PvP is slowly dying

Actually you have this quite backwards. Most if not almost ALL pugs in HA would die if this change was implemented. Most of the decent players would have a friends list that they would play from or not play.

The problem is not the whether I want to play it or not. The problem with such a suggestion is that it is simply not feasible. How would Anet balance such an arena? The problem with GW is that you are limited with 8 skills out of thousands of skills per bar. In other words, on one day, you would run into the usual whammo, and beat them to a pulp. But when you run into a mesmer, you are pretty screwed. And if you take skills against melee chars, then casters will practically beat you all the time. Simply put, there is absolutely no skills or minimal skills involved in such an arena. In fact, that would no longer be an arena, more like a lottery contest.

And from that, winning in such an arena, I barely see what is there to prove in that, apart from that your build > opponent build. It does, in no way, prove that you outplayed your opponent. Hence, any sense of competitveness is basically null in that sort of "arena".

not true though.

in random 1vs1

u have to choose the build that will get u best win ratio....and thats the one that adapts better to most situations as u have no idea who or what u gonna face. the search for the best multipurpose build is half of the fun (and it will be a neverending search)...the other half is the fight.
u dont have to choose rock-paper-scissor....but u can be a bit of all three at once...thats' the whole point of finding a build that can deal with a bit of everything.
obviosuly u will find builds that hard counter yours and u'll lose....but it's all about win-lose ratio.(the guy who had a build which hardcountered yours is not likely to do well if he's so specifically anti-X )
if u win more than u lose u're doin somethin right ....if not u need to change your build/playstile to be able to overcome most situations.
if there is a ladder...u should gain levels for wins and lose levels for losses...so to climb u need to find a build that will assure u have a good win/ratio

in profession 1vs1 (me vs me, war vs war, nec vs nec etc etc)
even more skill based.u can choose the matchup u enjoy most(mesmer vs mesmer for example).....and its on equal terms...again u need to find a good general build to win more than u lose.


duel
its for fun...


i'm not sayin it will be a great competitive experience.....but i'm 100% sure there'll be more ppl on 1v1 than in team games.

I'm sorry but trying to implement a 1v1 situation in a team based game is a horrible idea.

Agree 1vs1 is bad idea.

Look at the reaction on 1 vs 1 (npc) norn torument.

It boils down to any sort of random 1vs1 will yeild you will lose no matter what if Build X could destroy your Build Y and have no chance.

You know...there are anti-melee AND caster builds that can be used. You can believe it or not mix it up a bit.

Well the Norn tournament isnt so bad because theres a limited set of builds you run into and its documented on wiki. With that, you can fully set your build to handle most targets.

I am speechless. I'll keep it brief and say it is a horrible idea, and I dun't think I am gonna bother elaborating more on that part. I did plenty already. I dun't think anything I say will reach you nor do I think you even stepped foot in a pvp arena.

SF is not overpowered, fire eles are supposed to be powerful. I have crushed ranked SF teams with groups of unranked players. It can be countered, before the nerf, but id imagine a Hardcore PVPer
like yourself would know that wouldnt you. Cant counter SF? Please.

I didnt say skill balances werent needed, I said they dont need to be nearly the issue that the PvP community makes them into. I did not say observer mode is the result but that it contributes to the skill nerf by contributing to all the buildcopying going on and running of the same builds rather than creativity, so alot of teams are running the same kind of thing. That leads to nerfing of some skills because someone somewhere says x is overpowered because it cant be beat by y, or it must be overpowered because everyone is running the same thing or whatever.

noone is likely to enter 1vs1 random with anti-specific builds.....and if they do they'll not do well cos they'll only win in specific situation. hence they will not level.(levellin based on win-lose ratio)
ppl that want to climb the ladder will be forced to play all round builds.....the build which can counter most situations will go further. specific builds will not level well.
as simple as.
so yeh u will find someone who enters with a anti-X build.....but mostly u'll find general builds (that can handle hexes, conditions,do damage ,interrupt etc etc).
also whether it will be balanced noone really cares....ppl just wanna have fun and its a good introduction to pvp anyway.
anet bring 1vs1 now pls.

ps:look at polymock.. i can tell that my skill is better than the AI's...or am i just more lucky than the AI ?there surely u can compare skill somehow..... maybe the idea of 4 common skills could help....not sure. but thats an example where 1vs1 can give an indication of skill...

Not sure why PvPers are posting here.

Reading Brian78wa is giving me a headache, worse with each post.

Ignore the nonsense , don't argue with the people that lack any understanding of balance or Pvp, make a few suggestions that you hope Andrew Patrick might like and move on.

I suggest a fairly cheap Full PvP UAX pack 50 dollars U.S. Create a GW:EN tournament championship that showcases the best players still remaining, with a nice location, and earn prizes that are a bit better than the last World championship. For those that whine they had to buy 2 pvp packs i'm sorry, tough luck. I doubt many of those people will mind if new players actually started pvping.

