The main point

My apologies if my earlier expression could be taken the wrong way. It's just that this thing has been blown out of proportion imo, which created a bad athmosphere. I think it's too early for doom scenarios.

We don't know what Anet is cooking behind the scenes. I agree like I said in other posts that PvP needs the proper balance and attention. And if possible without hurting PvE play.

We've been over and over this and, frankly, I'm getting tired of having to repost it. It's not how much it effects PvE, it's that it DOES effect PvE, and after awhile it just gets frustrating tweaking a perfectly good skillbar yet again when your opponents aren't actually doing anything different. WE don't get to tweak our skillbars to face off against new, innovative builds and AI tactics, we just get to tweak our skillbars to face the same old crap because the AI doesn't change, but skills that worked before stop working for no contextual reason.

It's like that movie Groundhog Day. At first it's okay, then it's tolerable, and after awhile it's just horribly frustrating to keep having to go back and do the same thing over and over for no apparent reason. With any luck at all, ANET will have learned from the mess Factions and Nightfall made that they either need to make BOTH portions of the game interesting and diverse, or they need to at least divorce the two enough that one doesn't pointlessly impact the other.

Favor of the Gods doesn't really do it for me. For starters, I could easily say that most PvPrs didn't even care that HoH gave favor of the gods. After they removed it from HoH, I don't remember reading a single complaint from PvP players about it.

But anyways...lets say that it does count as one PvP thing that affected PvE. We can blame Anet for that, because nobody really wanted it to begin with. And besides...I said list of 5. =p

I think you are largely underestimating things here. Yes it wasn't neccessarily the skill changes that affected PvP, but it was nearly everything else.

That's the problem of Favor of the Gods; it just limited players from some PvE content for no good reason. PvP players didn't care about it. PvE players did care, but they wouldn't have a chance to make a different anyway (even if they'd tried, do you think it's a good idea for them to get favor, then leave the match to play the PvE content they want?). So basically we had a stupid feature that didn't really accomplish ANYTHING, period.

List of 5? Why stop at 5 then? If you want to make sure you win an argument this way, set an absurd number. You know, like 100.

It's not "how many things" affect PvE. It's that something AFFECTS PvE when it shouldn't. If the change is inevitable, do what other games do and make sure PvE players care about PvP too, or simply separate the two things. I know Anet did try, but they should try harder. It works in other games (in which PvP isn't anywhere near balance to begin with). Why can't Anet make it work here?

Quick question: Would it be possible to use PvE monsters to weed out gimmicky builds in PvP?

Just add an corridor to GvG maps that the groups have to go through like Mhenlos way in Vizunah Square. They have to face PvE monsters there, which prevent gimmicky build from proceeding.


There are two things to consider:
Would PvP players want that?
Is it even possible to weed out gimmicky builds that way, without weeding out balanced builds too?

No, because AI doesn't adapt to gimmicks.

PvP needs to be balanced and rebalanced regularly, and Anet is quite commendable in their efforts to do so, if not always appreciated. However, the roles of quite a few professions have been disjointed from the reality of high end PvE.

Mesmers and Assassins, and to a lesser extent Ritualists are not build for high end PvE that revolves around AoE Damage, AoE Debuffs and AoE Protection. And these roles are not tweaked because they would drastically affect PvP, as well as lose their flavour. I feel that it is something that Anet needs to work out if they are to create a better GW2.

Yes, in absolute balance, every profession is favoured in one play type or another. But the vast majority of players play PvE, so a couple of great builds for TA is not going to help that profession become viable in another play mode.

The solution was to bolt on PvE skills on everyone. It kinda made it worse as everyone can now use Pain Inverter and Technobabble, and would not even need a hero Mesmer, not to mention a player Mesmer. Lets not even start talking about turning everyone into an uber warrior known as Ursan's Blessing. Its kinda fun for a while, but why have 10 professions if everyone's going to have the same skill bar and playing in an identical way?

Arguably, PvE needs a lot more work now than PvP, which is constantly being worked on.

