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

A solid balanced PvP game will satisfy the PvP community. Conviently that is mostly what we had in late Prophecies and mid Factions. There were relatively few complaints back then (especially compared to post Nightfall). But yes, you are correct that Anet gave up on their solid PvP game.

The PvP community has mostly left. Any garbage that is currently happening in the game is the result of Anet and the remaining PvE player input.

Welcome to Nightfail release!

I can only comment on my own observations and experiences... I bought GW for the PvE. (Important to note... I didn't get GW until it had been out for almost 2 years.) Joined a PvE (mainly) guild and was having a blast. I love doing JQ and enjoy a little AB once in a while. I don't really consider it hardcore PvP but it's fun to me. I maxed Kurz almost exclusively by doing JQ. Just got r10 Lux the same way (thank you Anet for double Faction!) I hate RA because it's TOO random. Done some HA but unless you're already ranked and running an imba build, expect nothing but frustration. The learning curve is so steep and the competition already so fierce, it wasn't enjoyable.

The main difference I see between PvP and PvE is in PvP you've got no choices. You run certain builds, using certain equipment and play with certain people or you lose. In PvE you are (were) allowed to experiment with your options. I have a job, a wife, 2 teenage children and a house. I don't have 8 hours to play games everyday. It was FUN to load a 600 build on my monk and take Gwen to CoF and break some lockpicks. I wasn't getting rich by any means and I could still join a balanced group and do the same dungeon in about the same amount of time. i.e. (For me) PvE = virtually unlimited options = Fun. PvP = limited options = Not fun.

I personally don't care if someone can run UW in 15 minutes. So what if someone has 10 stacks of ecto? Taking it away from them doesn't make my characters any wealthier. I couldn't care less. I still have the option of either learning to do it myself, paying someone to do it for me or joining a balanced team and risk wasting hours of my time just for enjoyment. (I've never been on an UW speed run but many many balanced clears.)

"Balancing" PvE makes absolutely no sense to me because you have options. If you prefer balanced (the way the game is meant to be played) then go for it. If you want speed, I think you should have the option. Will people abuse the system? Of course... nothing is going to stop that short of shutting the whole thing down.

Maintaining balance in PvP makes perfect sense. It's competition. No team should have the "home-court advantage." Keep it fair. But balance in PvE is silly. Who cares if you have an unfair advantage against a bunch of dumb AI driven bad guys? They're not gonna complain. The only people who complain about balance in PvE are those who are worried that someone else is getting rich. Nobody is buying the "spirit of the game" excuse.

Anet should be more concerned with doing away with the exclusivity inherent in PvP than balancing PvE.

GW1 PVP sucked since day 1. Maybe you're just realizing by now that having a million ways to make an imbalanced team, with it taking the developers months to years to respond, isn't a great competitive game.

haha i only just recently started playing again since about over a year. it's sad to find out the team arenas were erased - spent most my time in those

That is really just a matter of opinion. GW PvP used to be extremely fun, and still was even after Nightfall release. It wasn't as fun as it was before, but it was still fun.

GW PvP is a lot of fun for those who like games where you must work as a team to overcome obstacles as a unit rather than just have 8 guys run around and do things on their own and hope everyone else isn't stupid. There really isn't another game on the market that matches the game style of a GvG.

The problem is just simply that, too many overpowered skills got introduced to the game by the new campaigns and the EOTN expansion and made the game less enjoyable overall. Couple that with the fact that everyone had already been playing for at least 3 years and you get a lot of people saying to themselves, "instead of just dealing with this change, I think I should spend my time elsewhere."

A.net has proved over the years they care more about randomly mixing up the meta, than trying to balance it to a state similar to that of prophecies (which is what I think the majority would like to see). Couple that with the lack of attention due to GW2 and the people that did stick around hoping for a change have now left.

That only leaves us with the people who decided to stick it out despite all those changes because they still view Guild Wars as the best use of their time, and those who are new and don't know any better than what they currently have. Unfortunately, that doesn't leave us with a very large number of players.

I'm not sure on how big the PvP community is in comparison to the PvE community, but I'm going to assume here, that Anet has always given equal attention to both sides when you look at their size. As far as I can see, it's pretty much equal.

