Severs are still up.

I understand the complexity of having too many skills like in GW1, but GW2 is OVER-simplified to the point where I believe it detracts from the game play. In addition to that, the skills that you can actually customize are severely limited in variety, not to mention that half of your bar is already locked with weapon you’re using. It almost eliminates one aspect of MMOs that I find the most fun, and that’s having variety of options in how to play my character. I’ll take more of that over the ability to just change skins.

It’s difficult to have a positive opinion on some of the design choices especially when you have 6 times the number of staff and resources as they previously had.

GW2 is not over simplified. GW1 just had too many skills that were useless and/or situational. The player meta was very simple in GW1 – player plays his build – has 1 or 2 healers/protectors – an MM – a fire ele or 2. The others were heros and that is all you needed. Gw1 was simple to the extreme in PvE.

The depth in Guild Wars was in it’s ability to allow a player to play any type of Build they could imagine. Whether that build ended up sub-par or not.

We are talking past one another, the gw2 players that love gw2 …say " Both had an equal number of optimal builds." Which makes sense. There are usually maybe 2 or 3 “optimal builds” that lend themselves to multiple situations.

For me… it ‘s Not about " Optimal" builds it’s about playing fun…. viable builds.

Guild Wars allowed for more viable builds. The sub-classes, the number of available skills, the number of elite skills, the elite skill capture system… having 9 “trait” lines…. 5 from the primary, 4 from the secondary… The “traits” also allowed for vastly different playstyles… the skills synergized better with One another…or worse. Borrowing a term from Statistics The Standard deviation for Guild Wars was larger. You could build a LOT better, or a lot worse. Some of us like that.

ALL of these led to a game system with a LOT more VIABLE builds… so if you and I were BOTH Elementalists, chances are we had VASTLY different playstyles.

Gw2….not so much.

nightwulf.1986:

Nerelith.7360:

Galphar.3901:

ANet “dumbed down” GW2 because they said after adding so many skills to GW it became almost impossible to keep balanced.

I find that unnacceptable as a" reason"… that boils down to " it’s easier for us, so you need a simpler game. We don’t want to do our best to provide you with the best gaming experience. If we need to sacrifice fun gameplay, to make our jobs easier…. we will do it, cause it makes our jobs easier."

Basically you are saying that the devs chose to be lazy, even if the product suffers for it. That they gave less than their best because less is Not as hard to do.

Personally, I think that equating designing a new active pvp and pve combat system with less skills than GW1 that involves 50 or more players on a semi-open world map with laziness is a bit disingenuous. That does not sound lazy to me, but then again I chose to highlight/include/exclude different parts of what it takes to design a combat system. GW1 devs made sacrifices in designing their combat system that some felt made it suffer as well. Namely, designing maps and encounters only for small parties, no open world, no taunt mechanics, etc. You may not agree with these criticisms but that is my point. GW2 is a different game with different challenges and sacrifices than GW1, they really only shifted the difficulty in balancing the game away from balancing hundreds of skills to other areas of the game design. Easier does not mean easy. One monster for another.

Despite the (unwarranted?) doom and gloom, GW2 still has room to grow. Anet even said that one of the benefits/reasons they redesigned trait acquisition was to allow a more coherent seamless integration of new skills/traits going forward. Take that for what you will.

maps with fewer players means everyone’s contribution is important. When the result is good, when the team wins everyone contributed. Having hundreds on a map, means all you need to do is zerg, hit someone once or twice…. hide.. and win.

In My mind …in my opinion… gw2 trashed the core that made the original game… replayable, and enjoyable, for simplicity, and ease of balance.

Simple, because what I have heard is…." The Players need a simpler game…. they cannot figure out Guild Wars without making sub-par builds."

and Easier to balance…….

THEY wanted less to do than what the developers had to handle with Guild Wars.

I understand Guild Wars was 3d chess on an 8×8×8 grid. When it comes to both complexity, and depth of play and diversity. And maybe it did need SOME simplification…

But in my opinion they went too far in the opposite direction, Instead of regular chess, they gave us tic-tac-toe. For the worst of reasons… what I have heard from Gw2 defenders is:

1. We as players need a simpler game, because Guild Wars is too hard for the average casual player.

2. The developers need a simpler game, because balancing Guild wars is Hard.

The former is insulting to the average casual player. The latter is insulting to the Anet development team.

I am not the person saying these things…. Some Anet defenders are.

See I do not accept either, but I do not blame the developers, I blame the players In general. If you don’t demand more than Bread and water, that’s all you will get. Why would the devs give more? We don’t want more, we are content to accept a barebones game in comparison to what they themselves can provide. I know they can do better, because with Guild Wars in my opinion, they did better.

Galphar.3901:

Nerelith.7360:

Galphar.3901:

It’s the way the “Min/Maxers” view the non-“Min/Maxers”. To them tho anyone who isn’t a “Min/Maxer” is a casual player. Hate to break it to them tho, a causal player is just someone who doesn’t spend 5+ hrs a day in-game. Casuals actually have real lives and don’t live vicariously through a computer.

You know. Until I read your and sorudo’s posts I always thought casual / hardcore was mostly time based, or How Much time you devote to doing things Like researching builds etc…

See I always looked Up information on skills, where to hunt down bosses for elites… even as i play " that game that shall not be named." I flip on the AH, yes I use add-ons and Look up How to use TSM etc… for me that is hardcore.

But sorudo said " casual players just play " fun" builds… I read that as " Builds that are not Intended to be mini-maxed, and are played because the skills are cool."

if we look at it that way, someone that plays 5 Hours a day with a fun …frivolous build…can still be a casual player. Somepne that only plays 2 Hours a night, but does tons of research on the game can still be hardcore.

Looked at from that Perspective, in my opinion… Guild Wars appealed to, and pleased both casual and hardcore gamers more. It gave so many skills players could make " fun" builds,…and Play for laughs…

and….

Gave you enough meaty skills for theorycrafters. In my opinion…Guild Wars served BOTH the casuals, and the Hardcore better…. so why was Gw2 dumbed down?

ANet “dumbed down” GW2 because they said after adding so many skills to GW it became almost impossible to keep balanced.

I find that unnacceptable as a" reason"… that boils down to " it’s easier for us, so you need a simpler game. We don’t want to do our best to provide you with the best gaming experience. If we need to sacrifice fun gameplay, to make our jobs easier…. we will do it, cause it makes our jobs easier."

Basically you are saying that the devs chose to be lazy, even if the product suffers for it. That they gave less than their best because less is Not as hard to do.

Galphar.3901:

It’s the way the “Min/Maxers” view the non-“Min/Maxers”. To them tho anyone who isn’t a “Min/Maxer” is a casual player. Hate to break it to them tho, a causal player is just someone who doesn’t spend 5+ hrs a day in-game. Casuals actually have real lives and don’t live vicariously through a computer.

You know. Until I read your and sorudo’s posts I always thought casual / hardcore was mostly time based, or How Much time you devote to doing things Like researching builds etc…

See I always looked Up information on skills, where to hunt down bosses for elites… even as i play " that game that shall not be named." I flip on the AH, yes I use add-ons and Look up How to use TSM etc… for me that is hardcore.

But sorudo said " casual players just play " fun" builds… I read that as " Builds that are not Intended to be mini-maxed, and are played because the skills are cool."

if we look at it that way, someone that plays 5 Hours a day with a fun …frivolous build…can still be a casual player. Somepne that only plays 2 Hours a night, but does tons of research on the game can still be hardcore.

Looked at from that Perspective, in my opinion… Guild Wars appealed to, and pleased both casual and hardcore gamers more. It gave so many skills players could make " fun" builds,…and Play for laughs…

and….

Gave you enough meaty skills for theorycrafters. In my opinion…Guild Wars served BOTH the casuals, and the Hardcore better…. so why was Gw2 dumbed down?

