PvP as endgame content

Your original point, unless I misread, were that "teamwork focused games fail". I simply showed you that isn't the case.

PvP is not an endgame. You do can access it at anytime you wish. You do not need gangs or cliques. You only need the keys L, F, and G and after a bit of time you're all set.

Yeah easy for u, but I dont have that time, well i do have lots of spare time by my time attention span is short, I dont have time to wammo LFG id rather not play than do that, some people enjoy that and thats fine youll always have the option to spend all the time you want planning and strategizing and waiting if you want, no stops you from doing that. What about the rest of us? We want the option not to have to wait and not have to be that commited like in BF2, and if they cant accommodate our style into pvp then dont, no ones complaining. We're happily playing PVE with lots of things to do and get our PVP fix somewhere else. Just dont bring that garbage to PVE and the best thing they ever did was by taking most of it out when they added heroes.

A different point of view on this issue: rather than moving from PvE to PvP, Anet thought that they could make a more open game where you can freely choose between PvE and PvP. And they did. But the way it's designed, the gap between the two "sides" grew bigger, even with attempts to bridge it as seen in Factions' AB, FA and JQ.

That's why I'm really excited about GW2, I hope Anet will allow us to move freely between the two, and thus BEYOND the two. The game is supposed to be fun, not put players in "layers" as it's happening now. Many PvP players think too highly of themselves because their "side" is more demanding (no offense to PvPers, it's also where you find the most amazing GW players, see GWG tournie). I hope that the community will be able to "socially" evolve in GW2 into a more fun community where we enjoy playing the game in whatever way we like.

(this reminds me of the cult movie Avalon, a must-see for any MMO-er, where the endgame content is Class Real II ... in other words: real-life!)

There's a difference between crazy builds and shit builds. When dR balance with the fire ele ganker came out, it was a crazy build. When you try to put a defy pain guild lord tank as a PvP player, it is a shit build.

Learn to tell the difference before QQing.

I do not have vent. I do not have the gaming iq. I do not have all the skills. I do not have the patience to sway anymore. I do not have the rank.

PvE is just quicker to set up and more attainable goals D:

Wrong. The players did not understand what they were buying with Guild Wars. Guild Wars was NOT meant to be an MMO!! It was a CORPG! Big difference. This is something people need to get into their brains. Guild Wars was meant to be a normal video game! You go through the PvE content and buy the next content that arrives if you liked the game just like a normal video game. The thing to keep you busy in between content was PvP or to play another game waiting for the next content to be released. With the way Anets marketing model is set up, it made perfect sense and worked perfectly.

It doesn't matter WHY people bought the game. It matters that millions bought a game with higher goals in mind. Anet caved in and no longer goes with these goals.

As stated earlier, Guild Wars was not an MMO, but Anet has now (since Nightfall I'd say) made a very half assed attempt to turn it into one. Guild Wars 2 will be an MMO entirely. Your point is moot. Guild Wars did not need to be an MMO to provide a fun PvE campaign. Also, the Fury argument is bad (as JR pointed out).

Prophecies was essentially a "merging the sides" chapter, and as far as I know that was the most successful (and most people agree) that is was the best chapter of Guild Wars. It never forced you to do anything.

Addressed this above.

It is now because of how bad Anet has disfigured their game. One of the ridiculous things is that Anet could easily get more people to play PvP if they wanted to...they just choose not to or don't know how to. Guild Wars PvP is unlike (or WAS unlike) anything else in gaming. If Anet played their cards right, there would be more PvP players today than PvE players, especially considering how generic PvE is now. But they didn't play it right...and now their entire hand rests on Guild Wars 2, and they know it. That is the one and only reason HoM exists.

In my opinion, a huge reason for the current bad state of the pvp part of the game is caused by features that should have been included at release, but are either still missing, added late and if added, often added poorly. The only feature that has been added later that works well is the J menu. The rest all has flaws. This is just a short list of things that held back/killed the pvp part.

