Has Guild Wars focus shifted from PvP to PvE? Opinions.

Is there a reason why you track my posts and flame them, or do you normally harass people?

1% is a very large obvious bullshit spread, because 75% of the beginning game population was PvP related, with only 25% being pure PvE. They did mix it up of course and PvP players did play PvE and vice versa, but thats what I saw in 2006, but to say that ONE percent of the population is PvP? Thats why there is no point to reply to him. Thats why RA had 6+ districts everyday and kept getting blue screen of death constantly.

I normally harass people.

Of course it has. And as a result, poor guys at ANet can't even fix it.
Who could've seen it coming!

The PvE, especially the High End Content is absolutly unpolished.

Just compare the Dificulty of City with Foundry in the Domain of Anguish. The only thing A-Net does is nerfing, what they consider farm builds.

The focus has shifted to GW 2.

Thank god they finally give some attention to PvE after having given none to it for years.

Most people play PvE and people are still playing at this stage mostly because PvE (unless you like playing RA/HA/XX-PvP map 10k times over and over in 5 years).

Funny how people keep saying GW was a PvP game, I never picked the box for PvP. It said "online RPG", that's what I paid for. I don't particularly enjoy "who smashes 8 buttons faster" tournaments. I like the story, exploration, "do it in my own pace", etc.

So to be honest, I have no clue why they neglected PvE so bad so far... and they still do.

What, like your claims that pvp players somehow are key to having sold 5 million copies? If you had an actual argument that you didn't know was total bullshit, you'd use it. But you don't, because anyone with 2 neurons left in their brain knows that GW made way more money from casual pvers than it ever did from pvp players.

Also, please, who the hell cares what anyone on the internet thinks? It's full of people like you...

Wow, well said. I'm using Echo...

Great way of proving my point about the attitude of the so called pvp community.

I'm guessing it's because he thinks you're an idiot..


Since when did RA become serious pvp? Did I miss something? We're not counting RA/JQ/FA or any of the crap PVP players typically disparage as "not real pvp". I said serious pvp, that's HA and GVG. That's the "pvp community" that has major attitude issues.

At the beginning, sure, the pvp population outnumbered the pve. That was 5 years and several million game sales ago.

Over 5 million copies sold. 1% is 1 in every 100 people. Do the math. It's close to 1%. Maybe it's even 5%. At a push, 10%. Honestly, I'd be surprised if it's more than 1%.

Here's why. Call it 5 million for a round number, and assume that's all chapters. For the sake of argument, we'll exclude multiple accounts because there's no way of knowing. 5/3 =1.6

1.6 million players. That's an estimate of 16000 serious pvpers over the life of GW to get 1%. Seems a little high to me, in all honesty.

@ Arkantos, that's called estimation based on available information, not pulling number out your ass. But hey, don't let logic get you down.

All of which still means your purchases were utterly incapable of supporting the game, long term. Which is what you really have a problem hearing, just like almost every other serious pvp player I've ever met. Reality bites, deal with it.

And pvp gets a lot more than 5% of the current (non-microtransaction) work which goes into GW. Which is fine. I actually wish they'd spent a lot more and split pvp from pve entirely.

I fully agree with the above. On my Prophecies Box there was nothing about pvp as well. I have the impression ANET sent two different messages to the customers those years ago. That it is pvp oriented game which they were always selling as an online RPG. They just saw which brings them more profit and they made their choice. I like pve but I do miss old pvp.

That's probably why you're bad at the game. It's not a game of speed (though reflexes are important), rather, a game of which skills you use and when.

I appreciate your try to estimate my game skill based on a forum post, you show very good estimation skills

On the other hand, see? You're giving a perfectly fine example why I don't play PvP. It's not because I'm bad, but because I don't feel the need to listen to others telling me how good or bad I am and I feel no need to tell others how good or bad they are (or get frustrated by that).

PS: GW is not rocket science you know? Given enough time to get sufficiently experienced to pressing the 8 build keys in the right combination anyone gets sufficiently good at it. So I really don't see where all this proud of PvP == skill comes from to be honest. If that's the only thing you have to be proud of... too bad.

I play games for fun, not to boost my ego or help other boost theirs. I find these "ego" disputes quite boring.

