User:Titani Ertan/Why

This game isn't broken?
I have heard that. I hate that. I have heard it from several guildies who I appreciate, but people sometimes can't see the obvious until it is pointed out at them. I saw the obvious when I was level 17 and played with a level 20 friend with heroes. I couldn't believe how easy it was. Instinctively, I knew there was something wrong: playing with Henchman on my own was somewhat challenging, so why is it so easy now? My theories remained at their drawer until I went to PvP. In there it was all so obvious, that I was surprised people didn't riot. And then of course I found Wiki, and felt relieved to know that I am not the only one. So, for those who don't see why this game is broken.

What is Broken?
In real life, when something is broken, it means it is shattered into pieces. In the game industry, it mostly indicates a situation where a group of skills towers in abilities over the others. Here is a comparison:
 * Palm Strike is the broken skill.
 * Seeping Wound is the underpowered skill.

Comparison
Palm Strike causes unblockable damage and the Crippled condition. It has a side effect of being an Off-Hand attack, meaning you can start a chain of attacks without the need for a Lead Attack. It has amazing synergy with Trampling Ox, which knocks down the enemy. The chain is continued by more attacks, without any of them being a Lead Attack. Its recharge time matches the recharge time of Trampling Ox. Seeping Wound causes over-time damage if a target is under a certain condition. It's duration is twice the recharge and it's a hex spell. According to the Build Wars, condition removal and hex removal are found in 90% of the teams. So, you are using a skill which relies on the opposing team's stupidity of not seeing a condition and a hex that requires that condition. That is the comparison of 2 skills: 1 is broken and the other is not. The choice of an assassin is simple: knock down+cripple your opponents, leaving them open for your team mates to kill, or relying completely on the other team not noticing what you are doing. Another comparison: Between Heal as One and Comfort Animal. Comfort Animal allows you to bring your pet without the need of Charm Animal, saving up a valuble skill slot, and gives you a Heal+res, and it's cheap and spammable, and it's cheap, and it's cheap. Heal as One isn't spammable, is your elite slot, and it doesn't bring your pet with you, thus it is balanced: imagine a spammable self heal for you and your pet. So, I leave it to you: What would you prefer? The obvious choice would be Comfort Animal, as it essentialy removes the need of Charm Animal, and it saves your elite slot for more damage/utility/etc. When the player base notices a new broken skills combination(s), they normally release it to the PvX wiki, a place where players post builds to the community, for the players to test and score them. Most gimmicks come into common knowledge by people who visit the PvX and try builds there. People who faced those builds and lost, try them, and so it passes.

Why does it matter?
What does it matter if people use broken builds, or why does it matter that this game is broken? Here's the explanation(s):

People use broken build
When you come into Random Arenas Player versus Player, I can guarantee you will face gimmicks. And guess what, your build depends on either raw luck to work or you have to be gimmicky. Even if you are an experienced players (what ever that is), you have a 90% chance to be butchered and sold in parts by the people running gimmicky builds. It is frustrating, it causes you to crave the need to throw away all those people into the ocean. The reason people use those gimmicky builds are because they win. And you don't have to use your brain for them; you can just roll your head on the keyboard. Seriously. I did that once twice. The frustration comes from the fact that a player with the IQ of a burning milkshake can kill you whilst playing another game.

What does it matter
Half of the answer is in the previous paragraph. If you have planned to go and do any high-end missions or explorables lately, and you're missing teammates or you're PuGing (PuG=Pick Up Group), you won't find anyone with a brain that doesn't use Speed clears. The UWSC (Underworld Speed Clear) and 600/Smite teams alongside FoWSC (Fissure of Woe Speed Clear) clug the Temple of the Ages and only people leaving for DoA (Domain of Anguish) are either in a party of 3 or another Speed Clear. This creates a favorable side of some sort: the used professions for those speed clears get the most attention from the player base, as the player base wants to quickly finish things in a fast paced game. In PvP, in Heroes Ascent, PuG parties are formed based on Rank (unless it's Randomway, in which you spam Tab+Invite to randomly invite people). Most people won't invite players with a Hero title of less than 7 or 6, as on the surface, the more you won the more skilled you are, right? Very wrong. Even if you have 0 Fame, you can me more skillful than an R10 (Rank 10) player. Most people win in Heroes Ascent (HA) because they run the gimmicky builds of the whenever. For example, Sway (Spirit Way) is/was a very popular build, consisting of Spirits, Traps, powerful frontline and as much as powerful backline. People who played Sway won because they ran overpowered skills, crushing the people who have skill and gaining fame. Unless in a Randomway or found by a generous leader, most players can't even start the HA experience (note: it is often said and is true that Randomway parties don't pass the Underworld map).