Observermode was added later and as a result is really limited. Options to save a match and a pause/fast-forward button would have made it far better then it is now.
Balthazar Faction was included to give PvP players a way to unlock skills without playing PvE. It has been changed many times since then. Some might remember how few points you actually got for killing someone back then (believe it was 1 point for a long time). However, there should just have been an UAX button.
Guilds have a whole format for them alone. But on the same time, there are exactly 0 ways to find a guild in game. This alone adds a huge barrier most people will never get past.
As a slightly different point, the high end PvP formats are very inaccessible. Not only the 8 player requirement and the lacking party system have something to do with this. Rank discrimination didn't make it any better, but is understandable.
Complete lack of support for TA. TA could have been a perfect format to get people to play PvP, but instead is an area only a very small amount of people care about.
Automatic tournaments that are very unfriendly to new guilds. It kinda works for hero battles if enough people sign up to form multiple copies, but for gvg it is a huge failure. I still don't understand why Anet found it needed to include such a high k-factor for them. In my opinion, switching the k value of ladder play and the tournaments would give more guilds a reason to use both. You still need to play tournaments to get your 20QP, but low ranked guilds won't suffer a huge rating loss if they do decide to join them. If playing in a tournament setting isn't enough to encourage people to use them, then add more rewards to them. With the increased k value of the ladder, more guilds will be interested in using them. You can also think of things like the highest 8 guilds go to version A, the next 8 to B, etc, etc. Again encouraging guilds to sign up.
Skill balances happened far too slow, effect far too less skills, push the game in the wrong direction and often completely miss the point. Nobody has been waiting for certain buffs might the last year and most had absolutely no effect. Except that some monsters using them got slightly more irritating.
And last but not least, the current GvG format is in my opinion a nice example of how a pvp format shouldn't look. The more npcs you have, the more important the PvE part of your PvP match becomes. If you are more worried about luring knights then about what the other team is doing, then something is wrong. Also a format that needs extra systems to bring the game to an end has problems. If playing not to lose ends up being the way to win, your format is seriously flawed. VoD got added to at least bring matches to an end in a reasonable time, but does nothing to solve the problem. Fact is, there is nothing that can be done to solve the problem. Simply because the format itself is the problem, not the skills or VoD. This made the GvG format both boring to watch and, at times, boring to play. Which of course doesn't help to attract new people.

Occam's razor

Pve is ez
Pvp is less ez


Why risk failure when they have a sure thing.

that's a given, Never said i did much pvp, just go by what i hear.
The only real pvp i've done is HB (near r3), used a wiki build as i play for funbut as the roll weekends come i see sadly how easy it is to get.
look at any pvp forum(at least before there was,not sure about now) and you'll hear moaning about X-way, and button bashing hear enough and iy sinks in.

I have put some thought into PvP just without a backing it hardly seems worthwhile, Start cooking when you have the ingrediants and knowledge.you know?

Only way i could see it happening is if it turned out into a tank and spank, as you couldn't artificially create the experiance.
i would like to see maybe a seperate class in Ta,Ha nad GvG class C or along the lines only open to unranked players, (HA would be rank 3 cap) alowing unranked players get exp. and giving them a stepping stone into pvp.

The reason I largely neglected pvp (only played some in the summer of 05) is the time it takes to play. Pve and other fps games I play are easy to jump into even if you only have a short amount of time. With pvp between the setup and match it can take a while. Also, being a student, it's difficult to know if I'd be available for a match on a particular date/time.

The gist is that many are likely unable to (or want to) commit to being online at certain times, which many serious pvp guilds require. This would limit you more to random pugs to play with, which gives a sour impression of pvp. This is nothing you can fix, just a fact.

I haven't seen anybody outside of the ArenaNet marketing machine seriously call Guild Wars a "CORPG". When car companies use the term "crossover vehicle", it doesn't mean that it's not a SUV. In fact as far as the government is concerned, it's still a SUV.

You know, it's not like I was making that crap up. When Factions was released, it was heavily advertised as a method of merging PvP and PvE together. They even said crazy things like: "The best guilds will be a mixture of top PvP and PvE players."

Those were all empty words and it looks like really bad planning in retrospect.

I don't even know why we have these forums, because people just want to shut down any kind of commentary if it doesn't agree with their point of view.

I think one of the things that contributed to it was that Anet made PvE too easy.

PvE wasnt easy when you were fresh out of prophecies and your best skill was healsig and you did a whopping 20dmg with flare. In theory, however, it would be correctly scaled as that flare did more damage and that healsig healed for more, as the levels of enemies increased.