The problem is, the total amount of attention is going down (Anet's focusing on GW2). As a result, both sides have to deal with less updates. PvE can survive with infrequent updates, but PvP is a different ball game. The current amount of attention PvP is getting in terms of skill updates and content updates isn't enough to keep it alive. The result is that it seems that Anet is neglecting PvP over PvE, while in fact they aren't.

I'm really glad you're all mad and stuff. We don't need dicks like you hanging around. You're completely wrong trying to fit your assumptions around pve players. I happen to prefer PvE over PvP just because I never managed to get into it, I never had a decent guild or team and I really dislike programs like Teamspeak or vent. However I'm as discontentful as anyone else about the micro-transactions and grinding and whatever. The chasm between the two communities is more than half of the problem. Anyway please keep your "sophisticated" opinions to yourself.

PvP focus shifted for me when the Tombs outpost on the 'pve map' got changed into an instanced pve grind...and HA was created on the substantially less significant 'Battle isles'

Yeah, I used to be like that... 3500ish game hours ago.

Which brings me to an interesting question...

How many hours have the most vocally negative of us logged? Because I'm beginning to suspect there is a link between the number of hours played and the vitriolic hatred for ANet.. Also, we're the ones who vaguely remember each and every nerf, whereas newer players have no idea that things like rolling for chests or HFFF ever existed and so aren't embittered by Anet seemingly constantly nerfing anything which was fun and accessible to all professions.

To answer my own question, about 5500 hours over 52 months.

This guy wins, hands down. I agree with him. Thats why I made this thread. Has PvE been changed to a main focus and why, and this guy answered what I asked. Kudos on a well thought out response from a casual player that watched how the game progressed.

I agree with most your points except this one. Balance in PvE is not about balancing the "competitiveness" (there is no competition in between humans and AI monsters as AI monsters don't have a goal to win - as you mention yourself) but it is a about "cooperation".

When all PvE groups in any mission outpost, end PvE area etc would isolate all dervishes out because their class is just not worth one spot in the 8 party build then there is an issue. When all PvE groups would require you to run A/E and only A/E to complete an area then there is an issue as well.

When these happen you don't really have a choice as you say, but rather it turns into the same situation you noticed in PvP, for example it used to be that if you wanted to finish UW you'll play perma sin (specific class + specific build) or you won't get any group and you can't hench it either.

Not to mention rank discrimination was a huge issue in PvE (in the times of ursan) which kept many players away from content. Locking content away from players because they chose a "bad" profession for their main toon or because they refuse to grind some title is possibly the worse that can happen for PvE players. No one wants to play an online game to feel left out.

So does PvE need balancing? Yes. Does it have the same nature as PvP balancing? No. PvP is about making sure both teams have equal chances to win while PvE is about making sure every player has equal chances to get a team an play through all the game's content.

Let's face it. Guild Wars PvP has been flawed and never a focus from the start.

The "high end" PvP - GvG and HA, are like pvp minigames with all their gimmicks instead of the basic killing another team.
And even in killing another team, things like TA were flawed.
Where is my 1v1 arena? PKing?
To top off all the damn annoying inconsistencies you experience with the gameplay, mechanics, and pvp modes, you also have a discriminatory community with insane requirements, making it impossible for anyone new to jump into PvP.

Look, I don't want to criticize, but Guild Wars' PvP is horribly done. It's absolutely horrible. I don't want to offend any of the developers with that, but seriously. It's frustrating, annoying, and broken.
Say I want to have a simple match with a friend, with 4 heroes.
Things are an absolute kick in the ass for something so simple.

Luckily, Guild Wars 2 will be cleaning up this fallen sludge. But I really think that a focus on PvE is for the better, as the Guild Wars PvP should have never been a focus in the first place with these standards.

Of course, that is just my view.

Guild Wars is a co-operative RPG with team-based, "e-sport"-like PvP.

This, and I would have rather them left all the arenas as seperate outposts with diverse goals, like it was for a short while before they consolodated them into two 4vs4 arenas(okay, they all boiled down to kill the other guys, but, work with me here).

It made less sense when they said "Okay, we're moving all the PvP outposts to the battle isles, and, OH, we're introducing a few new types of PvP with Factions that are only available if you own that campaign and they're on the world map for Cantha."

