PvP as endgame content

The original question was: Why didn't PvP turn into the endgame content like ArenaNet originally envisioned?

I think that the answer is very easy: ArenaNet simply did not understand the wants of the gaming community when they developed their game. As everybody can tell, all successful MMOs have a strong PvE component because that's what people want. If you try going all-out PvP, then you end up with a game like Fury. Look how great that game turned out to be.

When ANet first made Guild Wars, the intent was indeed that after you did PvE a few times, you'd naturally start playing PvP. In other words, once you beat Prophecies, the idea is that eventually you'd get so bored with the lack of end-game content that you'd just go into PvP. This didn't happen.

When Factions was released, the intent was to somehow unify the rift between PvE and PvP. ANet decided that the best way to merge the two sides was to simply force players into PvP. The original idea was to use the mandatory 10,000 Faction quest as a gate to make sure everybody had to somehow grind out the allegiance faction somewhere. At the time, the fastest way to get Faction was to AB, FA, or more rarely JQ. No PvP-only characters were allowed into the arenas at the time, so you had to take a PvE character and grind out in casual PvP play.

Needless to say, the whole "merging the sides" attempt was a total failure. You can't force somebody to play in a way that they don't like. PvP-only characters were eventually allowed into all Faction arenas, and Priests began giving out Blessings which allowed players to grind out Faction via killing regular monsters.

The problem is that PvE and PvP don't play the same and they don't use the same strategies at all. The only exceptions (maybe) are the Faction-oriented battles, but those are deemed as "trash PvP" by most of the hardcore PvP players. In fact, the PvP snobs often sneer at AB and say it's not PvP at all.

yeah because going for lesser pay so you can deny your children a better education, more food, entertainment, more clothes, and just a better life in general just so you can be a bit happier is obviously the way to go.

Also I disagree with the above poster. Completely PvP games are successful and always have been (StarCraft is "completely PvP" in the sense it is known only for it. Counterstrike 1.6. Quake. Street Fighter. etc.)

Fury had too many problems with its dev team and core design, that it failed. It's pretty short minded to say COMPLETE PVP GAME = FAIL. Because it doesn't. You say successful MMOs (not even going into how GW isn't an MMO.), yet the genre means very little. You just have to have a good game structure and a competent team.

That largely depends on how promising your play/behaviour is. However, guilds like the Kisu ones were founded with the sole purpose of teaching people to PvP. You might want to check them out : http://teamlove.us/kisu/

Not ment as a personal attack, and i might be wrong as i don't know you nor the guildies you talk about. However, a lot of low ranked people tend to claim they are just as good if not better than higher ranked people. Rank does indeed not mean skill, but rather experience. However, experience is a good part of your "skill" in Guild Wars. Knowing what to do in which situation doesn't come naturally. Usually, people with more experience will be better than you.
This of course does not justify not letting you play. Everyone needs to gain experience, and the only way to do so is to play. Like i already said, there are guilds our there (like Kisu) that will give you a chance to get that experience, and improve your playstyle.

Wow, i never tought people seriously were that materialistic. I guess they burn it into peoples brains from young age in the states.

Completely off-topic:
So how about if you'd spend the time you waste on recovering from the shitty job with your kids instead?
Yeah, if you didn't wear a rubber - you need to take care of your kids!
But the kids do NOT have the right to demand that their parents completely neglect themselves for the next 20ish years!
I mean seriously - you're going to live for what 70ish years?
And you want to WASTE 20 years of that time - and not even that - your MOST productive and what should be your BEST years - on something that doesn't make you happy?

(Of course this is based on the idea that the job that makes you happier pays LESS - rather then too little! Which was what the guy brought up!)

That is rather profound of a statement for a gamer forum...

someone PMed me a response because he didn't want to risk getting flamed :

Ok, I started out PvE with the original Prof chapter.

I explored the game PvE as I did not want to get slaughtered right off in the bat against someone who played PvP already. I wanted to play PvP.

