Bridging the great divide. PvE and PvP.

Inspired by a comment made by Avarre in a Riverside thread, I thought that I might post some ponderings on what is arguably Guild Wars greatest failing, and hopefully hear your thoughts on the matter, where ArenaNet went wrong, and how things could be better for GW2.

The original Guild Wars is often touted as having been sold to us as a PvP game, or so many forum posters comment. And true enough, the original release of Guild Wars held a number of promises that appealed to a variety of gamers, sure, the subscription free model was nice, but the game itself was said to reward player skill, over time and grind... appealing to casual gamers.

Guild Wars, before the addition of title grind and relentless farming really didn't have a lot of PvE appeal, simply put you had a limited amount of PvE game play available to you, and once the PvE storyline was played out, you moved onto PvP. PvE was often cited as little more than a training area, a tutorial of sorts that led to the PvP end game content.

Obviously a lot has changed since that initial release of Guild Wars Prophecies, more and more has been added to the game largely to keep people occupied in PvE, to the detriment of PvP.

People just aren't making the endgame transition to PvP, as was originally envisioned in those early Jeff Strain interviews.

What do you think kept players from making the transition into becoming regular PvP players? Why is the PvP population so abysmally small compared to the masses of people happily grinding their way through PvE.

More importantly, what can ArenaNet do with GW2 to make a smoother transition between PvE and PvP, or better yet, encourage a healthy PvX population?

edit: It shouldn't need stating, but just for the obtuse, please no attacks or flames aimed at any part of the GW player community, just constructive ideas or honest opinions on why the divide exists, how ArenaNet could better implement transition between PvE and PvP play etc...

Gold = rare items = farming = showing off

Because not everyone enjoys a competitive format.

There's also other reasons: time - in PvE, you can h/h, and if you have to leave for something midway through, or you're just kicking back for an hour, you can leave and nobody will complain.

Connection's also an issue. Not everyone has insanely good ping, and if you don't trust your connection, again - in PvE, you can h/h, nobody will complain, and you won't feel bad about having d/ced on a team halfway. I used to lag insanely on my old computer. Sebelkeh was a nightmare because I'd lag everytime someone killed the Blasphemy: I had to use my friend's computer so I could actually finish the mission. I couldn't PvP in any format, not even RA or AB, because upon entering I'd freeze for over a minute. So I stuck to PvE.

Before someone tries to argue against this (I know it will happen), I'll elaborate more.

Yes, Guild Wars was originally a more PvP based game. Take a look at Prophecies. The PvE content was the storyline, nothing more. End game content for PvE? Non existent. PvE was more of a format to get players used to the game, and once they completed it, they'd move onto PvP. The easiest way to see it is the Crystal Desert. Elona Reach? Relic running. Thirsty River? Annihilation. Dunes of Despair? King of the hill. Where was HA located at the time? The Crystal Desert.

Then came along Factions. The storyline was a whole 12 missions (with an extra if you wanted to complete the other faction part of the game). It brought end game PvE content (Urgoz and Deep), and it introduced titles. They also added 3 PvP formats - Alliance Battles, Jade Quarry and Fort Aspenwood. As you can see, they still tried keeping the community less split between PvE and PvP with the low-end PvP forms.

After that, PvP support pretty much dropped, and ANet started focusing on PvE. The big tournaments were pretty much done. Nightfall came out. It introduced heroes and PvE skills, with a 20 mission storyline and more end-game content. What did NF do for PvP? Well, other than the massive power creep, hero battles.

Eye of the North added absolutely nothing to PvP except for some more skills. The whole expansion was for PvE. So in the end, they drifted away from their PvP based Guild Wars to a PvE based Guild Wars with less PvP support.

You can argue against it all you want.

Now, on topic:


I'd say that the main thing that stopped PvE players to becoming regular PvP players was that they didn't like the competition, and the fact that getting into PvP after a few years was pretty hard. Right now, it's pretty hard for a PvE player to get into a successful PvP guild. The PvE community is larger because as other MMO's will tell you, PvE is always more popular.

Honestly, I have no idea what ANet could do to bridge the gap. If the GW2 community is anything like the GW community, I doubt they can do anything. Both communities are at each others necks all the time.

