why do more people PvE than PvP??

same reason why e-gaming is huge and there are alot of professional gamers

it's fun to play other highly skilled players, you get to test yourself and winning them is even more fun

i agree, your ex guild sounds shitty if all they did was play the blame game instead of being constructive with critiques

why do you let it get to you then?

I enjoy building one character up. It sounds dumb, it sounds like WoW, but I like playing one single character.

Until there is a direct Balthazar Faction -> Cash transfer, you won't find me PvP'ing much. 1,000 faction is enough to unlock one single skill. Why can't we trade in 1,000 faction for one Platinum?

Anyways, yeah. Because PvP has absolutely no benefit to my PvE character, I'm not going to bother.

Because when you've been playing the game for a while and whenever anything bad happens in PvE and it always turns out to be because someone has moaned about it in PvP it kinda gets frustrating. It'd be like parking your car...you choose to park it somewhere one day...then someone else moans and the next day you find the council has painted double-yellow lines so you can't park. You're forced to find somewhere else...but someone else moans about it and the cycle starts again...and this happens every time. It's the same with PvP. Someone complains that they can't counter a specific skill with their W/Mo and when they whine enough it gets changed so all the builds that PvEers find fun to use are no longer fun because "PvPers say it must be so". After a while it does start to really hack you off. If you find a way of not letting that happen you let me know mmmkay?

Simply put, they never played PvP on a competitive environment. That happened to me, and now I can afirm that PvP is really the end content of PvE.

A lot of people I know that never got into PvP was because of the lack of gold as a reward. They didn't care about getting better or playing competitively, all they cared about was how much gold an enemy dropped for them when they killed it. This alone made PvP 'crap and boring'.

It isn't enjoyable, produces tensions and stress among guildmembers and the agony of losing to another player is too much to take!

For you perhaps. For me the "end content" of PvE is collecting titles and "finishing" my characters...although I'm not sure I'll ever consider any of them as truly "finished"...there's just too much to do..

I play PvE because it's LESS monotonous than PvP.

Look at this very thread: constantly, we hear that PvE doesn't require skill, any build works, only in PvE do you really have to work on your build. Well, the consequence of this is that in PvP you get little variety. In order to get anything done, you have to make a very efficient build, and the result is that everyone runs the most efficient builds (the individual skills may differ, but the core skills of the build rarely differ). This results in monotonous play.

In PvE, I have several characters, all in different parts of the world, at different levels, and when I manage to get them all through the campaings, they'll be living trophies to my efforts.

If you're playing for trophies, /tiger or a cape trim is a much bigger trophy than finishing all campaigns, getting fow armor, or KoABD. IMO.

Is the key.

Personally, IMO, PvE Titles > Flashing Rank Emote in Shing Jea to display superiority... Doesn't mean I'm right or you're right. Just like it'll not stop me thinking "oh why do wammos insist on flashing that vulgar thing in here...does it make them feel better about themselves?"...also...I never notice cape trims personally. I'm not a fan of capes so I tend not to watch other people's.

You don't happen to notice the gargantuan irony here, do you?

I play PvE because for me, video games are supposed to be relaxing. If I wanted to prove I was "better" than someone, I'd go outside and punch a random stranger in the face. Using a video game as a platform for the "Ha, I beat you, I'm a better person than you" attitude is retarded. Life is stressful enough when you get older, I don't need stress from video games either.

I play to get finalized characters, capable of performing several functions, allowing me to play the game in several different ways.

Or perhaps of adequately using an interesting item I might have found (like my Mesmer, who came into being after I found Milefaun's staff).

Sometimes, they allow me to play a whole chapter, instead of the "open to foreigners" parts only (2 characters).

In any case, once I have done everything with a character, I usually stop and focus on the next one. While a suitably looking suit of armour is desired, that's not FoW armour to show off, but just max armour in the style I like most. I don't do all this to show off. They are trophies for me only.

All in all, they allow me to play the game - the parts of the game that I like. And these rarely include PvP elements. After the first half hour, Fort Aspenwood was no longer fun, and I only go there if I want fast faction.