So I tried Mesmer as my first. My second was NOT ranger I remember that much. I also remember that I got not that bad at my toon and I thought that I will make a second toon just like this one for PvP. So I did.

WOW what an eye opener that was.

I got creamed. I was fighting a ranger and I was being attacked by a pet. I could not kill the pet and the owner as there was way to much damage that I was taking. I had no skills except what I unlocked. I was Badly outfitted. I had no runes on my armor as I did not really know what they were and how to apply them.

I remember putting a minor rune of health onto a rune of major health and wondering what just happened? I waisted 15000 gold in one mouse click that took me forever to get in PvE.

It sucks so bad when you first start to play. I started playing in March 2007 before there were any "Skill Packs" or stuff. You had to unlock everything.

Then to make matters worse my guild told me to show up in the guild hall for GvG or I would get Booted from the guild. So I did. i went GvG with my monk. I was the ONLY monk and never GvG'd before. It was sad. We got hammered. We killed none of them. Took 3 minutes or less to kill all of us. There was Yelling and flaming and swearing. The guild split. I came back on later and found that I was an officer and there were 3 people in the guild and I was one of them.

So. PvE is Very Peaceful especially with the advent of Hero's from the other chapters. Now I can outfit myself and 3 hero's grab 4 henchies and off we go (or I go really). There is no yelling or bad playing. No one runs off in the distance when I say, "3 of 47 Energy". Monk's need energy to HEAL you like daaaa??

That said, I mostly just stick to Presearing as there is too much bickering in post. The game has changed so much with PvP trying to push from PvE the changes of skills. It is bad. Very bad.

The whole dynamic of the game has changed. They should have separated PvP from PvE totally. NOthing from one into the other. Totally different skills sets everything. Also if one player does not have a pet and is playing PvP then the other person should not have a pet. It is an unfair advantage to have a pet when I did not and could not have one or atleast eliminate critical hits from the pet when attacking its master.

So as you can see there are many reasons why people do not PvP.

If my best player from PvE can not PvP then why have the skills tied from one to the other. This was the fatal flaw in Guild Wars one. When they changed the PvP skill to make thing better in PvP they were not using their brains as they forgot about PvE players that needed the skills as they were. So they tried to help Paul and Killed Peter.

There should have been separate skills. I just had a though. There should have been a Separate game altogether just for PvP like an expansion pack for Prof like GW:EN for those who wanted to PvP. That would have kept things separate.

I will admit it should be easier to PvP now that you can buy the unlock but when I started that was not the case. It was very hard.

I hope that this helps you.

Just throwing it out here as an extra opinion (he agreed on me posting it in his place).

Weak arguement. Fury had huge potential, and it's core concept was solid. There are a plethora of reasons it failed, and being 'pure pvp' is not one of them. High performance requirements, lack of polish, badly balanced...

The reason why PvP failed as the Guild Wars endgame is simple: When you are a newbie in PvP you lose a lot. Most people ('carebears') object to a game that puts them in that kind of situation. They miss having their hand held, they miss the roleplaying element, they miss being able to do what they want whilst remaining successful.

It is important to mention that the PvP player base for Guild Wars declined switfly after release due to a number of elements that were missing at that time: Observer mode, J menu, AT system, RPs... etc. Had these systems been in place at release I have little to no doubt that the PvP community would be much healthier.

The other main contributing factor towards the decline in players still exists, and that is poor game balance. I didn't include that in my list of mechanics that would have helped at release because it really hasn't made much difference now either. Izzy still makes bad judgements, and acts far too slowly. Constant small tweaks are absolutely the way forward, and it would be easy to put systems in place that automate this process to reduce work flow. This situation could have been helped considerably by an experienced PvP playing community relations peon, who could sift through feedback, get to know the players who really understand the game, and push Izzy in the right direction.

