Fury

[Merlinios]

This game looks extremely awesome. Beta is either now or soon. Highly competitive PvP. Not too much else I can tell you. Beta sign up is in the upper right, for anyone who is interested and fails at finding it on the first shot like I did.

Fury

--me

[Merlinios]

Fileplant is now hosting a promotional event in which (assuming your machine meets the requirements) you are auto-included in the beta, with no random selections from developers.

Again, very PvP oriented, so if that's not your cup o' tea, might want to try something else.

--me

[Frag]

Fileplant is now hosting a promotional event in which (assuming your machine meets the requirements) you are auto-included in the beta, with no random selections from developers.

Again, very PvP oriented, so if that's not your cup o' tea, might want to try something else.

--me

Put in my system specs, which meet or exceed all of the minimum requirements, so I went to double-check what I put in and sure enough it was correct and was told I didn't meet the minimum requirements.

Curious,
~Frag <_<

[Merlinios]

I'm running a video card that meets the minimum requirements (it's 512 MB), but it's not one of their selected few, so I'm not able to get in either. Updated drivers as well.

I think thus far they only have support for those. Hopefully they add more, or hit the open beta soon.

--me

[Wyrm]

More and more MMOs are advertising as revolutionary PvP and all that but, to be honest, it all sounds the same as the already existing models and I really can't see paying a monthly fee for a PvP game when there's Guild Wars.

[Frag]

More and more MMOs are advertising as revolutionary PvP and all that but, to be honest, it all sounds the same as the already existing models and I really can't see paying a monthly fee for a PvP game when there's Guild Wars.

Because you can't jump in GW and there's not always GvG going when you log in and that mens pugging :P, that's enough reasons for me as I don't mind p2p as long as there's content updates and bug/error fixes.

Guild Wars is a fine product, and I consider Izzy a pal of mine, but I simply don't dig it since the people I ran with (like LotD, Fianna and KT) stopped playing (for the most part). All that being the case, I will admit to signing in a smashing face in random and team arena until I get bored every now and then when I feel like PvP and I don't want to pound my face against the WoW PvP-wall.

Even so, Waiting on Warhammer,
~Frag :D

[Merlinios]

From what I understand, Fury is built on the same concepts that make Guild Wars *almost* the greatest game ever, but should not suffer from developers who shift the game in a PvE direction, abandoning such concepts as balance.

As far as I know, Fury has not yet announced whether there will be a fee or not, but if it delivers on the level I'm hoping for, I'll be glad to pay one.

Izzy's heart may be in the right place, but he doesn't understand a lot of the concepts that apply to upper-level PvP. And even if he did, I don't think he has the resources necessary at the company for the kind of full-time balance Guild Wars needs to be taken seriously anymore.

--me

Edit: Don't get me wrong; it's still the best PvP on the market to date.

[Artega]

More and more MMOs are advertising as revolutionary PvP and all that but, to be honest, it all sounds the same as the already existing models and I really can't see paying a monthly fee for a PvP game when there's Guild Wars.

I haven't played GW in a while, but it was no better or worse than WoW's PvP when I did. It was no more balanced, and there was no less pointless PvE crap to be done in order to be competitive. All that remained was the fact that I greatly disliked the method of control and general UI that GW has versus WoW's extremely customizable UI options.

For straight-up PvP, I'll stick with the Unreal Tournament series:)

[Frag]

I haven't played GW in a while, but it was no better or worse than WoW's PvP when I did. It was no more balanced, and there was no less pointless PvE crap to be done in order to be competitive. All that remained was the fact that I greatly disliked the method of control and general UI that GW has versus WoW's extremely customizable UI options.

For straight-up PvP, I'll stick with the Unreal Tournament series:)

How about the fact that you were on equal footing with everyone and your skill and your skill choices are what won the day, not what you were wearing? In fact, if you were wearing something worse than the rest of your competitors or teammates, you only had yourself to blame, not the 39 people you were guilded with. Or the fact that they had instant queue's from day one? Or you could PvP for your 'advancement' never having to have set foot into (admittedly) possibly the worst PvE since Pong? (though that wasn't from day one, took a ton of hounding on Izzy & Co. to get faction put in.)

As far as the UI not being customizable, I have basically the same interface on both games, everything UI related in the bottom 20%, chat on left, skills in the middle, hp/target bars above skills, combat log/map on right. WoW allows me to fancify things with custom graphics, but the integral pieces are identical, ymmv of course. :D

Not trying to be down on ya Artega, but for most of us that play both games, there's a night and day difference in WoW PvP & GW. :wub:

Cheers,
~Frag

[Frag]

From what I understand, Fury is built on the same concepts that make Guild Wars *almost* the greatest game ever, but should not suffer from developers who shift the game in a PvE direction, abandoning such concepts as balance.