Harper.4173:

sorudo.9054:

Harper.4173:

Mesket.5728:

Harper.4173:

Uriel.6310:

In the past, I use to believe that GW2 skills were going to be something similar to how GW1 worked, and for those who have played the original series would know what I mean. There were multiple builds and usually more than one way for every class to be played in game. But as I played through the GW2 betas that quickly changed.

I am bothered to see now how some classes have more or less builds than others. And even with there being another build, it usually only includes swapping out a few utilities while maintaining the same 5 skills from your weapon. Not only that, some classes have mechanics which keep them from even being played at their max potential or at all in certain game modes. (Necro’s and Rangers).

So to start the conversation, How did we go from creating almost endless combos of builds in GW1 to being pigeon hold into certain builds to fit the meta in GW2? Is there any chance that things will improve or only get worse?

/Discuss

Guild Wars 1 group play also pigeon holed you into a build that was the meta.
That was always the case – not sure what you remember about the game.

Also – the lack of build diversity comes from the reduced number of skills and skill being tied into weapons.

This was done in an effort to make the game easier and more accessible to casual players that don’t have the time and resources to read up, do research and inform themselves in order to make a decent build by themselves.

In Guild Wars 2 – with the skills bound to a weapon they can ensure even the worst player is still somewhat viable.

Long story short: it’s a full proof system designed to keep people from being really terrible.
In GW1 if you wanted you could make * a totally unviable build that didn’t work*.
In GW2 that option has disappeared – and with it a lot of variety and customization.

Yes, I can imagine the devs saying “Guys, we must repress our will of adding this hundreds of skills we already did and complex combat mechanics we have designed and go back to simple, lets do it for the casuals…”

Games that are easier and cater to more casual players usually sell more.
Since it’s fun for the whole family not just the one who likes to play hardcore games.

weird, i am really casual yet i find the GW2 build system really restrictive and boring, GW1 kept me interested because i could fool around and make builds so underpowered it can never work correctly.
however, in GW2 we are stuck with forced builds not made to fool around, “fun” doesn’t exist because it’s made to much for serious hardcore gamers.

if it really was made for casual players then builds were not designed so restrictive, a part of being casual is to experiment with builds and to not take things to serious.
clearly that’s not the case, GW1 was made more for “fun for the whole family” while GW2 was made for “fun for all the hardcore group”.

You misunderstand – by GW2’s standards and you’re not a casual player. A casual player doesn’t have the basic understanding of skill synergy to put together a build like you did in GW1.

You may consider yourself “casual” but that doesn’t mean you represent what I meant when I said casual.

You’ve probably played games before and have an idea of what you’re doing.
I’m talking about players who couldn’t even piece a build together in GW1 – they can play GW2 easily.

It doesn’t require as much theory crafting, grasping mechanics and reading comprehension.
It requires more reflexes and other related skills but from a build building perspective it is much easier.

I find this actually pretty insulting. A lot of casual players can put together a halfway decent build in Guild Wars.

This is what jumped at me

A casual player doesn’t have the basic understanding of skill synergy to put together a build like you did in GW1.

Unless we mean different things by casual. For me casual, is abouyt How Much time a player can devote to the game, How much they can put into it. A player that can only log in 30 minutes a night to an Hour may be casual, that doesn’t mean they cannot read skill descriptions to find synergy.

The way you seem to use the word casual. it sounds Like someone that cannot or will not read a skill description, and must have all the work done for them, or they cannot play the game….

as I said, sounds kind of insulting, and I consider myself pretty hardcore, but I would never talk about casuals as you do.

Vayne.8563:

Nerelith.7360:

sorudo.9054:

Vayne.8563:

sorudo.9054:

Vayne.8563:

sorudo.9054:

it’s really simple, if i can’t choose the skills on my weapon then i question what ppl talk about with builds.
i never use a scepter on any prof, they just suck and the same is for the mace.
if i could change the skills then i might use them more, i would remove the lame defend skill on the mace and replace it for a pierce throw.

in GW1 i can do that at any time, in GW2 we are stuck with lame skills no one uses unless for fun.
every time i see a guardian they always use the GS, it becomes quite tiring to see the same.
and why do you think that is, it’s not because of choice but rather lack of.

Right because in Guild Wars 1 everyone used quick shot.

oh wow, so because one skill isn’t use you think that’s a good argument against a whole weapon not being used, a champ move…..-_-

No, I pulled one skill as an example off the top of my head, because I remembered it’s name. I remember having dozens and dozens of skills I didn’t find useful.

there are plenty of skills in GW2 that are completely useless yet that’s easy to ignore, ignoring a whole weapon means that you’re cutting a portion of the profession away.
it’s like instead of ignoring vampire gaze, you ignore the whole blood magic line.
if we could change the skills on the weapons with a certain set of skills then weapons are less likely to be ignored completely, it would give more diversity in a skill bar.

one thing i would like to see is that one-handed weapons still have 4/5 skills (i don’t really see the auto attack skill a skill), that way you’re not forced to use an off-hand weapon and the amount of skills you ckittene increases greatly.

Personally I think weapon Locked skills are just a bad design move. Does it simplify the game? yes. Is that a good thing? In My opinion. No.

Does it make it easier for a Player to NOT play sub-optimally? Maybe. Is it a good design choice? In my opinion no. A player will not learn how to play better if you make it simple, you need to give them something challenging to strive for, like lifting weights.

Yes, anyone can ride a tricycle. Except that NOT falling leads to NOT learning to ride a Bicycle.

Does it make it easier for the devs to balance? yes. But Is that the criteria we should be aiming for? Should a game be simplified so that the devs have an easier job? Especially when the message that sends out is.." Guild Wars is too hard for you to play, and too hard for us to balance"?

The best thing that Guild Wars had was that since you had so many skills open for you to choose from, if you took sub-par useless for the given situation types of skills, you had no one to blame but yourself.

It’s the best thing for the game in my opinion. Because many people I know…possibly most, didn’t like Guild Wars 1 because of the build aspect. They’d get into the game, they’d only have a few skills they’d have to wait to get anything that worked together decently. It wasn’t fun for them.

Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have a staff of 50 devs to pay. It has a staff of 300. It needs to appeal to a broader spectrum of players.

At least this way, everyone has a working weapon.

It may not seem fair to people who want more build depth/complexity, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near a majority.

so a staff of 50, did a better job balancing Guild Wars with it’s myriads of skills, and class combinations,…etc… but 300, cannot balance the weapon locked skills, that were weapon Locked…to make balancing easier?

Maybe they should let go some of the staff in the gem shop, and hire some to balance the professions?

Mesket.5728:

in GW1, any useless skill, COMPLETELY useless skill, could be the next FOTM without any balance patch just because someone put some thought and find a combo with the least thought class combination and made it the most OP build ever. Given the amount of skills, class combinations and runes, it was theoricrafters dreamland and the best (at least for pvp) there was no meta because every meta was always countered… in GW2 pvp metas get nerfed because there aren’t enough tools ingame for the players to counter them,

All I’m saying is that if this game wants to be GW sequel, its needs a ton load of more skills and let us choose between different weapon skills as well, not just the same 5 for any build with the same weapon.

GW2 meta builds are a kinda of a joke when compared… “I equipped reflect wall, I’m now the party reflector, that’s my role”, “hey I have time warp, I must be the party buffer!”..

THIS. It is amazing how synergy had so much to do with the earlier game’s popularity. All it took is saying " hmmm…this skill teleports me over and heals me, but..I get extra healing if it also happens to be poisoned… what causes it to be Poisoned? and that other one makes it bleed,… but this skill will cripple it if it happsn to be bleeding.,…so do i want extra heals from it being poisoned? or cripple it if it’s bleeding? Now I need to figure out…where do i put my points ?"

