Improving PvE from a PvP perspective... comments appreciated

With the new year now under our belts and the possibility of change looming over the horizon, I thought that now would be an appropriate time to look into some changes for PvE.

Now, PvE by itself has been discussed to death. PvP by itself has been discussed to death. However, what very few have talked about recently has been the possibility of looking at both from a wider lens.

I think that in reality part of the reason that the PvE game lacks extra "oomf" right now is because PvP characters tend to overshadow PvE characters in the PvP world. Allow me to ellaborate.

Guild Wars follows a natural player progression. You start out at level 1 with few skills and no armor. You then progress through the game and aquire max armor and more skills. You finish the storyline. Then, after you've conquered the game, you set out to demolish other playeres in PvP combat with your risen champion.

All of this works well in theory. However, the PvP-only character has seriously hurt the possibility for PvE characters to participate in PvP. This is due to the fact that a PvP-only player can make a character that works just as well, if not better, than a PvE player INSTANTLY once the proper upgrades have been unlocked. This of course lead to the concept of "build slaves" as I have heard them dubbed. Your individual characters mean very little in Guild Wars, but your ACCOUNT means everything. To compete seriously in PvP you tend to not use the PvE characters that you played through the game with. Instead, you use generated PvP ones that follow an exact build that the serious guilds force down your throat. As a result, I have taken several characters through the game. I was never able to actually enjoy creating any of them because my guild demanded one thing of me and one thing only- UNLOCK ALL SKILLS. PvE became a chore to unlock skills quickly.

Before I continue, I do not want to give the false impression that I think that PvP-only characters are bad. Far from this, I believe that they have created a level of serious play that would not be possible without them. However, at the same time, it tends to hose us non PvP-only players. I like characters to think of me as Tozen the Assassin, but I have seen very few successful builds in HA that use in Assassin, so I can never use my PvE character in high-end PvP.

So, how could this be changed? How could we see people specializing in one profession again and actually seeing some INDIVIDUAL character development?

For one, I think that some forms of PvP should be limited to PvE players and have appropriate, PvE rewards to go with them. This would encourage players to find one character that they were good at and work at improving it through competition. Rather than have serious PvP play and separate PvE experience like we have now, why not have both serious PvP-only and hybrid PvE/PvP play? I know that both types of players exist in Guild Wars.

Please feel free to comment.

The serious high level PvPers have UAXed PvE characters already.

The idea for a PvP mode with PvE characters only sounds interesting, if its a direct suggestion, it should be moved to sardelac ^^

As opposed to PvE characters being practically a requirement in serious PvP in much of Guild Wars' history, and a gameplay advantage up until Nightfall.

What "serious" guilds do you play with, and why can't you play multiple professions?

Are you sure you're looking at it from a PvP perspective, or are you still very attached to PvE?

Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry.

i guess i mean "serious pvp". LOL. Those 2 dont count since its not core.

You're not going to be able to make a PvE characters-only place and make it "serious PvP".

Heck, they had to change Fort Aspenwood and Jade Quarry so that PvP characters could come there.

PvP characters can play those areas, as well.

After a little thinking....I think quest based PvP would work better than an arena for PVE only players.

There are guilds that are very serious about PvP, and there guilds that focus on the fun part of PvP and/or PvE. Seems you like the fun part too, so I think you might be in the wrong guild.

Isn't versatility a good talent to have? IMHO, someone who knows how to play several different professions well is superior to one who knows just one profession extremely well.

Well my way was kinda different... . When i had everything in PVE (first tyria, second cantha and im start to be bored by Elona(, when you are bored with gathering virtual gold you need to find something new for you. Friend of mine helped me. He asked me do i want to join their team in Tombs of Primeval King. I said sure but never done those things. He said dont worry first time always hurts but its only for one time in your life... and it doesnt bite ... to often. Now my gaming day is kinda different from the old days. 1-3 hours of PVE (not to often, but sometimes i prefer to "sit" in town and talk with ppl, sometimes help them with some quests or mission). Rest of my gaming day is PvP... . I dont like Guild Battles cause im ex Counter Strike player and its making me sick when i see some board with points... . Mainly HA now or Alliance Battles .

After some serious months playing pvp i understand now why PvP players are not concern about favor... . We dont give any shit about it . Im played with many ppl from other "countries" than mine and thats fine for me .

p.s We shoudnt change a game to move more ppls from pve/pvp to pve/pvp. Ppl shoud change their point of view... about those two different worlds. Most of pve players are afraid as i was, and they are blocked by those who check rank (i had 2 accounts, i gave one to my friend with r6 on it. Now im using my second one as primary. Untill i gained r3 i alwasy need to explain to those players my history of pvp experience.) in HA teams.. Thats stupid.

You seem to take it as a given that pve progression should help your character outperform pvp characters in pvp, but you don't say anything supporting why that should be the case.

Any pve player can instantly roll up a pvp character and participate, just as a pvper can, though your post assumes that a pve'er can't do that. Furthermore, pve'ing has given him a legup on skill and item unlocks to outfit his character. Guild wars can be exactly what you said, "conquer the main storyline and then pvp." Now that you have near complete unlocks for probably 2 professions, you're ready to jump into, at the very least, RA, and begin unlocking the others.

You complain about character identity, but I can and do use the same name and color scheme on my various pvp characters.

You want to mix "progression" with pvp, but any serious pvp will be skill based. As was said earlier, pve character only pvp will never be competitive, because people concerned with a dynamic pvp game will require the ability to constantly reroll, and will probably not want to grind for items.