As far as I know, Fury has not yet announced whether there will be a fee or not, but if it delivers on the level I'm hoping for, I'll be glad to pay one.

Izzy's heart may be in the right place, but he doesn't understand a lot of the concepts that apply to upper-level PvP. And even if he did, I don't think he has the resources necessary at the company for the kind of full-time balance Guild Wars needs to be taken seriously anymore.

--me

Edit: Don't get me wrong; it's still the best PvP on the market to date.

Izzy's heart has never been in the right place, he's a right dirty git, he is. :DThat being said, as I've played with him, I'm going to have to differ on his knowledge of PvP concepts. While he is, in fact, the dirtiest, meanest and downright orneriest PvP varmit I've ever run across, that's mostly due to his innate undestanding of the underlying pinnings of whatever particular system he's dissecting at the time.

Can't comment on the resources bit, sadly.

Again, YMMV.
~Frag B)

Edit: Thinking back over it, simply because someone can demonstrate it via playing doesn't mean they can demonstrate it in design. So, you may be correct, the changes I saw (Alpha > the very beginning of IWAY) were fine, but since IWAY I haven't done much/any HoH or GvG, so things definately were on a downward slide when I departed.

[Wyrm]

Edit: Thinking back over it, simply because someone can demonstrate it via playing doesn't mean they can demonstrate it in design. So, you may be correct, the changes I saw (Alpha > the very beginning of IWAY) were fine, but since IWAY I haven't done much/any HoH or GvG, so things definately were on a downward slide when I departed.

It's kinda funny, the only nerf to IWAY thus far has been the reduction in IAS from 33% down to 25%. They've nerfed just about every skill that's been used with it to the point where those skills can't really be used anymore, but they have yet to do any real damage to IWAY itself.

Most of the original top guilds are gone and the members from those that stayed around have formed different guilds and stuff like that. But, really, you can't have expected highly competative guilds to stay together until now. It's been my experience that PvP guilds in GW will have their run and then disband and the members head off and form different guilds with different people. Even the PvE guilds have a constantly changing roster. I've been in the same guild for the entire life cycle of the game (including betas) and that's pretty much unheard of.

The only comment I have about Izzy and balance in GW is to say one of the funnier "joke" guilds out there was: Guess Who Fails At Balance [izzy] (might have been skill or game balance, can't remember). If I say more I'll start ranting.

As far as I know, Fury has not yet announced whether there will be a fee or not, but if it delivers on the level I'm hoping for, I'll be glad to pay one.

I can't afford a monthly fee, so I'm just going to stay away unless it is announced that there won't be one.

[Merlinios]

'Fraid I don't know Izzy personally, but from what I've heard secondhand, he seems more in line with the "all skills should be fun and playable, particularly if you have to put several otherwise terrible skills on your bar for minimal synergy" philosophy than "skills that reward good players should be better than mindlessly mashing for maximum effect". Once again, secondhand conjecture, but from what I know, he was largely responsible for the massive buff to Channeling that sent the metagame into the hell we all know as Ritspike.

About the resources, as far as I know, very little is being dedicated to balance updates and such. Reconnects came from someone at the office working on them in his spare (over?) time. Without anywhere near the playerbase WoW has, and certainly no monthly fee, Arena.net has had to make choices about what they're going to do, and PvP often gets left on the back burner. Not that I can blame them; the majority of their audience somehow came out on the role-playing side.

I'd almost blame this on them being TOO successful. The game was so idealistic at the beginning that it attracted not only the target audience (Time>skill, Balanced and tactical PvP, etc.), but also masses of people looking to play a "grind-free, fee-free MMO". I could be wrong, but I think that's influenced their marketing and development decisions since then.

And perhaps it's just my personal growth or cynicism or whatever, but at the beginning (beta and shortly after), I always got the impression that they cared, that they were trying to fix things, but now it feels more like they just trying to get that next chapter out there as fast as possible to avoid going into the red. **



As for the downward spiral PvP is going through, you get a lot of the same phenomena in M:tG. In the earlier days, no one really knew anything about balance. Time progressed, they started learning a little (game was pretty good just before Factions), expansions created synergies which horribly broke the game. And this is the stage GW is in right now. Magic fixed it by first making several expansions which were so incredibly underpowered that they did nothing. Hoping GW excludes that bit. Then they started grabbing ex pros for their R&D teams, which helped drastically. But I don't know if Guild Wars will survive that long as the potentially PvP beauty we know it can be.

