News for PvP Players

I still don't see why the profession unlocks have to go. As a player of both Pve and Pvp per profession unlocks may prove highly useful. For instance, I don't have a primary warrior, necro, or assassin. It requires a LOT of ingame money to get all those skills unlocked in PvE, sure I could use Balth Faction, but (in the past at any rate) that has been use to unlock the runes and mods that I hadn't managed to ID during PvE play. I'd like to see what sort of statistcs there are for unlock packs being purchased only by PvP players, as oppose to those who do both and simply haven't got around to unlocking a full compliment of warrior skills yet.

I'll be happy to answer. In order for us to offer the full "tournament pack" or whatever we end up calling it, we need to code things on the back end. You can understand how complicated this might be when you realize that the current PUPs do not allow character creation on their own, but are tied to the existing account to allow character creation. With the many choices in Guild Wars -- 6 core professions, 30 combinations as primary and secondary -- it's not feasible for us to code for that extremly high number of possibilities: 30 profession combinations times 3, for PUP versus the tournament pack versus neither. Well, it just gets to be too much to manage in a reasonable fashion.

So in order to offer the PUP or tournament pack in the future, which we feel is an order of magnitude more valuable and more sought-after by the community at large, we need to simplify the coding that is involved in these options. That means that while we will continue to support individual skill packs that were purchased in these early weeks, we will not be able to offer them in the future.

Only new players who are 2-3 chapters AND hardcore PvP will purchase these packs.

Being an avid PvP player I will still purchase each chapter as they are released, as will every PvP player I know. Any talk of 'splitting the community' doesnt make much sense since this will help welcome new players by not having them 1000 hours behind us all in skills.

Good Job on Anet's part by not letting the new players get left too far behind.

This is a great idea. It's actually feasible for new players to jump into high level PvP right away now, which was going to become an issue sooner or later. Glad to see ANet being proactive and fixing things before they get bad.

If you guys didn't catch that, what she's getting at is that coding the individual class PUPs to be able to function without purchasing the full campaign would be an astronomical pain (hyperbole ) due to the vast amount of potential combinations. Far more efficient to simply do away with the single class PUP's and focus on the good ol' all-in-one.

.-.

in one hand i like the idea of giving PvPers what they want so they dont have to play through the "boring pve" but at the same time, its splitting the community even further.

T_T

well...at least it will shut up people who say "GW needs PvErs cause PvPers arent the ones giving the money".

Correct me if I'm wrong, Gaile, but the way it works at the moment is that:

Pve account + unlock key = Pve account with x unlocks.

I understand that the new tournament packs will require a lot of programming and that it would be impossible/difficult/not sensible to offer a:

Pvp account + unlock key = Pvp account with x unlocks.

However for Pve players, who are going to continue purchasing the campaigns and may occassionally have use for the:

Pve account + unlock key = Pve account with x unlocks,

will have no option at all should they need a certain set of skills to support their pvp fun. What will we be expected to do? Purchase the tournament pack too?

Just to make this absolutely clear. I don't have a pve warrior. I've unlocked some, but not all of the warrior skills. Say my guild wants me to play warrior in HA or GvG, what do I do if I don't have all the skills? In the past it simply would have been a case of purchasing or using Balth faction to unlock, but these new unlock packs have made that easier. Now say I have no balth faction, and no in-game cash, my guild is stuck with a bit of problem. Certainly I doubt that this is going to happen all that often but it will happen more frequently as more chapters come along. Why shouldn't a Nightfall monk be able to purchase Prophecies skill sets?

Believe it or not, forcing PvP fans to PvE 10,000 hours made the divide much much wider, not narrower.

I have to agree with the whole 'splitting the community' point of view. On the one hand you'll have the so-called 'hard core' PvP players who simply purchase the skills and ignore the storyline that is the true difference between the chapters (with so many duplicate skills introduced with the new expansions, you're not getting much for your money if you already have the other chapters). On the other you have the people who play through the storyline and then seek to test what they've learned - only now it will be against people who have been practicing their strategies for a while and have the upper hand right off the bat.

