Guildwars: Pvp game or Pve game?

No more Edge bombs in PvE or PvP, Spirit Bond didn't change in PvP at all, but had a counter to stop PvE "abuse," and I am unsure if Prot Bond was used in PvP. I just don't remember. It's dead, now, certainly.

I don't really have a comment for the PvE vs PvP debate. They never end well. No %s from me.

People already adressed your other points, and I just want to comment on this one.

It could probably have become a pvpers wet dream, but are you sure ANet would even have survived without carebears/PvE players???

In another thread someone even stated, it is always 90% carebears and 10% PvPers in MMOs. I think he is quite right.


How about that

90% balancing for PvP - 10% for PvE
99% new content for PvE - 1% for PvP


I remember the idea that was rampant a few years ago, that pvp is "fun, unlimited endgame content" - GW was probably developed with a similar mindset. It did not really work out that way.


I hope GW2 would focus on one aspect, or that they find the egg of Columbus and make great pve and pvp in one package.

So far I see both PvE and PvP suffer because of the other

SB was nerfed solely because it was too powerful in PVP, not because of it's use in 600ing or other farming. Demonstrable by the fact it's still used. It made monks un-killable in PVP without some kind of shutdown. EoE was a similar case, sac necros were dominating HA using EoE.

Also, can you say PVE Skill? There was no consideration of balance when those were added, as demonstrated by Ursan and Seed of life.

Clear enough for you?

without PvE, Guild Wars PvP would be successful like fury
oh wait.. fury died

EoE was also nerfed because it destroyed witmans folly.

All the spite and bitterness I get from people in-game are PvE people complain about PvP or how PvP people were like this or that.

Another one joining them isn't showing anyone anything.

Anet CREATED this PvE vs PvP divide and refuses to acknowledge it.

Yes "could have been" never happened, but "PvP being amazing" did happen. It just isn't that way now. I would be willing to bet in a global poll that a large majority of people would agree that PvP today is pathetic in comparison to what it used to be. I can only imagine where Guild Wars would be today if PvP never went through all the changes.

No I don't...at least not at the very beginning when Guild Wars was an unknown brand name.

As I said before, PvE was needed to bring the players to PvP. PvE and PvP were never meant to be as seperated as they are now. In the ideal Guild Wars, PvE would be played, but PvP would be the endgame (like it used to be).

Instead we have PvE takes over, PvP players frustrated about it, and Anet creating that divide. This divide should never have happened! I'm not even convinced Anet realizes what they had in their hands.

These are just assertions. Writing your opinions in boldface does not magically make them valid.

I do believe you are mistaken.

gw has lots of pvp and pve so it's 50/50 to me. knit picking this subject is the zzzzz

Yep, we have two very different game modes that still share the same skillset.

The problem with the idea that PvE brings players to PvP is that it did not work out. Why?

PvPers and PvEers alike often claim it is because of rank discrimination, because higher level PvP is harder to get into and many things like that. Hm... maybe!


But I think the assumption that people would hunger for pvp and really get enticed to play pvp after having played pve was totally wrong, and has it not proven to have utterly failed?
PvPers wanted to start right away, and PvE players just played PvE and not as many as ANet thought got into PvP.


Having tons of PvE players to basically raise funds for PvP cannot really be a desirable model, and this division is not good for the game.



How will GW2 do it better, lessen the gap between PvE and PvP?

WoW did it better!

World of Warcraft has PvE and PvP servers, the majority being PvP servers (60% roughly, counting RP-PvP and stuff like that)
WoW does not suffer such a divide between pvp players and pve players, even very casual PvE gamers play battlegrounds (!).
Even I as a PvE player have not felt annoyed by constant fighting on PvP servers (I was on EU Azshara most of the time), rather the opposite, I wished sometimes that there would be more action than a few random rogue attacks.

Mending the gap between PvE and PvP would be very nice, sometimes it feels like two factions playing the same game so differently like they are in two totally different worlds contained in the same game.