But despite the mass-migration of Magic players to other things (right around Saga, when it was broke the worst), there was still a healthy competitive crowd. And in Guild Wars, it is dying. You get garbage guilds farming the ladder with overpowered skill-less builds. **And the players have a ton of ideas to revitalize things, but either Izzy is simply not given the programming resources, or he doesn't think they'll work.

I'm stopping now, or I won't be able to, and this has gone on long enough.

If anyone does manage to get Fury up and running, reports would be good.

Edit: But don't violate any NDAs.

--me

[Swiss Mercenary]

Time progressed, they started learning a little (game was pretty good just before Factions)

I am so sick and tired of those days being proclaimed as if they were the bestest-best ever, when all that people played back then was IWAY in HA, and Ranger Spike in GvG. :rolleyes:

[Merlinios]

I am so sick and tired of those days being proclaimed as if they were the bestest-best ever, when all that people played back then was IWAY in HA, and Ranger Spike in GvG. :rolleyes:

Indeed they were common, and so-called "gimmicky" builds will always be common, and have been common since they were invented. The difference here is that right before Factions, it was entirely possible to win at least 80% of your matches playing a skill-intensive, fun-to-play setup if the rest of your team was good. Right now you'd better be damn amazing if you want to win a Broken Tower against Ritualist Spike with just about anything, but if you go back in time and run the usual Gale Warriors + Domination Mesmer + Boon Prot + Ranger and/or Elementalist utility, it was entirely possible to just outplay both IWAY and spikes, even if the opposing players were very strong. Ranger Spike was much stronger in Tombs than GvG (and it showed). IWAY wasn't particularly strong in either, but a lack of offensive disruption and mediocre Monks made Tombs pretty easy to farm. People didn't play IWAY and Ranger spike because they were good; people played them because they were easy, and generated a fair number of wins. I don't know that the same can be said for the modern counterparts aside from the easy part (Ritspike, Hex overload, and no doubt some that I'm missing).

You saw weaker teams farming both Tombs and the ladder with these builds, but you also saw these teams (I'm looking at you, Eternum Pariah) fold once they hit real teams (Te, iQ, EW, wM, EviL). Ranger spike was pretty disgusting, but there was enough offensive disruption to keep it in check if you were smart. But most of those tools, which were all skill-intensive, were powered down right around Factions (along with Ranger spike). The skills that require timing, positioning, game/tactical knowledge, and even just reading your enemy have all been hit with the so-called nerfbat since the oft-referred to Golden Age of Guild Wars. Short list for emphasis:

-Crippling Shot (cost increased, SHADOWSTEPPING introduced)
-Diversion (Recharge increased)
-Blackout (effect decreased)
-Energy Drain (hit at least 3 times, 3 different ways)
-Distracting Shot (buffs to passive blocking skills--Shields Up!, etc with introduction of more skills of this nature)
-Gale (cost increased)
-Bull's Strike (Damage decreased, I believe--could be wrong on this one)
-Blinding Flash (Condition Removal better--Mending Touch, Signet of Remedy, etc.)

All of these skills are arguably semi-effective if you just randomly spam them around, but become infinitely better if the player behind them knows what he is doing in terms of both targets and timing. Arena.net is moving away from this trend and towards skills that just want to be spammed around. Does it really matter who that Reaper's Mark goes on? Natural Stride is another good example of a newer skill that needs work. It's up ~50% of the time and offers up a crapshoot, rather than Whirling Defense, which comes up for a slightly longer period, recharging every 45 seconds instead of 10, and can be used to force through key skills (Resurrection Signet, penetrate their backline to D-shot Aegis, etc.).

The problem is not just restricted to skills, but entire character classes:


-Monks (Reactive skills become stronger as proactive skills become weaker--Introduction of Spirit Bond, LoD0--leading to twitch-Monking instead of intelligent Monking)
-Assassins (Shadowstepping destroyed Water Magic, Cripple as mechanics, though they are still marginally usable)
-Ritualists (Broke Soul Reaping wide open, lengthened games with skill-less skills by making everything hyper defensive)
-Paragons (See Ritualists, replace Soul Reaping with Energizing Finale)
-Dervishes (Avatar of Grenth, Melandru, Scythe AoE at VoD, to a lesser degree, Mysticism)
-Necromancers (Soul Reaping goes infinite (finally fixed to a degree), Hexes are too "spammy" in general. I'd rather see a Freezing Gust than a Reckless Haste, if that makes sense.)

