GvG

Thank you, I will keep that in mind! Thank you to all of the nice people who've whispered me this evening, actually. Got err7'd mid conversation /sigh, but it is nice knowing people are willing to help and put up with complete gvg noobs, heh. wannaplaywannaplaywannaplaaaaay.

not when the R/A's were fussing around in the meta :P

I'd say the biggest help to people wanting to enter GvG would be for experienced people to do some sort of mentoring. Either along the lines of KiSu or even just having one person helping out a few gvgs a week in a new/"bad"/inexperienced guild with strat/spike calling and generally helping people see how to improve.

We were lucky enough to have someone experienced helping us out and I really don't think we would've improved anywhere near the same rate (and thus have lost a lot more players) without him.

That last paragraph is where you're wrong.

I can say from own experience in mentoring projects that a large difficulty is indeed logistics.
I and a couple friends tried to get as many people as possible in a single-nation guild into pvp and specificall gvg as possible.

It wasn't too hard to get people interested.
It was pretty hard to schedule it even thought everyone lived within the same time zone.
Unlocks played a large role since basically noone was UAX, meaning wasted time and weak links.

Apart from needing the people, you also need the right blend of people who like and are capable of playing the different roles properly.

These two for me. I normally just have a guild of a few friends, so not joining proper GvG guilds is stopping me, but i'm not too bothered. And most of my friendslist don't login anymore

For me the biggest problem always seems to be finding the "right" type of people; the mature and non-competitive ones. Maybe because I'm old (30+) I just don't see the need to take GvG seriously at all. I honestly couldn't care less about rank or any of that stuff. So we lost 10 games in a row, so what? It doesn't affect my health, salary or taxes in any way, big deal... About 18 months ago I briefly played in a guild that was r340 or something but I honestly can't say that it was more fun than playing in a r1000+ guild. I'm just not a competitive person I guess. The atmosphere of the guild is much more important to me (and balanced-ish builds).

Usually when I join a guild, it seems that they don't really play GvG at all or there are a couple of people who are far from relaxed. And sometimes, sadly, people don't seem to understand what the term mature means. Because of that I've mostly been an on and off player, I'd like to play more though.

ps. I'm euro but felt like I wanted to answer anyway.

I'd like to request to keep the heated arguments in the thread down a minimum. I wouldn't want this thread to get locked without seeing more answers from people. ):

It's funny because I was actually thinking about making a thread just like this, but Canon beat me to it.

It's interesting seeing the various answers people have, and I really do hope that somehow through the unveiling of why more people don't get into GvG, the GvG community/player base will expand from it by changes made within the community itself. Or at least, ANet can use this for future reference on how to draw more attention to high-end PvP in their games.

i started to play gvg recently, ant its rly hard to get into gvg if u dont have pvp friends, and only done PvE and casual RA/TA

first off i vent into RA and get some basic skills there, got glad rank up, unlocked all skills, and tried TA with organized groups, and then when i got glad rank up, i still coudn't find find active gvg guild who is willing to learn "new" players...

finaly got into low ranked gvg guild, and started playing regulary, made pvp friends list, started to guest and higher ranked guilds, learning more and more each day...

my point is ... if u wanna get into gvg u gotta have some basic skills for start, and get lucky to get into team from which u can learn, and they will have a bit patience with u, a lot of guild dont wanna have anything with new players, and thats just sad, because gvg community is just getting smaller

To the OP, I just don't enjoy the PvP element of GW. Glad you do though, hope you get some more people involved

for me, the requirement of vent(mic) and elitism is the deterrent ;o

I think one reason, that hasn't been mentioned yet, for what makes guilds hard to get to gvg scene is guilds like mine. We have very experienced gvg players, but we play very casually and our rank goes around 500 to 2000 depending how seriously we play. We face lots of inexperienced and bad guilds who we rape with 3-4 heroes on our team. That can't encourage those guilds to continue if they lose a lot to guilds like mine.

edit: Also it seems that most and I really mean most players who are trying to get to pvp/gvg are not willing to listen what more experienced pvp players say and are not willing to learn.

I used to GvG quite often and managed to work my way into a guild that won a bronze trim. I have played in 2 mAT's (one was for my last competitive guild I ever played for, the other was as a guest for some friends). The months in which I played at my highest (competed in AT's and mAT's) was the most fun I ever had in Guild Wars hands down. Unfortunately last November my guild disbanded and everyone but me and one other player stopped playing for about 2 months.

During those 2 months I tried to look for a guild, but no guild that I was interested in was interested in me. I may have played at a top 150 level, have mAT experience, and have one trim (even though it is only bronze) on my resume, but because I really wasn't known outside of my guild, I couldn't get anywhere. After experiencing mAT's and playing at a respectable level, it is no longer fun just to play casually. I tried it for a few months, but I really wanted to compete in mAT's again, and unfortunately, I couldn't find a guild with whom I could do that.

So I left Guild Wars and as of right now really have no interest in coming back. There is no incentive to playing ladder, because waiting 20 minutes for a lord damage battle isn't worth it. I can't find a guild I want to play with because none of my references play this game so I have no one to vouch for my abilities. I don't want to play below my level because there is no reward in it anymore. I don't have the time to dedicate multiple hours every single night to prove myself to people who want to see If I could be an asset to their guild or not. The meta really hasn't been fun to play, so GvG has lost a lot of that "wow" factor.