-Cheers

I used to PvP all the time. Had you read previous posts. You would have seen that. Stopped PvP when all the Elitism really got too much to handle.
And just because YOU think its a horrible idea doesnt make it true. Ive used many many builds including ones like I had mentioned. The ones that counter both melee and casters worked very well.

First of all if I give you a headache then dont read them Second I DO understand PvP.
Just because my opinion is different than yours doesnt make it wrong.
This is what I HATE about most people. If you dont agree with them then they are stupid dont understand are wrong etc etc.
Just because you think one thing doesnt make it right.
You people need to get off your little pedestals seriously.

I really wish this kind of post from people who have never played anywhere near the top level of the game would stop. You clearly underestimate how important balance is in this game, because you have never been in a situation where it was required. Thus, you are ignorant to the detrimental effects of poor balance and overpowered skills. For the sake of argument, just think about this - there is a skill in the game, which instantly kills the target. The downside is, it's got a 3 second cast, a 30 second recharge, and costs 25 energy, and is elite. Would you say that skill is balanced? According to your argument that everything has counters, it is. You can interrupt it, use Signet of Humility on it, or energy deny the person who wants to use it.

The problem with the thinking of "there is a counter so it's balanced" is that the counter can be nullified, or there may be more things that the counter to that particular skill must be used on. You can easily say "just Diversion it" about a skill, or "just interrupt it", but in practise you won't be able to 100% of the time. The skill can be cancelled, you can have Sig Humil interrupted, the guy can run Glpyh/Mantra of Conc. or Resolve. He can run Glpyh Lesser also, with a Mantra. Yes, there are counters, but they can be stopped, and in the actual environment of play, you won't always have ideal conditions where your counter will work, because your resources may be used on something else.

The only problem with Observer Mode is that match length and skill balance has been affected so as to make matches more exciting to watch.

There isn't really elitism in the use of titles, it's a common myth. If you're referring to rank 9 and aboves wanting to group with others of the same rank, it is merely because they know that those players are experienced in that area of the game, and would rather party with them than someone who is less experienced, in a pug situation. Titles mean nothing when you have people on your friends list who want to play.

People running the same build is not a problem with the game, as there will always be some builds that function better than others. Teams will quickly begin to play that, or find reasonable counters to fit into their own builds. The problem comes when those builds are too overpowered and the game is completely stagnant and requires very little skill to excel in (as is now).

I disagree. There's a post in the Gladiator's Arena section on my reasoning for this.

Rank 6 shows you have some experience, nothing more really. Of course, given the question of taking someone with experience, or someone without, who would you take? It's the same in any form of PvE, and don't even bother saying you would take a new player over an old one.

Rank discrimination only comes into the fold when you are trying to get someone you do not know. There is no other time rank discrimination is used, unless jokingly.

Rock paper scissors is not fun. Losing before the match begins due to not having any way to win unless the other team/person makes a ridiculously bad mistake isn't fun at all. Winning is fun.

Something having a counter does not mean that thing is balanced. You know why SF was imbalanced? Because it was ridiculous damage in a huge AE that required absolutely no skill to have a decimating effect. You know what's still bad about it? The fact that in GvG you have these things called Knights, Archers, and a Bodyguard, that will all quite happily ball up and let you run however many copies and nuke them into nonexistance.

One reason PvP is dying is because there is nobody to replace the people being lost through attrition (attrition is natural for any game).

It is very very difficult to get online friends from other games, who have never played Guild Wars before, into GW PvP. I certainly tried. These are people that aren't interested in the PvE campaigns, and yes, they bought the UAX packs (these don't unlock weapon mods and runes btw). Annoyances like click-to-move and the inability to jump aside, the learning curve for GW PvP for someone who has never even played the game before, is way too harsh. They get absolutely decimated in random arena, for example. I suppose you could say "Screw them then, they suck and aren't dedicated enough", but if you do, understand that's why you aren't going to get any more people playing.

Also, the in-game community in this game, in both PvP and PvE (as well as on the forums for that matter), is absolutely horrible, so when they don't know anyone else who is on, they really do not want to group up with strangers any more. Part of the reason for the horrible community is that there is no accountability - in conventional mmorpgs, there is the concept of a home server with its own community, and people actually care about their own and their guild's reputations. In GW, you won't run into the same person twice, or even recognize guild names, so few people seem to care how they treat others.

There needs to be more of a stepping stone for people to ease themselves into PvP. I think a large casual pvp instance map, with a larger number of people on each side, with various objectives (think something along the lines of WoW's Alterac Valley), and no NPCs at all, could work, and would be more forgiving for prospective new pvp players than Alliance Battles or Random Arena.

To get this part out of the way; I'm not a hardcore GW player.

