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.

I think this post is a good summary of the misunderstandings of my post.

No, I specifically said that at the moment PvP characters easily outperform PvE characters. As other posters have mentioned, gearing a PvE character for PvP takes a long time.
You're right that PvE players can roll PvP characters, but that isn't the point. Because the system is designed to promote players having all skills unlocked, you tend to be forced into being a "build slave" as opposed to using the character that you brought through the game. On the PvE side, some guilds will make you rush through the storyline and stuff simply to unlock your skills as opposed to letting you enjoy the experience. I never said that I thought that the system is BAD, but it seems shallow at the moment for all of the PvE players who want to play PvP with the characters that they have invested their time into.

Your points after those were again very valid, so let me restate that this is not a OMG GUILD WARS SUKS I'M LEaVINNGG No0bs post... it is merely identifying where the current system stands and where it could go.

One form of PvP relies on a player having an extensive knowledge of the skills and play mechanics in the game. We have this already. An improvement would be to add a mode where players don't have the luxary of constantly rolling whatever builds they need to counter every strategy. This should not REPLACE the current system, but it would be a lot of fun for existing PvE characters who want to test their mettle in a more competative environment with rewards (like cool looking weapons) that support the PvE atmosphere.

Actually my main character is greater than 60% uax alone with all elites, and the acct IS 100% uax, and if the team build for any pvp (or random/ab) will fit it, I'll take my pve toon every time. The only time I roll is the rare occaision that I need an assassin primary (but why? I gotta R/A just as good ;P) or something. Granted I certainly won't claim to be a 'serious PVPer' anymore as I hardly have time anymore and my guild is currently primarily PVE.

Edit: I do like the idea though, but probably we'd need another type of arena for it. pvp just for pve toons? I'd probably enjoy it. Im ready...

Ok, I think I understand what you're saying better now. On the first point, it really isn't an issue that pvp characters outperform pve characters, for the reason that anyone can make one in seconds. Also, no pvp game type benefits from full skill unlocks, so that's not encouraged as far as I can tell. GvG calls for showing up to your guild hall with enough faction for one build, and HA simply requires unlocking a particular flavor of the month build and playing that. I suspect your outlook towards pve being a chore for pvp comes from being jaded by a bad guild. There are guilds that do both pve and pvp, and take both seriously, though it can be damn hard finding them.

I think what you're getting at, with pve focused pvp, is exactly what Factions tried to do. Jade Quary and Fort Aspenwood were both pve character only, with pve related rewards, in the form of faction that could get you materials and money for some very nice armor.

Now, Arenanet abandoned this idea by allowing pvp characters into them, probably because both of those places were pretty dead by that time. I'm guessing ANet was trying to bring pvpers into it (and failed), since pve'ers had lost interest, but I think they missed the point. The pve'ers abandoned it because the rewards ceased to be important after you got your armor, and there are faster ways than selling amber to make money. Adding cool pve rewards, like unique weapon skins and whatnot, would have caused those gametypes to explode in popularity. Unfortunately, I'm not sure ANet realizes this and probably took the failure of those pvp formats as a failure of the very idea of pve focused pvp, not that they just implemented it poorly.

Hopefully, the factions team tries something like this again.

The OP made some valid points, believe it or not. When prophecies came out, everybody was complaining about the lack of slots. Four slots and six professions. Not even enough to play all professions. Even now, if you don't want or if you can't buy the extra slots, you are still 2 slots short. I know many people, who come from a RPG-background and wanted to play every profession and did not want to "waste" a complete slot on a pvponly character, as that is restricted to just one half of the game. Those are the players that are complaining about the balance between those two character types. Pvponlys always had the advantage of flexibility and they were really cheap (one rune unlocked gives you unlimitted uses for every character you create for example). With the last updates pve character aren't worth anything anymore. They are subpaar in every category. People who have all RPG-characters and don't want to delete one are basically locked out of pvp, if they don't have the time to spend at least 300 hours per character to get them at least somewhat ready for pvp.

We had the same problem in my guild, a mixture of RPG- and hybridplayers. Try to create a build if every member has filled his four slots with pve-toons. It's painful and it took sometimes ages to get required equipment in pve just to play pvp. We don't have this problem anymore. The guild broke down as most members left for other games because of this. Infact just me, an officer and a few casual pveplayers are left.