Now… for ME that used to be interesting, and could keep me playing on, and on, and on,. and on.

I could take builds into GvG, and enjoy it, and this…coming from someone that detests PvP.

I think that many players that currently enjoy gw2, have latched onto the idea that " Guild wars was filled with useless skills" to accept that gw2 has so few of them. It’s Like they feel the sheer " uselessness" of Guild Wars was a problem that a Lot fewer weapon locked skills were the answer to.

Guild wars wasn’t filled with useless skills, Guild Wars was filled wit tons of situational skills, that rocked in the right situation. Guild Wars was filled with synergistic skills, that would rock, if used with other skills that played off them….

Personally I think Guild Wars was a Theorycrafter’s heaven. And what we are seeing boils down to " Am I a Theorycrafter at heart? If I am I would probably love Guild Wars. If I am not…not so Much."

And how come no one has even mentioned sub-classes? Added diversity ^2, from having 1 of 9 possible sub-classes for each main class. That is…

90 possible combinations, without even looking at skill selections, and elites. If you Bought Prophesies, Factions and Nightfall.

56 if you owned any 2 of the 3.

30 if you only owned one.

And yes Monk/mesmer played very differently from monk/necromancer

No.. The skills weren’t useless, they were situational, which meant they were powerful In the situation they were made for, and useless In the one they weren’t.

Holy Water, Powerful against Vampires, useless against Robots.

sorudo.9054:

Vayne.8563:

sorudo.9054:

Vayne.8563:

sorudo.9054:

it’s really simple, if i can’t choose the skills on my weapon then i question what ppl talk about with builds.
i never use a scepter on any prof, they just suck and the same is for the mace.
if i could change the skills then i might use them more, i would remove the lame defend skill on the mace and replace it for a pierce throw.

in GW1 i can do that at any time, in GW2 we are stuck with lame skills no one uses unless for fun.
every time i see a guardian they always use the GS, it becomes quite tiring to see the same.
and why do you think that is, it’s not because of choice but rather lack of.

Right because in Guild Wars 1 everyone used quick shot.

oh wow, so because one skill isn’t use you think that’s a good argument against a whole weapon not being used, a champ move…..-_-

No, I pulled one skill as an example off the top of my head, because I remembered it’s name. I remember having dozens and dozens of skills I didn’t find useful.

there are plenty of skills in GW2 that are completely useless yet that’s easy to ignore, ignoring a whole weapon means that you’re cutting a portion of the profession away.
it’s like instead of ignoring vampire gaze, you ignore the whole blood magic line.
if we could change the skills on the weapons with a certain set of skills then weapons are less likely to be ignored completely, it would give more diversity in a skill bar.

one thing i would like to see is that one-handed weapons still have 4/5 skills (i don’t really see the auto attack skill a skill), that way you’re not forced to use an off-hand weapon and the amount of skills you can use increases greatly.

Personally I think weapon Locked skills are just a bad design move. Does it simplify the game? yes. Is that a good thing? In My opinion. No.

Does it make it easier for a Player to NOT play sub-optimally? Maybe. Is it a good design choice? In my opinion no. A player will not learn how to play better if you make it simple, you need to give them something challenging to strive for, like lifting weights.

Yes, anyone can ride a tricycle. Except that NOT falling leads to NOT learning to ride a Bicycle.

Does it make it easier for the devs to balance? yes. But Is that the criteria we should be aiming for? Should a game be simplified so that the devs have an easier job? Especially when the message that sends out is.." Guild Wars is too hard for you to play, and too hard for us to balance"?

The best thing that Guild Wars had was that since you had so many skills open for you to choose from, if you took sub-par useless for the given situation types of skills, you had no one to blame but yourself.

Galen Grey.4709:

I got one question. Multiple people in this thread stated something along the lines I didnt care about the meta build in Gw1, I did my own thing, it may not have been the best but it worked and was fun to play. Great.

so my question is, why do you all feel compelled to play just the meta build in Gw2? You got weapon skills, utility skills, gear stats and traits that you can combine for different effects and no one build isnt exactly the same. Even the same build doesnt play exactly the same in different situations. The issue is not that Gw2 doesnt offer different builds, of course it does, the issue is you refuse to play anything but the meta.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter. The issue is build diversity. How many different types of builds can you play ? How many different ways can you play? Are you afforded the opportunity by selecting different skills to vastly change your playstyle? can you pick and choose any skills to play together to get some synergy?

In Gw2, your skills are few… and 2/3rds are weapon locked. The traits do not afford you a chance to change How you play because they are things Like." when you steal you gain vigor" etc…. except for 3 rolls as opposed to 2, In the same time frame, i sincerely doubt Vigor is gonna drastically change how i play.

In Guild Wars, How you trait changes How you play. The fact that most of the skills were situational doesn’t mean they are useless, Just Not usable 100 % of the time.

I think the players that Anet wants to play Gw2, are " set it and forget it" type players, that use one build for almost everything.

Guild Wars demanded you think dynamically about your build.

Holy Water is awesome against Vampires, useless against Robots unless you pour it down a vent or something ( metaphor got away from me)… anyway… Not being able to use Holy Water on Robots doesn’t make it useless, it just makes it useless against Robots.

I LOVED situational skills in Guild Wars. it was a way of making you THINK about your skill selections, and try to synergize them with one another.

That you had TONS more skills means you had tons more diversity. was it possible to play sub-par builds? absolutely. The cure was simple…learn how to theorycraft so you didn’t have a sub-par build…or grab a cookie cutter off some website. Me I went with the former… and that made all the difference.

Of course if all you care about is " meta cookie cutter" then there will only be 1 or 2… but.. I for one never played Meta cookie cutter… and yet I never got booted out of a group either.

maha.7902:

Out of all of these supposedly diverse builds in GW1, how many of them were actually meta? Or was it just run build X or be kicked?

I never ran meta…I was never kicked. Fact is, throughMy play from the launch of the first game, i rarely had a hard time finding a group to do group content…. And we did bonus missions, etc…not once was I kicked or even asked what my skill choices were, or what armor i was wearing.

the playerbase was also a better community. So…I think all these memories of " I wasn’t meta and I was kicked." were either grossly exaggerated, or maybe given too much weight do to the passage of time. Kind of the Opposite of rose-colored glasses….

maha.7902

So it was exactly the same as it currently is in GW2, except GW1 literally just had more skills.
So in both games we have useless builds, useless weapons, useless gear (well I think GW1 didn’t have gear stats, just runes or something), it’s just that in GW1 you had more useless builds since there were more useless skills, but when it came to optimisation you still had to run a build from a very small pool of builds, which is basically identical to GW2. And yet GW1 is harped as some sort of holy grail of build diversity despite the fact that you can make twenty shades of terrible builds in both games, you still won’t be wanted in organised groups.
Or am I missing something?

Yes you are missing quite a lot since you exaggerate. Now, since it seems that you never played the game, and are basing your ideas on what people that you agree with have said about the game, I can see why you would be incorrect about your assessment of Guild wars.

The fact is, that while it was poissible to play with a subpar build, it was also possible to theorycraft a build that had some synergy behind it. It wasn’t that hard.

Some people have presented it as if Theorycrafting was rocket-science. All you needed to do was Look at what conditions you could apply, or what boon you could give yourself, then Look for other skills that worked off those boons or conditions.

Except that by having ability points to improve certain" traits" Lines, you would decide How LONG a condition lasted, and How much damage it might do…. you could have tons of elites to choose from, each of which changes your style of play drastically…Unlike Gw2.

So yes, you are missing a lot. But the Only way for you to know what is to go play Guild Wars yourself. The game is still running.

Vayne.8563:

Nerelith.7360:

Vayne, this isn’t a court of law where you get to say " show me evidence". The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

And you are right, Raptr is not indicative of anything. With a buy2play game the only viable proof is concurrently logged in players.

