The New AI: The Unpragmatic Rationale

To Arenanet, this new patch was supposed to make things more challenging. One of Arenanet's main points was that they wanted to discourage farming and encourage team play: they wanted everyone involved in Guild Wars, hence its name. However, there were several major flaws found.

1. (Most) people don't spend their lives on Guild Wars
According to this new patch, it's expected that people, instead of doing a couple of runs, spend 1 hour doing 1 run to possibly get a chance of getting some gold. Arenanet probably felt that they were gearing towards the people that spent so much time on Guild Wars. Unfortunately, it's necessary to realize that a huge chunk of their userbase comes from people who have lives.

2. Money is, and always will be, an issue
With Arenanet's new patch, a utopian ideology can be derived from their perspective: they wanted a game without much importance to money, or gear. This can obviously be seen by the level capped at 20, and unique items easy to find. Unfortunately, with this new patch, they entirely contradicted their policy, and made things therefore infinitely more difficult. The best part about Guild Wars, however, and how it attracted people was its facility in gameplay. You could, potentially, create your own build, go out, and farm to get those items you needed. Now that it's near-impossible to go farming without taking 6-7 hours, perhaps they should rethink their ideology.

3. Contemplate the consequences
What did Arenanet expect the reaction was going to be from this patch? Did they expect a submissive public in response to this "upgrade"? What was their rationale in releasing such a possibly controversial patch the DAY before their new "expansion" came out? Arenanet obviously did not think this through clearly in realistic concerns, as if they did, it would have certianly dawned upon them that the Dervish uses AOE spells. Maybe they thought people wouldn't figure that out?

These are just some major flaws I saw in Arenanet's causation in releasing this new patch... perhaps some argument will invoke a repeal of the so-called "upgrade"?

I've already had a friend telling me he is probably going to buy ebay gold because he works and does school and now farming is near impossible... He doesn't have the time for getting enough money to buy a set of armor, because without farming, just playing through the storyline, that takes quite a while!

Of course I told him not to but I'm sure a lot of people aren't going to feel they have been driven to this option.

I guess it's back to being permanently poor for me. :P

GG to those who managed to get rich before this update. Widening the gap between the rich and the poor is definitely helpful!

I suspected something like this would happened and sold my crap last weekend and stock gold instead. But what i wanted to say is this:

Any game that you need to ebay gold to play, isnt a game worth playing at all.

Take it for whats its worth.

I had Nightfall reserved from EB games, and was planning on picking it up tomorrow. I am now seriously considering getting my deposit back and just moving on to a new game. Farming was monotnous and tedius already, I can't bear spending 10x more time and effort on the same exact run with the same reward...

I don't like Pvp, pve was why I played this game. Apparantly that's not good enough for Anet? I'm really sick of having anet spit in the face of pvers. I think I'll start looking into WoW.

Well I sold most of my ecto's to boost my cashflow, pity that was a week ago. Furthermore I helped a guildie get fow armour and an axe, 60 ecto's I'll probably never see again.
I'm not mad at them nor ANet, I'm simple dumbfounded by the rationale of it all. I really only have myself to blame as I generally try to help out newcomers to the game, what this is promoting is more greed within the guildwars community so now the newcomers are going to struggle a hell of alot more to find or get items that they can use in certain situations.
Some might say I'm a mug for doing this but I've always tried to promote the game to newcomers and not disaude them from gameplay..
On that note... SHIT HAPPENS.

Another problem is this:

Large numbers of farmers have accumulated large amounts of money and goods, and with the nerf of current farming practises, the real value of that money and goods will increase dramatically, to the detriment of new players. i.e. rich become richer, poor become poorer.

..farming is easier then ever know..just adjust your builds..
example: FoW spider famring with new skill, lions might, speedsens things up QUITE a bit

This makes no sense with the introduction of Hero hench - encourage team play, c'mon. In a recent Gamespot article they said it is possible for 2 players with heroes to finish NFs end game missions - 2 players, not 8!

How Anet can do such good things and then screw it up is unbelieveable. The common player pays for their real lack of dealing with "pro" farmers. Even with the new salvage abilities, its the skins that are coveted as much as the mods.

I enjoy a Tombs run every now and then, enjoy trapping UW and FOW runs. They are fun but can also be rewarding. And not all of these are done with 8 man teams and have been enjoyed by many.