I don't think anyone who was around in the Prophecies only days could disagree with you Arkantos. Another thing that the PvE storyline offered as a training area on the way to PvP end game content was skills, you could amass quite a few skills from quests, add to this a few skill caps and purchased skills and you were set to enter PvP far better equipped than those atrocious old Prebuilt templates.

Your mention of it being hard (especially after the game had been out for a few years) for new players to make the transition into PvP is largely due to the often cited Rank discrimination? Any idea how to address this for GW2? Or is this a problem with the community, and not a problem with the game itself?

Well, players with no rank are going to have a hard time getting into HA groups because of lack of rank. Getting into pugs is hard, and if you don't have any PvP friends, you're pretty much screwed. Even if you have PvP friends, it's not a guaranteed way to get into groups. I'd say its a problem with both.

As for GvG, getting into a high-end guild is going to be hell. First of all, you have no experience. You're going to have to go through shit guilds just to get experience, and continue to go through shit guilds. Sure, there's kiSu (if that's still around), but you still aren't guaranteed to get into a good guild. Even with experience, if people don't know who you are, your experience doesn't mean much. Seems like a problem (if you want to call it a problem, really) with the community.

Both of these things are also why there's such a big gap between PvE and PvP. Since both issues are more based on the community rather than the game itself, there's not a lot ANet can do.

Actually, there was end game content in Prophecies; UW and FoW. Though it too was tied to PvP.

As for bridging the gap now? Not going to happen. PvE skills would have to go, as would the bandaid of PvP versions of abilities. With all the ridiculously powerful stuff PvE'ers rely on to get through the content *cough*Permasin*cough*, people would either have to adapt (this won't ever happen), or the content would have to get easier.

Heroes were a godsend for PvE - Henching would have been so much better if I could've given Alesia a proper build.

I do really miss the days of waiting for America to win Favour, getting annoyed, and taking a trip to HA (I think we used to call it ToPK / HoH) to win Favour to go do UW.

1. Because some of the newer players to PvP are destroyed by the more experienced ones because they don't know any good builds and don't know how to make any. Getting beaten over and over again in TA when I had first started GW was what made me turn to PvE. Its much easier to learn and adapt to PvE than it is to PvP.

2. Its nearly impossible to get to HA without a guild to back you up even if you are really good.

3. Some people don't like PvP. And some people, like me, like to grind and farm.

because the last time i went to heroes accent, all i saw was GLF R7-8

PvP is hard, grinding titles is less hard.

I thought it was your build that mattered... I'm even less tempted to go to HA than I was before.

I hope this feature that will be in Guild Wars 2 will help close the gap between PVE/PVP:

"World PvP will allow you to play characters of any level, using the skills that you have in your possession at that particular time. It is intended to be a more relaxed bridging point between PvE and structured PvP. It will be on a larger scale than the original Guild Wars PvP with large battles which could take place over a long period with people coming and going.

Each battle will have a number of different objectives which can be met such as taking guard towers or defending choke points or joining a larger battle to take a castle. Battles will take place in the Mists.

Victory in World PvP will confer benefits to your world. This may include improved drop rates, better energy regeneration or other bonuses."

Even more so than Alliance Battles, I feel the Mists will really get people intrested in PVP gameplay. ArenaNet needs to rip down that wall that divides the community, and start blending both sides of the game together.

thank god.. please stay out if you can't see why people would ask for specific ranks



As an aside, I don't understand the intent of this thread. Bridging the gap between PvE and PvP? In PvE you have people who enjoy fighting a static, unchanging enemy coupled with grind. PvE is when you want to always win, because the monsters are too weak to ever really defeat you. PvE by definition is the antithesis of competitive play (aka PvP). The two formats are utterly different playstyles, so much so that they don't even occupy the same universe, even if you include both formats in a game.

God forbid people enjoy both styles of play.

Sure, people can enjoy both styles of play, but to bridge the divide? That makes no sense. You can't 'bridge a divide' when both have nothing in common with each other.

PvE players join PvP for the first time and either find it impossible to get in a group or suffer the common pugging problem of "waiting for a group to get filled/ready for battle" or get rolled up in battle and laughed out of the arena.

I PvP around once a week in RA or TA and I'v seen this time and again. I'v played with really good players who were friendly and helpful and I'v played with complete douches who have their heads up their asses and do nothing but talk shit.

Another really fun thing about PvP is the quitters. Oh how I love the quitters.

