User talk:81.138.247.170

Your lack of interest in "talking to Guildwiki morons" aside...
I know you generally have a low opinion of both Guild Wars and GuildWiki, but I would like to address some of your queries about assassin skills anyway. I do it here on your talk page so that you may liberally say whatever you want in response in a secluded area where folks aren't going to gang up on you for it.

Anyway, the question you asked on Talk: A/any Never-ending Assault before reverting it was:


 * I'm probably going to regret this, but why is it considered a good thing that certain arbitrary skills do not need a lead attack while all the others do? It looks plain wrong to me, one could call it a "b*g" but I've recently found how viscious this community can be if you dare accuse (or even incinuate) GW accidentally put B*gs in the game. So leaving that aside, how is this "Off-Hand Attack (but not really, but we're not going to mention it)" considered a good thing?

A skill's prerequisites are spelled out explicitly in its description. This is a precedent that was set back in the first GW with skills like Gash (if Bleeding, add damage and Deep Wound) or Hunter's Shot (adds damage; if the target is knocked down, causes Bleeding). Thus, if you forget about the whole assassin business for a second and just look at how skill descriptions are written, you'll see that "if target is enchanted, add damage; else miss" is consistent as far as skill definitions go. In all cases, prerequisites for the skill taking effect are listed in the same manner: if GFS was a warrior or ranger skill, it would look like any other skill and we wouldn't be arguing about it.

"Lead/Off-hand/Dual Attack" refers to something else entirely: the skill's type, not its prerequisites. Just like Gash is just a "Sword Attack" and not a "While-the-target-is-Bleeding Attack", GFS is an "Off-Hand Attack", not a "Target-must-be-enchanted Attack". Why do we call GFS an "Off-Hand Attack", then? For the same reason we call Gash a sword attack: to determine how it affects the prerequisites of other skills. Does Gash trigger Empathy, for example? Yes, because it's an attack. Do you get a bonus from Signet of Strength while using Gash? Yes, because it's an attack. Does being Dazed make Gash take longer to use? No, since it's not a spell. Makes sense, right?... Now try the same with GFS... How do we know whether GFS triggers Empathy? We can look at the description and see "attack". Can we use Repeating Strike after GFS? Yes, because GFS is an "Off-hand Attack".

Now, there certainly are exceptions to this, mostly of the trivial variety: you need a sword to use Gash, but it doesn't say "You must have a sword to use Gash" in the skill description, for example - but, in general, skills will explicitly state their prerequisites rather than hiding them in the skill type, and the skill type is used more to determine how other skills interact with that particular skill rather than to say something about the skill itself. This pattern has existed since GW1 was in alpha, and assassin skills definitely do fit into it about as well as warrior or elementalist or necromancer skills do.

Is this the best possible terminology for this kind of thing? Well, arguably, no, as it clearly has caused at least some small amount of confusion. But it is internally consistent with how all of the game's skill descriptions are worded. The description for Golden Phoenix Strike, unlike, say, Whirling Defense, does correctly use Anet's skill description language, and the text fully communicates all salient features of the skill. Indeed, my only beef with assassin skills is the confusion damage format on Dual Attacks.

I hope the above is at least mildly informative, even if you disagree with it.

A side note: please sign your talk page messages with ~ ; reading diffs to figure out who said what is annoying. &mdash; 130.58 (talk) ( 03:11, 25 May 2006 (CDT) )

Stop breaking moulds. You're on the wiki, just make yourself a "cool" userpage that engenders popularity from stupid people then impose your will on everybody who disagrees with you, with all your fan club to back you up. That's the winning formula, get on with it.

Ok, aside from that, What you've said is well thought out stuff, and as far as Assassin skills go, I can now see the logic in the illogic. Perhaps simply not referring to lead attacks as "Lead Attack" could have saved some confusion. On a wider scope, I come from a more hardcore gaming background than most, Magic:The Gathering, where the actual definite and very very literal meaning of the words on the cards is quite possibly the single most important thing in the game. (Sucking up to the judge out of hours being the second) and so to see an achievement such as Guild Wars suffering with such trivial yet easily avoidable errors is upsetting. (Shall we get into the "errata" issue? no let's not.)

Although in many cases 'trivial' doesn't even cover it. It seems to be an increasing amount of success in-game can be achieved through knowing some little trick, or a misworded or bugged skill. At some point I fear it will end up that this will become the fully normal method. And that will be a sad sad for something as magnificent as Guild Wars is. No wait, IWAY, the most famous of all the bugs, and didn't get fixed for about 8 months. And all the other little quirks and exploits that come and go. Like, I think it was Dark Fury affecting Nearby party members who were in fact halfway across the map. But it's not so much that these things occur, it's why they occur and what gets done about it.

Suppose you write Guild Wars and declare it complete, holy and true. I release it unto the grateful masses. IWAY gets discovered. 40% of your audience loves the bug 40% love countering it. 20% are just a little bit peeved off with the whole thing. (Because you cannot counter IWAY AND Anti-IWAY at the same time)

Who do you choose to side up with? 20% of your players, or 80%?