A lot of what ANet has said in the past has been proven untrue, and this time it's the whole 'PvEvP characters benefit the most' promise that takes the hit. I would like to see some tangible, meaningful manifestation of that, rather than something that would only further elliminate the 'middle ground'.

Oh Gaile, it's good to see that you're human.

Gaile, any ETA on how long after Nightfall before a PvP Edition becomes available?
Please don't make it where I need to grind to be competitive. Armor swaping and more weapons is just a small advantage, anything bigger than that would just add grind if you wish to pvp on par with everyone else character wise.

Ok, I'll correct you. Unlock packs do not apply to PvE characters. They only apply to template or PvP characters, the Level 20s that you make on the "other" side of the character creation screen.

According to the design team, we have no intention of offering unlocks for PvE characters. To do so would totally obliterate the reason for playing PvE to begin with, and would muddy the line between the many benefits of creating a PvE player and raising it to Level 20 and making an inst-character that is already max level.

At this point, we're considering the options and listening to player feedback. Your input is more than welcome, and I've noted it along with that of many others.

I couldn't agree with you more. Instead of spending time in "the old campaign" scrambling to get those skills, the player can move ahead and join his veteran friends. I think it's really a great idea!

okay so i have to ask, since the new installments are only gonna be 2 characters each, will there be cheaper price for those packs? and if so, any idea on the price range?

I don't see that it will split the community. That's already been done. It you take even the well-above-average sstrictly PvE player and put him/her in HA, they won't understand 90% of what's said there. And many of the current PvP players who've been around for awhile have already UAX'd all of the skills, runes, & weapons mods for Prophecies anyway.

I see this offering as a way for players that are new to GW as a way to be somewhat competitive right away. Which is a very good thing.

As for the change to make them all-professions, that's good for the newer players, too. As they can be flexible in their builds.

I can give a semi-explanation until/unless Gaile gets back to you, Autumn.

There are 300 skills in each new campaign. 150 of which I believe are for the new professions. The remaining 150 are spread across the six core professions.

Now, there are 454 Prophecies skills, and this pack costs $40. 300 is about two thirds of 454, so logically, the new packs should cost around $27. But Anet is a business, and they need profit, so I would still expect the price to be at $40. Having it at $30 would be a nice surprise though.

In short:

Probably $40, but logically $30. Chances are we'll see the former, hopefully we'll see the latter. Make sense?

i also have to ask, since skills was the major faction sink, will there be any extra uses for faction in the future. any concideration to the cosmetic upgrades that some were suggesting in past forums, or would that take too long on the programming part?

Are you forgetting the upgrades to the skills of the core professions? We didn't just add skills for the Ritualist and Assassin in C2. We added a boatload of skills for the other 6 core professions. And we'll do the same in Nightfall.

So no, we won't lower the price for subsequent campaigns, sorry.

Wow, Gaile responds fast o_O

So yeah, looks like it's gonna be at $40 still for the subsequent chapters.

And about your other question, Autumn, I don't believe faction will have any use beyond its current uses. However, perhaps, and this is *TOTAL* speculation on my part, a new type of faction will be implemented with a new use. Remember, that's *TOTAL* speculation with absolutely no evidence to back it up

ok, thats cool. so when a person purchase these packs do they get the new skills added in future installments as well? if thats the case i can't see the price being an issue then.

much appreciate the fast response and time out for the forum community =)

thanks to Relambrien for the response too.

Gaile, please confirm my assumption that this will be a $40 prophecies or factions pvp package that unlocks everything in the PvP character creation screen, including all skills, runes and items, at the cost of the PvE world. If this is true, ArenaNet gets some serious praise, and I will be deleting random hate posts without any solid reasoning behind them.

I guess the endlessly bickering about how we needed something like this finally kicked in

Now if only they put a nightfall PvP package out with the same release date as the full game, I would be in GW heaven.

Hm isn't that a lot like what Factions did? Straight to level 20, and then buy all your skills from the Skill Trainer if you can afford it.

So you are encouraging the "old campaign" to be empty, and nobody should play it. Given up on it.