I am sure many people would not know much of the other side if there would not be the forums...^^

but quite impossible. Three years is a long time to form set opinions. You cannot teach a PvE player to like a PvPer, nor can you teach a PvPer to respect a PvEer. Like all other forms of social change, the only way for the rift to heal is to wait for the current generation of players to die.

"wait for the current generation of players to die."

I'm not ready to die yet.

I would agree with this if I could think of anyone who was a 'PvPer' by the definition of 'only plays PvP'. Every person I know that plays PvP plays PvE, or has played and gotten tired of PvE.

There are no 'PvErs and PvPers', just those that play everything and those that only play PvE. The condescending nature people perceive from 'PvP players' is mainly because these people, playing both sides of the game, can see how absurd a great amount of the PvE complaints are.

And how would this be financed (if there is no PvE, smaller numbers sold) ?
Monthly fees?
Everything they do cost money, just imagen how much a programmer gets paid /hour and then calculate how many games they need to sell to pay for that hour. What it comes down to they would not have had more time to spend on skill balance, unless someone stepped up and PAID for their time.
95% of the people I play with would not have bought GW without the PvE part. Time is money.

Well, most serious PvP players would have been willing to pay a monthly fee for a solid Guild Wars PvP format, as it has the most potential (still) of games currently out for that format of play.

You're entirely missing the point. The fact that the balances are "primarily" or only pvp based is actually largely a good thing imo. PVE doesn't really need balance, if it did, mobs would have full skillbars and solo farming would be utterly impossible.

But claiming PVE is given much (or any) consideration in balances is being willfully stupid.

Frankly, ANet realised that they don't really need to worry about specifically balancing PVE, so they don't. I have yet to find a valid argument why they should. "They ruined my favorite farm" does not constitute a valid argument.

I can understand that, but is there enough players that serious to make it viable for a company? maraxusofk made it sound like A-Net could have had the same staff on payroll without the PvE part as with. That would mean rhoughly 75K-100K players paying a monthley fee just to break even (unless the fee is over $20/month). Running a company is expensive, specially if you have skilled staff you have to pay top salerys or they get recruited.

As it is now they can fall back on NC-Soft for money projected against sales of the last project. And only because of the amount of games sold so far.

The assumption is that the number of PvP players with or without paying a fee would be enough to support GW is something I dare to doubt.

In fact I would rather say they could throw PvP and all hardcore PvPers overboard and still make much more profit than the other way around. They are a minority!

PvE players seem to take a lot and still do not quit and buy the latest chapter, despite all whining about skill nerfs and this and that. I am still playing GW despite the latest PvE skill stupidity and silly "grind as the game" stuff added mainly with GW:EN. ANet is capitalizing on that, this makes me fear for quality PvE in GW2 that hopefully is not just another stupid grinder.

Since the AI in this game is horrible, I actually consider the monsters fairly balanced. They make up in strength for what they lack brains. Not to mention you asked where, if ever, they make a balance with PvE in mind (but that was already answered.)

12 skills, 9 of them PVE only skills. I think that fairly proves my point that

a) PVP is the overwhelmingly large factor in all balances

b) this is not as bad a thing as most PVE players seem to think it is.

PVE is nowhere near the correct use of "balanced". If it was, 8(human, hero, hench)v8 (mobs) would be a roll of the dice every time and not what it is now (a forgone conclusion, 90% of the time).

Solo and duo farming would also have been utterly destroyed.

Rather than saying PVE is balanced, let's say it's challenging enough to serve it's purpose.

QFT

PvPers play PvE all the time. I don't remember which thread it was, but Age called Moko out on not knowing squat about PvE.

Moko proceeded to put up a screenie of her PvE monk; the list of PvE accomplishments was relatively impressive.

This is why PvPers know PvE better than PvE'ers do.

Because we do both.

Nearly everyone who plays PvP at a high enough level sets foot in PvE only when not enough friends are on for GvG or whatever. If RA were any less idiotic, that's where they would be instead. If all the PvE areas of GW were closed today, I doubt much of the PvP community would shed a tear. (I certainly wouldn't, and I have even stopped identifying with the PvP crowd.)