I can't comment too much on the other classes because I have not played them extensively as Monk, and they aren't nearly as broken as the new classes or as obvious as Necromancer. None of the new classes brought much to the table except broken or un-fun (in most peoples' opinion) mechanics.

But wait, there's more! Jade Isle was introduced. Yes, it is necessary to have maps that discourage certain tactics (or you will just see everyone using said tactics and the game stagnates), but you don't want maps that make it literally impossible to do something like split. It's still entirely possible to run 8v8 on Frozen Isle, despite the fact that it's almost perfectly built to split, but unless you're all running Recall, good luck on Jade.



I will agree with you that nostalgia plays a huge factor in the game seeming better back in the day, but there are reasons behind the complaints. While some people complain about individual skills, I would like to see a philosophy change so that the game plays like it did. Freezing Gust is an excellent skill at the flagstand. It's a snare, or damage, and when applied correctly is very powerful. When applied incorrectly, it does nothing at all. You could argue that it's a little overpowered in gank situations, but I can live with that. I want to see short-duration skills that require intelligence for good effect, not AoE hexes that last for 30 seconds and completely incapacitate the other team's offense (Reckless Haste).



And despite all of this, I would argue that Guild Wars is STILL the best PvP on the market. I like a good RTS, but they're a bit micro-intensive, which can overshadow tactics. Imagine what Arena.net could do if they fixed it.

--me, parenthetically

[Swiss Mercenary]

I had a long response typed up last week, but the forum ate it. Suffice it to say that I can't agree with some of what you've said (While Blackout takes far more skill to use then Conjure Phantasm, that doesn't mean it wasn't ridicilously overpowered), you're right on other stuff, and lastly (See: Latest update) I'd love to know what some people at A.Net are smoking, with the new PvE-only skills (Which incidently require as much grind to max out as getting 8 WoW characters to level 70).

[Merlinios]

I had a long response typed up last week, but the forum ate it.

Happens to the best of us.

Suffice it to say that I can't agree with some of what you've said (While Blackout takes far more skill to use then Conjure Phantasm, that doesn't mean it wasn't ridicilously overpowered)

Agreed. But I'd rather have a ridiculous Blackout than a ridiculous Spirit Burn, or Reaper's Mark. And to further the goodness of Blackout, not only is it a well-designed skill in terms of offense, but better teams are able to play AGAINST it effectively. You won't ever see a good Monk or Mesmer get hit by an opposing Blackout. This was, in fact, my point. The game wasn't necessarily balanced back then, but the overpowered skills were skills that (I, and quite a few of the avid PvP players, feel) were good for the game, instead of this trash where every five seconds you pick a target and it explodes through a double Infuse.

I'd love to know what some people at A.Net are smoking, with the new PvE-only skills (Which incidently require as much grind to max out as getting 8 WoW characters to level 70).

I could honestly care less how long it takes to grind for said skills. As long as they're keeping them out of PvP, and perhaps by extension able to keep PvP more balanced while keeping the rest of the crowd happy, so much the better.

--me

[Wyrm]

In a hairbrained idea to get this topic back on topic, I just wanted to say that the buzz I've heard about Fury (oddly enough, it's from the PvP people from GW) is that the game seems pretty good once you get into the depth the game has to offer; so far but the main concerns are around how it will handle casual PvP. Also, the tutorial stinks, but you pretty much have to go through it or you'll be lost.

[Frag]

I made it into the beta, downloading the client now and hooked up with Lords of the Dead. Looks like I might be on the Green server, and if allowed I'll toss some feedback everyone's way. There is the small caveat of myself & Tori being out of town for a couple weeks so don't hold your breath.

Cheers,
~Frag B)

[Wyrm]

Grats on making beta. Apparently they start the open beta this weekend, and sometime in August they'll announce the business model.

I know this sounds a little dumb of me, but before I start putting any hopes on this game I want to find out about the costs involved in playing. If it winds up being a Guild Wars style system or even a system like what Hellgate: London is going to have then I may bite.

Yes, I'm a cheapskate.

[Merlinios]

Last I checked (admittedly some time ago) they hadn't really said anything about a business model. I have reports that the game is much twitchier than I originally thought it would be, for those interested. Some would say Guild Wars is between RPG and FPS. Fury is between FPS and Guild Wars.

--me