However I think its mainly the unique nature of 10000 billion skills available, choose 8, and the unique nature of the way those skills intertwine, combine, and synergize, that led to guild wars becoming easy. It was only a matter of time until the experienced "pro" players figured out the most devastating combinations of skills. New players could easily get the build, skills, weapons/armor/attributes and rickroll through pve.

The additions of Factions, NF, and EoTN, mainly the new skills/proffesions, made this much worse. The massive numbers of skills and combinations of skills are far more powerful than any monster or AI Anet could muster in any campaign, that, and while you could say the chapters got harder according to player capability, EoTN and the previous (now easy) campaigns are still there, leading to the main point:

easily 95% of people anywhere you go want to win, or would atleast prefer to. Maybe you're not driven to win, but in a videogame your options are win or lose. Nobody WANTS to lose, plenty of people want to win, those who dont care im sure would have a preference to winning. So at the end of the day, while your average PvE'er might take a stab at PvP (serious pvp) and get they're ass handed to them, they're going to go back to PvE, throw on some overpowered build, and dominate everything.


So to wrap that all up: its the people that prefer winning to competitive play, and while PvE is expected to be easier than PvP, its the massive difficulty gap between the two that cause the problems.

I am primarily a PVE player but I do enjoy PVP as well. I have been lucky in that I am part of an alliance that has players that have been pursuing PVP since GW was released. Even more luckily they have been willing to teach the rest of us. On the other hand I know that not everyone has the luxury of having an in game tutor for PVP.

The simple fact of the matter is that PVP is much less forgiving of mistakes than PVE. There is a limit to exactly how much you can learn from your mistakes if you dont understand what went wrong. The lack of a tiered system for PVP meant that many PVE players trying PVP out for the first time were rolled so fast by teams that had been playing for years that they still dont know what happened.

I honestly think that another significant part of the problem with drawing new players into PVP has as much to do with these forums as anything else. Most PVE'rs know that they have to lose in order to learn how to win. They died learning PVE and gradually figured it out. But when they come here to learn about PVP they found a strong bias against, "PVE scrubs." Such trash talking is found in matches and in attempts to find a group as well.

As an ex marine I understand the whole idea of messing with the new guy, make him earn respect before you give it, etc. On the other hand this is a game. It is meant to be fun. Being treated like crap is not fun.

PVE requires new content in order to remain fresh and interesting. PVP requires new players. New players bring new ideas, builds, and play styles to keep everyone on their toes. If you fight the same team using the same builds repeatedly then PVP is no more interesting than the one millionth time you beat the same mob in FOW. But if the PVP community holds new players, almost all of them coming from PVE, in disdain and treat them like red-headed step children then the new players wont stay. Theyll go back to PVE where even if there are obnoxious people you can avoid them. The worst part about this is the fact that most PVPers are respectful players who act with sportsmanship and, dare I say it, honor. But if there is a perception of PVPers as obnoxious jerks by the PVE community then any hope of a significant influx of new PVP blood from PVE is shot.

In summary I think that the biggest problem stopping more PVEers from coming over to PVP is bad PR. Every "PVE scrubs go home," post on Guru or, "learn to play the game noob," comment in a match is repeated a hundred times to every friend and guuildie until the general assumption is that such behavior is the rule rather than the exception. Sad fact of life...people remember the bad experience and talk about it more than the good. People expect to have to learn how to PVP, but they dont want to be harrassed during the process.

To all of you who still type GL and HF before a match an GG after, I salute you.

When did a too-cool guy like JR end up in a way-cool guild like MH?

Some people will never play PvP because they don't like this mode of play - nothing is wrong with that.

http://www.gamerdna.com/bartle.php

It certainly was not meant to be an MMO. Thats a very big misconception. A lot of people bought Guild Wars with the idea in their head "oh cool a FREE MMO!!" Unfortunately Guild Wars did not fit into that category at all. Guild Wars was meant to be more of a normal video game with PvP content plain and simple. It was designed that way. Nowadays Anet is trying to fit in with what people thought it was rather than what it should have been, and I honestly believe its going to backfire one day.