I think the big problem is that the idea for the game was to start people in PvE and as they grew stronger transition them into PvP. People who PvP have no problem PvEing, but people who PvE generally don't have an interest in getting into PvP. I am primarily PvE, and have very few complaints (if any) about the game (little peeved over the LoD nerf, but the latest LoD change was exactly what I said they should have done - so that's all good now). I bought Proph a couple of years ago thinking that I would PvE and naturally transition into PvP. By this time, there was no natural transitions. You had PvP only characters already, and a lot of the arenas were already shut down by the time I reached them. Not only that, there were no quests or anything to encourage you to find an arena and take part. So I never PvPed. I thought that with Factions that might change. But by the time I got around to making my way through, Jade Quarry was a once a week organized event for mapping. Fort Aspenwood was fun, but Luxon always won (good thing I was Luxon) hands down. Now I'm Kurzik and have no interest in trying to defend hopelessly. But just having a couple PvP matches still didn't instigate a transition, it was more like a tasting.

So the fault I think lies in that there is no natural progression from PvE to PvP like so many of us expected when we got the game. There is too much of a barrier between the two that you must forcibly overcome. PvPers probably appreciate the game more, but believe me when I say that there are PvEers that thoroughly enjoy the game. But I agree that there is rarely anything to complain about in PvE...if you can't do it with Pain Inverter...then there's always Ursan =P. Probably the biggest reason you hear a lot more complaints from PvE is that there are a whole lot more people that play PvE.

If the game had institutioned some sort of natural progression, it would have really added to the quality of the game. I think they wanted to do this, but expected that the players themselves would drive the transition without much assistance from the game. Oh well. I wouldn't fault anyone here. Hindsight is 20-20. Hopefully, GW2 will have the same goals, but a better design to achieve them. All in all, i still think GW is a phenomenal game. I have never had a game I played so much or held my interest for so long.

EDIT: lol...I misspelled "here". Had to fix it.

Stop talking about what you know nothing about.

I'm not kidding.

Stop it.

If the PvE population is 80% immature, 20% mature, and the PvP population is 80% immature and 20% mature as well, it will be harder to find mature PvPers.

With these statistics let's assume you have a pool of 1600 players - 1000 PvEers (as PvEers are more common) and 600 PvPers. There is a larger chance of meeting a mature PvEer (as there will be 200 mature PvEers floating about) but also a larger chance of meeting an immature PvEer (there's 800 floating about)

PvP on the other hand, has less people, so you have a lower chance of meeting a mature PvPer (480 immature PvPers, 120 mature PvPers) What's worse is that as you enter matches, you'll probably keep bumping into the same group of egomaniacs that you just lost to half an hour ago. With PvE, if some jerk is acting like a monkey, you can always zone away.

Alright Bryant, who's making the broad generalizations now? :>

Sometimes I really wonder about guru denizens.

Enjoy your fantasies, though.

Guild Wars is both PvE and PvP. You can't quantify how much of which for each.

GW, however, would be infinately better if ArenaNet only focused on only one aspect.

Actually, I have long thought that a f2p PVE game variant (ie current PVE) and a lowish fee pay monthly PVP variant (no upfront cost, only monthly fees) would be a solution all around.

That way GvG tournaments and things which cost continual money to run would be available to PvPers, and the one-shot, low maintenance stuff like PVE pays for itself and then some. Skill balances would also be completely separate, leaving PVE players with no route of complaint about PVP affecting their world.


QFT right there

You know nothing of the top GvG community and are thus unqualified to speak on about its motives or activities.

Top PvPers PvE together all the time. Just because you have this rather one-dimensional, uninformed perception of someone you don't like doesn't mean it's true.

If you had access to the PvP community, you'd have an informed view. But you don't.

I'm in a PvE alliance, one where at least 3/4 of its 400-500 member roster has koabd, and most have fow and high level equipment. I've been in at least a dozen of these alliances. I have access to the PvE community, if you can call it such. I've also been in top PvP alliances, so I have access to that.