Match starts, we load up and our monk see's our team has a warrior, and two rangers while the other team has two monks, and ele and a mes. The monk quits and the three left are S.O.L. This is but a single example of a common problem. Superior LAG and constant DC's also make PvP so much more enjoyable.

Broken skillbars that make fighting pointless also rool jo face off! Nothing like fighting against 4 overpowered skill builds when all we have is a restoration rit! People bitch about PvE balance when PvP needs to be the focus of ALL balancing updates until PvP is fixed.

But its ok cause I now run a cheesy overpowered Defypain KD build just make everything even and then just leroy my jenkins off until the match is over. I'm gonna step up my game and run a mending smite build on my warrior to make PvP even better!


Fix the problems I meantioned and PvEr's might want to join in more often.

Good thread.

The learning curve for PvP is abominably steep. You go from casual RA/FA to HA/GvG? Not a damned chance for the average player, unless they've managed to get enough friends and contacts to get eased into it by better players. Let's be honest, the average guy playing doesn't want to play Guild Wars: Myspace for weeks to find someone willing to bring him along and teach him. Nor should he have to.

GW2 needs some better intermediary form of PvP to bring players into it. TA has its merits, but needs more attention in that regard. The team based structure of PvP really inhibits low-level competition, since team organization is so utterly key, and that's hard with random people. Games that involve only 1 player or homogeneous players (most FPS/RTS games) allow a single player to play against equally skilled people on an appropriate ladder system, but GW forces you to try to get 7 other people, and then get mauled by every other team on the same ranking system.

The monsters are static and unchanging.

People bought GW for something it wasn't and Anet changed their game to suit those people. I don't know what else to say...this topic has been beaten over and over. We really can't say Anet's original vision failed...we can only say that Anet moved away from it to a more generic MMO vision for now and the future.

4v4. It's completely different to go to from you + 7 others vs predictable mobs in PvE but RA is like the "first" PvP (need to do it you want TA and HA). I think that anything super small isn't that fun though.

I think they if they had more goal based PvP formats like JQ/FA (not AB since that is merry go round boring cap fest eternally in Grenz). Maybe not so NPC based however.

This probably comes off as a little sad but I enjoy GW b/c of the team element, when you do get into a good guild and have fun in GvG's while still being friends it's just awesome.

Even if you suck, if you're a great person and people like you - they will quite often take you on and help you.

Maybe it's just me but I find the actual gameplay secondary to getting to know people from all around the world and just chilling.

The monsters are static and unchanging.

Don't think I've encountered many people in Guild Wars who enjoyed failing because of a bad player.

well unchanging yes but each area is different. But they are defiantly not static.

I interpreted that the wrong way. I though he meant all the monsters in the game were virtually the same and easy to defeat.

Exactly. More intermediate options to bridge the great divide between low-end and high-end play. In my opinion. world PvP will be a good idea as it gives you some options to experiment with PvP in a setting you're comfortable with.

Pretty much Avarre has it penned in this post.

I think the "if you don't have rank you're not good" argument is crap. Everyone's got to start out everywhere. You're not going to automatically dive in and be r8. And what about those who dive in and learn how to adapt to the format quickly but, because they're new to it, have no rank or a low one? Then they're just getting screwed because people think that high rank is everything. And even those who refuse to play with anyone below a certain rank sucked horribly at some point.

You want people to PvP, then try being a bit more accepting of those who are just starting out. It'll help.

Anyway, I really don't PvP because, well, there's just nothing about it that's appealing to me. You're beating the crap out of each other. Okay, why? Oh. There's no reason to it. Hmm. Don't get me wrong, I like beating the crap out of stuff in games. But, when it comes down to it, I'm a roleplayer at heart. Grew up on RP video games, turned to tabletop RPs when I got older, still play both extensively. When I get into a game, it's because I get into the plot. I like the story behind everything. I like know why it is that I'm doing what I'm doing.

But PvP has none of that. It's just...beat the crap out of random people. What's the appeal in that? For me, there isn't any. Competitive gaming has never been my cup of tea in any format.

lol

Theres no reason for anything in this game. PvE has no point to it either. You get the most expensive weapons in the game... you beat all campaigns... you get a obby set for all your characters... you max out all your titles and get God among mere mortals... what have you achieved? Nothing. But its fun.