Ok i kept trying and writing big posts but really most people PvE rather than PvP because:

They cant use vent/ts because of family etc.
They simply dont like killing people.
They give into flammers and haters.
They arnt skilled enough.
They dont want to try and get r3 like everybody esle did.
They beleive rank elitisn sucks and should be in r10+ because there equally as good.
There PvE chars arnt aloud in because they dont have sup vigor and right weps.
They suck in general.
They believe they will never get in a top guild even though they have enver tried PvP (seriously)

When I see someone flashing tigers I always tell them I'm allergic to fur animals :P Everything is ok if it happens for the sake of fun . Besides, I kinda enjoy a few rounds of HA every now and then. Other people turn on their PvE titles, why? theyre proud of it and it takes time and dedication to get them. I was in an AB match once with some folks and every time they got off a kill they flashed their tiger, thats overdoing it, especially since they left when the score fell behind. Go play HA then and sod off
As for PvE/PvP, i like both a lot. Questing with guildies is always smooth sailing and we always get good loot, and when I'm in the mood I play some TA/HA/AB whatever, but I have to be sharp to do that else I suck and it's no fun.
PvE does require skill btw. For me it's the difference between a smooth experience or an unorganised slugfest. You can PvE and PvE. Finishing an easy mission while the whole party has 60% dp is PvE, but it sucks, finishing raisu palace in 13:00 with no deaths is also PvE and it gives me a huge kick .

PVE allways produces a winner (unless you really suck).


Organised PVP requires a steady supply of regular losers. You'll find that the steady PVP players are the regular winners, it's a feed chain where the lower down you are the worse it is, until you are a dabbling loser who mostly PVEs but wants to try it out. Basically by definition not everbody can regularly win in PVP, if you're on the losing side you quickly give up if you can't improve your lot. Some people are good enough to bridge into the good teams, they make contacts, they get on friends lists and keep improving, but for the most people go in, lose a couple of times and then go back to PVE.

The organised nature of Guild Wars PVP makes this different to other games. Take FPS servers - you drop in and there may be a few extremely good players on either side and a lot of dross but overall it's equal. You win approximately 50/50 in unorganised play and the unorganised play is decent...

Compare this to Guild Wars PVP - you can't just drop into a HA or GVG, you have to organise based on your contacts and rank. So you get into an unranked PUG and then load in and get matched against a R6+ PUG and promptly get flogged. You do it again and get a guild team and get flogged. The only time you get a 50/50 matchup is when you play another unranked PUG, but for the most you're losing.

This partially explains the popularity of RA and AB, despite them being utterly horrible in terms of skill, intelligence and tactics. It doesn't matter, because on average you win 50/50 even if you're a scrub, because hey, in RA you hit enter, you get a monk and a warrior who know what they are doing and they can drag you through 10 wins to a glad point and you have fun.

Bwfh, since when is typing: www.ventrilo.com/download in your browser such a huge investment? I never had any trouble finding HA teams (but im so leet i have 13 fame :P), but, I don't give a crap about losing as long as it's not to jagged horror teams. I indeed lose more then I win, but i trust that it will improve over time. Games that don't require practice to get any good at them are a waste of money because they don't last longer then a month before I uninstall. Losing a tough fight is more fun then winning one against a team of 3 RaO thumpers that make me run around the map all the time anyway.

AB doesn't have to be sucky either, as long as my own team doesn't suck. RA I don't touch, I don't gamble, it's no fun imo.

Sounds like the lack of reward thing so many people talk about.

PVE

1. I enjoy the titles 100% explored etc...
2. I enjoy the events - Hats etc...
3. I enjoy the people - making new friends
4. I enjoy most of the Quests
5. I like the elite areas
6. I like being able to go out with a totally stupid build if I want to - just for fun and challenge
7. I like not having to take people if I feel like being alone
8. I like the Lore
9. I like the armor choices and weapons (I collect greens)
10. I collect pets for my characters and heros
11. I like variety

PVP

I do not like the trash talk/insults and feel it is poor behavior on the part of anyone playing

rank elitism never affected me much - I never really had a problem finding a group before I had rank 3 - so I fail to see the problem - anyone who reads the forums should have an idea how to get into or make a group for HA. However I never really dervied a great satisfaction from being in HA - even winning Halls never really seemed like I accomplished something. So I put HA on the back burner for now.