Those are pretty much the things keeping me from getting back into GvG. After spending so much time away from Guild Wars I simply found better ways to spend my time. Now I really only wish I was GvGing when I have absolutely nothing to do but stare at my wall. And considering it takes 8 people to be on at the same time, the chances of me being able to play GvG when I feel like it and not on a set schedule are pretty much 0.

There really isn't anything any player can do at this point in time to bring in a large influx of new GvGers. A project similar to KiSu could bring in new people, but it isn't going to increase the competition. Unless the mentor is actually very good at teaching, people don't get better by having a great player hold their hand. You can learn things from top players, but you get better by taking what you learned and implementing it when those top players aren't there, not while they are playing with you.

There is no way to bring back players who used to GvG but have left, unless you bring back live tournaments with real life rewards. There is no way to get PvErs or casual PvPers/HAers to come GvG unless you make the title more accessible, add a flashy emote to it, and give them rewards besides balth faction for winning. It all comes down to, time put in vs rewards paid out. For some of us, just enjoying the game isn't enough anymore. We need that extra incentive.

I'm one of those who are trying to pass from PvE to PvP (i'm stuck at the RA level by now ). At this moment my biggest problem is the lack of friends willing to join me in this project (and another year at the university coming..). I've done a few TA and HA matches, but i've always been into PvE guilds, and it has been always a pain to convince other people to try arenas, and those few who would be interested, needed a lot of practice (and i need it too TBH) before we could form a decent party.

I don't really know PvP so well to say what are the best things to do to bring people into GvG, or into PvP in general. I joined some discussions here on guru and i read some interesting arguments, but i need more to listen than to speak^^

Another point that hasn't been brought up is Ping Wars.

You can't be fully effective at a LOT of slots in conventional GvG builds without an obnoxiously low ping. Forget about playing Ranger, Mesmer and Infuse at a high level if your ping isn't amazing. Melee and Prot are very difficult to play with poor ping. (Melee characters with poor ping tend to desynch and lose ground moving through groups of players.)

This, combined with continued server deterioration, result in a glut of experienced midliners and a shortage of players for other slots. Lots of players had the ping to play reaction slots at a high level at some time in the past, but no longer do.

Why do I not gvg anymore?

Because the gvg system is all screwed up now. Once they took away VoD, its been gimmick after gimmick.

latency is certainly an issue, especially for me. my ping fluctuates between 76 all the way up to around 400. i can deal with consistent ping around 250-350, simply because i'll adapt to it. there's no way i can ever adapt to a ping that fluctuates from 76-400.

anet really needs to look into how their servers are implemented.

I don't GvG for a similar reason, although the group of players I look for are mature and highly competitive/skilled. Over time, and especially concentrated a couple years back, the community started skewing younger as previous players left for various reasons (some from game balance, a lot just graduating college). I've actively avoided/left big pvp alliances, and consequently never did enough networking to keep actively moving on from dead guilds.

From my viewpoint, a huge part of making headway into the gvg community (other than obviously be willing to work toward getting better) is having high tolerance for the overwhelming personality of that community, in order to avoid self-imposed restrictions on who you want to play with when joining a guild, guesting, etc., and essentially be able to treat your progression as ladder theory (the purpose is moving up the 'ladder' by upgrading to the best guild you can at any point, instead of valuing intangibles that hold you back).

I can say that the only reason I have or will be getting into GvG EVER AGAIN is because I have a very good friend who decided to come back and play again and his friends list extends from people in gold caped gvg guilds to some of the best HA only guilds(oxymoron?lol) and ON TOP OF THIS I am a fairly decent player. This is my way back in when faced by a system where even if you want to get in a top 9000 guild you need recommendations, titles and a guild history. For someone who came back to the game on a new account, I had none of that because all my friends quit and my guild history spanned a whopping 1-2 guilds that no one probably would know now(Our Infuser Is At Taco[Bell], GL with that).

No one wants to join a guild that is like, recruiting anyone for GvG guild(no ladder rank aspirations), if they want to play it seriously. The only way to get into a guild that is serious is to either make it yourself or have the recommendations, titles and a guild history as of right now. You might see guilds like that pop up here and there who aren't a smurf where you say something like, who are these people and where did they come from?, but the problem is the likelihood of that happening to any random PvE'r or r3 HA'r is very slim.

So basically, how do u overcome the process of grinding out your titles and hoping you find some friends that can get u some guild history without doing so? I don't think it's possible unless you know someone like me. On top of that, the only reason I know said person is because I HA'd with him a lot and we had plenty of mutual friends who all came together to make my previously mentioned guild, and to go even farther together making/joining more guilds together until they eventually go to the top. And I'd also like to mention all these people were r9+ at a time where saying HA rank doesn't matter wasn't so widely accepted. It is simply too tough of a process to join into GvG as of right now when starting from scratch. Even with all of this that I've said I never got into GvG enough and all the players I knew pretty much quit so getting back into it is still an impossibility for me until my friend becomes active again.

Sad truth - GvG is possibly my favorite mode, but to get a guild commited enough to play 3-4 times a week at evenings, to set up and choose a build quickly and start and play fast? It's almost impossible.