We're on a GW forum, obviously if I say that hamstorm is a great pvp build and have been practising it for 2 years people will call me bad and they'll be probably right.
Just like people who think that GW is about button smashing are bad.

Oh dear, then I must be bad.

So your argument is that GW PvP is not just button smashing is "fancy button smashing": you have to smash them in the right order and timing, possibly but not necessarily taking into input what other people smash.

In the end PvP is still button smashing, no matter how fancy you want to make it seem. PvE is button smashing as well + the story, learning something new about the world, the role you're playing, or just exploring areas you've never been to, etc.

But even PvE, once the RPG is gone and done is just button smashing farms. (As they call it replayability).

/agree

ANET description:

Q:Is Guild Wars an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game)?

excerpt of answer:

A: we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game). Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to create the best possible competitive role-playing experience.

and:

What kind of game is Guild Wars?

Guild Wars is a global online roleplaying game. Players can engage in cooperative group combat, in single player adventures, or in large head-to-head guild battles. Guild Wars is a mission-based game set in a stunning 3D fantasy world that offers excellent support for guilds.

Shift from one type to another...meh.

You sound like the jock-douche from every 80's underdog movie. You realize you're just a montage away from a humiliating smackdown, right?

Why don't you go play a game that's geared towards PvP? ArenaNet has made a metric arseload of mistakes on GW, but not catering to the minority PvP subset of players isn't one of them. Go play CounterStrike, Starcraft, or even an actual sport (videogames are not and never will be sports), just don't screw other people out of their fun.

I re-quoted what you said so that every player who is a CASUAL PvPer can look over it, chuckle, and come back later without having to read through the text wall. Simplified.

1st Point - We are on a forum about a videogame that we play, I'm not going to say that when I get home from work I enjoy playing basketball or going to the sauna and relaxing myself, I was just throwing some real relaxing ideas out there for people rather then waste their time fighting Computer automated pixels and not competing with other real people that do exist in real life.

2nd Point -Guild Wars. Re-say that with me, Guild wars. This games storyline had NOTHING in it about GUILD wars. Nation Wars, Nation Disputes, Luxon vs Kurzick disputes, but not GUILD wars. It was all about battle some great bad guy, beatup whoever doesn't like who, or collect 9 of this and go here to do this, rinse and repeat, e-peen items/titles off in an outpost.

I do play CS and other FPS, but sometimes it is fun to compete with the brain more then the reflexes/if I'm tired and too lazy to twitch my hand every 3 seconds to HEADSHOT someone. Starcraft and other RTS's are not real PvP to me, as a casual player. Its all micro blah blah, and becomes a task rather then enjoyable.

Guild Wars made micro possible with shrines and other things of that nature, while still holding true to teamplay and even solo play when running/getting seperated from your team in PvP. I just wish they wouldn't have so heavily neglected it after setting it up.

To tell the truth now that I think about it, forget all the who bought what, even though I still think this game was LAUNCHED based off the PvPing population, not MANTAINED, A-net is adding more titles and grinds to the game so more people will have more stuff to get to add to the HoM, which in turn means more people will buy GW2 to continue to e-peen/continue their 'relationship' with their little pixels that walks around fairylands.

Thanks for the opinions guys, glad to see some real veterans that appreciate PvE and PvP, and even the random flamers.

This post is hilariously stupid.

Well this is very true for me. I am a console gamer. My guild leader got me to try this game by ironically enough, playing some of j-soule's music for me. I thought it was beautiful, so I decided to waste 20+ bucks on a game just for its music, luckily it turned out to be great. (by the way in like 10 months I've put around 2,200 hours into this game)

I love RPGs on consoles (japanese ones primarily, in exception to some like secret of evermore [another j-soule game, lol]). So I treat this game like console RPG I play on my pc... thats it. I never wanted to compete against people in chrono trigger, so why GW. If I want competition lets get on some guilty gear or lets get on some samurai showdown

But anyways I just wanted to mention that as a console gamer I prefer PvE, and I also game to relax, not to have people have mess up my gaming experience with their opinions or what have you, i get enough of other people's opinions in real life / my job.

Just because I enjoy PvE does not make me an inferior player, it makes me a different player. Different should not equal inferior, when different starts equaling inferior you are moving into extremist / racist / prejudice areas.