With that said, with most MMO's, or even online console based games, I enjoy PvP aspects of gaming. It's fun. Well, sometimes it's fun.

Only speaking for myself and from my standpoint I would be more attracted to furthering my PvP experience in GW if I wasn't chastised for every little thing.

I even see it in this thread. Mixed messages so to speak.

I'm told to run builds from wiki because they're supposively proven to be highly successful and I get chastised for running the same thing everyone else has.

Then the times I get creative, take serious time creating and tweaking a personally made built that can adapt, hold offense and defense, and hold a good chance for helping the team win. Not just throwing in anything and everything that works in PvE, but actually picking skills that can adapt to certain pvp situations. Actual consideration of who I may be paired with and who we may be up against. What happens? I get chastised for not running the proven and successful cookie cutter build - even when the one I have created and tweaked has been pretty successful.

I don't even ping my builds anymore. I've come to the conclusion I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.

But I'm always open to ideas and suggestions. So I've ask for advice and opinions on either current builds, or tweaks on new ideas. The top 3 responses I get usually are:

1) "Noob"
2) "wtf?"
3) "LOLphail"


In fact, there are only 3 people I've ever met in pvp areas who have actually whispered me in game and sat down with me to discuss builds, possible changes, and approaches I could take. Not a very high statistic, which I find unfortunate, but nonetheless, we both learned, laughed, and did some designing. It was fun. That "f" word I thought was really important to everyone.


In the end though it's sometimes a no win situation for players, like myself, who have a great desire to further their pvp experience, but simply can't bring themselves to find the effort, or desire, to enter that atmosphere where you don't pretend you're not as expereinced, for we haven't owned the game since its first release date, but get chastised for it constantly when you're trying to learn more of the ropes. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. If the team fails because of anything I've done wrong, instead of whispering me for 10 minutes calling me names, why not work with me, as an adult with actual human intelligence, to improve our success? Honestly, it hasn't been a once, or twice thing. It's been a lot.

I also feel I'm probably not the only one with this perspective, of a somewhat casual player, wanting to become more versatile in the pvp area, but are discouraged from doing so because they either a) Can't get unbiased and polite help, or b) Even when/if they do get the assistance, they're still scoffed at.

So that's my detraction from pvp. I'd like to become a well rounded pvp player. Play in an environment that, even if it's a crushing defeat, we can all still laugh, lick our wounds, and try again. I just can't ever seem to find that environment though. I find myself in the one that, even in a crushing defeat, the players suffer uncontrollable tourettes attacks, and when asking for advice, I get more uncontrollable tourettes attacks.


Anywhoo, I'm sure I've stepped too close to a fire I should have stayed away from, but that's ok. I'm secretly a pyromaniac; although not so much a secret anymore...

And before I get accused of it, this isn't a rag on "leetness". Truth is the few very helpful players who've striked up convos with me to help have been, or were, the long time pvp only players, or primarily pvp'ers. To further truth, it's the long time experienced players I want to learn from. I just don't want to learn it in the form where I'm treated like a 9 year old, or called every name in the book like I'm still in high school.

Sure winning is fun but not if its ALL the time. A challenge is more fun than winning. Which was my point

there's a difference between a challenge (odds stacked against you, but you can win) and something that's impossible (you simply cannot win).

again, you have demonstrate that you have zero knowledge of pvp mechanics, nor the mental capacity to understand them. please stop posting.

So going into a match where you know youre going to lose because of your build and having absolutely no chance of success is your idea of a challenge?

Im so glad you have NOTHING to do with balance or high end PvP...
This re-enforces my post. Firstoff you give serious PvP players a headache because you dont have a clue about playing PvP at any sort of resemblance of a serious level. Yes you have ideas and theories on PvP, the problem is that EVERY one of them are wrong and you dont understand that concept. There have been a few worthwhile people that have posted in here that actually know PvP matters, community, metagame, and playstyle that is going on in the current PvP scene. The rest of you are posting useless trash liek a 1v1 tournament or make polymock PvP or some bullshit about how you couldnt get into that r9+ pug because youre only r3 and think you deserve to play with any group forming in Tombs/HA.

Reality check. There will be some people who will understand PvP and be able to play it at a top level and be successful. There will be many many many more who fail at it. The ones that fail at it are usually the ones bitching, complaining, and ranting about elitesim or that we have too many skill balances or even the dumbshit idea that PvE balance is more important than PvP skillbalance. There have been several good posts from many players who do play PvP regularly and have a good knowledge of what they are talking about. Unfortunately there have been far too many posts from people who quite honestly have no reason to post there thoughts or ideas other than to try and make themselves look intelligent and like they have a clue, but turn out to be just some random bullshit that is either wrong, or based off of PvE gameplay.