Now, last time I checked those numbers are locked up tight by Anet. Not sure if they publish them anywhere. Have they?

If they have I’ll admit I was ignorant. but I do know this….

If their concurrent numbers were anything to rave about, it would be on the front page of Most forums " Arenanet Breaks 5,000,000 concurrent players"…

If they have done so, I have not seen it. Not saying they haven’t ..just I have not seen it.

Maybe you can find me the link? I’ll gladly eat humble pie if you show me any link post say 5/1/14 that shows ArenaNet raving about their concurrent logged in players.

Edit:

When I said 5,000,000 I was exaggerating…but any large type blog On a reputable website that shows ArenaNet raving…. any interviews post the 4/15/14 update… that shows Anet bragging about How many concurrently logged In players Gw2 has. I’ll gladly admit I was wrong. it’s 3 months since the 4/15/14 update, so surely there must be at least one.

Edit: I disagree about raptor since there are players that play MMO’s and do not use it..* raises her hand*.

IF Raptor were mandatory with ALL games…and IF… it were mandatory to run it when you are logged into all these different MMO’s THEN, you coupld point to raptr’s figures as meaning something. since it is purely voluntary, it is not representative.

You could have 100,000,000 players playing League of legends, but only 50,000 on Raptr,… On the other hand you could have 2,000,000 Gw2 players… and have ALL of them on raptr. If you go by Raptr…. Gw2 is 40 x’s more Popular than league of Legends.

so no… I don’t accept raptr’s figures as being representative of anything, other than How many players that Play Gw2, are also logged Onto Raptr at the same time.

If you haven’t followed Raptr for any length of time, of course you wouldn’t believe the numbers. But if you have followed it and looked at it, you’d see that it does pretty well parallel how games are doing in sales. It’s not hard and fast evidence, but annecdotally it’s been pretty compelling.

More, what are the odds that everyone that still plays Guild Wars 2 happens to also be subscribed to raptr? It would seem very unusual to me.

Generally speaking, about the same percentage of gamers that play Guild Wars 2 would likely be on Raptr as any other game. And it counts log in hours. Hours spent actually playing. Not sales. So it doesn’t matter that Guild Wars 2 is buy to play.

If you have Raptr and decide to open it up while playing Guild Wars 2, it will track your hours, just like all the other games up there.

So when you see Raptr players from May to June in ESO have halved, the odds are the trend would follow elsewhere. The numbers might not be 100% but they’d be indicative of a trend.

You don’t have to believe it. Their predictions and the information they give have been relatively solid for a good long while now.

As I said, the fact that raptr is purely voluntary, means it doesn’t indicate anything. Maybe 5 % of Gw2 players Like raptr, maybe 50 % of LoL like raptr, the fact is, you do not know.

You guess, you think… you find it compellingbecause of Confirmation Bias, it tells you what you want to hear so you say " ya Raptr."

Sorry, but the fact that the figures could be off, because there is no indication what % of players that play a given game also log onto raptr … tells me that it is not indicative of anything.

All it can tell me is how many players that play gw2, also have raptr on their compute,r and run it while playing gw2.

You can point to it,… it doesn’t compell me to give it any weight, since it is Not mandatory that it be run on every computer playing MMO’s so that it can actually say " 100 % of Gw2 players have this…and 30 % are on concurrently at any given time.

As I said, with buy2play games the only figures that count are concurrently logged in players.

If Gw2 has been raving about these numbers post a link. So we can see How great the game is doing.

me..My impression is, the game is losing steam. And Raptr doesn’t compell me to change my opinion.

Maybe if yoiu post a Link of Gw2 raving about their concurrent logged in numbers post 5/1/14 as I asked it might convince me otherwise.

Vayne.8563:

What evidence do you have that Guild Wars 2 is “petering out” as you put it? Because I don’t think that’s the case. While Raptr isn’t all players it gives and has always given a pretty decent indication of what’s popular. Guild Wars 2 remains in the top 20. In June it was back above ESO again, even though ESO is only a couple of months old. There are precisely 3 MMOs ahead of it. One of them, Wildstar launched this month. WoW is a juggernaut of course, and FF and Guild Wars 2 are almost neck and neck, before season 2 kicked off. I expect Guild Wars 2 to move up that list next month.

I’m not sure what you think petered out means in a 2 year old game, but it seems to me that Guild Wars 2 is doing quite well.

Vayne, this isn’t a court of law where you get to say " show me evidence". The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

And you are right, Raptr is not indicative of anything. With a buy2play game the only viable proof is concurrently logged in players.

Now, last time I checked those numbers are locked up tight by Anet. Not sure if they publish them anywhere. Have they?

If they have I’ll admit I was ignorant. but I do know this….

If their concurrent numbers were anything to rave about, it would be on the front page of Most forums " Arenanet Breaks 5,000,000 concurrent players"…

If they have done so, I have not seen it. Not saying they haven’t ..just I have not seen it.

Maybe you can find me the link? I’ll gladly eat humble pie if you show me any link post say 5/1/14 that shows ArenaNet raving about their concurrent logged in players.

Edit:

When I said 5,000,000 I was exaggerating…but any large type blog On a reputable website that shows ArenaNet raving…. any interviews post the 4/15/14 update… that shows Anet bragging about How many concurrently logged In players Gw2 has. I’ll gladly admit I was wrong. it’s 3 months since the 4/15/14 update, so surely there must be at least one.

Edit: I disagree about raptor since there are players that play MMO’s and do not use it..* raises her hand*.

IF Raptor were mandatory with ALL games…and IF… it were mandatory to run it when you are logged into all these different MMO’s THEN, you coupld point to raptr’s figures as meaning something. since it is purely voluntary, it is not representative.

You could have 100,000,000 players playing League of legends, but only 50,000 on Raptr,… On the other hand you could have 2,000,000 Gw2 players… and have ALL of them on raptr. If you go by Raptr…. Gw2 is 40 x’s more Popular than league of Legends.

so no… I don’t accept raptr’s figures as being representative of anything, other than How many players that Play Gw2, are also logged Onto Raptr at the same time.

Vayne.8563:

Nerelith.7360:

Many people are focusing on " The meta" or " Optimal builds". The issue for me is… what if I want build divercity that doesn’t follow the garden path of those that Theorycrafted before me?

Some say " Gw2, has x number of “optimal” builds and Guild Wars has y number of “optimal” builds, and since they are close…they are each as diverse."

Some say " Guild Wars made it so it was too easy to make sub-par builds"

They do have points. The issue for me is, I don’t hunt down "optimal " builds. I Like to Theorycraft. I enjoy playing builds that are fun. Or Builds that focus on a particular style of gameplay.

Guild Wars allowed me to do that, since Guild Wars gave me tools that if i searched I would find weird and unique synergies between 2 or 3 skills.

Can you do that in Gw2? I am sure you can. Can you do it as well as in Guild Wars? Many may debate that they can. But If you have an 8 color box of crayons….. and a 64 color box of crayons… one gives yoiu more divercity than the other….even if 16 of the 64 are colors YOU might not touch with a 10 foot pole…it’s always best to be given the option to select your palette for yourself.

Guild Wars had more colors.

Yep Guild Wars did have more skills. And for a guy who likes and centers around Build Wars, it was definitely a superior game.

I think you’ll find that it was less popular than it would have been because of that focus. Too hard for too many people.

I’m like you. I loved the building aspect of that game. But that was the ENTIRE game. It was linear. It was pathed. You couldn’t step over a log you had to turn around and go back. The entire game was the builds.

Because that was the focus of the game, that was what you got.

This game doesn’t have as much build diversity as that game. And if that’s mostly what you care about, you won’t like this game as much.

Guild Wars 2 has a different focus…intentionally.

