User talk:Infinite/Nostalgia

tldr -Auron 13:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Genuinely worth the read and attempts! - Infinite - talk 19:28, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

They upgraded the henchmen for all campaigns didn't they? Powercreep is a big deal as elementalist would be completely broken now. Most of the mesmer skills aren't broken apart from Clumsiness. There's also stuff like Shielding Hands and Healing Breeze. The nostalgia would be traveling and going through the story rather than the combat though. I don't have fond memories of combat besides mending, heal sig, cleave build.--Relyk 06:16, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

wot rant

idk, gw1's pve was nothing more than a rushed attempt to tack on a pve "experience" to a nearly finished pvp product. Very few of the enemies got unique skills, and honestly very few of the areas required using a different build. The best use of the PvE content in GW was to teach new players PvP mechanics so they would be prepared when they took the step into the real endgame. The desert missions teaching hall of heroes mechanics, various arenas spread throughout the map letting players get used to each map individually for RA/TA, and even Guild Halls which were crafted specifically for GvG were available to wander around and explore so new players could get accustomed to them. The game suffered tremendously when it attempted (and failed) to make standalone PvE products; Nightfall's slag of insanely boring missions throughout kourna and vabbi, Grind of the North's literal snorefest of 16 identical dungeons with no tactics or build changing required. No unique badass monster skills adding depth or complexity to encounters, only a change of wallpaper and scenery where you fought more monsters with copies of player skills with terrible AI. Yawn. Hard Mode was a half-assed attempt to add difficulty to mindless content, with only artificial difficulty added in areas with 3 healers in one pack forcing you to restart the zone vanquish. Normal mode was a complete joke all the way up into grind of the north, which expected you to start bringing various PvE skills to start countering the mobs that almost had coherent builds (but didn't really, lol). There was almost zero replay value to most of the missions, and the few areas with "replay value" (aka "farm this place for ecto/shards/gemstones") got over-farmed real fast and were honestly kinda boring to begin with (although I will say the butthurt when a guild full of PvPers got a world first HM Mallyx kill with a half-hero group when everyone was trying to glitch him with dumb gimmicks was nothing short of glorious). All that said, I think the main flaw in this exercise is that it's pointless. The game has changed too much - base skills have changed too much. Mesmers and eles (both core professions) both got hilariously imbalanced skills given to them during their respective overhauls, and they still have access to some really broken secondary skills (Signet of Spirits, for example!). Beating the game now, even with arbitrary restrictions on heroes and skill unlocks, is far easier than it was back in the day. Some enemy bars flat don't work because of some of the skill changes, and it's not hard to break the game with player skills (even the simple Clumsiness is many times stronger than it used to be... cheap, spammable, aoe armor ignoring damage). It doesn't take "skill" to win PvE with a bunch of arbitrary restrictions. That just dampens the already somewhat lacking PvE experience into an unfun slog of annoyance and precise required skill-point-counting. (It actually kind of reminds me of Raine trying to do Underworld "as a PvPer," bringing only gvg bars and failing miserably, apparently not understanding that PvPers use every tool available to them to roflstomp the content when 99% of PvErs are running around with heal area and heal other on their monks wondering why they run out of energy and die despite having all the tools of success available to them) -Auron 05:37, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I hear and agree with you both. It's almost nothing like the actual nostalgia but I'm fairly convinced that in terms of PvE, this is the closest you can get to that feeling. I am currently doing this challenge with a group of 4 players (so no heroes or henchmen), a group consisting of a warrior, a ranger, a monk, and a necromancer. We consider it the best set-up for the challenge because it doesn't allow for mesmer and elementalist elites and keeps the maximum of 3 non-primary skills on each of our bars important choices. This challenge brings back the long-past days of tweaking builds and team synergy to overcome normal mode (we had a blast taking down Glint, it took forever). So far we haven't had access to the skills we might end up using in a final, global team "build," so there's that issue as well.

Speaking of access, there's a rule I've forgotten to write down: you can only purchase skills that are offered by the respective skill trainers, not the ones you've unlocked. Very important note, I reckon. At least in the Prophecies stage of the challenge, that is.

The point in the challenge is not that it proves something, or that it makes the current product less terrible. The point is that you (almost literally) gimp yourself into a handicap that actually challenges you as a player (preferably in a group of 4). Guild Wars isn't difficult, we all know this. ArenaNet did nothing substantial to improve PvE, and had a terrible laugh at improving their PvP. I get that. But it's still one of the games that made the most impact on me in the online gaming world. And rolling it with just heroes and henchmen was getting so mind-numbing that I turned to Guild Wars 2. It was that bad. So I quit Guild Wars 2 and went back here, to refine and publish the challenge I designed prior to Guild Wars 2's release. To draw me back into the game a bit. So far the handicap is fun and keeps me coming back. We, as a group of 4, highly recommend others to at least give it a go. It's most fun with 4 players, but with these rules even solo is worth a try (granted, a lot easier with heroes, even though they don't get standard hero privileges). - Infinite - talk 09:54, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Trying it out

I have been doing something similar on my ranger. I started from Proph only using equipment and skills from the Proph campaign and doing all the missions + bonus and using henchies only. I have not been restricting myself with the amount of skills but the elite skills are all capped, so no elite tome and having an elite in the early parts. Also I did not have my character run from place to place to get better armor or skills. Right now i'm busy with NF with a max of 3 heroes and I must say one thing: it's as easy as hell, hardly any challenge whatsoever. I still have to try out HM but I can easily conclude that for now there is hardly any challenge in the game NM, unless you seriously shackle yourself like you do. BTW my ranger is using a pet (that should say enough). Da Mystic Reaper (talk) 17:56, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, once all restrictions are in place you'll be locked away in the challenge to a degree where things become what Hard Mode should have been. It's most fun and the hardest with a team of 4 players, but these days most players are going to settle for the 1-man challenge. As long as the rules are followed it's not too easy (but still much easier than a 4-players run). GW is primarily made easy because of the abundance of strong skills obtained early and the AI's behaviour with them available. If you restrict obtaining skills in general, even heroes, that luxury is lost and you have to build up teams from scratch. Further limiting things just makes the challenge feel more.. complete. :) - Infinite - talk 12:53, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

But finding 3-7 additional players that also want to restrict themselves is quite a difficult thing to do. For somelike like me who is not very sociable (I've got a light form of autism) makes it very difficult for me. Da Mystic Reaper (talk) 13:24, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Some experience

I did something like that a long time ago (I since moved to gw2 but I miss gw1 I come back time to time). I do a full prof run (with bonus) and I even did Sorrow's Furnace (but failed at ToPK) with a warrior (pre-searing left at level 3), only with henchmen (except for one mission where someone joined me), starter armor with no runes, only skills in quests rewards (no elite / no tome / no skill vendor) ,only-looted weapons and no infusion. I discovered again the game and I encourage anyone to do a similar challenge. Ich bin marc (talk) 23:39, 22 January 2014 (UTC)