And if most people only play for an hour , maybe 2 at a time I hope the new elite mission is not a 3hr or longer grind. The only reason Urgoz or the Deep were enjoyable was the skill of the players.

Have to see how this plays out, if it's good I'll stay and if not I'm gone, have to enjoy it to play it. Factions burned my good will to the bone, so here is hoping I can still do the things that I enjoy in this game.

ign - Huntress Velasca

Soooooo.... what does this have to do with the new AI? Or am I missing something?

Possibly meaned that because Monster AI now is better, causes that monsters are harder to farm.

Monsters (particularly to farmers - melee monsters) will stop attacking when they reach a certain amount of health.

They also flee in that point to regain health.

Look into WoW if you think farming was already monotonous while the farm builds was working?
Wow, I think you've seriously misunderstood what WoW is all about!

So, they made the AI more challenging and people are disappointed? That is a weird thing for people that love a game based on skill.

I agree with the topic.
I don't regard farmers as any threat: ANet implemented expensive armor sets and rare skin weapons so there will ALWAYS be a need for gold. What do you - and ANet - have against people who spend their time to get resources for the armors they like? I don't get it. It's their choice.

But bot farmers are a threat. New patch, increasing the gold value, will only encourage irl gold trades and botting and, as it was mentioned, will make the gap between poor and rich even wider. Thnx gods I was farming a bit myself for the past few weeks, maybe I'll be able to at least buy some new skills for my main char.

1. People who don't spend their entire lives on guild wars:

Don't need zomfgleetweaponsofpwnage with zomfgwtfawesomeskins.

2. If they don't need the above, they don't need:

A whole heap of money.

3. The zomfgsuperobsessed players can still farm and therefore:

Can still get their zomfgleetweaponsofpwnage with zomfgwtfawesomeskins.
Can still hoard ten gazillion plat.
Can still waste their money on armor that the casual player doesn't need.

Conclusion:

For the average, casual player, this update will have little impact. Collectors exist for a reason. They give weapons just as good as the zomfgonegazillionplat ones. You don't need to farm to play the game successfully.

I have to disagree with the OP on point one and two.

1) Yes, they made enemy AI harder, but henchmen AI is also a LOT better. Since most casual players tend to use henchies most of the time, this works to their advantage.

2) It is NOT hard to get max armor and perfect weapons. Yes, you may not be able to get that perfect rare skin green/gold that goes for 50-100+k, but you can get perfect max collector items VERY easily. The same applies with armor. Farming has never been and still is not a necessity for gameplay, but rather a perk for those who want to upgrade their stuff to be prettier.

As for point 3, I don't believe that the AoE effect will be that big of a problem for general PvE use since all damage is not focused on AoE and enemies will be scattered now anyways. I am a bit worried about how the Dervish will work with this, but I honestly don't see this as being that horrible. If anything, I am glad to see that an Earth AoE ele should be able to join up just as well as an SS or MS nuker in PuGs.

so venful of kanie rit no longer works... greaaaat. that is so RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed its not even funny. why take away the only some of us average players can even get money. it took me a month to farm up to my 15k armor. i don't see why they have to stop us from farming. If they want us to do gruop play then RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing make shit drop in group play.

in general, i hate the new update ;P

BUT:

i've noticed one good thing bout the new AI: didnt u always HATE it when u played with hench monks, sumone was dead near a mob ... u start castin rebirth to get that person back and alesia &co run in to use res and get KILLED bc they r so DAMN STUPID!

well, i just had a situation in which sumone was dead ... i started to res that person and alesia next to me did NOT run in!! she stayed nice with me, and attacked instead of gettin killed for no reason. now THATS an improvement imo ...

There is this thing called inflation you know. If farmers can sell their items for ridiculous prices to people who have bought or farmed all their gold, they're less likely to sell for low prices to regular players. So, there goes your whole widening the divide between rich and poor thing, since farming does the exact same thing you claim this aoe nerf does.

Also, if gold is hard to get, that means ebay gold prices go up, which means less people buy it. Which means less people able to purchase items for ridiculous sums, meaning prices come down.

Lets not also forget that this isn't going stop anyone from farming. People will still farm, new strategies will be worked out, eventually we'll be back in the same place. So why are you freaking out? People always over-react to these updates.

This update does exactly what they want it to, discourages farming, increases difficulty.