Thats true, and in many respects they failed. That is why people like me argue that the Prophecies system was flawless. There was no "pushing" of the two sides together (like Factions) or complete seperation of the two (like Nightfall and EOTN). Prophecies just existed, and that is why many people feel it was the pinnicle of Guild Wars design even though it was missing many features we have come to expect.

I am just pointing out the facts. Guild Wars was supposed to be a PvP focused game. It was marketed and sold as one. Then it changed, and now nothing of its former self remains.

Yeah Guild Wars is really just an ORPG, just like Diablo II. People who call it an MMO are pretty much wrong.

Personally for me it was the limited access to PvP , the elitism and sneering and whatever dont worry me, but the access to 'higher ' echelons of PvP for me i found limited, plus RA bored the hell out of me.

Because by the definition you gave, any online game ever made can be considered an MMO as long as it supports thousands of players that can interact. Ask anybody at Anet. Guild Wars was not originally an MMO. It was a regular play through video game with PvP content.

Nobody was forced to do anything. This is one of the ridiculous arguments I hear a lot. "Oh people were forced to do PvP and that didn't work". No...people weren't forced to do anything.

It would be like if you bought Halo 3 and said "oh the endgame is online PvP and I don't want to be forced to do that". Good...you aren't forced to do it even though the game was made for it. You do whatever everybody else who doesn't want to PvP does...play through the PvE campaign and wait for Halo 4.

I like how you skipped the part right after it.

Guild Wars does not have 1 persistent world, or any persistent worlds. Why? Because the world only exists if there are people there. If every single person on World of Warcraft quit playing right now, there would still be "a world".

If every single Guild Wars player left, there would be 0 (ie: nonexistant) districts of every place in the game, ergo causing there to be "no world". The game server only generates a place if someone is there (but the mapping system allows you to generate a place if no one is there, but it technically doesn't exist until you go there.)

Therefore, it is not persistent. Therefore, it is not an MMO.

Yes, this is the definition of an MMO and what it is. GW is not this. It is an online RPG. big difference.

...

If you're going to quote a definition off of Wikipedia, and then only take half the definition it gives, and then when I post the full definition you go "using another definition of the term which has not been made explicit so far", then you basically kill your entire argument because you just nulled what you used as a definition in the first place. By neccessity an MMO needs a persistent world and requires use of the Internet. Guild Wars has 1 of those 2 things, it is not an MMO. It is an online RPG.

The definition you gave me says you are wrong, you just failed to post the whole definition.

MMOs and ORPGs have a lot of similarities. The difference is one has a persistent world, the other doesn't.

WoW is an MMO. (persistent world)
Diablo 2 is an ORPG. (room based world that disappears when all players quit)
AoC is an MMO (persistent world)
Guild Wars is an ORPG. (room based world that disappears when all players quit)
Madden NFL 2008 is a sports game (lulz)
Aion is an MMO (persistent world)
Phantasy Star Online is an ORPG. (room based world that disappears when all players quit.)

uh?

I wasn't implying anything. I just said I "liked" how you missed it. Woo for assuming much? My statement had no bad words or anything at all man. You're just wanting to see an attack against you or something I guess.

Part A: Xunlai storage technically isn't up. If there were no players playing, there would be no Xunlai agents generated by the server, and hence technically isn't up. The Xunlai Storage database is always on, yes, but technically there would be no way to access it. Semantics I guess. But there would be no world at all spawned.

Part B: Private servers, knowing the server infrastructure etc. The instant the server is loaded, the entire world (barring instances, but there is still a world) is generated, even if no one is there.

And if you start attacking posters because of things you think are true about them, while it's only a STUPID opinion you have on them, then YOU are the one killing the argument by making it personal. See my apologies above.

No, you failed to understand what I did and you're starting to piss me off.

Yes you were. Why would you "like" something like this? I don't want to continue this argument with someone like you, I'll simply delete what i posted above.

Show me the attack, please? I just told you you killed your argument at the time. (which is true, even if you apologized for making a mistake)

Ran to Wikipedia and hastily took a definition without fully reading the article or something. I do it too. No worries.

EDIT:
like seriously if you think I'm attacking you report me or PM a mod or something. I haven't attacked you at all man. Nice to think I hold some grudge or something against you (and that you think I have a stupid opinion on something? whatever.) when I don't even care about you at all. I haven't attacked you at all so whatever.