How was it broken?
Recently I've talked to someone playing Maple Story (facepalm). As she's an adult, I asked her "Why are you playing this game?" One of the answers was that it has some sort of challenge into it, and it requires cooperation. For example, if you're a level 80 priest, you can't level up in the level 80 area on your own; the foes there will kill you for sure. So, you just take an level 80 Knight; he slaughters everything, and you heal him. GENIUS, right? Sadly, no. I gave her the example of Palm Strike: "Some time ago Palm Strike was a great, balanced skill. If you knew how to use it, the combo that followed could be devastating. The thing is, that you needed to know how to use Palm Strike correctly for it to work right. But recently, the 8 year old kids that usually inhabit your Maple Story game for some reason came to Guild Wars. ArenaNet saw it as a chance to earn more. So, if up till then you needed to use the apparently vague Palm Strike right to make it a huge success, it is now so easy and much more powerful; you can hardly do anything against it. "Now, Guild Wars has or had a very strong aspect of Strategy. You have over 100 skills, but you can only take 8. So, in order to actually do this right, you need to plan. 8 year old kids can't do that right, unless they're extremely talented. You see what happened? When you take a population that doesn't have the tools to build, and you tell them to construct a building, they can't do that. My question is: Why the hell are 8 year old kids playing a strategy game? And why is ArenaNet riding that wave?"

It's not A.net?
While talking about a friend of mine about this subject, she said "so in your opinion a.net ruined the game, not the players that exploited some of the holes". This is a good statement: people that abuse the brakes inside Guild Wars are the ones that's broken. In a tiny way, it is true. But in another, it is not. Here is the answer: "Do you blame the government for allowing murder, or do you blame the ones that murder, abusing the holes?" People abuse holes. That's the way people are. The good to mediocre people try to pass the holes, making a bridge over it. Lately, the hole inside of Guild Wars grew to be so big that building a bridge over it is a very hard task.

Build Wars
As Guild Wars allows you to bring only 8 skills have have 8 party members in a high-rated match, you can predict what the other team's builds would be, and create your builds to counter it. That's called Build Wars: it's a War of Builds, Builds being the predicted skill bars and Builds being the counter bars. As of late, you can predict what other people's build would be, as the Metagame is found amongst all PvP players. How often did you see a Wounding Strike Dervish, or a Hybrid WoH Monk, or a Curses Necromancer? All of those are within meta, and can be found in almost each match. The term Build Wars is used to determine those builds.

Meta
When many people use a certain build over a long period of time, it becomes a Meta build. Meta builds, at large, don't abuse broken skills; they use unique skill combinations and prove useful, so people use them. A PvP game, as Guild Wars is, is supposed to be made out of Meta builds. GW used to circulate about meta builds that change every short while, as new combinations were discovered and people moved on. Let me make this clear: Meta isn't a problem. When a meta isn't changed for many months, or a meta build existing for more than so long, then it becomes a problem, and not always, at that. Let me give you an example:
 * Shock Axe is a long-live Meta, but it isn't broken, as all normal Melee-counters apply.
 * Feast of Corruption (FoC) used to be a Meta, but only existed a short time, before Cry of Frustration became a common skill.
 * Wounding Strike is a longer-live Meta, yet unlike Shock Axe, it is broken, because all normal Melee-counters only hinter it for a short to no amount of time.

Power Creep
Is explained well on it's own page.

How is it Broken?
This article is split into two parts: PvE and PvP.

PvE
In Player versus Environment, a player coupled with either other players, henchman or heroes defeats predefined monsters with predefined skills. If you are about to enter an area, you can check those monsters skills and see their weakness, and work your builds accordingly. This is a Build Wars (see above). As of late, Sabway and Discordway have popularized themselves, as they can easily destroy almost any area or mission. For other people who can't or don't want to use those team builds, explorables posed a challenge to them. Facing the Power Creep, Hard Mode has become a challenge unless Rick'Rolling it.

PvP
In Player versus Player, a player teams up (or on his own) with other players in order to defeat other players. This aspect of the game is treated to be the main focus of Guild Wars, as in PvE you can predict a foe's every move, whilst other player's builds and tactics differ. This creates competition amongst players, and when there is competition, there is cheating. I treat OP(=OverPowered) builds as Cheats: you don't need to have skill, you just insert a certain code and you can destroy opponents. In Guild Wars, unlike other games, those cheats also effect the players who face them. In other games, cheat codes only effect Single Player mode, whilst in Guild Wars, you use cheats in Single and Multiplayer mode. Those cheats are the broken skills and builds. The cheat code is the template code. Insert Cheat menu is the template box.

Why are you doing this?
I was asked that question once. "ok, so what is your ultimate aim? once you bludgeon everyone into understanding? what then?" I, at least, don't write these walls of text just for kicks. I write/wrote them because: "The aim is to get A.net's head out of their ass, and get this game back to at least twice Prophecies era, which by far was the best."