Sigh...some people will simply never know the truth even if it hits them in the face.

You mean that giant 'Skill depends your ability, not mindless grind' type on the back of the prophecy box? It tricked me into thinking Guild Wars was about PvP too. Even the PvP only character part as well, that also tricked me.

/sarcasm.

Lack of balance in PvE becomes a problem when people aren't to enjoy the game. Aka no longer being able to do a quest or area unless they grind through another character of a profession they don't care for with a build they find boring.

Meh...if you'd like I'll pull out about 5 articles, the GW official website, and videos of 2-3 Anet employees all saying the game was built from the ground up as a competitive game. But that probably wouldn't be enough for you.

pk'ing is not competitive pvp. your point is that gw doesn't have casual pvp modes? ra/fa/jq/ab says hai.

wow has both pk'ing and arena pvp--its arena pvp has way more depth and competitiveness (imo).

Already been noted by others in this thread, but one need only look at Nightfall to see where the "focus" went. Can't say that it was ANet following "da cash" since you just need one glance at WoW to see how easily people can get drawn into complete simplicity. Looking at other games and their success, it feels a lot more like ANet dropping something fragile (i.e. screwing up PvP) and instead of taking their time to fix it they just sweep it under the couch.

It has the potential for depth, but it gets lost completely in regards to balancing concerns and many other messes. Funnily enough, it feels like just a week ago where I was actually praising WoW's PvP...

In regards to WoW's competitive nature, it pretty much exists everywhere, and for the worse.

How they built it (6 years ago) vs. how they advertised, why people picked it up and how people are still playing it after 5 years are not really the same.

6 years ago they were building it hoping all PvE crowds will pick the game and once finished through the content they would move on to PvP. Don't you ever wonder why that didn't happen? Why GW never really became a hugely successful PvP game? Valid questions in my opinion.

PS: And yes those interviews wouldn't be enough, because we all know ANet had not much clue of the results of "what they were building" 6 years ago.

I think you are mistaken, at least for an online game whith cooperative play, for a single player game you might be right. Unbalanced PvE leads to certain character classes (or professions) not being able to partake in cooperative gameplay.

Balanced is perhaps more important to cooperative PvE because it's far easier to create a new (competive) PvP char then abandonning your RPG character and creating a new one.

PK? You mean level 80 characters one-shotting level 30's doing quests. That's your idea of top-quality PvP?

PK-ing requires shared zones, which limits the type of quests you can do to 'go kill 10 of X' or 'kill boss Y', with X and Y respawning when you turn around and run back for your reward.

So, you've played with fun at least 2000 hours.

for approx $160

that's $0,08 / hour

There aren't many sources of entertainment that give you so much for so little.

Well... I see things I want to do, find out which profession and build is best for those things and get those characters there. i.e. You don't send an electrician to do the plumbing. If you choose a "main toon" then you should expect to have limitations.

Smiters do better in areas with undead. When I go to areas with undead, I take a monk. I wouldn't be surprised if I loaded a MM build on my necro and was refused entry into a PUG. You shouldn't be either.

Are there seriously people who've played since the beginning that don't have 10+ lvl20 characters each with different professions?!?!?! That's surprising. Or is it simply "I don't want to play that way so you must play my way?"

I was using sarcasm to agree with you that GW was originally advertised as a competitive Person vs Person game, whether it be in PvE or PvP format.

Dont misaim the flames brah.

Edit to Deakon: 'If we can't play my way then the game is bad. If you can change the game so I can play my way, do it.'

History of the last 2 years of updates.

You are correct in what you say but I don't think that's how most people think. If PvE had a reroll as any class as PvP has then your suggestion would work but that is not the case.

It's not that easy to reroll as a different class just to do DoA for example and many people are not willing to grind all possible professions to max level and all outposts just so they can play anything. We only have that much time on our hands because ANet refused to release any new content for 3 years now(?) so some of us picked up and played other professions, but that would have not been possible if they released a new campaign every 6-12 months.

Also each profession plays significantly different, some people might even totally dislike playing certain professions, why should they be locked out of areas?