Someone else said this but I agree that "3 2 1 spike" ruined pvp. The longer the game has gone on, the more spike builds that have come about. That plus a lack of skill balances. I would have liked to have seen more frequent balances. 4+ months of nothing sucked. Especially when those 4+ months were filled with the worst spikes we've ever seen in the game.

That is simply not true. Teams have run adrenal spike since the BWEs.

i think he meant bloodspike, FC air spike (now dead), ritspike (also dead), ward+obsidian spike (mostly dead), and.... i can't think of another spike other than rainbow spike (who the hell plays that?).

Team balance and diversity, intermixed with a good voice communication system, like vent or Teamspeak; (I prefer teamspeak) is the key to having a enjoyable time in HA.

Yes Heroes did cause some problems in that it allowed groups that were not allowed to join player groups to get into HA because of some rankest discrimination. But this did not Ruin PvP, it changed who was in it and who was accepted.

Also it made team building a little easier for those that were unwilling to change roles at times.

The Team size changes also seemed to be a very large contention with True PvPers. When AB came out it was a true 12 vs 12 environment, and that was expected to evolve further into HA as well eventually. but in the end AB became random 4v4v4 vs 4v4v4, and HA actually lost some party size which went more to promoting the build of the month party's that now dominate what is left of the PvP world.

Lastly the easy ability to steal a build and share it with millions in PvP... thats right the coveted template system. While its function was wonderful for PvE and to assist new players to know what worked and what did not work... the Template system became the RAPID SUCCESSION of standard in PvP because of 1: the smaller party size, and 2: inexperience of players in developing balanced team builds made them dependent on build of the month doctrine with no willingness to compromise from template.

So the concept of a concise and balance team that could experiment with builds and skills to find new methods and have some forgiveness while doing this with a balanced team was thrown out the window...

Indeed common builds in the beta days for PvP was balanced, smackdown, and spike. And when the game went live it also added anti-caster to that mix. Those were the standard for many months. While people learned even more efficient ways to tweak builds. But slowly and somewhat inexplicably the concept of a balanced team that could kill and yet sustain itself was lost, in favor of the win in 10 mins or quit attitude. This became the standard, and ever since then was the downfall of PvP... It no longer was about playing with friends and enjoying a competitive and fun game. It became getting that instant gratification or screwing everyone with you if you do not get it fast enough.

We need to get ourselves in PvP and back to the core of what the game was based on from the beginning. While I too enjoy and love PvE, I miss the beta and Early Tombs PvP days when I could just join a bunch of friends and go to it for the hell of it. If we lost no big deal, if we won great, lets remember this for next time... Once they started making grind and rankest demands and selling grinding services for ill gotten rank... sorry that got the whole thing rolling right there...

I think one thing that could help PvP more then anything else is make a loss have a penalty, and a win truly worth something as a result. This will penalize those that leave, rage quit, sit afk, or any other number of atrocities in PvP nowadays. And put minimum time limitations on a battle. Its not a match if a round lasts less then say 15 mins. As it could have been no challenge at all. Such matches should do nothing to advance a player in rank or reward. as such this will promote the return of the balanced team build. Or better yet use timer multipliers that will increase rewards if you sustain a battle through to the sudden death point.

Healers, Anticasters, Tanks, Ranged or midranged dmg, and energy denial. thats 5, fill the rest of the party, up to 8 again please at the minimum, with whatever you wish to experiment with to further your team build and enjoyment. If you loose well try something new. if you win, great, file that away but don't JUST do that, continue to experiment.

When that stopped happening for me... that is when I left PvP... I could not manage to organize a group to try something out even within my our guild in some cases. I organized our alliance to assist in this and bring us back to PvP in some small way, but in the end we all just gave up. Settled into our larger PvE world which was less stressful and easier to get people to play with without the attitude.

That my friends is what you so aptly say KILLED PvP... I disagree on its death, but I do agree its far less appealing then it used to be.

I hope this commentary will be taken for what it is meant to be. Not a PvP vs PvE rant or a misguided and uninformed attitude being thrown in the faces of the developers. It is simply the opinion of a long time player that has been with Guild Wars and loved the game for a very long time. I will continue to love the game for what it is, but I hope everyone can see that there are those among us that do honestly remember when it was good to play with each other. When we would try out new things and bring in new people openly to play PvP. That is what made GW a success in the beginning, before anyone ever paid a dime to Anet, this was the environment in game. It was the environment for several months if not up to the launch of SF and Battle Isle conversions itself. True Tombs has some issues by that time but it had not gotten too out of hand as of yet. But when Battle Isle and HA began it started the downward spiral of PvP to what we have today.

Don't be discouraged by what people you'll never meet say to you over the internet. I've pvp'd for about a year, fairly seriously devoting time to it. I learned some about the game, tried to create a guild and builds for it with some success not a lot.

I decided i'd try to concentrate more about my individual play and find people i enjoyed playing with and if i gained some respect i'd try to suggest skill bars and builds i thought could be more successful. To be honest i've never used builds from wiki or even looked at them as i'm sure good players don't either.