And that's it for my random comments

1 ) You misquoted me. I'm simply going with the general PvP communities opinions on what "real" pvp is. I cite the many posts on this forum, for a start.

2) Casual pvp players....yet you wait 3 hours for a team... doesn't sound casual to me.. in fact, the entire problem with what pvp players call "real pvp" is that it's entirely not casual. The people are not casual, they're hyped to the nines, the games are not casual, they take too long to set up for and too long to get a decent team. Nothing about so called "real pvp" is casual.

I actually wish they had spent more pve'rs money, including mine on PvP. I would even donate to a fund they set up, if they would just make it playable and actually fun again, for everyone instead of the elitist clusterf**k it is now. More like MW1, where you can just drop into it and have fun and a reasonable chance of winning. RA isn't like that, at all.

way to grasp the concept of skill. call it "button-mashing" if you want, but it takes great skill for me to "button-mash" better than you can. i mean hockey is all about "puck-whacking" and basketball is all about "object into container"--omg so hard, people have learned to put objects into a container since they're about...oh 6months old...that must mean any idiot can be good at basketball.

Hmm... I'm not sure you're getting my point, which is: I don't believe playing GW is developing a skill or requiring one. That's stretching it by a lot. But I do see these "guru elitists" who need to find some importance for whatever they feel they've achieved by claiming "they're skilled at GW" (usually at the expense of others).

GW is a game, and it's not even a complicated one. Any person with an average IQ can play it otherwise it wouldn't have sold so many copies and this forum wouldn't exist. Also since it is a game, it is supposed to be fun, first and foremost. So excuse me if I find this "skill" argument silly.

Or is it more that people feel the need to justify this special "GW playing skill" they've achieved as something "important" feeding their ego? As if being better at GW makes you a better/more important person. Well I for one don't play GW to feed my ego by bashing other players and declaring myself better than them based on either ingame behavior or forum posts ("only a bad player could say such a thing"... like yeah right, grow up, I'm not impressed nor threatened).

I am sure whatever "skill" people developed in GW will help them with their next job interview... or saving the world... or something.

Actually if you are to judge GW by its community, I wouldn't say it attracts the intellectual kind. Or maybe it's just my impression.

i do get your point, and your point is wrong.

complicated enough for you not to be able to understand its mechanics.

like i said, any person with an average iq can put an object into a basket. sound easy? okie, now try to do it with me standing infront of you trying to stop you. oh...and did i mention that you have to dribble this object?

not only has anet shifted the focus from pvp to pve, but they have also dumbed down the pve mechanics incredibly. i can understand why you may think the way you do having only (mostly?) experienced pve, but try to step into a high-end pvp match and you will think differently.

people want to be good at gw for the sake of being good at gw--and why cant they have that? what gives you the right to say that being good at gw is unimportant? are you expecting that we all go study to become doctors and lawyers because being good at gw is a waste of time?

You just got your ass handed to you in PvP and are trying to claim it was for something other than you having no skill at Guild Wars.

Yes, the focus is now on PvE. Why is this a discussion? It's actually a fact.

EDIT: Let me clarify... The PvP community is dead thanks to the brilliant management of Anet. The community that is left will not easily allow new players into the fold, whereas people can pick up and play PvE anytime. Therefore, PvE changes will affect a larger audience, and (hopefully) get more positive reactions from them. PvP more or less has "token updates" so Anet puts on the image that they're actually taking care of it. However in reality, despite the larger emphasis on PvE, neither PvP or PvE or GW1 is getting (or has been getting since 2007) adequate support/updates/management.

Don't remember ever playing with you, but feel free to be condescending if that makes you feel better. To each his own.

A small difference. You actually have to use some muscles (besides finger muscles) and sitting on a chair fattening a belly would not be to your advantage. And out of all the players of any sport how many get professional and actually make a living out of it? Yes, they are skilled. And they can use their skills outside of their professional sport live.

On the other hand comparing GW (a computer game) with a sport is rather ridiculous.

They can, but they can't call that "skill". Or I have a higher standard for myself in regards to things I consider myself skillful at.