On another note: In my opinion the pvponly character has hurt the game more than it helped. Some people love it. Some people are just playing the game, because of it. But the same amount of players were driven out of pvp or the game too.
Also, now comes the worst part of the pvponly character. It allows everybody to jump on every fotm just the same second it came around the corner. Log into your account, select random character, press "b", scan for newest fotm, visit the priest of balthazzar and here you go (observer mode saves you just half an hour reading forums). Sure, the pvponly character enables you to test around with strange and weird builds, but believe me, even if it had never seen the light, people would still find these builds, but slower and not everybody would instantly jump on it when it is good and becomes public. Metagame would take longer to become stale also the "build slave" thing might get tones down.

Nagh, although I know how handy they are, got one by myself, I could write a book about why pvponly characters killed much of the game. In my opinion their introduction was the only really big mistake ANet ever did...and it was fatal.

PS: I don't want to blame all on the pvponlyplayer. The game was originally designed for hybridplayers. But ANet tried to please any type of gamer, that includes the pvponly and the pveonly. This resulted in three groups, that split up in even more subgroups (gvgplayers, hacommunity, farmers, roleplayers,...). No matter what they change, even the weirdest change, will make some of those groups happy and some others will be annoyed. That's why there will be always complaints after updates. A fix to the problem? I've got none, that would please everybody....

1. Do not touch the PvP char. GW has been held back for almost a year and half because PvP chars were not on par with PvEs and PvPers were forced to grind PvE just to get the maximum edge. If I wanna play PvP let me play PvP. Do not force me to play PvE. How would you feel if you could only do the final 10% of the PvE missions after you've done 300 hours of PvP. Would that be good game design? No... it wouldn't.

2. You can play with PvE chars in PvP. What's holding you back? Yes it requires a time investment but should that be a problem to the hybrid player that wants to play his one character? No... If you really want to and you have some cash then you can roll a reasonably functional PvE in about a week or two. Trust me, I've done it after accidently deleting my main char. (only so Anet could install the new PvP chars one week later making my entire effort completely silly). Whether or not that time investment is worth it is up to you but really what's the big deal?

3. Having a PvE-only arena would not solve anything. If it is team-based (which it should be) you'll still see people optimizing builds and as soon as it becomes a competitive, respected place people will start rolling PvEs just to compete in that zone. You'll end up with the exact same situation as you're currently experiencing: your character X that doesn't fit into alot of builds STILL won't fit into alot of builds. In the end the only thing you will have accomplished is that those that play PvP for the actual PvP are once again forced to grind PvE.

4. PvP chars do not hurt the game. I cannot think of a single reason why.
- Does it make it easier to roll new characters? Yes... that is the entire point and it is the main reason why it' so awesome. When I'm doing some PvPing I can often end up rolling 10-ish character in a single night and everytime I can rest assured that my character isn't handicapped. The best reason for PvP chars is this: They are the foundation of the level playing-field GW pvp is based on. Destroy that and you destroy GW pvp.

- Does it make it easier to follow new FotM? Yes... But what's the problem? In a game like GW the metagame SHOULD be changing and the faster the change is the better. Atm the metagame still changes at a rather slow pace. I wouldn't wanna see it slowed down anymore because frankly: without change PvP can get boring too.

- Buildslaves?? Really... Anyone that thinks a PvP char is a buildslave has never played PvP on a serious level. Will you often end up running the same build? Yes, you will. Does that make you a buildslave? No.
GW pvp functions both on an individual level and a teambased level. Frankly: there is only so much individual skill a build takes. The real skill starts coming in beyond the actual build and consists more out of an assessment of the current situation, what your role in that situation is and how you can optimize your part (and your entire team). A good monk isn't a build. A good monk can see when the enemy will spike and who they will spike. A good monk does that whilst simultaneously keeping track of his energy levels, giving warnings when they go to low or a specific person is taking too much damage. At the same time he will track the locations of his fellow teammates to assess risk factors and try, minimize the damage he takes through kiting and try to negate all the nastyness enemy mesmers are throwing at him. Not how all of this things actually transcend build and bring the play up to another level.