RA & TA

Can be fun in moderation

AB's

You can run pretty much any build and just have fun but gets boring after a while - the whole Kurzick Luxon battle thing is pretty funny to watch. People yelling at everyone to cap all the time instead of capping themselves is annoying. FAction farming to own a Town is not an option I am interested in. I do not want to have to devote my whole online time to AB's (I have donated 600,000 faction)

FA & JQ

okay sometimes but rather boring running amber/jade

Scrimmaging

Not my cup of Tea - I find no sense of accomplishment from beating someone one on one

4 on 4 can be amusing if doing it for fun or low level characters within your guild

Snowball fights

Takes no ability whatsoever and gets terribly boring after a while

GvG

we haven't done this in a long time - at the moment the guild I am in decided we did not want to just do GvG and practice all the time. Since devotion of time is needed to be a top guild it was agreed we are not willing to make that commitment at the moment especially with members away at school. We have great respect for those who do make such a huge commitment to one area of the game.

I find in general People don't trash talk/ put someone down in PvE. There are exceptions to the rule, however, in general it's a more relaxed and friendly atmosphere - without larger time input requirements.

I disagree that people don't PvP because they aren't skilled enough.

Well put. /Agree

Most new players aren't that excited by PvP, as it has a high learning curve, while PvE is a more relaxed enviroment.

Anyone else find this ironic?

well despite what you say, I believe your little thread here is nothing BUT flaming pve.


Someone of your meager pve experience has absolutely no idea about inventory clutter. I promise you that much. Simply no clue at all.


The rest, meh Im not touching it.


edit: ok, one little poke...

I think its pretty sad that in a game such as this, with many many minigames, there will be people that feel 'their' way is the only way to play. Who really cares if Joe doesnt like pvp or if Mary doesnt like pve?? This game offers enough options to play in a variety of ways, so if you dont like two-man UW, dont do it. If you dont like HA elitism, for whatever reasons you have, then dont go there. Personally, I do all of it. Im not a subjugating hero or a thrice-over grandmaster cartographer, I simply play to have fun at the end of my day. For some people, guildwrs is a lifestyle... but when it becomes your life, then you really need to analyze yourself rather than crying over spilled milk.

It's pretty simple in my case: I don't like PvP. I didn't pick up this game to play against other people, I picked it up because my brother and his fiancee wanted to run around and kill stuff and play PvE.

I play video games not to "win", but to just relax and chill, pop on for a few minutes and do a quest when I'm feeling fried after I get home from work, ect. Plus I'm addicted to shiny armor and love getting shiny new stuff for my chars. I can't help it, I like shiny things.

Although I do confess I have got a little bit of a fondness for some of the PvP-ish stuff in Factions that's sort of part of the PvE experience (Fort Aspenwood ect).

I see two iterations of the lamest "reason" I've ever heard. "They suck." "They aren't good enough." First off you can't logically say that. If they don't PvP then you have no yardstick to measure them by. For all you know they could easily step into HA with a competent group and completely demolish an HA group from a top 10 guild. You can't make definitive statements like that without solid evidence. Secondly lack of interest does not mean lack of the necessary skills, and let's face it the ability to yell at people over TS and mash buttons is a dubious "skill" at best. I for one simply have no interest in competition. I can do it. In fact I was involved with a very good very GvG-centric guild for a long time before I just stopped caring about the competition. It didn't do anything for me and it got really old really fast. That's not me saying "OH PVP SUXXORZ!11!" That's me saying I got bored.

Some people aren't competitive by nature and for them PvE suffices. Other people set priorities on what they want to compete in. For me my priority shifted from games to business. All my competitive energy goes into the operation of my store and achieving the best market share possible in my industry niche and geographic location. That's the competition that matters to me and it feels a lot better to me to have that wad of cash than cape trim or rank emotes. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that all the reasons given are valid reasons and no one, and I mean no one, can compile a short list of reasons that will suffice to explain why people prefer PvE over PvP. In the end this thread is the best list you can have since it offers many varied reasons that are as individual as the people writing the posts.

EDIT: This bugs me too!!!

