User:Lilondra/FoGB

Intro
You were linked to this page because you fail to understand some game mechanics, or are just an idiot in general. We hope that by reading this page you will have a better understanding of the game.

Wall of text
'''Why do people keep ranting about this stuff? I mean, we already know it's a problem!'''

Well, yes, the reason people rant is because it is a problem and it remains a problem. Most of the rants about skill balance are actually supported by a lot of empirical evidence and competitive game-play experience. They don't rant because they want to, they don't just magically conjure the arguments out of thin air. They actually thought about the problem, and since they like the game, but those problems ruin the fun for a lot of players, they rant about it. You also have to realize that if someone is ignorant enough to ask to buff an imbalanced skill or ask for more imbalanced skills, people that hate those imbalanced skills will obviously react.

Well, you don't have to run those imbalanced builds if you don't like them!

True, but we still have to play against them. This is a competitive game. "Don't use it if you don't like it" is poor logic to begin with, and it definitely doesn't work here. If a skill is more powerful than the alternatives, there is going to be someone running it, even if you aren't. If somebody "owns" you because of his imbalanced build and not because of his personal skill, it gets frustrating. Would it be fun to play against somebody that is worse then you but wins because he has 2 queens in a game of chess?

Then run those builds too, DUH!

We could do that. The reason we don't is because we find them to be boring. Rolling your face across your keyboard is only amusing the first time you do it. Imbalanced builds are bad for the game and for the people using them. The bad players that run them and roll other bad players never get better at the game, and skilled players which use them get worse.

'''Why would you get worse by just playing an imbalanced build? That's ridiculous!'''

Actually, it isn't. With a normal build, you have to pay attention, not screw up and weigh risks with rewards. If you fail to land a D-shot, you feel the consequences. If you Frenzy at the wrong time, you feel the consequences. Players get worse by playing gimmicks because they don't have to do any of these things. Their builds are so powerful, they don't have to pay attention to the rest of their party or worry about risk at all. Their screw-ups have less dire consequences than those of more balanced builds. That leads us to the second problem. People often think they are good because their build is strong (they win a lot), so they never have a desire to get better at the game. If you have ever played "lower end" PvP (Team Arenas and Random Arenas in particular), you might have noticed the same builds being recycled over and over. Look at what happens when a teammate dies: many of the people who run imbalanced builds don't pay attention and don't resurrect them, leading to a loss.

Well Guild Wars is a PvE game anyway !

By design it is not and in the early days that was pretty easy to tell. The first big "wave of leavers" occurred simply because Guild Wars didn't have UAX from the start. For a long time, updates were clearly pointed towards GvG or just PvP in general. However, things started to change after Nightfall. Arenanet realized that the PvE community was a lot larger than the PvP community. They tried to change the game to make it a bit more PvE-friendly. Many say they killed the PvP side of the game this way, and I think it's fairly obvious that it didn't work out that well. Because GW was a PvP game by design, it will never be the #1 PvE game. Whilst Guild Wars PvE is very different than other MMORPG's PvE, the PvP sector of Guild Wars is still more developed and more complex, and without proper introduction to it from PvE, many newbies (note the difference from noob!) find it frustrating to face the entirely new system by themselves, and their mistakes are brutally criticized by the people who run imbalanced builds or people who have no patience. This creates a sort of barrier between the PvE community and the PvP one.

'''It's Arenanet's game. They don't *have* to listen to you, they do what they want.'''

That may be true, but if they want anyone to keep buying their games and like their games (which is the goal?) then they have to listen to the community. After a while, PvE people will stop whining because their imba skills got nerfed, but PvP players won't since they keep getting beaten by worse players just because of the build they run instead of their level of talent. I'm going to quote Titani here: "Guild Wars is their game. If they can't commit to fix it to at least twice Prophecies era, why did they start it in the first place? Finish baking your cake, or no one can eat and enjoy it."

But X already got nerfed, so they don't need to nerf it again.

PvP players don't keep track of (or care about) the amount of nerfs; all we want is a balanced and fun game. So basically this means that if a skill still poses a problem after being weakened, it has to be weakened again. We don't want things to get nuked unless the skill is broken to the eyeball and Arenanet doesn't want to revamp it.

A good example would be since it will always be overpowered or underpowered. Arenanet nerfed it several times to butcher it after.

If more people like it as a PvE game why would it have to be a PvP game, I mean people like it now too!

2 reasons. Reason 1 would be that Guild Wars is a PvP game by design and therefore will never become a super PvE game, only relatively close. The 2nd reason would be that the PvP aspect of the game can be balanced without killing anything on the PvE side of the game thanks to the PvE/PvP skill split mechanic. Even if you consider Guild Wars to be a PvE game because of the direction it took post Nightfall then there still would be no reason to introduce these skills in the PvP aspect of the game. By design Guild Wars is reliant on good balance.

But if the game is supposed to be balanced around PvP then why are 90% of the balances pointed towards GvG ?

GvG is the highest level of PvP. All of the big tourneys were/are GvG tourneys. Heroes' Ascent would be the 2nd highest level of PvP. Because of the large variety of skill functions and availability of their counters, PvP becomes more balanced as you increase team size. This is why most PvP balances are geared towards 8-man combat, as opposed to balances in TA or HB, which are areas that are naturally more flawed.

But you still spot the diffrence between a pro player running PS Sin and bad players running the exact same build ! I agree with you there but that doesn't prove your point at all. If you look at Gale for example; there is no limit to how good gale can get. Gale is as good as you are. If you look at Palm strike thats not the case: Palm strike is at least this good and can only do that much for you.Palm Strike also doesn't require as much effort or skill as Gale.

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