Exactly...but the point I am trying to make is that this was not a PvP change that affected PvE because nobody (including PvP players) wanted it to begin with. So I'd call it more of an overall game addition that wasn't needed from the start, and was thus removed.

So basically the Favor of the Gods change did nothing to PvP players because it didn't affect the game whatsoever. If it were the other way around, and changes were made that didn't affect the PvE game much (such as many balance updates over the years), you'd still hear PvE players complaining about it.

The number doesn't matter, because I can probably counter with a list twice as long.

I guess that is the ten million dollar question. Perhaps they don't know how?

Though, since my friends list (as small as it is) is PvE based it shrunk in the past (and is being retained now) for exactly the opposite reason. Unfortunately any single persons "friends list" isn't the State of the Game no matter how much it means to the individual or how many other individuals said person knows (especially since those friends/guilds lists will have a great deal of overlap).

As has occurred since the very beginning there are two crowds - PvP and PvE, for reasons unknown to me they are hostile to each other. I'm very strongly in the PvE crowd but I can empathize with most of what the PvP'ers complain and talk about (there was a period of my life where I would have been there also). Yet, at this point I have to note that the PvE crowd is MUCH larger.

In the end the argument runs down to the two following groups.

PvP people: PvP is the end game and where Anet wants us to go. It requires the most amount of knowledge to play and revolves almost 100% around balance. An unbalanced skill kills the fun of this game as an unskilled player can simply spam the build and do well.

PvE people: We are the most abundant and pay Anets bills. We fight against fixed enemies and our definition of balance is that one class or build isn't so strong that they are the only ones wanted - overpowering the enemy is the name of the game. Our knowledge lies is knowing what we are to face and having the ability to counter it to an extreme amount.

Both sides have a point - PvP is almost entirely about balance and the meta-game will change and so must the skills. PvE is about learning the critters you are to fight and making a build to rip through them - balance is that all classes are wanted. Those are both VERY valid points and are pretty much opposite to each other.

Less valid are the PvP crowd saying they are only ones that count as they are the end game content and the PvE crowd saying they are the only ones that count because they are more numerous and pay the bills. If they would both get their heads out of the rear-ends they would realize that they are *both* right and *both* wrong. That is: PvE benefits from the balances and PvP benefits from the sheer amount of PvE'rs supplying money to Anet. However if either side were to actually dominate that relationship would end and GW would have the tough time it is currently having.

Unfortunately I don't see that happening as those ideas are too strongly ingrained in most of the people. They each see it as a contest as too who wins instead of a situation to work together to create a great game. In this case I suspect the PvE'ers will win simply because getting the bills payed is more important than pretty much anything else though I really don't want either side to win. This was realized many moons ago and is why PvP is mostly dead outside of scrubs like me (and, again, make no mistake I wish people were out there that VERY easily handed my ass to me). Anet is slowly realizing that if PvP is dead then you only have PvE'ers (and their dabbling in PvP) to worry about.

Now that you mention money strcpy, I wonder how PVPers and Anet would feel if PvErs were to ask to also get an opportunity to earn money (for example through elite missions or challenges, or new PvE team challenges). Is it fair that PvPers can actually recoup the cost of the game while PvErs have to pay this bill?

(this is not a real point I'm making here, I'm simply pointing at another facet that no one mentioned here and highlighting the fact that some PvPers are earning money; furthermore there are people who play both)

Not neccessarily. It is pretty clear that the game was originally supposed to be more PvP oriented, but as I said before, I don't want PvP or PvE to "win" the argument. I think they should both exist and both thrive. The problem is it hasn't happened because Anet managed to make each side break each other down. You rarely see it this bad in other games.

I am of the opinion that the game would have been a lot better off had they stuck with their original intentions. Just think about Jeff Strains original speech when he made this game, and how the course of Guild Wars has changed so much from that. Ah well...

Yep...sadly.

I wouldn't care much. In fact it would actually be kind of cool, and I know a lot of PvPrs who would participate in it. As was said, players are usually not black and white (PvP or PvE), but shades of grey.