Ok maybe that was how PvE was envisioned originally by the design team but it is clear now to even a casual observer that PvE has become an important segment in the game and cannot be relegated to the role of a "PvP tutorial". Continuing to say that "PvE is just training for PvP" is not only an erroneous statement but an ignorant one. That state of the game has changed and I think that Anet realizes this. Nightfall saw a lot more attention to PvE and it shows. If anything we now have two separate games in spirit if not in code and packaging. We have Guild Wars PvP and we have Guild Wars PvE. Saying that one is just a tutorial for the other is as ridiculous as saying that Need for Speed is just a tutorial for Gran Turismo.

Str0b0, you have hit a bull's eye!

The game is composed of individual's who have their own agenda's and goals in mind.

No one list can encompass each of the players, whether they PvP or PvE, or do both.

And that should be the last word on what any one individual thinks of another's reasons or motivations.

Give your own reasons, and let's leave it at that.

Its easier for a noob to get into pve than pvp.

Everyone in pvp is only excepting r3/6/etc + people which is pathetic. It's hard for new people to get in. They also don't know the builds that work and it's hard getting to r3. And NO ONE seems to be helping out the new players at all, people just tell them to create their own unranked group.

This whole, "We all had to get to r3" saying is BS and it's a sucky excuse to not help new players. No one likes grinding their way to R3 and it turns a lot of people off. I've been playing for 20 months and I'm only R3 (heading to R4). I didn't do much pvp in the beginning because most people were like, "Forming R3 Air Spike!" and all that crap. I didn't know any decent hoh builds and I never knew where I could find them online. We need people/guilds helping out the new people to improve the pvp community.

yes and no. I agree with you...forming groups in PvE is (or was before DARN HEROES WHICH RUINED PVE....lol but that's another story) is much, much easier than forming the typical PvP group.

Everyone and I mean EVERYONE knows that the rank system is bad. I mean it's just so flawed but it is way too late to change it now. I know so many people say it, but if someone wants to gain rank you have to either:

Find a typically Cookie Cutter build and play one character until perfected and then PuG it out in unranked HA groups

Or find a decent guild that's willing to help/wants to do more PvP

I have not played HA in months...just becuase it's really quite crap now. I still LOVE GvG (best part of GW IMO) but it's hard to find a decent guild. I may start to HA again (been r5 for like 9/10 months now lol) but only when it is changed back to 8v8.

And yes to rank elitism IS a problem. But there is pretty much nothing anyone can do about it. If someone keeps flashing their high rank emote it usually means that they are a 10 year old kid nerdy guy who you can just feel sorry for.

I enjoy both PvP and PvE. One thing about PvP however that bothers me to no end is the elitism involved. I was recently trying to get more involved in PvP so I went to GToB and asked if any guilds were willing to recruit someone who was new to PvP. The first response I got was "no, go back to pve." In HA when I try to get in a group they see that I have no rank and kick me. How am I supposed to get fame if I can't even get into a group?

In PvE MOST people are always willing to help out a n00b, or invite them into their party to try to teach them. I know in DoA today I did a run with a tank who had never done it before. The first few tries were a failure, but after a little bit of help and explaining, we did a complete Gloom run.

I wish that the general PvP community would be more willing to help out others. I think this is one of the big reasons that PvE has so many players, while PvP is becoming smaller by the day. Essencially the only PvP that I can do is RA or AB because any others the parties will not accept me.

I can't and would not speak for the majority of people, however I am a dedicated pve player for a lot of reasons.

One is that I feel a sense of accomplishment completing a hard quest or mission. I gain some gold and possibly a few items worth keeping or selling.

Another reason is that if I'm short on time I can log in and grab hench/heros and play for exactly the amount of time I have and quit, no strings or ticked off people.

Lastly because of my guild. Ive spent hours debating/arguing about skills or real world topics with them, then joined them on a quest to kill the evil ( insert monster name here ) and capture a skill or green drop.

I enjoy both PvPing and PvEing. One thing about PvP that bothers me however is HA etc. If your not ranked..people automatically think you aren't good or experienced enough. When i pvp i tend to do TA and RA.