In an ideal situation, you would be right we'd all play all classes having all outposts unlocked on all. But that's not realistic at all.

Really? It worked for me. I created at least 1 of each profession and leveled them all to 20, got the attribute quests for each and got them to where I wanted to use them. I didn't have to beat every campaign and get every town and outpost on each character. I've never had to "reroll" anything but my PvP only chars. (That's because I only have 2 slots for PvP only)

Try it... it's not hard. You can basically roll your forehead across the keyboard time and time again until you're leveled. Really... You might find it easier to get into PUGs if you're a little versatile.

Note: I'm not talking "you" in particular... I'm talking about the mentality that a little effort is "unrealistic."

I'll give you just an example. I did do it to get a Me in DoA for cryway times. I had to play all NF allover again. In the end they nerfed it and it was all a waste of time. I'll never do it again...

I don't want to replay all those noob island quests 10 times over and all of NF 10 times over just to be able to have any profession available for DoA for whatever the profession du jour is required there. And btw just playing over is not enough as usually you need to get your build and you either need access to some proph jungle skill trainer or some tomes, etc.

Again you are only doing this because there is nothing else you can do. If there were new outposts/maps/campaigns and possibly professions every 6-12 months you can't expect to still apply your tactics can you? Yes GW is a dead game in terms of new content so we have all the time in the world to play all 10 professions as much as we want even in order to unlock all outposts on all of them. (But that is not fun and any game that requires that in order to justify a lack of PvE balance is a horribly bad game).

But that does by no means mean there is no PvE balance or that content being locked from specific classes is fine.

Actually, aside from GW, there isn't one. Not a single, solitary other example. And the 3000 hours after that have still been fun, but more for the chat aspect than whatever I happen to be doing, unless it's teaming with allies, in which case it's fun for both.

What I was getting at is that people with a lot of hours and a long time playing the game are bound to remember the how the game used to be in the past and compare it to how it is now, which can lead to anger at how much it's changed for the worse (which is ofc, a matter of opinion.).

This would be incredibly valid if not for the hugely packed Guild Wars tournaments. The game saw a lot of success in the competitive area. During these times it was tense, thrilling and awesome. Playing GW as I was and knowing that at the time something actually *big* was going on right now was quite exhilarating, and it was based off of these tournaments that I first actually got into PvP.

There was indeed a moment when many players flocked and stayed in GW for the PvP, even while ANet was able to please the (easily sated) PvE portion of the game (ex: Sorrow's Furnace). One bad decision lead to another, though, and now we're stuck with this. ANet's lost a huge amount of high-end players, both PvP and PvE, based on where the game went.

And ANet, instead of wanting to fix this mess, is just forgetting it completely and leaving it to rot, instead focusing on GW2. Here's hoping that ANet's learned their lessons. If not, then, well, I still got Doom, I suppose...

I understand your view and I'm seriously not trying to knock it. I just don't think making all professions equal in all areas is the solution. If it was, then why even bother with multiple professions. Just make everyone play the same profession and have access to the same skills if that's the logic behind balance. I've joked before by saying, "Skill Update Fall of 2010: All skills removed from game and replaced with 2 skills only. Heads or Tails. True balance at last!"

One of the things that attracted me to GW was the realistic physics involved. And just like the real world... All are created equal, it's what they do after that makes them different. Professions, secondary professions, virtually unlimited skill combination etc. is what is the most fun about the game to me.

But no matter what... you still have the exact same options as I do. The fact that I spent a weekend getting to DoA for each of my characters does give me an advantage over you I suppose. But only because I took the time to do it. It sounds to me that if you could complete a campaign on one character and have all the towns and outposts unlocked for the account then that would solve your issues in a way that "balancing" never will. Y'know... since that seems to be the only thing keeping you from doing the things that I have.

WTF with the time machine? the shift happened about 3 years ago, why the polls now?

GW showed potential. I agree with that. In both PvP and PvE, it showed huge potential. But that doesn't make a game good. Where is that potential today?

Probably it will be GW2, that's why we're all still here, because we still want to believe that the potential showed in GW1 will be materialized in the great game GW2 will be. Though I am starting to have my doubts that history will repeat itself with GW2.