Players that are buildslave aren't playing GW right and frankly, players that think 'buildslaves' are people that run the same build over and over are missing the point entirely. There is a huge gap between 'skills' and skill. Similarly, this is also why being good in PvP requires alot more then 'selecting a random character, scanning for the newest Fotm and copying that build.

PvE and PvP only differ in styles and looks, however PvP is not something that you can just jump into as a fresh player with no GW experience.

That is where PvE comes in, it allows you to unlock core skills, and learn how to play the game. Once you have a basic understanding, then you can move on to PvP.

Realize that by just buying the skills and jumping into PvP, as a fresh player with no exp, will only frustrate you or make you into someone elses drone.

Take the game for what it is, a game. And with any game in order to become better at it, you need to understand how it's played, the mechanics, tactics, and stratergies used to play the game; as well as plenty of practice. PvE gives you that, and PvP allows you to hone your skills on a new level.

That is how the best players started out, and became who they are today. However don't be fooled by the players who used a premade build, or premade team tactic to dominate the game, they are not experienced at all, because followers are not leaders.

One final note, there are PvE arenas located in every chapter for low level characters. They are set up like random areas on the PvP area, and they are PvP based, so there is no need for a creation of a PvE arena area, and knowing that is all part of knowing the game.

Man, I still don't feel like I'm being clear. Let me say this as point blank as I can:

This thread is NOT about changing our current PvP system. It is about PvE... it is about adding ADDITIONAL, SEPARATE features from a PvP perspective that would make PvE characters more desirable in terms of character progression and lasting value.

That is all. Thank you all for your feedback regardless.

I do not agree with this, rich players will have the advantage over anyone else, getting good equipment as fast as possible. less extensive players are at a disadvantage here, even if they are more skilled. I don't see the need to create 2 seperate "pvp" worlds. I use pvp only chars for pvp, cause im not so vain to wanna perse use my pve char, maybe if i have a build thats gonna be a long timer, but investments in skills and equipment are way too much, while u dont get any gold rewards or else from pvp.

/not signed ^^ (NOI)
ALthough i would love to crawl in monsters hides to start attacking some adventurers, that would make pve definately more challenging, but people will complain about erratic "ai" or not being able to hold agro on the tank.

Something like pve quests of all difficulty levels with quest rewards valuable (degree based on quest diffivulty) for pvp. Such as unlocks for cool skins? NO! unlocks for pve armors on pvps? NO! I can't think of a single thing that a non hybrid (I'm hybrid) player would want to pve for with the exception of cash or easy elite unlocks. Cash buys skins, and the ONLY advantage pve toons have over pvp ones is the good looking armor, which is of course balanced by the account wide access of the pvp toon. You want ideas to get PVP players to PVE more? or get them to keep pve toons for pvp? I think its individual, there are plenty of things which make pve characters desireable, but do they matter to a hardcore pvper? not so much. I've never been able to come up with any ideas that my pvp only friends/guildies have cared for... but that doesn't mean it isn't possible, gl.

Ah ha, and this is the point of my entire topic. I am specifically addressing HYBRID players. I believe that there are many players who are perfectly happy doing mostly PvE or PvP, but there is another category of people like me who like doing BOTH but find that at the moment both systems don't mesh very well.

Why change what works however? The PvE and PvP systems are fine as they are for the gaming populations that they represent. However, there is a third population of hybrid players that could benefit from a new or upgraded system.

I'd love to see stronger integration, I don't see how to do it though. This is mainly due to folks that prefer to play one or the other, not the game itself I think.

A majority of players dabble in both. Sure, they may favor one side over the other, but many PvErs dabble in RA, AB, GvG, whatever. (Well, mainly RA, but that's not really the point.) PvPers do PvE to get pretty looks, unlock some stuff, and screw around.

PvErs don't need rewards to be encouraged to do PvP, they already do PvP to some extent for fun or whatever. PvP is in serious need of more rewards for all players, not just PvE-only ones. Faction should be more than just unlocks, though I'm positive there are already a thousand threads on this forum about that.

PvE-only PvP arenas have been and will be complete jokes due to the quality of the players playing there as well as the random teams. (You could make the teams nonrandom, but who wants to deal with "omg PvE arenas eliteism!!!!! " Not I, says the forum mod.)

How would you go about doing this though?