Another of your stupid and nasty sentences, just for the sake of showing off. I did read the whole article. Of course you didn't imply anything behind this sentence, you're just too good to be true.

And this folks is why people don't like PvP.

They don't say things other people want to hear, they state the facts.

If you have a problem with me, take it to PM, honestly. You're not only deleting posts now because of some odd reason (dealing with "someone like me" hohoho now that almost sounds like a personal attack (since I doubt you'd say that to someone you deem of any actual worth/as a good person), but you've had this weird ass grudge with me for some reason for the longest time now and it's starting to get really dull/unsettling. Maybe it isn't a grudge with me and you just take everything as an attack with everyone, but a) I never used offensive language at all. b) Even if I did (I didn't) none of it was directed towards you at all. c) all I did was point out a part of the definition you failed to add for some reason I can't quite figure out if you read the whole thing (Possibly a C+P error?).

If pointing out you made a mistake is a personal attack and "stupid & nasty" then I really want to know what you find downright despicable.

At no point did I ever call you dumb, say you had a stupid/bad opinion (though this wouldn't really be a personal attack per se), call you a bad person, use any cuss words, say something bad about you, call you a useless human being or a useless waste of space/air/etc, or anything.

I...talked like I always do using non-offensive language and pointed out you made a mistake?

Also to amend my last post I do not condone the usage of private servers and most of it is pretty much from basic server structure. When a WoW server comes online it generates a copy of everything because only 1 copy is needed, and if there was no copy of something it would be screwed because of how the game works. It's a persistent world for a reason 8).

EDIT:
and/or don't want to invest time to learn a whole new game (and it is, a whole new game), and/or don't like not having heroes (well there is HB), and/or hate competition even though its in their entire life and/or can't "break in" into it.

but yeah. that's prolly a big one too.

keep it civil please, no need to get all personal.

It doesn't matter what kind of game GW1 "technically" is. What matters is how people view it, and how they play it. You can go on about CORPG till your head explodes, that won't make anyone pick up PvP.

Just keep it on topic. Either state what stopped you from playing PvP, or throw in possible "tweaks" that could prevent such situations in GW2.

I was referring to the exchange between you and other bloke...

Anyway, I think that a lot of people take it too seriously as well. When they get told that their build/skill/haircut sucks, they think 'omg i'll never be good enough'/'omg pvp'ers hate me' and then swear never to PvP again.

This is pretty true as well and one of the more potent reasons (one I hear a lot at least), but I don't really get it what do you do then if you don't do that just to get more PvPers? You can't very well lie and say they are good, because then they will never improve...? (And its not like you can "go easy on em" or something...it's just going YOU SCREWED UP.)

Perplexing problem I guess ;\

Awesome post and great idea at the end, PvP should be ranked segregated to allow for new folks to enter and challenge the more experienced. This would really help many folks I believe.

Silver

I know this is old but i'd just remove all grind-titles from pvp.

There are always people who just want something to show off. These people flooded HA (tombs) because of the shiny emotes.

Back in the days when only tombs had a emote-rank-system, GvG and TA didn't have any rank-elitism, people actually played for fun.

Today we have "r5+ gladiator" groups and even in GvG there are guilds who play degenerate builds to farm champ points.

Rank elitism was (and still is) one of the main reasons for PvE-Players staying away from PvP.


no grind-titles (and emotes aswell) -> no rank-elitism -> more PvE-Players get to actually play PvP
(Rewards in gold or just skins for your weapons are ok imo)

Sadly it's not very likely to have no PvP-titles in GW2

so then theres nothing for JUST PURE pvpers (rare as they may be, since this is like 5 people maybe) to unlock in the HoM? We should get stuff too ^^

Also to get favor for their country.

Skill elitism. Rank elitism in GvG existed too (Rank 500 etc only)

Those people would play the same degenerate builds anyways.

So they chose Title Rank Elitism instead?

I don't think those people would even bother to gvg if there was no title, no gold, no nothing. But that wasn't really my point.

When you ask PvE-Player why they don't PvP you often get to hear something like: "PvP-Players are unfriendly", "I don't find a group (because i have no rank/emote)", and so on.