GW is a computer game. If you're a teenager with tons of time on your hand and nothing better to do it might be the most important thing in your life and you might delusion yourself into believing that you're not "wasting time while playing it but you're rather building up the GW skill".

GW is a computer game and as so it is meant/developed from start as a pleasant time wasting activity. Same with watching movies or TV, they're not skills you know? People have the need to waste time to relax and have fun, but saying that you're "skilled" at wasting time.... doesn't sound right does it?

--------------
Anyway back to the subject of this thread:

Again I picked the GW box as an online RPG game with no monthly fees. Before GW I've enjoyed the "Might and Magic" rpg series and wanted to continue playing the genre.

I was the first of my friends group to pick it up, I liked it and in the end other 5 of my friends picked it up and we played together. It's a nice game to play with friends btw. But for reasons that seem to elude the forum posters here, I and my friends don't feel the need to get competitive and figure out who's better against one another or as a PvP team against others. Instead we rather coop through the game.

So yes, I find PvP repeatable and therefore boring. It's the same match played over and over with different opponents. And it gets even more boring as some builds become meta and all opponents will run the same thing and you'd do the same thing to try to defeat them. It changes once in a blue moon with a skill update but in short time it settles again.

To put it as GW guru like to: GW PvP is subpar to other games with PvP systems. The many things ANet got right that made their game a success were mostly PvE related (the no grind philosophy, the story, the gorgeous graphics and world environments, etc).

That invalidated any point you might have had.

So something must be profitable in order to be a "skill." Professional gamers DO exist; Guild Wars simply does not have third party tournament support to allow this.

I'm not buying this. You think basketball players find having a 3-foot vertical useful outside of the game? Or maybe it's the behind-the-back no-look pass. High level game (sport) skills do not transfer to real life. Basic running endurance, maybe, but you can draw the analogy to something like touch-typing or mouse dexterity there.

These are passive activities. There is no user input.

Bottom line is you're just plain wrong if you think Guild Wars does not have a trainable skillset. There is a reason the same forty or fifty people top16 every month. Whether or not you think this skillset is worthless outside of Guild Wars (it pretty much is), you cannot trivialize the impact it has on actually playing the game.

You lost all credibility with anyone who played the game before Nightfall's release with this paragraph. Not to mention the no-grind thing was pretty much destroyed when Nightfall released, as I recall, though I had pretty much abandoned PvE as unplayable tripe by then.

Only problem is that I'm not here to boost my credibility. I'm pretty much unimpressed by my credibility level on a game fan forum.

No-grind "was pretty much destroyed" with factions actually and it's time for you to wake up, we're almost 3 years later and GW is not what it used to be anymore. And neither PvP nor PvE are anything special anymore and furthermore by how the player base evolved GW is much more of a PvE game than it is a PvP. PvP was the first to die.

BTW I'm sure you can find the older GW guru pool showing a crushing number of people on this forum preferring PvE over PvP.

Time to grow up and learn that nothing invalidates anything and no one holds the absolute justice (sadly not even you). Oh and by the way, your post doesn't express any opinion at all, so "invalid" as mine are at least I have some and arguments to back them.

I'm wasting my time with kids here that are unable to distinguish and respect other people opinions and don't have an opinion of their own. Therefore the only thing they can say are personal attacks the same nature of some religious freaks would come up with "because you have a different opinion and you don't pray to the GW PvP gods every night like I do you must be bad at playing this game and have no clue about my worshiped game".

I can't really understand this religious attitude of loyal fans of a game, but it would be much more pragmatic if you accepted nothing is perfect, including GW PvP/PvE; that there is no "grater than" sign in between PvP and PvE and if you're a PvP player that doesn't make you more entitled to opinions (or your opinions better).

I criticize GW exactly because I like it and I want it to get better. However some people just don't have the intellectual capacity to pass over the religious phase and figure that worshiping GW is not helpful to anyone (as if it's perfect and therefore any critique is an assault on their religious believes).

And I've wasted enough time here, ciao!