But until GW2 is out and judging GW1 standalone as the game it is today discarding the nostalgia and the undeveloped potential.... things don't look pretty at all.

This is pretty much exactly what my post said, so I'm not too sure of your point.

I may've come too late with in regards to what you were saying, but it appeared that you were saying that ANet went this route in regards to lacking the support, which in a sense is true - but not because players weren't interested. The competitive side lost support because of ANet's disregard for it, because of ANet's lack of care. Things were going great up until then, and then ANet made one bad decision after the next, thus our final product.

The "my way" thing sounds like something you want.

I'm not thinking balance means equal, more like each profession being meaningful and having their own distinct role, but having a role as opposed to being generally useless.

But I agree. If they were to complete the grind free philosophy, ANet should allow us to change main profession at any time. That would be best, but won't go well with their char slot sales. In GW2 we have different races so there is still a reason to have multiple characters, but GW1... will never happen. Unlocking map outposts comes as a second best.

I don't think they'll implement either... But if they would, then PvE balance wouldn't really matter all that much. Can't get in a group with a derv? Change primary to sin and go

Yes and no. That may be it but...

It looks like GW PvP failed against the test of time. Good PvP games are released, get a couple of patches and people play them 10 years later (we all know a couple of examples). If a game requires so much maintenance to be good and dies a tragic death when disregarded by developers... is it really good then?

It failed due to terrible decisions and poor implementations.

The "my way" part, yes. The forcing others to play "my way", no. But some people can win the lottery and still complain about having to pay taxes. Nobody likes a "build nazi."

But the haters know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So they never shut up. That way they get what they want and the rest can lump it. No matter what changes are made to the game... and at any given point or time in the history of the game... We ALL have the same options. There's just becoming fewer and fewer.

Maybe I should start a campaign to "balance" PvP to favor the newer player... I can't take my Riposte Tank there and get anyone to add me to their group because they've already figured out what works the best. It's not fair... I should be able to play a crappy build and expect the same results. Seems all I need to do is get enough people to QQ to Anet and they'll eventually (after months) give in and screw things up good for everyone... (Change that last "P" to an "E" and you have what just happened to the 600/Smite.) Silly, huh?

Play it how it was origionaly intended :O but i guess thats too scary for some people.


arenas in game like the ascalon arena or the ones in yaks bend lions arch shing jea etc...Give a reason to go there, make it give you something special or something...i mean honestly speaking these places have been bone dry for 2-3 years now.


AB-Needs a buff on SOMETHING in terms of faction because nobody plays it anymore.


Problem lies in Kurz rock FA and JQ so they do that...Luxon Rock AB so they do that, you get the crap luxon on JQ and FA and the crap Kurz in AB.

JQ and FA are still fun if the style fits you...

HA is a laugh

But do you know who makes it this way? Not A-net...theyre not the ones doing this, Its the players, its the meta builds, and its the egos given to those "with massive E-peens"

You NEED a pvx build in HA because of those standards PLAYERS make, JQ and FA are like they are because of standards PLAYERS make.

Q.Q all you want, no matter what A-net does unless they rework everything (which would pull from GW2 development so it wont happen) it wont do ANYTHING, because standards players set overrule what gets nerfed and what gets buffed, and when it doesnt they QQ about it and burn guildwars boxes and quit the game....In the case of SF and 600/smite nerf

Players will always find the way to make it the fastest, make it the most profitable, and make it the easiest and simplest that they can, so they can make their money and faction and build their internet egos. Something gets changed, players will build standards to whatever happens and youll end up with the same problem.

RA is filled with stupid because its the first place ANYONE goes for their first PvP experience, peoples egos there are almost as big as the Ex-SF UW farmers, or HA teams. You get in there and all you get is one person rocking everyone the others either playing with their limited knowledge to PvP (no problem there) or theyre too busy calling someone a noob or telling them to uninstall GW to help their team win.

AB can be fixed with a simple boost in balthasar or Luxon/Kurzik faction...Hell buff both of them, because the balth given there is bull compared to the 6k in 20 minutes a day you get from trapping Zaishen elite

No... no. The answer is not to buff AB... it's to nerf Z-Elite Trappers. It's not fair to sins. {sarc}