The problem is… Guild Wars is still around, and there are plenty of people that play it, I among them. Gw2 seems to be petering out.

Now you can say that Gw2 has a different focus …intentionally, and that is clear.

That is not the issue, the issue is… that many players feel the game took a wrong turn.
Many will say " this is not the game for you." And maybe they may be right. But Anet has shown that they are not above changing direction. The way they now have players opening up traits by completing content shows they are taking a page from Guild Wars playbook.

It may be the execution may be off, but if i remember something about Anet it is, they do not have a problem saying to themselves." Maybe we can do this in a new way, a better way."

So is the game as it is, the game I might wish it to be? No. But does that means I have given up that Anet may bring some of what made Guild wars great to this game?

I’m still here.

Lastly. I disagree that Guild Wars would have been a better game by making the game simpler. I feel that it appealed to players that liked playing Build wars, and have no problem playing Build wars year after year after year. Log into Build Wars sometime, you’ll see plenty of people still playing with their builds, their heroes builds, and their mercenary’s builds.

You can argue that it would appeal to more casual gamers. But is that always a good thing? It makes the game simpler. But is that always the right way to go?

" If it is more casual friendly it will be more popular" is not always true. Sometimes challenge keeps and retains players. Make it too casual friendly, and it becomes shallow. And you retain less players than if you catered to a Little more Hardcore.

This is Not Black and white. There are not " Super – casuals" and “super-hardcore.” turning to one doesn’t always mean abandoning the other. All of us fall somewhere in the middle.

So to answer your question….No. I do Not think that simplifying Guild wars so it would have been more casual friendly would have made it better, or even more popular.

Many people are focusing on " The meta" or " Optimal builds". The issue for me is… what if I want build divercity that doesn’t follow the garden path of those that Theorycrafted before me?

Some say " Gw2, has x number of “optimal” builds and Guild Wars has y number of “optimal” builds, and since they are close…they are each as diverse."

Some say " Guild Wars made it so it was too easy to make sub-par builds"

They do have points. The issue for me is, I don’t hunt down "optimal " builds. I Like to Theorycraft. I enjoy playing builds that are fun. Or Builds that focus on a particular style of gameplay.

Guild Wars allowed me to do that, since Guild Wars gave me tools that if i searched I would find weird and unique synergies between 2 or 3 skills.

Can you do that in Gw2? I am sure you can. Can you do it as well as in Guild Wars? Many may debate that they can. But If you have an 8 color box of crayons….. and a 64 color box of crayons… one gives yoiu more divercity than the other….even if 16 of the 64 are colors YOU might not touch with a 10 foot pole…it’s always best to be given the option to select your palette for yourself.

Guild Wars had more colors.

Mesket.5728:

Nick.6972:

I still remember theory crafting an ideal Jade Knight (or whatever were they called) Hard Mode solo (with one hero) farming build.
I came up with extremely gimmicky and Mo/Me build with Famine R/Mo Bonder Hero.
Was fun to play even though it was far from the most efficient build.
It was like playing a MTG/YGO. Theory crafting, analyzing, etc.

In GW2?

In Gw2? we all equip the same gear, we run everything through until they loss aggro, then collapse in a corner where we can’t even see our own character and spam the same 1,2 or maybe 3 buttons.

What I miss is the fact that the mobs we fought had their own skill set, that they used. I felt Like " Ok, these mobs are known for this style of combat…. If I wish to do well enough to face down the named Boss and capture his elite skill ( remember how fun elite captures were?)… then I need to counter this type of play from the mobs In this area."

I Miss having elite skills that then became the center of a build, and a playstyle. In Gw2, what frustrates me is, how they seem to think " casual" means " incapable of theorycrafting"… They “simplified” the game.

2 reasons I have heard from players that defend Anet’s actions:

1. Simpler for the player, that doesn’t have to learn a lot of situational skills ( read …dumbed down …)

2. Simpler for the Developers who have less skills to balance.

Personally I don’t really accept either….

the first is insulting to the casual players.,…. saying they are dumb, the second is insulting to the developers…. saying they are lazy.

Personally I do not believe either. I just think that the devs are giving players as little as they demand. If they are content with a simpler game…why would the devs give them anything more?

So ultimately I blame the players. If players are happy with a hamburger a side of fries, and a coke…. Why would anyone cook them a Veal marsala? Why serve them a fine wine?

Smith.1826:

Well, I kind of liked the idea of ANet going “okay, GW1 was clearly too much for us to handle, we’ll work out what we can do in GW2”. The idea of a ‘reset’ or a ‘second chance’ wasn’t altogether a bad one, I just wasn’t expecting them to tone it down by this much. I’m REALLY hoping they have more in the works and that this isn’t the extent of “how much they can chew”.

There is a difference between." We Bit off more than we could chew let’s simplify it a bit." and ….

GW2.

Guild Wars may have been 3d Chess with an 8×8×8 grid…. but …

Gw2 is not even checkers it’s tic-tac-toe.

Smith.1826:

Vayne.8563:

There’s another aspect people really aren’t considering. You can move and cast in Guild Wars 2. Part of the skill is actually in how you play,. when you dodge, which wasn’t as often a factor in Guild Wars 1.

It’s not that I’m not considering it, I just don’t feel them entirely worth mentioning. They’re far from unique features, and cast-while-move is something I particularly don’t like as it reminds me too much of other typical MMOs like WoW. I’m much more a fan of the risk/reward scenarios that exist when you have to commit to attacks and other actions.

Dodge buttons/mechanics have existed for a long time, generally in cases where they favor more precise timing (dodge rolls in GW2 are full of invulnerability frames).

Vayne.8563:

But there’s your problem right there. Your great sword warrior. It’s like sayign there are a ton of options for sword warriors in Guild Wars 1. There really weren’t.

As a sword war, I could focus on a sword elite or a strength elite (sometimes even a tactics elite), then choose to compliment it with sword/strength/tactic skills, adrenaline/energy skills, and secondary profession skills. This was just PvE. Even without limiting myself to one weapon moveset, I felt like I had far more choice in GW1 than in GW2 regarding my skillbar, way more choice.

Vayne.8563:

Edit: But it should have MORE build diversity than it has now. I’m just saying it will never have, nor should it have, the type of build diversity that Guild Wars 1 had.

I’m with you there. Nearing it’s two year anniversary, GW2’s granted us a few new traits and equipment stat combinations. A little over two years after it’s release, GW1 acquired it’s third expansion pack worth of skills. I want them to find that middle ground: GW1 was more than they could chew, GW2 is way too little.

Good analogy, Guild Wars was more than they could chew. Sort of reminds me of a Dagwood sandwich. Where does one start? How does one start? For me these are welcome questions. It means how I tackle the dagwood sandwich of options is always a factor and contributes to my fun when I get it to work.

Gw2 is watered down broth. Nothing to sink My teeth into.

Second thing I wish to say. Not all of us Live on websites looking up the " Most optimal build." So while there is only 1 Most Optimal Build that does not equal…“ONLY build” Just " Only build for those actively seeking the most optimal build online."

I enjoyed theorycrafting different builds with different sub-classes. I enjoyed seeing what I came up with if I focused on one type of skill as opposed to another.

You could be an interrupter, or you could be a snarer, or you could be a health drainer… you could be teleporting backstabber… you could focus on positional play…. or you could …etc.etc.etc.etc.

Guild Wars was a complex game when it came to builds, and many players would play non-viable builds. But so what?

Either you learn and adapt or you don’t.

Gw2 was supposed to be " More welcoming to casual players."

The problem I have is, that they insult casual players. The idea that for casual players to enjoy it, it needs to be dumbed down. I would think casual players can learn how to theory craft as much as anyone else. I think the problem is, some casual players… do nto wish to, and dislike that there are those that can, that then find a more viable build that is hard to counter from something on gw2wiki, since it is original.