Concerning specializing in a certain class, many people do just that. Watch the high end guilds play and notice that the same people often play the same classes. There's a big difference between specialization though, and what I believe you imply, being able to only play the class you progressed in. You can never be a truely good pvper without becoming very experienced playing EVERY class, even if you only play one class in the important competitions.

Also, about your guild, it takes at most an hour in RA to completely unlock all skills and items needed for a particular build, and most guilds don't change builds but once a week. UAS isn't a requirement to participate in any serious pvp, just have your guild leader assign you a build, go spend a short time unlocking, and play that build. If your guild is demanding pointless things of you, you should leave it.

I prefer to use a PvE character in PvP whenever possible, just because I can.

It doesn't take long to unlock skills in PvE and even less in PvP (UAX with 300k faction!). The ability to create PvP characters with the spoils I've accumulated in PvE allows me a much wider choice of classes to play, and much more enjoyment overall.

I'm known by my PvE char's first name, which carries over all all my PvP characters (one for each class I commonly play). With the ability to shift armor and gear, they are re-used whenever I play that class - adding to 'character identity'.

Among alot of players, especially those with multiple characters, it's not character identity but account identity that trancends all your characters and defines you, the player.

Making a PvP situation only playable by PvE characters compounds the problem you mentioned - it will only be playable with the characters you have prepped, creating a rigid and inflexible system.

Ive got 4 PvE chars, love them all. But two of them are my primary. So i can do almost everything for them (Michelle Soulscream - Dervish, Jillian Soulscream Warrior). But playing playing in HA with PvE ? No thanks, i need something what i can change instantly.

As i said ppl are affraid game on both side after long time in one part of game. They are affraid because they will be named noob or something much more rude... . Ah and always there is "im to proud to do that..."

Virtually ALL rpg MMORPG's use pve toons playing pvp, so I don't see why not. Even in pvp server you have to level up your toons via pve. Only non-rpg games like CS and BF let you create pvp toons.

This was also what original GW was envisioned to be, if I remember correctlly.

Exactly my thought.

Playing only monks gives you only monk experience. You have no idea about how warriors work with adrenaline and charging etc..

But if you major in monking(almost sounds like a degree huh?) but also play a warrior at a decent level, you'll learn how warriors work. While playing warrior you are sure to play against some monks, who make mistakes. These mistakes you can learn from, even though you didn't observe yourself making them. Additionally, you can learn what other monks do, that works good against warriors, and then learn from that etc..

Long story short, you can learn from other's mistakes and find weaknesses of professions that you can use against them.

This isn't really true. I play exclusively monk. I've got a few level 20 PVE characters of other professions sitting around, but I would say upwards of 80% of my time is spent on monk. That doesn't stop me knowing how adrenaline works, in fact I routinely count adrenaline build ups of warriors to work out when a spike is going to happen.

The only thing that will limit you in understanding another character is your own stupidity IMO, not your time having played it.

There's plenty of PVE characters in PVP, I use mine in PVP all the time and it's heavily kitted out. I have nine different shields alone, all equivalent to what I would carry on a PVP character - I think the moral is if you want to make a PVP ready PVE you have to commit effort to it.

That's not too say versatility isn't a strong talen, in fact you look at the top guilds and you'll find they all have accomplished generalists. People like Eonwe or Rayne on iQ, who seem comfortable playing a mesmer, warrior, ranger or ele etc. But at the same time, their warrior, monk and runner core don't change at all.

I dunno. Most serious PvE players don't care about PvP except when it hampers them. Like when they can't get into FoW or UW. *lol* Personally,I'm saving all my PvP energies for Stargate Galaxies, which will probably be out mid to late 2008. I just don't have the time to get all the skills I'd need and playing against other people just doesn't appeal to me. I wish there was a way to get the favor of the other gods. I'm a N/Me and would like to be able to get Grenth's or Lyssa's favor. Let the PvPers have Balthazar's favor.

Ok, I was like you for 2 years... Then I actually properly played PvP (HA 6v6 not 8v8 and GvG) and now I'm a fully paid up hybrid player, hell, most of the time I log in now is to PvP

Myabe what's needed is a PvP arena for low ranks...and I MEAN low ranks r1 MAYBE r2. Or have a tiered system where people could learn without coming up against the r4 lvl5 in max armor. Yes there is the Zaishen Challenge and such but that doesn't really let them expand and explore. Don't know...probably will always be a problem.

I see more distance between pvp and pve being a good thing rather than less.

Keep in mind that each time a skill is balanced its mostly due to the idea of players being the equal of other players.

In pve you tend to fight monters that are higher lvl then yourself at most every stage of the game. As such you need some advantage to win, mostly thats the human brain, but often a skill that seams over powered to a pvp player is just right for dealing with lvl 28 monsters. Remeber this is a game thats meant to be both fun and challenging.

When the challange out wieghs the fun...people stop playing!

I have to be honest I rarely PvE at all. I stoppped PvEing totally a month before nightfall and havn't picked it up again untill just this week. since rit buffs seem to be coming up i want to get some melee are for for my rit.

But essentially I've done RA.TA. and GvG exclusivly for about 3 months. And oddly enoguh I'm not really bored. Considering the fact that i Havn't UAX I'm still unlocking new gaer and trying out stuff. If you unlock your way through all 10 classes in RA and TA you'll have a fair idea of how they work.