I've got both sides of the world, you've got one.


Enjoy your fallacies.

Why has this flamefest been allowed to continue?

Because this is Guild Wars Guru.



Anyways.

I've played both PvE and PvP. Here's what I have to say about them.

PvE: majority of PUGs are horrible but luckily PvE can be soloed. So I do.

PvP: not quite as bad, except that (aside from HB which is just a joke and RA which is a testing zone) you are pretty much obligated to either PUG or find a good guild.

The end result is that while granted the PvE community is overall worse than the PvP community, PvE remains much more accessible.

Now, if PvP had a similar accessibility, such as tiered HA (sorted by rank for example), an easier way to get started in GvG, etc; I'd say it would be better.

For the record when I've managed to get a good PvP team in HA/GvG I've had some of the best moments in Guild Wars. The problem is that these moments are so very rare. Even the latest guild I joined, made by my friend and several people we knew, all of us fairly experienced (though they were more PvE focused than PvP) still never got off the ground due to an insufficient member count.

/sigh

Right. Now, where are you pulling out these statistics?

Snow Bunny? I don't see how that has anything to do with me.

It's called an example.

Example:

a pattern or model, as of something to be imitated or avoided: to set a good example.

an instance serving for illustration; specimen: The case histories gave carefully detailed examples of this disease.

Did I say anywhere that it's true? I'm using it to illustrate a math concept. I could have used any other kind of phrasing, I just chose to use those two as examples because the subject is Guild Wars.
So it's fine for him to make stupid generalizations, but when a PvEer does you jump on her immediately? I see.

Bryant should jump on me if my generalizations are wrong, but they're not.

Continue to make the ad hominem attacks, though.

Its whatever you make of it.

Krat

And how would you know? Have you interviewed every single PvPer and asked how much he/she knew about the game? Where did you get that data?

I agree that PvE at large doesn't need much attention in terms of balancing skills, however you're wrong that saying PvE doesn't get any consideration at all. It seems pretty obnoxious of you to even suggest that PvE doesn't even get considered as they're skills that are better suited to PvE than PvP(barrage) for example.

Anet does put in things that might effect the economy too much. Hell they have put in gaspings in UW against 55s. If what you say is true, then how come Anet has changed skills that barely effect skills that that are used PvP? Anet nerfed trappers a while back but the last time a trapper was in the meta, was so long ago.

No, but to be a good PvP player means that you have to understand the mechanics of the game; why mitigation is better than healing, energy management, basic little things that most players don't think of. Most players spam GoLE on recharge, shoot off 2 10e spells, and consider that energy management. In PvP you can't do that, you'll run out of energy under all the pressure.

The thing about pvp is the perception any player on a froum gets from a very small % of the group. On another game site that I visit, there is a "leet pvper" that has a screenshot of him in game saying "pve sucks" in pve towns. All of his replies to any thread are very unfunny smartass remarks about how dumb pve and/or the players. This gives anyone that is reading and just starting out the perception that pvp is for elite asshats.

Now personally I have played for about 5 months now, I have played through all of the campaigns. I am now doing the extra stuff like vanquishing, skill capping, going back through missions on hard mode, etc. I have thought a lot about trying out pvp, I think I am an ok player and I learn quick, but anytime I go to RA, Hero Battles, etc. all that I hear is bickering. I don't want to cut and paste someone else's build, but use my own and learn what will and will not work on my own, w/o the leetness of someone who has done it longer than me blasting me for my noobness.

So at this point in the lifespan of GW (twilight), I will work on max titles for my HoM and try to get into pvp at the beginning of GW2.

There you go with the generalizations.

It is possible to find out other game mechanics through PvE. It might not be as obvious, but you still can learn.

A guildie of mine doesn't really PvP, but he knows that a healer and an active prot can pretty much keep a FoW group alive without much of any trouble. A healer + bonder? Not really. 2 healers? Sure, but expect a lot of accidental overhealing. And that's just one game mechanic you can find through PvE.