Original poster again ---
God stop putting PvP down so much, lol now i'm on the defencive-

You guys talk about which one takes more time and which is more casual- IT DEPENDS ON HOW MUCH TIME YOU WANT TO DEVOTE TO IT!!

People PvE hardcore as well, as i don't doubt there are many hardcore PvE guilds that always farm in the underworld and FoW and stuff, just as hardcore PvP guilds always GvG or HA or something

In PvP you can be very casual- in RA you just click enter battle like it was an FPS and your automatically in. I sound like a n00b for playing it but when i need faction fast i go there; and I win 7/10 of the time (this is b/c i run paragon support builds or be a monk, otherwise it truly would be gambling unless your build and your leadership skills are godlike). You could also do TA, which rewards for finding and making good groups and team builds, but you can still join a group fast by self inviting to all groups with 3 ppl present (unless your an unpopular PROFESSION like paragons ) - hint- you can also press "enter battle" with no one in your group which will put you in a team that entered w/ 3 ppl... but sometimes it puts you in international servers if the game can't find anyone from your country

People keep complaining of how stressful pvp is and they like role playing games, but i really don't know what kind of people are like that (take no offense im just speculating). I play sports and play video games with my friends, and for me competing (and pwning) is just plainly more fun than "co-operating", i dunno just my 2 cents.

If you play for fun, both can be very casual, but i agree to get to the upper tier of PVP you have to be much more of a hardcore player than someone who built themself up in PVE over the period of a couple of years because PVP is usually guild and metagame understanding dependant.

They're two very different games, and many people's tastes aren't broad enough to make both interesting to them. On one hand you have a cooperative, party based action RPG. On the other you have... well a competitive action game with a little strategy, basically. PvP isn't an RPG since there's no character development, it borders on a sports game in some sense.

For me personally, RPG's tend to provide a lot of gameplay and sports games tend to get old in about a week. That's the basic reason I PvE and don't PvP. People with different tastes will naturally get more mileage out of one or the other.

Actually, there's another element here too. PvP requires real people, PvE doesn't. If you have a small base of friends in the game (or none at all, I suppose) you can still PvE without resorting to PUGs but can't PvP without dealing the the PvP crowd.

More than anything else, rank is a decent measure of your experience. Not skill, mind you, though they're (very) loosely related. A rank4 individual is going to have more experience--likely both good and bad--than a rank1.

Guild Wars, due to its lack of a subscription fee, targets a large medium of people who want to experience MMORPGs. PvE caters to the casual gamer, while high end PvP targets the more hardcore trainer - and in the case of HA, farmer.

Lack of skill has nothing to do with people not playing PvP, because most of the people who play PvP just have experience and practice, they are not anymore skilled than anyone else.

And you can expect alot more people to be playing PvE when I new chapter's just come out. They all want to get the new outfits for all their characters. In time it dies down and nobody is in any of the channels, atleast not in North America.

I noticed alot more people PvE in Europe than they do in America. I was totally amazed the other day to find that in Europe people still regularly do FoW and UW group runs.

Heh, that has nothing to do with them favoring PvE over PvP. That is just because they have favor ALL THE TIME, thus FoW and UW are more casually available than other countries.

Infact It should prove that Europe Favors PvP over PvE because you have to win in PvP so much to even be able to get to FoW and UW.

Each to their own i say. Personally I've never had any real interest in pvp style games in the 15+ years i've been gaming, Mortal kombat used to bore me to tears after 5 mins. I make myself available to my guild for GvG when numbers are short, but thats only because with 4-5000hours behind me i can atleast hold my own and have everything needed on my pve chars. I don't care if we win or not so long as my fellow guild members who are into PvP get their fix of fun. I have plenty of friends who are 100% pve and likewise simply are not interested in pvp, suppose to some degree its the younger generation who are more interested in the competitive side of pvp and "proving themselves"

With 3 chapters gw has plenty to offer. With several chars to pick from i find myself constantly switching from one to the other farming one area, doing a few quests, a few missions. Get bored switch to another char try somewhere new to farm, a new build, team up and help some guildies out etc. Admittedly i've henched/heroed most of each campaign with all my chars, why its atleast twice as quick as pugging it. Heroes for people like me are great, not only can i make sure my team is equipped with the right build and weaps for the area but i can also control their spellcasting and positioning, i love my mm, b/p interruptor, P/W support and SF heroes. For those who hate the hero system, kick your heroes and pug away, theres plenty of like minded people. Heroes are great but they have not affected MY choice on whether i hench it or not, if i have a char thats finding it a pain to get past a mission i call on a guild group not a pug one!