Currently, my guild tries to assess what is needed to stay alive, what is needed to kill and what our team has as strengths then we create a build that is fun for us and gives us a good chance at being competitive. We don't copy builds from wiki but do try to take good combo's from observer mode that we think might help us become more successful.

And when someone messages me in observer about how "we're bad, or we're only good because our build is overpowered or whatever it is that makes someone feel it necessary to message me as such, just ignore it. It's quite easy, i just go about trying to improve my play, team play and try to be a competitive guild as best as we're capable.

best of luck

Im sure someone has already pointed this out in one way or another, but balancing in this game just seems to become a big game of Whack-A-Mole.

My most recent example of this is last night. I did HA with my guild (Law) and the majority of our matches were against Thumpers with N/Rt healers and either Hexes or Traps.

We just got out of a period of Rt spike being the dominant broken build and now this.

Im not going anywhere as long as I have people to play the game with, but I am not hopeful that we will ever good balance in this game. I think in some aspects its getting better all the time but broken builds keep appearing, but I repeat myself.

I personally think the biggest problem with Guild Wars though is nothing necessarily to do with Guild Wars at all. People tolerate only so much frustration at a games problems before they will move on. There are so many good games out there so holding community is hard.

As ANet has said themselves they are always learning from their mistakes but unfortunately there are only so many mistakes people will be prepared to take.

I have hope though because although it seems like there are less people the people are different. Hopefully since GW is more established things will get better and these new people will not be frustrated like the people who used to play were. We will see I guess.

I didnt say anything like that. So I dont want be insulting or resort to any "ignorant" namecalling here, so Ill just say you might want to re-read it and think about how much of what you just wrote is what was actually said and how much of it is your interpretation of it which I will gladly point out that you describe as ignorant.

I also do not appreciate your attitude of "being a rank 9 and someone who has played at the top level of the game" or whatever, and therfore my comments are more relevant the majority of people out there. I think that most people out there with half of a brain know that you dont have to have spend 2000 hours in HA to be able to play on any type of team role in guildwars. Comeon, 3,2,1 spike, its not rocket science people. You can learn the basics to play any team role in gw in less than an hour, it may take more time to tweak it and play it at maximal efficiency but certaintly not more than a week depending on how fast you are. I know there are other teams, balanced teams may be a little more difficult to play on, but its still not that hard, and thats not what this is about.

I would like to know what your definitions of balance and skill are. What you describe sounds to me like you think of skill in a way that would require both teams to have the exact same makeup and it just being a matter of whover performs better wins and has more skill.

Guildwars was not intended for the teams to work like that. In most cases you dont know what you will be facing when you enter GvG, and yes the other team may be in a position or running a team that is of the ideal makeup to defeat yours or the opposite, thats how it was designed. If both teams are well made they will have the same basic capabilities to kill, heal, support, advance on or defend a position, and to function if forced to split, or may be designed to split, but they will not be equal and perfection in balance can not be achieved the way it was designed. That is something that is obviouse to everyone and you dont have to be someone such as you who has played "at the top level of the game" to understand. LOL So yes, the way guild wars is designed you may find yourself in a situation where your strategy, position, or both are at an advantage or disadvantage to the other team based on the make up of the teams and where they are playing at. The question then becomes how well your team can adapt to that situation and environment even though (as you said) you may not have the ideal conditons that your team and strategy was desingned for. If the team is good it will be flexible enough to adapt to, function, and win under those conditions.

From that perspective everyone knows that you will never have perfect balance in this kind of a game and the situation becomes reversed as to what you describe. It become less about balance and more about skill through teamwork and the ability to adapt rather than what you describe as the more skillful team being defined by the one that wins in a perfectly balanced match. This is not tennis or chess LOL.

Also note that I never said skill balance wasnt needed at all, I just said that it doesnt need to have nearly as big of a deal made of it as the PvP community makes it into, and the way guild wars was designed you will never have perfect balance. To me its less about balance and more about skill within the team to be able to adapt and execute in a less than ideal situation, that is skill.

Alot of people dont think so. Alot of people think the game would be better without titles. Even if you and people like you would still just play with only people you know other people coming into the game wouldnt place such emphasis on the title rank stuff, and dont really want to play with you and the people like you anyway. The only reason the new people coming into to PvP place so much emphasis on the rank title is because it its needed to be able to get into a good group which is important to them so they can win to get more fame and title. So they play with determination to win with unranked groups paired against the ranked experienced groups and lose. They arent getting any fame losing so the group falls apart and new people spend more time looking for groups than they do playing in HA. Most realistic people just say * this, I just have way too much of a real life to waste this kind of time here and move on. Hence the dead PvP community, no new growth, dying. If there were no titles people would still play to win but they would play to win because its fun and not because I gotta get rank so I can get on a good team. They dont have to play with people like you. There are tons of new people that come to HA all the time, but get frustrated because of the setup and leave. Without titles they could make thier own friends and just play to win because its fun, maybe form new guilds together. If the didnt exist then the inadvertant pressure created by anet to get rank fame that was placed on players to get them by the elitist PvP community wouldnt exist either and people might just play because it is fun without getting so stressed over it, groups might actually stay together long enough to get good at playing together, form guilds, and the PvP community might grow.