The final thing that Guild Wars needed (for the goal of successful PvP) is PvP rewards that PvE players could appreciate. Something like a HoM section for PvP achievements. Right now PvP titles can't even contribute to maxing a HoM because they never finish. This is a poor reflection of the game, and I think a mechanic such as the HoM should reward players who have truly mastered all aspects of the game. There should not be this silly divide between PvP and PvE game mechanics.

quoted for truth

RotteN (I've seen you on QQ, I like your posts there as well), I completely agree that this game was/is meant for PvP.

The ascension missions are all PvP oriented. Splitting, fast kills, capture the flag, it's all there.

The problem is that the majority of PvE'ers are "I WANT IT NOW" type players, whereas serious PvP is a long term investment. You can just jump in and get whacked, hard, or you can spend a lot of time seriously thinking about your strategies/movement.

well said. i think constant small changes rather than interminent big changes would be easier to adapt to and have kept players from QQing after a certain overpowered build finally gets nerfed since those kinds of builds would have been stopped early on before players got comfortable with them.

yes, and in order to be a successful team it takes teamwork which involves waddaya know ... work. Most people arent that commited and dont want to work (literally) with people when they play their games. Its why most group content fails and its why PVP failed, because its highly team oriented which means unless you have a team and want to put up with all that comes with being a team you wont do it. In other words its just too much work to work with others and thats why people dont do it.

If true, then CS and TF2 should be failures.

CS and TF2 are differnt than Guld Wars PVP, the key is they're solo and casual friendly, you dont need a team and you dont necessarily have to work with others to have some fun. Guld Wars pvp isnt solo or casual friendly, you need a team before you can play, you need to grind a whole lot of pve to even get into pvp competitavely, and when you get there you have to work your way up the ladder to get into a team before you can even start the HA or GVG. None of those barriers are there in CS and TF2 which are team based games but the difference is they allow for soloer and casuals to jump in. The only place for the solo or casual PVP experience is Random Arneas, which isnt much of a game if you look at it. Theres no balance in it at all, Id rather just play BF2.

While you can "outskill" players through soloing in CS, it's highly unlikely you'll survive. The best chance of survival and/or victory is sticking together and coordinating strategies. The same goes for TF2: It's called "Team Fortress" for a reason.

Notice that this isn't just a "play to win" thing. If you just dick around in either games, you will get shot or blown up and die. The same applies to GW. The only difference is you have to get a couple more people before you can "jump into it".


You can't "jump in" into the competitive formats of CS or TF2 either. If you just want to dick around, then you can do that. But if you want to take it more seriously, all games need amount of work in terms of upping your skill (well, then there are the unlock packs in TF2, but let's not get into those just yet).

I think for me setting up just takes SOO long in Guild Wars team pvp and this is one of the main reasons i dont play pvp heavily.

it can take a while to get everyone ready only to die the first time.

take 20 mins to set up.
battle.
dead
take 20 mins to tweak build slightly.
battle.
dead
etc.

Its hard to measure success.

TF2's success is that it lets me pick my choice of playstyle....try it out. and if i fail, i can quickly switch to a new build or style in mid-play or change my class to suit the battle's dynamics. More medics needed? Ok. Need more snipers? let me switch.

PvP in Guild wars tends to be luck of the draw when it comes to your opponent. If you run into a build that you have no counters against, you're done. Theres no "side deck" factor where you can change skills in between rounds.

Well, the barriers like skill-unlocking should be gone with GW2. Giving straight out-of-the-box UAX for organised PvP.

I agree with JR on the whole picture. However, i'd like to add one thing : the teamsize. 8v8 is BIG in online games. I'd rather see this scaled down to 5v5, the "standard" format for team e-sports. This way it'll be easier to get LAN-events going (getting 8-ppl teams on one spot for a tourney is, well, hard. Unless Anet pays all the costs (GWWC & GWFC). Lowering teamsize will boost activity in-game and make LAN-events feasable).

Lately it's been more like Grind Wars thanks to all the glorious PvE titles.