Sagius> with nightfall came new players, if they have not yet experienced UW/FoW or solo farming then obviously they're gonna try group runs. Still nothing wrong with the B/P FoW group, rarely fails even with first timers and reasonably quick. Trapping UW, yes you can solo trap it but its a heck of alot quicker and more effective with a team. Must admit i'm not liking the changes to SV/AV and rend ench as my fav choice of solo UW is 55Mes(yeh yeh its not the quickest), it doesn't stop me but i have to be on my toes alot more now with those nightmares, no more wanding before they get rend ench off. Just give me an excuse to try out the E/Mes build i've been wanting to do for a bit

True, however it is MUCH easier to be a casual PvE'er, Not necessarily easy in terms of skill, but in that 99% of the game is open to you and groups/guilds tend to be easier to find.

While technically PvP, few consider it much more than goofing off. I RA from time to time and have quite a bit of fun (hero battles can be the same way). TA is the first "real" PvP and unless you spend quite a bit of time usually about as far as you are going to get. Of course, there pops up that whole "elitism" thing that makes that whole area un-fun to me.

I know I see it described in the way I did way back early in the thread - "stressful" isn't the right word - "not fun" is more it. I've played competitive sports, the net step in where I was with shotgun and pistol was semi-pro at national shoots (and I shot well enough to do so). I've also played FPS enough to climb ladders.

However, I suspect that, like me, a lot of these posters did that in their youth. Been there, done that, don't feel like it anymore. Even in real life I have WAY more fun loosing almost every racquetball game I play (for reasons unknown to me I can not play racquetball worth a flip) than going to a state archery tournament where I would place in the top 5 simply because of the atmosphere. Thankfully I can go to a local archery club and just shoot and have fun (which would be PvE'ing over PvP). In both the archery cases I'm "casual" but only one tends to have an atmosphere I have fun in and in neither case do I get stressed.

I do not see very much bashing of PvP - nothing I said above is either, the actual mechanics and game should be quite a bit of fun. It is more a commentary on the general community one must deal with. While the same could be said about the PvE community I have the choice to ignore them and never deal with them on the PvE side. Were I to have too then I wouldn't PvE either.

Heck, it's not too hard to see in this thread - how many "people PvE because they suck" have we seen? No one on the PvE end of things say *all* PvP'ers are, just that the attitude is prevalent there and unavoidable - few deny it, just say we have to learn to put up with it (Umm, no I do not).

What I always do is pop into HA, see if someone needs a class I play well, and if noone does, pop out and play somewhere else. Don't waste time there waiting, there are people that don't care about rank, you just have to be lucky to run into them. If not don't even bother. This way i get to play and farm fame without geting frustrated, it's only a bit slow, but fame should be hard to come by, thats a simle fact.

I think there are many more people in PvE that do play PvP that you just aren't seeing. Many of us just play real traditional PvP (aka FPS and even RTS games) as opposed to the GW version of RPG PvP. RPG PvP just isn't everyone's cup of tea. On the other hand, you may find many of us at QuakeCon again playing games like UT, CounterStrike, Quake, even StarCraft/Warcraft (RTS's). Many of us that do enjoy some PvP being about selecting spells/skills and strategically playing them out would rather play Magic:TG and leave GW to doing what those other games can't do as well (PvE adventuring). Some people don't believe GW's PvP is really hardcore, despite the tourney prizes offered and would rather play fast-paced/twitched based PvP or more traditional CCGs.

PvP is not about proving that you are better than someone, it's basically making a group of 8 persons play a coordinate thing and study tactics.

Don't u managed to achieve some ubber 1337 weapon or title? What is that for other than saying that you're better than someone else?
In PvP you have warriors with ascalon armors and nobody really cares, as long as they are good players