Same thing for PvP. You killed all of them and omg you won. You get a big load of NOTHING! Except more balthazar points to spend on more skills to win more matchs so you can get more of NOTHING. But its still fun

cuz you get to /zrank their dead bodies.

but i think it just feels more fulfilling to beat other players, than c space monsters

Absolutely true. And where they started out is 'as a bad player'.

Rank isn't skill. There isn't a good player in the world who believes that it is. What rank is, however, is a measure of experience. When it comes down to it, the bad player with experience is worth more than the bad player without it, because, much like PvE, understanding the battle is massively important.

PvP isn't about beating up randoms. That's actually one of the key points of GW PvP - it's organized and fairly competitive rather than a brawling gankfest. Organization, arrangement, preparation, and execution. For the reward of knowing you succeeded (and sometimes, real-world prizes).

Yeah, did you see where I said the main reason I enjoy PvE? I'm a very plot-based person. I don't care about the shinies, I don't title-hunt, and I probably won't get more than just the one elite armor set I own now. Sure, that stuff can be nice, but it's not important to me.

But give me a good story and I'm hooked. And GW's plots can be rather convulated but they're really not half-bad. There is, in-game, a point to what you are doing. PvP lacks this. And combined with a format that I've never enjoyed, I feel no desire to play it.

(Obsidian armor is ugly, anyway )

thats what RA is for

The answer is quite simple: They want to play PvE. They have no interest in playing PvP.

More people enjoy PvE than PvP.

You presume, incorrectly, that people want to make that transition at all. The lesson to learn from GW1 is that they don't.

The monsters are static and unchanging. Some may be challenging, but they are nonetheless static and unchanging.

It isn't if you don't have rank you aren't good. It is if you don't have rank you have no proof that you have a proper understanding of the environment you are about to dive into.

I think the "Just because I don't have rank doesn't give you the right to discriminate against me" argument is crap. Why should someone who wants to win take players who have no proof of experience into their group? Sure you may get lucky every once in a while and get a really good player. I guarantee you 90% of the time you are going to get someone who will lose you games. In PvP areas like HA and GvG, if one person can not do their job, your team will lose.

New players need to learn with other new players. It is how pretty much everyone you watch on obs started off. They weren't automatically thrown into a top rank guild and they didn't automatically play with rank 11 players. They joined a guild of scrubs and played against other scrubs until they learned how to not be a scrub.

People need to realize you have to start at the bottom and work your way up. You don't get to be in rawr just because you want to. You don't get to have a phoenix because you think it looks cool. You have to work your tail off for years and have the motivation to be the best and continually improve your skill day in and day out non stop. No one owes you anything. You have to earn it. Stop whining about not getting hand outs and start taking what you want by learning the game and performing.

Well, I sure hope verene isn't judging PvP based on RA.

The problem is most people don't care about the game enough to do this, hence the tiny pvp population.

Since when were you the spokesperson for the entire PvE community?

Yeah, many PvE players don't PvP because they don't want to. Many PvE players also want to PvP, but cannot get into it.

Many PvE players have also tried, failed, and just stayed away. That's what the OP is talking about: the gap between PvE and PvP. The whole point of this thread is to talk about things that ANet can do to bridge the gap. If you don't want to PvP, don't. That doesn't mean everyone else shares that opinion.

You can't say that's the lesson learned from GW1, because it never failed, ANet just stopped. PvP was doing fine back before ANet started majorly focusing on PvE.

RA (kinda fun but pretty much only if you get lucky) and Hero Battles (...*snores*) are basically the only PvP I've ever dabbled in. Tried out Jade Quarry for the first time last night. Higher-end/more organized PvP I've never tried and probably never will. Not interested in it, and I don't feel like leaving my guild to try to find a PvP guild.

I've just simply never cared much for competitive gaming. I've always leaned much more towards co-op.

(incidentally, there's got to be other PvE'rs that dislike Shadow Form, right? I finally got around to giving it a try on my Assassin and after like five minutes went "well, this is certainly overpowered but it's also boring" and just went back to playing the game properly...)

you're making a lot of stupid assumptions that go a long way to illuminating how little you really know.

HA requires that you know more than just being a 'good player'. There's a lot of ins and outs from map to map that you simply cannot be effective at unless you've had some measurable level of experience. The only possible scenario where you really are a 'good player' and not have rank is if you do hardcore GvG, and if you are into GvG at all you'd be in the tiny minority of people who'd ever want to even bother with HA if they already do GvG.