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

My main was Monk.

In PvP – WoH/RC/LS/PaH/SoR/ZB/Smiter…etc
In PvE – HB/UA/WoH/RoJ/55hp/600hp/ …etc

And I only named the meta builds. Mo/A (Assassin’s Promise) wasn’t even considered meta, but it worked extremely great – (Basic principle, spam all your skills and cast AP for instant recharge of all skills).

No Build Diversity? Get real.

A handful of builds over six years. You’re not taking time into account. I’m positive 600 monks appeared way after some other builds and some builds were far less viable by the time they appeared. There was an evolution.

55 monks eventually became just farming builds and pretty much the place people used them was outside Bergen Hotsprings. They weren’t a build that people used to play the game. They were a build people used to farm in one specific spot.

But I wouldn’t take kitten monk build into most dungeons.

If you want to talk about builds that won’t work in harder content or anywhere, Guild Wars 2 has plenty of them.

Since when is farming not a part of playing the game? You do it in the game, it’s part of playing the game for those of us that like farming.

I am confused the way you say

55 monks eventually became just farming builds and pretty much the place people used them was outside Bergen Hotsprings. They weren’t a build that people used to play the game. They were a build people used to farm in one specific spot.

Are you saying that even for those of us that enjoy farming, and that enjoy using the 55 monk build, somehow the fact that it’s farming, even if it’s only one location, somehow we are not playing the game? what are we play8ing then? It Looked to me Like I was Logged into Guild Wars, and I was playing a Guild Wars profession…. and killing Guild Wars mobs… to collect Guild Wars Loot.

What game was i playing?

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Uriel.6310:

In the past, I use to believe that GW2 skills were going to be something similar to how GW1 worked, and for those who have played the original series would know what I mean. There were multiple builds and usually more than one way for every class to be played in game. But as I played through the GW2 betas that quickly changed.

I am bothered to see now how some classes have more or less builds than others. And even with there being another build, it usually only includes swapping out a few utilities while maintaining the same 5 skills from your weapon. Not only that, some classes have mechanics which keep them from even being played at their max potential or at all in certain game modes. (Necro’s and Rangers).

So to start the conversation, How did we go from creating almost endless combos of builds in GW1 to being pigeon hold into certain builds to fit the meta in GW2? Is there any chance that things will improve or only get worse?

/Discuss

It was too work intensive for the Devs to maintain skill balance. Yep that was the reason given. I was like “Seriously?” If my development team admitted that and wanted to dumb the game down there would have been alot of job openings. They may as well have told me, “We can’t do the job sorry..”

I’m waiting for them to announce console versions of Gw2. I’m used to MMO’s that require a lot more thought and planning.

This! For a second I felt I was the only one that heard the dev reasoning as " Sorry, we don’t know how to give you a more fun more diverse game. It’s hard for us to make, and for you to play. " A simpler game suits both of us.

I always took it as a Bit of an insult that the devs decided to simplify the game because.

1. The Original Guild Wars is too complex for casual gamers….
2. It’s too hard for us to balance it….

Basically they are admitting they cannot provide us a game we might find exciting because it would make their game harder to balance. Last time I checked it’s their job to give US a more thrilling game, Not give themselves a cushy easy job, That we pay for.

Mada.5319:

The build diversity is the same in both games.
GW1 had more skills, sure, but the majority were underpowered and never even used in the first place.
GW2 has less skills, but makes up for it with traits and expanded gear compared to gw1. If two builds used the same skills/utilities but had different traits/gear, those two builds would be played very differently.

Additionally, gw1 and gw2 were made by completely different people. Don’t let the ArenaNet name fool you. Almost everyone who set the foundations of GW1 had left the company by the time GW2 got into the picture.

I disagree. Guild Wars ( see my sig) had more build diversity, the difference is, most of the skills were sityational… and synergized off of one another.

Situational skills that are Uber in the situation they are MEANT to be used…can seem underpowered if you try to use them where and when they are not intended.

Think of it Like Holy Water, when battling vampires… ( Not game related no there are no vampires in Guild Wars or Gw2. )…. if you are battling Vampires Holy Water is the bomb. If you try to use it when fighting Robots it’s underpowered… against robots.

Guild Wars intended for your Hotbar to be dynamic… constantly swapping skills in and out… you were intended to even swap your sub-class in and out. You could totally change your ability points in towns ..ability points that actually changed How your skills worked.

You could change the 5 main ability lines of your primary, and 4 of your sub-class.

Saying " Guild Wars skills were underpowered or useless." well. Pardon me for saying this, just says you did Not Know when the skills were powerful, and useful.

Gw2 dumbed the game down. They wanted to give players a game with 2 maybe 3 alternate builds, and weapon locked most of the skills.

Dumbs it down for us…. simplifies balancing for them.

I think we were gypped , but that’s just my opinion.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Nerelith.7360:

And the fact that in game gold and gems are traded back and forth in exchange for items that have monetary value..GIVES them monetary value.

I am just hopeing pwoplw can see How items that may not appear to have “Inherent value” or even " real existence" can have monetary value.

The question is, is it worth something to someone? Will someone pay real world money for it?

If we ask those questions about in-game gold…then yes..it has Monetary value. Anet makes money by selling it.

/sigh

Again you’re wrong. Repeating a fallacy does not automatically make it correct. A = B, B= C, does not always mean A = C.

Gold and Gems have no monetary value. Players who exchange back and forth for items of no monetary value, the result is still no monetary value. If you’re talking about real life Gold, a rare metal, then yes, Gold has monetary value, in the real world.

I’m starting to wonder if this debate is a psychological attempt to attach real value to your perceived values of in-game items. Something along the lines of Gold-exchanging players feeling on par with Gem purchasing players. I don’t doubt that you value your Gold and your in-game items. I value them too. But the way MMOs are set up is that we don’t own anything. At most, we own the box the serial number came in. All virtual items are property of NCSoft, and we’re allowed to access them in exchange for money. It’s like we’re leasing time in order to play the game.

I would appreciate it if you would cease trying to psychoanalyze me on the public forums, extend me the same courtesy I did you.

We can disagree on the subject matter without being disagreeable, or seeking to get personal. I refrain from making personal observations on the public forums of you, I expect the same :-)

By the way, you are still wrong. Virtual Goods and services have real worl value when people pay real world currency for them.

PS: I never saved up enough gold to exchange for Gems. Too lazy and too ADD to be patient enough to save it up. I Like a lot of players used my Cash, to buy gems. I then used the gems to buy gold.

The fact that I did, does not make me any more important than any other player. And it doesn’t make me more important than players that use gold to buy gems. I am part of a group of players that supports this game.

So are players that save up gold to purchase gems as both you and I… as well as players that buy gems with gold,… bring material to anet that it can then use to turn a profit.

I do not need to purchase gems with cash to feel important.

PPS: you are wrong. If A=B, and B=C, then A=C, as Long as the comparisons are equal.

If $1.25 = 100 gems, and if 100 gems = 9gold 85 silver, then for a player that seeks to use cash to purchase gems to then purchase gold…..

$1.25 = 9g 85 s.