Starting in HA or TA without a guild- or friendslist-team is really frustrating and you'll have a bad impression of PvP right away.
This is because in my opinion playing in pugs is the worst approach you could choose getting started with PvP.
You need a guild or at least some friends to start with. This will help you and at the same time it's more fun.
Unfortunatelly PvE-Players expect to find a group the same way they do for missions and quests: Yelling "W/Mo level20 lfg" or spamming invites at random players/groups.........

You cannot force them to join a PvP-guild before they actually play.
The only thing you can do is to make their first impression of pvp less frustrating and this could be done (to a certain extent) by removing personal rankings/titles

Anet could of course keep an "I've played XXXX GvGs"-track (or something similar) for your HoM, that isn't displayable to others outside of your HoM.........

Yeah I agree although that would obviously dictate the need for a new area to prevent the uproar from those that garner titles.

I've also noticed and agree with the familiar thread in many posts concerning the lack of an introductory form of relaxed or transitory PvP that would make the shift or introduction so much easier, hopefully friendlier and less pressured for the newer PvPer.

Even the so called "low-end" or more casual areas, which were imo intended to fill this role, such as RA or AB are largely based on reward or a "win or else" mentality with the majority of players concerned with either consecutive wins or faction.

As such I question what effect a truly casual PvP area with absolutely NO tie in to titles or rewards of any kind would have had on this issue.

Some of the best fun I've had in PvP have been scrimmages where your just mucking around trying out builds and having fun with guildies and it's a pity this type of truly casual non-pressured PvP play is missing from the actual arenas.

It's the insta-pressure to win me thinks.

Edit:

Also wanted to add as I haven't really seen it mentioned yet that the entry level PvP and the people that play it tend to get slammed by the a large portion of the GW community with this "The only PvP is high-end.Period" mentality which doesn't seem to help matters.I get the feeling a lot of PvE players actually try PvP and like it but get shunned back into PvE by much of the community.

The amount of times I've seen threads like:

"New to PvP after trying RA/AB any suggestions or help for my class, on my build, with gear etc, etc"

...followed by....

"OMG AB/RA lol go back to PvE nOOb!!11!!"

...or similar attitude variations hence I would add the community also has some accountability in this regard.I certainly don't think it's 100% flawed game design.

i doubt anyone with a bit of brains would respond in such a way when someone is asking for actual help.

You do encounter similar replies when someone posts a build, people criticize it and point out flaws, the OP goes on to defend the build with "but it works is <insert low level PvP here>". Thing is a LOT of stuff "works" in low-end PvP, simply because it's low-end and thus not as demanding build-wise. That doesn't mean it's a good build.

A lot of GvG players from good guilds actually enjoy playing AB, and do so regularly. So saying "the only PvP is high-end" isn't realy the case.

Non the less, you need a thick skin if you start PvPing, i agree. Even the best players get called "LOL NOOBS" from time to time, just ignore it. But it's like that in every competitive online game, specially in FPS games were insults, kickvotes and serverbans run rampant. Strangely enough FPS is still the most popular "PvP" gamestyle ...

And yet on an FPS you can freely and easily join a server. Nobody makes you find a group of 8 other players before joining. Nobody demands you have a certain title rank to enter their server. And if for some reason you're kicked, there are many other servers for the game that you can visit.

Titles are the primary culprit. There's just as much shit-talk in PvE what with PUGs, but you don't see people in post-searing Ascalon declaring that they're quitting because the prophecies scrubs keep yelling at them.

You actually made a good point about FPS being easy accessible, but surprised me by not following it. The main problem of GW's PvP is the huge barrier for access. That barrier isn't caused by titles, although they don't help. It is caused by the complete lack of a decent teamfinding tool and even more by the complete lack of a guild finding tool. In a game where guilds are that important for the main PvP format, it is kinda sad that there is 0 support for it.

I felt it didn't need following since it should be painfully obvious to everyone that titles are the primary barrier here.

lol no. There is way more barriers to PvP then just titles. Titles added to it, yes, but these barriers have existed long before titles were added, and held PvErs back since JUST before the start of Factions, really.

TA ladder/ATs would have been an amazing addition to the game, though sadly were passed over in favor of HvH.