I never played those games anyway and they might be bad examples for my point but the point is still true, most gamers are solo players who dont have gangs or cliques on the internet, having that as a requirment to PVP you shouldnt be surprised no one is. Thats just one barrier to PVP, the fact that its the "endgame" is a barrier in and of itself, how many people actually beat the games they play? im betting its a small minority. So what did you expect? Theres 60 people in one district in RA right now, RA is the most populated PVP area, why is that? Because RA is the most solo/casual friendly and even then its attracting nobody.

edit:

And to think all that qq'ing nerfing and updating was for a couple dozen people in RA... wow.. because it surley couldnt have be for the handful of people in TA and HA? ... speechless.

A first note: I play both PvP and PvE, so I've seen both sides.

I think that the fundamental difference between PvP and PvE is that in PvE, the player is intended to win. Maybe through the AI not being as intelligent as players (though in this game the AI is more intelligent than the average Guild Wars player), through players having skill advantages (it's a lot easier to kill enemies that only have a few skills than, say, an AI team running a perfect balanced team build and programmed to run the build properly), through players respawning, and through the PvE-Only Skills. So in PvE the player is meant to win. After all, the AI won't complain about losing.

In PvP the player is also meant to win, but both sides are players, so one side will have to lose. And there comes the problem for most people who prefer PvE: when they enter PvP, they aren't guaranteed to win anymore. Indeed, early PvP will involve a lot of losses. Most people with the PvE mindset are discouraged by this - they would rather slowly and safely grind out rewards with no chance of losing. PvP on the other hand has no guarantee of victory.

Most players come to an MMO (and I consider Guild Wars an MMO because it is quite massive, it is multiplayer only, and cannot be played without an internet connection, so it's also online. The difference from other MMOs is that the rest of the player base isn't forced on you) expecting PvE. Grind. Safety. So the majority of players buying this game are buying it for PvE. Some of them try PvP and find out that they like it more than PvE. Others stay with PvE. The majority choose PvE.

Guild Wars may have been intended to have PvP as endgame content, but it's really more like a separate parallel game that uses the same mechanics, servers, characters, etc. Guild Wars has its own endgame: Underworld, Fissure of Woe, Realm of Torment, Urgoz' Warren, The Deep, Slaver's Exile, and dungeons. So there is presently no notable incentive to play PvP as there is already a PvE endgame.

PvP is not a very welcoming place.

In RA you have three types of players:

- scrubs who just reached Lion's Arch and now have reality slammed in their face as their wammo gets ripped apart.
- average players who are not too bad but suffer from the current soft state of PvE and are doing things like taking PvE characters that have imperfect equipment into PvP, using Superior runes, etc.
- skilled players who play one round with a group, leave, and repeat until they get a group of three other skilled players and then tear through ten rounds, leaving a trail of screaming wammos behind them.

In TA the skilled players can join up from the start. As such, team builds can be organized and guilds and friends can join together to play. Similar to RA but filters out a lot of the scrubs and takes longer to prepare.

In HA there is a lot of elitism, there is the whole issue of rank, etc. It is very discouraging to new players who come to HA. As such the number of new players joining is very small, and with many experienced players leaving the result is that the population of HA is dwindling.

I've never been particularly interested in GvG, so I can't really speak for it, but I do know that it's one of the more difficult PvP types to organize for.

AB allows unskilled players to get in easily, and it would be a good place to gain some experience at PvP except that the gameplay is so different from other PvP types; in AB the optimal team moves quickly, clearing shrines, capturing, running to the next less-defended shrine, and repeating, whereas with other gameplay types the goal is focused more on direct combat. And another problem here is that it takes quite a while to enter a match, and many players are unwilling to wait that long.

I think that while the PvP player base is partially guilty of keeping PvE players out (and fully guilty of keeping PvP players from getting into HA), most PvE players are never going to do PvP on a regular basis anyways.

On another note, Dawn of War II is probably going to include Tyranids.