The fact that a player is willing to pay anet for gold, and is willing to pay $1.25 for 9g 85 s, means that it has monetary value to Anet. That Anet makes players purchase gems that they then exchange for gold…does not mean Anet is not selling Gold. It is selling gold for real world cash, that means it has monetary value to Anet.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Nerelith.7360:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Nerelith.7360:

~~~ snip ~~~

Wrong again. I’m getting a bit tired of having to repeat our explanations on how the Gem Exchange works. Players are NOT buying Gold and Gems from each other. This is a simple fact. Just because the Gold/Gems go into the pot of the Exchange, doesn’t mean they’re suddenly trading with each other. The pot balance is meant to determine the exchange rates. Players are exchanging Gold/Gems with existing Gold/Gems that Anet deposited into the pot before the game started. Yes the new Gold/Gems that were exchanged today are now mingling with the existing Gold/Gems in the pot, but we are not at the point where I’ll be getting someone else’s Gold when I exchange my Gems.

Anet/NCSoft does not make money off of players who exchange Gold -> Gems. Why? Because this exchange was free. Anet/NCSoft makes money from players buying Gems (which have no monetary value). I’m assuming you’re thinking in-game Gold is the same as real life Gold, a rare metal, that people and governments use to do business.

You can say " wrong again" that doesn’t make me wrong. You can explain over and over and over. That doesn’t mean you understand.

Just because all the gold and gems go into a common pool where they mingle with everyone else’s from trades days before doesn’t mean Anet is NOT making money from trading in gems and gold.

They make Money when they sell in game gold to a Player for gems they bought with cash. But they also make money when they buy in game gold from a player that was going about playing the game, that then sold it’s gold to Anet for gems.

The same gold that maybe next week or next month it will sell to another player for gems they purchased with cash.

One of the ways Anet makes money is by dealing in gold sales. Just because gems are in the picture does not eliminate the fact that Anet is making money buying and selling it’s own in game gold.

Yopu used the following definition of Monetary value.

Monetary Value: Noun – the property of having material worth (often indicated by the amount of money something would bring if sold)

According to your own definition of monetary value, in game gold has monetary value. Since it is indicated by the amount of money it..( in game gold) would bring when sold to the cash purchaser of gems.

I hope you understand how your own definition of monetary value applies.

Wrong again. Gold and Gems have no material worth. We don’t own them. We’re allowed to access them.

And the fact that in game gold and gems are traded back and forth in exchange for items that have monetary value..GIVES them monetary value.

I am just hopeing pwoplw can see How items that may not appear to have “Inherent value” or even " real existence" can have monetary value.

The question is, is it worth something to someone? Will someone pay real world money for it?

If we ask those questions about in-game gold…then yes..it has Monetary value. Anet makes money by selling it.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Nerelith.7360:

~~~ snip ~~~

Wrong again. I’m getting a bit tired of having to repeat our explanations on how the Gem Exchange works. Players are NOT buying Gold and Gems from each other. This is a simple fact. Just because the Gold/Gems go into the pot of the Exchange, doesn’t mean they’re suddenly trading with each other. The pot balance is meant to determine the exchange rates. Players are exchanging Gold/Gems with existing Gold/Gems that Anet deposited into the pot before the game started. Yes the new Gold/Gems that were exchanged today are now mingling with the existing Gold/Gems in the pot, but we are not at the point where I’ll be getting someone else’s Gold when I exchange my Gems.

Anet/NCSoft does not make money off of players who exchange Gold -> Gems. Why? Because this exchange was free. Anet/NCSoft makes money from players buying Gems (which have no monetary value). I’m assuming you’re thinking in-game Gold is the same as real life Gold, a rare metal, that people and governments use to do business.

You can say " wrong again" that doesn’t make me wrong. You can explain over and over and over. That doesn’t mean you understand.

Just because all the gold and gems go into a common pool where they mingle with everyone else’s from trades days before doesn’t mean Anet is NOT making money from trading in gems and gold.

They make Money when they sell in game gold to a Player for gems they bought with cash. But they also make money when they buy in game gold from a player that was going about playing the game, that then sold it’s gold to Anet for gems.

The same gold that maybe next week or next month it will sell to another player for gems they purchased with cash.

One of the ways Anet makes money is by dealing in gold sales. Just because gems are in the picture does not eliminate the fact that Anet is making money buying and selling it’s own in game gold.

Yopu used the following definition of Monetary value.

Monetary Value: Noun – the property of having material worth (often indicated by the amount of money something would bring if sold)

According to your own definition of monetary value, in game gold has monetary value. Since it is indicated by the amount of money it..( in game gold) would bring when sold to the cash purchaser of gems.

I hope you understand how your own definition of monetary value applies.

PS: using bold doesn’t automatically make what you made bold true. it just makes it bold. So just because you say free doesn’t mean it’s free. it just means it’s bold .

phys.7689:

mtpelion.4562:

Nerelith.7360:

Not true. I disagree.

It is true, which means you disagree with reality. Or are you making a statement “not true” and then disagreeing with yourself and thus agreeing with me?

ArenaNet has monetized gems. They offer the gem to gold exchange and gem store in order to incentivize players to purchase gems. They only make money when players buy gems.

Any other statement to the contrary by you is blatantly wrong.

Of course anet only gets cash when they get cash
monetary value is not cash

what they get from players who sell gold is something of monetary value, what they get from people who buy gems is cash.

you can pay some one in things other than money, generally these things have monetary value.

lets say i go to a different country, and the people there trade me silver in exchange for my drawings. Silver has monetary value, it is not money. However it cannot be debated that they have paid me. I have not given them drawings for free, i gave it to them for silver.

Notice silver is not cash. I can trade it for cash, but it is not cash. I dont actually make cash, until i go to the silver exchange and change my silver for cash. However, i gained monetary value the moment i traded my drawings for silver.

based on how much silver i was able to charge for my drawings, i can then figure out the monetary value of my drawings in cash, even though i at no point sold a drawing for cash.
i can figure out how much cash, my drawings are worth, which is the monetary value of my drawings, So yes, for anyone asking me, i make money from selling drawings, I could say i make money from selling silver, but that is only giving them a tiny piece of the picture. The actual economic force driving my business is the value of my drawings, because how many drawings i can get silver for, determines how much money i make.

You assigned a Monetary value to your drawings even though you could never buy coffee at starbucks with them.

People seem to think Monetary value, and currency are one an the same. Once they Understand " Phys’ drawing may not be currency, but it has monetary value…. silver may not be currency but it also has monetary value….

maybe….

they can then understand.." neither gems nor gold are currency…. but they have monetary value. When a Player buys gems with Gold… and buys gold with gems, they are trading in items that have monetary value.

mtpelion.4562:

Nerelith.7360:

Not true. I disagree.

It is true, which means you disagree with reality. Or are you making a statement “not true” and then disagreeing with yourself and thus agreeing with me?

ArenaNet has monetized gems. They offer the gem to gold exchange and gem store in order to incentivize players to purchase gems. They only make money when players buy gems.

Any other statement to the contrary by you is blatantly wrong.

You can say it over and over, does Not make it so. Saying" You disagree with reality "does not make it so. All you show is that you are not understanding how Anet is making money from selling in game gold thus assigning monetary value to in game gold.

They make money when they sell gold to the buyer that buys gold with gems, they also make money when they buy gold from the player that buys gems with gold.

A lot of players seem to think they are bending over backwards doing a favor to players that buy gems with gold.

They found a way to turn players that normally would not buy gems for cash, into workers that provide them with a product to sell… In game gold.