Mallyx was/is stupid/easy. Yawn. Unchanging? Check. How is Mallyx not unchanging? It's not like his bar changes each time you go in. You really should go back and look up 'static' and 'unchanging', just in case your vocabulary isn't up to par.

You interpreted the wrong way? Uhh, I don't see how you could interpret it the wrong way, unless you're just making up shit about what I mean.. The monsters in GW by and large are virtually the same. Mallyx has some gimmicks. Oh noes. It's easier than a stupid EoE bomb to avoid (bless that build).. it's not like you don't know exactly what he's going to do.

If you don't have the desire, then I don't want to play with you. So no harm no foul.

The problem really is the fact that after the real tournaments stopped, a lot of players left. They wanted the real life prizes and the free trips around the world. Once those were gone they moved on to other games that probably would offer similar prizes. Because of the population drop it took longer to find matches and so more people left. It wasn't worth it to wait 30 minutes only to stomp a guild in 3.

And then the point of people not being motivated comes in. The only incentive in PvP for the PvE players is shiny trim or a rank emote (besides the fun of the game). They find out that no guild capable of getting them those prizes wants them because they haven't proven themselves and they get upset. They play with bad players and find out that they are losing a lot. They get a thought in their head that they are great and everyone else in their guild is bad and they get upset about it. They try to move up and get into a better guild saying the players in their last guild were holding them back but get the same response as before. Sorry you aren't good enough. They get upset think everyone is an elitist asshole and quit PvP and consider it a terrible part of Guild Wars that should be deleted from existence.

People have no patience and no work effort anymore. It goes outside of Guild Wars as well. I notice everywhere I go that a lot of my peers were extremely spoiled growing up and think everything should be handed to them. At my university, a lot of kids think that they deserve an A just because they are paying to take the class. They don't think they should have to earn their grade. It is extremely frustrating to be around people like this. The same goes for Guild Wars PvP. People think they deserve to be in a good guild. They don't want to take the time and put in the work in order to earn a spot. They were handed everything they wanted to them earlier in life and they get upset when something doesn't go their way.

Obviously I'm not saying this is every single example but you have to be blind to not notice this happening at least a little. I deal with this kind of attitude everyday during University life and I endured it all the time in my Guild Wars playing days.

Arkantos: Well it's not like I'm a terrible player - I mean play like rank 300-400ish GvG, I just lack experience and people see how often I play and how dedicated I am and they're happy to take me.


To the quoted post, you CAN be a very good player in other parts of the game but you can't be good in HA without HAVING SOME EXPERIENCE. People take r8+r9's because they're less likely to screw up - alot of the r8+r9's are full of people that ebayed/gimmicked their title so they're bad and fail alot of the time - If you look at the people winning halls everyday, it's pretty much the same people with one or two randoms that got lucky so you shouldn't think that once you've grinded your r9 you're going to hold halls 7-8 times a day. Rank is what comes as a result of playing with people, gaining experience and building up a friendlist.

I've been playing HA for like 2 months, I watch replays when I'm in halls or against top guilds, I ask people what I'm doing wrong, I talk to well known players and ask(beg) them for advice and generally just try to improve my game - I'm on summer break waiting for college so im on guild wars for like 6-7 hours a day. I still make lots of mistakes although im only r3 I can see a HUGE difference between ranked and unranked (at least those which didn't gimmick/ebay).

People don't want to play with some randoms that suck hard and just leave after like 20 minutes because they get butthurt. If people can take criticism and others think they're in for the long haul then I think people are happy to help (It's not really that hard when you have someone in your ear explaining the basics).

So quit whining, leave your cushy PvE alliance and join a dedicated guild.

so we have to work our experience up so we get the exp but we still have no rank. in HA we have no rank we can't get a group and if we can't get a group we can't get a rank so no matter how hard we work unless we have pro friends we can't get anywhere.

How about you join a freaking guild with players like you and you learn how to play the game? If you want to play pro basketball someday you don't start playing with Micheal Jordan. You play in little rec camps with other 5 year olds and learn the game. You move on and play throughout grade school and then into college. Then if you are lucky, you make the pros. You have to earn your place and you have to play with people on the level you are at. If you are at level 0, you play with people at level 0.