Capitolism demands that you go with the 80. There was once a game called "Evil Islands" that could be considered a fore runner to Guild Wars. Hardly anybody has heard of it for a number of very good reasons. 1. It is DAMM hard. You are punished with a DP equivalent that, in the later stages of the game, is effectively PERMANENT. This appealed to me greatly as it limits your so called "n00bs" (idiots) without penalising your "newbs" (new guys) thus meaning that at the upper stages of the game, the guys you play with are of a certain caliber, no need to ask the most basic of questions. (How many KD warriors do you know that carry axes?) Gold and XP was VERY hard to come by, so progression was hard, long, and had a proper sense of achievement. So as your average run of the mill general public bozo couldn't "pwn" at this game and he didn't want to play it. But to hardcore element gamers, they would find something well worth playing.

2. Not marketted well at all. I don't want to rant about capitolism, I hate it and wish it didn't exist.

3. Too easy to cheat. There was no security on the game and cheating was rife.

Side notes:- In EI running caused energy degen. (But you could walk instead for no degen) This is the single biggest mistake GW made by not carrying that forward. (in hardcore terms, not brainless masses terms)

EI had no Pvp. Shame that, but considering the cheating going on, it would have been valueless.

EI had a much better skill system, whereby your characters attributes could be channelled into the construction of the skill, not just the outcome. So you could tailor your skills to what you wanted to do with them, you could even install a skill into a weapon or an armour. (Shock Sword anybody?) (Pacifism Armour anybody?) and yes weapons and armour had "energy" and regen too. It was very very elegant.

EI physical damage could be targetted at attack time. (Headshot anybody?) And no legs = no running, and no arms = almost no fighting or casting. Again, very elegant implementation.

Ranted on about it enough now. You get the picture. Somebody did GW correctly before, and nobody liked it because it was difficult, and GW is easy and you need no brain for 0-95% of the game and THAT is what makes GW and it's community such a horrid state of affairs. Because even dumb people have money, and it's hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys.

For every flame, there is an equal and opposite ignore.81.138.247.170 06:54, 25 May 2006 (CDT)
 * Whats your point? It's supposed to be a game anyone can just pick up and play, if they're going to make a game like that then anyone will play it, especially for the no subscription fees Skuld  07:29, 25 May 2006 (CDT)


 * I'm not pulling my hair out. Baby Arena in Ascalon, was probably the best pvp arena in the game, no broken skills, all the basic skills worded correctly, all the matches reasonably balanced (except maybe a bit too much in mesmer) and it was great. Then the brainless ones came in, via Droknars Forge, and ruined it for everybody who had enjoyed it. Perhaps this example of muppet mob mentality helps clear things up? Perhaps I'm the only person on the planet who finds this kind of miserable mediocrity extremely annoying, while in the meantime we get WTS redirected automatically, and in the future we'll get wt$ redirected, then w2s, then *s*. And what's with the meaningless Titles? It's just Fame all over again, no use whatsoever, why can't I have (2200 hours as monk primary) as my title, who cares if I've been getting runs of 10 using IWAY or R/N or anything else for that matter? The only Title worth having is Drunkard. (I've got 250K to waste) BECAUSE if we had titles that actually meant something definitive we'd be EASILY able to filter out muppets and not play with them. The LAST thing GW want.


 * I was about to make an allusion to Magic, actually. Both in terms of wording being important (Guild Wars' isn't really any more arcane, and is only occasionally poorly implemented, in my opinion) and in terms of weird combos being important... Merieke Ri Berit (sp? - it's been a while) + Norrit; Marton Stromgald with Gaseous Form and a Jade Monolith for good measure; Lure and Gaseous Form (again) on The Wretched; Dauthi Embrace used defensively thanks to Circle of Protection Shadow; hours spent arguing rules and semantics over Errantry + Siren's Call; &c... I really don't think one can point to GW and say "This is done poorly" and then point to Magic and say "This is done well" - both have similar strong points and suffer from similar flaws. And, though I've never played it competitively, I think I'd be correct in saying that Magic has its fair share of whiners and idiots, too. The game you mention is interesting because it seems, based on your description, to include both my #1 pet peeve of MMOs: grinding (grr... I wish the GW monster AI wasn't piss so there was more reason to replay areas of the game) - and my #1 pen-and-paper pet peeve: heavily area-specific body damage.
 * I don't really see how running fatigue improves a game, however. It's not likely to improve PVP much, since a character running away and one giving chase will both be progressively running out of stamina. It certainly won't fix the "running" issue, as that's a bursty behavior anyway. Other than the mild level of verisimilitude that it adds, what's the appeal, exactly?
 * On titles: I think, say, the mission completion titles or the skill hunter titles demonstrate more actual aptitude than something like "2200 hours as monk primary". Sure, it might filter out some newbs, but it's "n00bs", not "newbs" that are annoying, as you say. And there's already an easy way to filter them out: talk to them. If your party members sound like idiots in team chat, they probably are. That's the method that's worked for me, at least. Personally, I find the cartographer titles appealing because they make it easier to tell how much of the world map I still have left to explore (and, if you want to be hardcore in your filtering, you can usually assume that people who walk around town with 60%/70% cartographer turned on are just slightly self-righteous). &mdash; 130.58 (talk) ( 16:24, 25 May 2006 (CDT) )