There are alot of things I like about observer mode but I think it was better before observer mode and the ability to see the entire build of other teams, and top teams because people developed their own teams and worked with them until they found something that worked well for them and tweaked it perfection or started over. Now the trend seems to be just a bunch of build copying going onl. They definitely didnt have all these common trend builds before this. People doing the same stuff is a problem for the majority players. Again, seems you just want to play chess or something, two exact same teams playing each other.

I'd like to interject 2 points.

First, if a poster has invested a significant amount of time into anything, in this case GW PvP, then of course they are going to take the viewpoint that it is a complex "sport" with multiple levels and subtleties of strategy. You expect them to say their hobby is easily understood and mastered in a matter of hours? Sheesh.

The second point is a bit tougher to swallow. Whether anyone likes to admit it or not, the performance of any player(s) in GW can be significantly improved by looking up a build in a wiki. In any actual sport, a wiki does not help performance, or else there would be a metric ton of Basketball wikis, Baseball wikis, etc. This begins to show the shallow nature of the GW PvP experience.

I'm sure the PvP "pro" mob with their pitchforks is coming for me now, but them's the facts. A sport, this ain't.

Thanks!
TabascoSauce

Oh really? Because I distinctly remember you saying balance isn't as important as PvP players make it out to be, and that there needn't be regular balance updates, and that everything can be countered...

I never said my comments were more relevant. I just said yours were irrelevant because you've never been in a situation where you needed skills to be balanced and thus don't realise how important it is, which it is clear you do not. Also, you try getting in one of the top 5 GvG Guilds based on maybe a weeks play. I'm sure you'll do it, because that's all you need, right?

That is the ultimate test of skill. If two teams are running completely identical Builds, the one who plays better will win (lag excluded for the sake of argument). Balance is a reference to a skill that is not overpowered, nor underpowered. If you need to take 1 skill to deal with another, then the latter is definately not balanced.

Hence why people don't run fully geared one dimensional Builds unless they can ensure they are in control of one of the main factors of GvG play (map choice). When you can tweak circumstances to favour you, and your team build, that's when you run something that abuses the shit out of it. See example: Hexes on Jade (before update), FoC Spike on Imperial (before update), Spike on Burning (before update).

In most cases though, teams will opt for a more balanced build selection, that can deal with multiple other builds, while still being somewhat effective. They lose their ability to be completely effective in a couple of areas, so as to make sure they are not rendered ineffective by a build that completely dominates them in those terms. For example, Team A is running 5 Paragons. Team B is running chained Shield's Up. See the problem?

It's obvious the game can never be perfectly balanced. As soon as one imbalanced thing is changed, something else will become apparent. The thing is, I'm not arguing that isn't the case. I'm just arguing for more frequent skill balances so as to address the problem asap so the game doesn't suffer because of it (too bad it's too late. 5 of the best 6 Guilds in this game have stopped playing as Guilds, if they still play Guild Wars, and of that one, only 2 players who have been successful in the game still play regularly).

Which is just completely wrong. Rock paper scissors doesn't highlight skill, which is, in effect, what you're arguing for, claiming that if you're skilled enough you can just beat anything. You can't. There are only 64 skill slots at your disposal to beat the other team. You can't counter enough things, and if the game goes unbalanced for a long period of time, with a bad meta, then it's not fun to play, often reliant on overpowered builds to win, and you're very likely to get beaten before the game starts based on skill selection.

Well, they're wrong. I'd rather not waste my time playing with someone terrible for 1 run. All that's going to happen is they'll get kicked right after we find out how bad they are.

You're so incredibly wrong I don't think I can even be bothered to correct you now.

Edit:

First, Guild Wars is an e-sport. It's not really a very good competitive one, because the resources haven't been made available to make it so, but it is one nevertheless.

Second, the majority of wiki builds are bad and to claim that they improve someone's performance is false. They will only do so up to a certain point. Also on this point, I'm sure that one sports team can research another teams plays. They can then incorporate them into their own strategy, which is very similar to running the same build in the grand scheme of things.

sorry to break it to you, but most us pvp players will play significantly worse if we play one of the garbage builds on wiki. also, most (if not all) of the good pvp builds were put there by us. your suggestion only works for pve scrubs.

So, do you think a new player can understand and master Guild Wars PvP in a matter of hours, or not?