3 years of seeing posts that GW is not about the skill anymore (gimnicks etc) and /ragequit because of that. Today I see people probably the same ones arguing that gw actually requires a skill.... I think some of you just like to argue regardless what is being discussed. I have to say that I agree with test_me. If you use the right build gaming skills stop to matter (actually in both pve and pvp). You can have someone like me happily mashing random buttons as does my team and still win with someone who should have "superior gaming skills" and why? Because that is the way skills and builds are being balanced in pvp. How many shitty teams won halls with a bloodspike or crap like that? Once I was so drunk I could barely see the screen and still completed DOA (ursan yay) and got to halls (bloodspike yay) that night. Or how this champion point farming worked? Why titles like hero or champion mean nothing? Because they are farmable and say nothing about player level. Sorry to be blunt but you are just cheating yourselves now. It was about skill in 2005 maybe but it no longer is. I would say knowledge (what others use and how often and how to counter it) matters much more than skill. I would say someone skill level has to be really superior to be slightly noticeable. All this due to lack of proper balance.

these are completely unrelated. the 1st is replying to the statement "gw requires no skill" as an exaggeration to call to anet that they are breaking and dumbing down their game lessening the amount of skill required and for it to be restored; the 2nd is about replying to the statement "gw requires no skill" as a cold-hard fact--he even goes as far to insinuate that computer games in general are not skill-based.

right, because there is no such thing as professional gamers. please get off your high-horse. hand and finger dexterity are useful for a wide variety of things. i can name at leas a hundred jobs that require hand and finger dexterity. sure it may not seem as 'glamorous' as lifting strength or running speed--but seriously, get off your high-horse. also, are you seriously discounting intellectual 'muscle'? doctors...lawyers...do you see them being able to do a million pushups? a lot--and i mean a lot--of well paying jobs are not physically demanding. open up your eyes a little bit.

i bet next, your going to tell me that poker requires no skill.


i completely understand your opinion. you are a casual gamer; you play the game for fun. i get that. keep doing what you do bro. however, i am a competitive gamer, and gw is (was?) a competitive game--you can not deny that fact nor take it away from me. in earlier posts you commented on how horrible a pvp'rs attitude is, but honestly dude look at your own.

My opinion is that you're wrong. I happen to be correct.

Your 123 vent drunk spike team faced people who were shittier then you. Thats how so many people have HA rank right now, because they can't PvP for shit. You gave knowledge the description of what skill is and then proceeded to say the game takes no skill. Silently logout and re-think your logic.

Skill - the ability, coming from one's knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well.

Yes, they can call that skill.

My opinion (for what it's worth) is that they gave up. If the posts here (and other forums) are any indication of the attitudes of the average player, then Anet realized some time ago that NOTHING will satisfy the PvP community. So they gave up... Now the PvP community is starting their foray in PvE and trying to ruin that as well. I hope they eventually stop changing everything. It sucks having to by new armor/runes/insignias/weapons etc every time they do an update.

GW is over... let me fill my HoM in peace.

nice

A sensible reply, wow!

We should all be casual players. Unless we play at least 8h per day and make some money out of it (gold farmer/bot? - that might pass as a skill actually). How many basketball players are actually skilled? Almost everybody plays it right? But out of them? One in a thousand? One in a million?

You can play basketball without being skilled at it. And most certainly GW does *not* "require skill" to play. That is a huge overstatement and if that were true we'd have only about 100(?) people in the world playing GW.

GW required an upfront payment, an internet connection and a PC to play. That's about all that is required. And since GW lives on sales and the vast majority of people are mediocre at best, GW cannot sustain itself financially if it would not be for the masses. ANet is an entertainment company and will sell what entertains.

So to take it to extreme, one could play GW on a TV remote control. You have all 0-9 keys + the arrow keys... so you don't need more. There is room even for keys like target next, turn around, etc. But we won't say that people are skilled at using a TV remote control would we?

But anyway I see your point. But you have to realize that when I and all my friends picked GW 4 years ago, it was never advertised as something competitive and I've never been much interested in the competitive side of it. So from where I'm standing GW never "was" a competitive game. But it does have a competitive side (4 outposts on the smallest map ingame).

If GW was rewarding skillful play and had a good competitive play many years ago than that is not the truth anymore. PvE has changed to "1, 2, 3 goes shadow form" (I know they nerfed it but you get the point) and PvP is non-existent anymore. They even had to take half of XTH down (the HB half) because it was really impossible to make predictions for all the randomness there.

