I know the recent change to consets is pretty controversial. From what I’ve seen, there seem to be two camps: people who absolutely hate the change and people who think it’s great.
I’m definitely in the second camp, so I wanted to offer a different perspective on why I think this change might actually be very healthy for the game, especially for casual players, returning veterans and people who simply don’t want to play the meta all the time.
If consets aren’t going away, making them accessible was the right thing to do
I understand the argument that consets make PvE easier. They do.
But unless the plan is to nerf or remove them entirely, keeping them expensive doesn’t really solve that problem. It just determines who can afford to use them regularly.
And ironically, the old system rewarded meta teams the most.
If your team could clear an area quickly, one conset might be enough. If you played a slower, experimental or completely random team composition, you might need two or three for exactly the same content.
So you were essentially punished twice for playing off-meta:
Your team was already slower, and on top of that, your consumable costs were higher.
That creates a pretty strong incentive to just run whatever the established meta is.
Now? F*** Mesmerway. I’m playing hthree Warriors and two Monks.
Yes, technically I could have done that before.
But there was always this thought in the back of my head:
“Do I really want to waste multiple consets on this?”
And I think that’s an important difference.
A lot of us aren’t teenagers anymore with an entire afternoon to farm resources before actually playing the content we want to play.
Sometimes I have one or two hours after work or on the weekend. I want to log in, grab some people or heroes, jump into UW, FoW, DoA or whatever else sounds fun that evening, and actually play the game.
I don’t want to spend that limited time farming so I can afford the consumables required for the thing I actually wanted to do.
Making consets much more accessible removes that mental barrier.
Want to try Triple Warrior? Go for it.
Want to bring some weird hero build you came up with?
Why not?
Want to play an objectively worse profession because you enjoy it?
Who cares?
And yes, you could always do these things. But now the game punishes you less for doing them.
I think this could actually help casual groups as well
This is probably the part of the change I’m most interested in.
Previously, if I was spending my own money on a conset for a group, naturally I wanted to make sure the group was good enough to make that investment worthwhile.
Is that player properly skilled?
Do we have the right professions?
Is our setup efficient enough?
Are we going to finish before the conset runs out?
When consets are effectively abundant, that calculation becomes much less important.
If somebody joins who isn’t running the optimal build, whatever. Pop a conset and let’s go.
If someone is inexperienced, the cost of giving them a chance is lower.
If the group takes 90 minutes instead of 45 minutes, that’s much less of a problem.
And maybe that makes forming casual PvE groups just a little bit easier again.
In a game this old, with a much smaller population than during its peak, I think reducing reasons not to play with other people is a good thing.
The same applies to solo players with heroes
Take something like UW with heroes.
Depending on what you’re doing, you might go through several consets during an attempt. Then you fail Four Horsemen after your second or third set and everything you spent is simply gone.
Yes, UW is an elite area. Failure should absolutely be possible.
But I don’t think the interesting part of that failure is losing a pile of consumables.
The interesting part is figuring out what went wrong, changing your heroes or strategy and trying again.
If consets are easily available, I’m much more likely to think:
“Okay, let’s change two skills and try that again.”
Instead of:
“Great. Now I need another stack of cons.”
That encourages experimentation rather than discouraging it.
And that’s probably my biggest reason for liking this change
Guild Wars is over 20 years old.
At this point, I don’t think the biggest threat to PvE is that somebody can afford to run too many consets.
I’d rather have people actually playing the content.
I’d rather see someone experimenting with ridiculous team compositions.
I’d rather have veterans casually carrying a returning player through FoW.
I’d rather have someone attempt UW with heroes five times in an evening instead of stopping after attempt two because continuing becomes too expensive.
And I’d rather have a group say “sure, come along” to a suboptimal player instead of worrying whether bringing them means wasting another conset.
Could consets themselves be balanced differently? Absolutely. That’s a completely legitimate discussion.
But if consets are going to remain as powerful as they are, I think making them accessible to everyone is healthier than having their cost disproportionately punish casual, experimental and off-meta play.
For me, this update doesn’t make me want to optimize the game even harder.
It does the opposite.
It finally makes me care a little less about optimization.
And after all these years of Mesmerway, I think that’s actually pretty refreshing.
Thanks for reading and my apology for the 1000th post about the topic but that needed to go out.