Usually people don't refer to video games as a "sport" because they aren't related to athletics, and dictionary definitions aside, the word sport has been associated with athletics for a long, long time. However, I don't think I've ever before seen the argument made that something can't be a "sport" because it is possible to improve your game by reading wikipedia articles about it.

Do you think Magic: The Gathering is a deep game, or a shallow one that is easily mastered in a matter of hours?

You win. The rest of this thread doesn't need much discussing.

Does it matter if Guild Wars fits in with your definition of "sport"? No, that's completely irrelevant to this discussion. I don't even know why you brought it up.

What is relevant is whether or not Guild Wars, at it's highest level, takes skill to play. Here's an experiment: grab seven of your friends and go GvG against any top 10 team. You can Wiki all you want, you can even ask your opposing guild for their build for all that matters. I'm sure they won't mind giving it to you skill for skill, because even with all that information, you will lose. Feel free to prove me wrong.

Im not arguing for straight up rock paper scissors, Im just saying that to a certain degree thats what this game is on a very basic and fundamental level. If the ability to win under unfavorable circumstances is not skill then I dont know what is. To do that every player has to be able to understand his own teams dynamics very well and also be able to recognize the most vital aspects of the other team to avoid and take out. Like you said the ability to be beat by skill choice alone is a possibility, you may run into something that your team just cant win against, but that will always be present. Balancing one just creates another. I think a net has really tried very hard at that and hasnt been able to do it. I think they have done a good job though. Seriously Im not great at statistics, but would like to know the odds of that happening actually are, meaning that from skillset alone it could be determined that one team would have absolutely no chance of winning.

That is probably never going to be completely eliminated so maybe what they should do is change the tournament. A net defines the teams for each guild in a series of matches. Both guilds must play as each team. Guild1 is Team A vs G2 is Team B and vice versa Guild 1 is TeamB vs Guild 2 is Team A. Or just make them both play the same team vs each other. Kind of boring but only way to completely take chance out of it and ensure that one team wont lose by skill choice alone. Also if the team is good each player should be able to look at their own skills and the skills of their teammates and be able to see how they would work together.

Could force guilds to submit the team they will run ahead of tournament and not allow any changes throughout the entire tournament. Then just play tem against each other in a playoff style.

Tabasco is part-right. A good build will HELP someone, but it won't raise them to an elite level if they aren't already there. If you are facing a SEAL with a .45 ACP, I can give you the same weapon. If you have his experience, it will pull you to his level. If you are an Army grunt straight out of boot camp, you are still dead, unless you are VERY lucky.

You are only as good as your ability and experience. The best new LEGOWAY build on a team with mediocre experience will STILL get killed by a top-tier team. Unless they are VERY lucky.

PVP here is toast. The final nail in the coffin was when there was no PvP in EotN. Not even a cookie. They know it, and are just keeping the status quo till they can get it right in GW2 with complete separation from PvE. If you want to see what it should have been, get Fury or wait 18 months.

Just a note and a reality check to all those claiming that it takes so much time, dedication, and experience to really play this game with skill at its top level

Naturally people will play better with experience but you dont need nearly the amount of experience thay most of the "pro" pvp crowd will attest to. Its really not that hard, and the major difference and where the reality check comes in is that to execute you skills perfectly in this video game called guild wars all that is required is that you understand what you are doing, what you are doing is what you should be doing in the overall scheme of your team strategy, and the you ckick a button. I real life games like football you wont make a perfect pass by pushing a button. I dont like the comparison to USN SEALS, and find it insulting that skill in a video game is sort of being made an analogous equal the real world skills that they have acquired through real world dedication, Honor, Committment, and Integrity.

My Final Note Regarding Skill Balance. The nature of this game inherant in its design is that the teams facing each other will not be equal, which I think was well explained in my earlier post.(This game by Nature Cannot be Perfectly Balanced) From that perspective yes both teams can play perfectly and one will lose just because if the difference in team builds, or the conditions forced to play in. Some teams work better in certain halls than others. So Yes there is a chance that you will occassionally find your team playing in less than ideal or disadvantaged conditions where you are very likely to lose. Does this mean your team will lose, not really. If you can recognize the other teams strategy you may be able to do things that would force them to make mistakes and take advantage of those mistakes and win. Will this always be possible, not always but alot of times it will. If they are good they will not be baited or pressured into making mistakes that will put their team in a vulnerable situation. And sometimes some teams strategy may just have everything it needs in it to perfectly counter and completely destroy team just by skill set alone, that is where it is rock, paper, scissors. That by the nature of guildwars design cant be eliminated. The chances of that happening I are really very slim, especially when you factor in human players and the potential for them to make mistakes. Also, both teams have the same potential to be put in an advantageous or disadvantageous situation.