Actually PvP died quite some time ago, and excuse me if I'm being cold here but if GW PvP play was so awesome I'm pretty sure it should have still existed. Dead after 2 years (more or less)? What does that tell you if not that it wasn't really all that successful? Good PvP games go on for many years after they've been released, I'm sure we all know a few. GW PvP didn't. At least ask yourself why?

And yes, my attitude is to not the best but remember we're on Guru and I have to deal with brain dead replies like: "My opinion is that you're wrong. I happen to be correct." Can you really expect anyone to have a laid down attitude here? I guess the Guru/PvP attitudes are contagious, makes sense if you think about it.

I full share the view Shasgaliel has.

"Welcome to a world where Skill, not hours played decides your ability." or something of that similiar.

In fact everything on your post contradicts itself and your earlier posts, A-Nets stance on things, and even how the game was advertised/made. I'm not taking sides in this, but makeup your mind already.

I know I am coming in late here, but I saw this and instantly facepalmed.

Those builds were nerfed cause they went against the idea most MMO's follow. You had a couple of overpowered builds that meant that most people could almost solo most of the stuff, or were groups comprised of the same type. To me, that isnt 'Large groups of people hanging out and doing random stuff together to try and succeed,' as you put it.

I fail to see the connection between skill > time and competitive gameplay.

In response to your original question and supporting argument, yes. It's been discussed on these forum a lot over the years, only dying down a little after the thoughtful, constructive PvP players stopped caring to share their opinions, and left the game.

PvE players play more, and pay more, and there are more of them. They are content with +1 to titles and overpowered skills to blast their way through the whole game. PvP players demand frequent updates and it just isn't worth it.

ArenaNet won't do anything to fix it. It's all downhill for PvP. I don't think it's hit the bottom yet.

I'm wondering when PvE players will wake up and realise that farming for +1 on a text-floater-beneath-your-name isn't fun. Then the game will really die.

These are my thoughts and you're welcome to discuss with me

I said that the idea of nerfing the area, rather then just the build, is what created a lack of creativity and pugs/random groups. I was in no way saying that overpowered builds should not be nerfed and solo play is encouraged.

Zahr: Pretty sure your an angry PvPer with nothing to say but /flame I can /rank lion so u must listen to me, but for the other people readin this thread. The quote I posted there is on the back of your guild Wars Prophecy box, and it was a response to how he was saying that Guild Wars requires no skill and it was never advertised as a competitive game.

Aeronox: I believe that some of the ideas I posted to upgrade the gaming experience should be seriously considered and would not take as much as time as most people would think to update. They took 6 months to update skills, can they take the next 6 months to think over some very valid ideas that I posted to make the casual PvPer more attracted to the game/rewarded by the game for PvPing? PvE dominates because you can e-peen faster and be more passive aggresive while still thinking your good at the game.

If they made PvP more rewarding, or gave people who did still PvP an incentive or something of the sort, like the ideas I posted, it would help us out alot. I'm not the 'I spend 9 hours playing PvP on a videogame' type of guy, but I do play 2-4 hours a day if I get the freetime, and I have HA ranks because of friends being online and random pugs that were actually really good, we didn't run shitter wiki builds with 123 vent spike, even though I'm pretty sure a succesful team of that would have stomped us, but luckily we didn't run into them. I've posted to double faction gain from AB, which would increase the amount of large scale 12 vs 12 PvP, which is very attractive to veteran gamers and PvPers alike due to the fact that the PvP is challenging, and there is still NPC's/PvE to interest those who aren't into mob diving. That alone would help bring back PvP, because AB is one of the most populated PvP areas in the game left. Sometimes it outdistricts/outpopulates RA. Even that simple change would help the community out.

Zahr Again for post below this one: You speak like you PvP and enjoy raging on people who say that PvP could be done by retards. Thats his opinion, I wouldn't go crackheadish over it, I would counter it with facts. 'NO U SUCK I WIN' is not an arguement. But back to the main point, you acted like you PvPed alot and whatnot, if we knew you didn't PvP we could have disregarded you right off the bat for you opinion.

But I haven't done PvP in months. How does that make me a PvPer?

Not all of us PvEers play to farm and work on titles. Some of us just enjoy playing around and doing vanquishes with guildies.