You saying over and over." I Understand how it really is, listen to me, you are wrong", doesn;t make you right.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Nerelith.7360:

~~~ snip ~~~

Repeating a fallacy does not make it correct. Please realize that you don’t understand how the Gem Exchange works. We, of the BLTC forums, have been talking about it since day one. Anet has also explained what it is and how it works, thus the reason why we understand what we’re talking about.

The Gem Exchange is a pot. In the pot is Gems and Gold deposited before the game went live. The exchange rate is a formula based on the rations of Gems and Gold. When a player exchanges their Gems or Gold, they get the opposite in return. The pot levels rise and fall, and with it the exchange rates. When the player population is doing too many exchanges of the same type, the formula makes makes it more expensive, thus reducing the incentive to continue. At the same time, the incentive to do the opposite increases by the same rate. The higher the exchange rate goes for Gold -> Gems, that’s proof that there’s a lot more Gold than there are Gems in the balance. Basically the scales are tipped heavily towards one direction.

Going on, Anet/NCSoft profits off of players who continue to make microtransaction purchases. To do this, they pay for Gems with real money. THIS is where the money comes from. This money is put back into the company, as well as pay out dividends to shareholders. Players who just trade in-game Gold for Gems do not add revenue to the company, because they didn’t pay for any microtransaction. They got their Gems for free. This is an intended mechanic. This allows non-paying customers to enjoy the same things as us paying customers. Non-paying customers exchange their time and hard work (which of course has no monetary value) for Gems. Paying customers exchange their real money for Gems (still no monetary value, as to the User Agreement).

You can claim to understand it, that doesn’t mean you understand it. That is why you are having a hard time, you have decided you understand it, and are trying to explain it to someone else that actually understands it.

You repeat yourself. But repeating yourself doesn’t make you right. In Game Gold has value for Anet, because they sell it.

They get cash for it, when a Player uses cash to buy gems, then trades the gems for Gold.

For some reason you do not wish to accept that when you use Real world money, to buy Gems, and then use the gems to buy gold… you used real world cash to buy gold.

If A = B, and B=C, then A=C.

if real world cash is used to buy gems, and gems are used to exchange for gold. real world cash was used to buy gold.

If I buy Item A for X dollars, and exchange Item A, for Item B. I did Not get Item B for free, Item B cost me X dollars.

If I buy Gems for cash, and use those gems to exchange for gold…I paid cash, for gold.

By Selling me gold Anet realizes a profit. The fact that I cannot realize any profit from that gold, does not mean the gold lacks monetary value, since it has monetary value for Anet.

The purchase and sale of Gold is one way that Anet pays it’s bills.

Think about it, is there a difference between How much Gold it takes for One Player to BUY 100 Gems with Gold? and when another wishes to purches gold from Anet with Gems…doesn’t he get less?

This is the definition of profit. That you are not used to thinking of In game gold as having monetary value, doesn’r mean it lacks monetary value, it simply means that you don’t recognize it.

PS: The User agreement is a legal position, and Not even an incontravertible one. it is not an economic document. So since this is an economic discussion, the User agreement has no place here.

The reason the user agreement says " Gems have zero monetary value" and " Gold has zero monetary value" is to prevent people from suing Anet if anything happens to their Gold and gem holdings.

I agree to that , that means i agree that i am not gonna sue Anet if anything happens to my Gold Holdings.

that doesn’t mean i agree to ridiculousness, saying that “The user agreement” says that what has value , has no value. Is ridiculous.

mtpelion.4562:

Nerelith.7360:

PS: I read it when you said it the first time, I do not agree with yoiu, because you are wrong. So you can say it twice, three times, four times, and five. The Number of times you repeat something wrong, doesn’t make it right.

The long and short of it is that you are failing to recognize that ArenaNet only makes real world money when a person buys gems. What a person does with those gems after they purchase them is irrelevant to that fact. If I convert my gems into gold, ArenaNet does not make any additional real world money. If you then trade your gold for some of the gems I just put into the exchange, ArenaNet still does not make any additional real world money.

Only buying gems gives ArenaNet real world money.

Not true. I disagree. In game Gold has real world value, since Anet makes a profit in buying and selling in game gold.

They buy it from playwers that have acquired it through in game play, and pay them with gems. They then turn around and sell the gold to players that bought the gems with cash.

This is a profitable stream for Anet. They value the gold sold to them because they can then turn around and sell this Gold to players that purchase gems with cash, that then turn around and buy the gold from anet for the gems they bought with cash.

If A = B, and B= C, then A=C.

If $1.25 = 100 gems, and 100 gems = 9g 85 silver,m then $1.25 = 9 g 85 silver.

Just because you buy gems with cash, that you then exchange for gold, does not mean you did not buy gold for cash.

If I buy Spiderman comic for $3.99 and rhen exchange that comicbook, for an X-men comic book, I bought the X-men comicbook for $3.99.

Saying that I got the X-men comicbook for “free” shows a misunderstanding of what comprises monetary value.

The reason why Gold has value is because players buy it. They use cash to buy gems, then use the gems to exchange for Gold. Like exchanging a Spiderman comic for an X-men comic. Just because you exchanged one for the other, does not mean that the comic that ended up in your possession was free…. it cost you the price you paid for the Spiderman comic.

PS Comicbooks also have monetary value.

Spider-Man / Spider-Man vs. the Chameleon! #1 released in 1963 in mint condition is worth $36,000

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Nerelith.7360:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

bloodletting wolf.2837:

I didn’t know that Anet employees could pay bills or buy groceries with in game gold. Who knew.

Unfortunately, there are some who don’t understand how the in-game system works. Because they perceive Gold to have “value”, they incorrectly assume that you can now use this “value” to pay employee salaries, overhead, dividends, etc. At this point, here’s how they see the system:

A = Gold (a virtual currency)
B = Real money (self explanatory)

A = B

Of course this thinking is completely inaccurate.

Just because you misunderstand the concept of economic value, and continue repeating it, doesn’t make it so.

in game gold has economic value. Anet sells it, Anet makes a profit from it’s sale. Anet makes Money from selling gold exactly as Gold sellers make money selling gold.

It seems because they sell you gems for your cash, and then you use gems to buy gold, that you believe falsely that you have not payed real cash for gold.

It is because you have paid Anet real world cash for their in game gold that they sold to you, that they can pay their employees salaries.

yes, Anet buying and selling gold gives in game gold value, which can be then used to pay salaries, and wages, and profits used to disburse to stockholders… just like any other Gold seller makes money from selling Anet’s in game gold against the TOS, Anet also makes Money from selling Gold, except they do it by first selling you gems, which you then use to buy gold.

It seems you still have a hard time understanding this. I hope that you understand it better.

/sigh

I really thought you’d understand the concepts we’ve been explaining all these pages. Anet doesn’t sell Gold. Anet sells Gems. Once in your possession, these Gems have no monetary value. And just because you can exchange Gems for Gold, that doesn’t mean Gold has monetary value as well. They have “personal value”.

Sorry, but you are still wrong. Just because you buy gems, that you then use to exchange for Gold, does Not mean you have not bought gold from Anet.

When you buy Gems, you are not buying gems, you are using a currency that Anet accepts for store credit. One of the items you buy with the gems is gold. If there was absolutely NO Gold or any virtual products or services that you could exchange for gems, no one would buy gems. NO one is BUYING Gems. People only buy gems as a medium of exchange.
Of there were nothing to purchase with gems, No one would buy gems. They are using their cash to buy gems so they can use the gems to buy gold.

They are using cash to buy gold.

And by the way, you cannot take an illegal activity such as selling Gold for real money, and then use such an example to support your arguments.

I’m not using an illegal activity to support my arguments I am using a legal activity. Buying Gold from Anet for cash.

The fact that you do not recognize the transaction because it is transpiring with Gems In between, doesn’r mean the transaction is Not transpiring.

Anet sells gold for cash, that is One way it pays it’s employees. So in game gold has real world value.

$1.25 USD = 9 g 85 s.

Edit – I forgot to remind you that when a player exchanges their Gold -> Gems, they are not paying anyone’s salary. The huge flaw here is that you believe Gold = real money. In the real world, that applies fine, as Gold is precious metal that acts as a buffer to inflation. In the game, Anet doesn’t make a single penny when a player exchanges Gold -> Gems. I repeated it twice here so you understand it’s importance. Paying customers like me who makes microtransaction sales is what drives the current revenue stream for NCSoft.

Just going to say you are wrong. I have explained it often enough.

PS: I read it when you said it the first time, I do not agree with yoiu, because you are wrong. So you can say it twice, three times, four times, and five. The Number of times you repeat something wrong, doesn’t make it right.