Alot of what is coming from this thread seems to be just anger that oh a top 10 guild got beat by an unranked guild or whatever. (Several posts describe such things.) Not because the unranked guild had skillfull players but because thier build happened to be perfectly suited to face and destroy our team. They couldnt possibly have skill because they were unranked. It was that their skills were overpowered. LOL. That is not the case, and those kind of things can and will happen in this game as long as its design doesnt change. It will never be perfectly balanced 100% of the time.

As was stated It doesnt take nearly the amount of experience that the "pro" PvP crowd who plays frequently at "the top level of the game" will attest to to play this game with skill. I just hope ANET has learned from GW and GW2 will be better and not have alot of the things that messed up GW in it.

Fury from what I have heard has a very individualized stat system that is not like guild wars that is based on individual performance rather than team performance so a person doesnt really have to be on a ranked team and can still acquire ratings based on individual performance win or lose. Thats what some of the people in my guild that did beta trials for it were saying a while back anyway. I have never played it.

Why people post without knowing what they are talking about, really astounds me. Some of you need do your homework before posting please, and let go of your prejudice and grudges.

I don't even know why I'm bothering to try and correct you. You're incredibly ignorant as to what this game is actually about, how it was originally marketed, and pretty much everything that comes anywhere near to good discussion about the state of PvP.

That said; Our goal from the beginning was to create a game that rewards gamers for their skill rather than just for the number of hours they spent playing. At the same time, we wanted to enable balanced long-term competitive play

???

Stop comparing e-sports to real life sports please. You can do theorycrafting crap like that all day and it won't make a blind bit of difference. Here is the simple fact - you have never been in a top guild in this game, and you are woefully ignorant to know what you need to get there. Others have, and are more aware of what it requires. Now can you please stop talking about something you know nothing about because it is beginning to get annoying.

Read link above you utter moron. Go look at what Guild Wars was advertised as and then maybe you'll get a clue. Seriously. Stop talking out of your rectum because you feel like being all self important.

Here is one of the best examples that comes to mind right now - EvIL (easily one of the 2 best guilds to have graced this game) got beaten by a bloodspike in the height of their dominance. This is not because the bloodspike was better. EvIL were far better and the bloodspikers were absolutely woeful. It was quite simply because that build was overpowered on a map on which you could not split at the time.

Here is another example - defense ball. It's ridiculously naive to claim that various passive skills in this type of build are not overpowered. Anyone who knows anything about balance can show you why they are. The fact is, this build allows you to effectively stay alive much longer than you would have otherwise, and get kills through spiking only. You don't ever need to use different tactics and strategies, you're not diverse, you just do the same every match, which is run, what can only be labelled as a spike build, and count from 3 to 1. It doesn't take skill to run effectively. Okay, to be really, really effective all characters take some degree of micro, but to be honest the micro required for a build in which your team is nearly invincible is much less than one in which your team is searching for kills through various different means.

Yes it does. You have no clue. Okay, it doesn't take anywhere near as much now, because the gap has got smaller as everyone who was at a higher level has left. But there is still a gap.

This thread is at least a year late.

Is that what the title system does? I think they have done the opposite. Also, you yourself said in a post earlier that you arent arguing that the cant be perfectly balanced.


the only thing that is getting annoying are the arguments from your end that seem to want to say if you are not in a top guild you argument is invalid. You guys like to make those comments because you cant come up with a rational agrument, and If thats your only argument I think you are the one that is clueless. It was people from your end that started the comparison, I was just commenting on it because it is unrealistic and insulting.



Comments like this only show your own stupidity. Do you really have to resort to this because you cant come up with something rational. Nothing further from me, as I said, I just hope for better in GW2.

First of all, the example I used wasn't meant to insult anyone. Serve 9 years working with true operators, understanding the abilities they have, the risks and sacrifices they make, then say you have the F'in balls to say what I can and cannot say about SEALs.

The comparison was valid in showing that while having the same tools may make you more cocmpetitive, it takes experience and skill in anything, whether chess, badmitten or PvP, to make use of those tools to make yourself elite.

Oh, and it's Honor, Courage and Commitment. Fvcknut.

The title system was implemented far later than the game itself, and titles having actual effects on the game later still.

No, Vanquisher makes those comments because you quite literally have never played at the level you are trying to explain. You don't know how it works, and yet assume you are correct even in the face of contrary opinions from players that played the game for the purpose of high-end pvp. I don't know why you assume you are correct without any experience at it, but if you can't give a real reason why you feel you are qualified to discuss something you don't even play, you're trolling at best.

You've ignored everything rational in favor of your own fantasies and how you think the game works. You specifically didn't respond to where Vanquisher does provide evidence for this. I can guarantee you that people reading this thread know who is showing their stupidity.

For instance:

Anyone who has played any form of 8v8 PvP will know you have no credibility after this. Explain how builds such as old D/Mos, Mesmer Spike, old FC air spike etc fit into your view? Oh, you can't, because you've never played against them.