GvG in Crisis.

I just posted a thread here
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/w...t10456400.html

Because I'm one of those PvE'ers who never got started on PvP but really want to. I'm tired of RA and AB, so write to me if you need an extra guy for some GvG or HA.

which "contrary"? That someone's opinion can never be wrong? Or that the (negative) opinion about the GvG-community, voiced by some people in this thread, is correct?

In all honesty, if you run off after a bad experience and conclude that it's one big cesspool of evil, you're never going to get anywhere. And trust me, that counts for any community. Let me illustrate this with my first attempt to join a PvE guild for some organized guild groups in the harder area's:

I had been playing PvP, pretty much exclusively GvG, for 2 years. However, I didn't really have time anymore for daily/almost daily GvG's, so I decided to go have a look on the PvE side. So far I had been PvE-ing pretty regularly, but almost always with H/H (I never liked pugging). I picked out a guild that looked good, and wrote a rather lengthy application explaining I had been GvGing a lot, and was now looking for a change of pace. I also explained I didn't really know what to expect (never been in an organised PvE-guild), so there was always the off-chance I wouldn't like it, and decide to go back to GvG. But that's what a try-out is for, right?
Boy, was I wrong. Within a few hours my application had 6-ish replies.
Of those reply, there wan't 1 welcome.
They were straight-forward hostile replies, flaming me for using f*ck (yes, I even used an * to censor it) once in my post (because, and I quote "excessive cursing is usually for the lower educated, and is frowned upon in this guild". Hilarious since they didn't even know me, nor my level of education. And since I was at that time in my master years engineering, I was pretty insulted). 2 of the members already voted "no" for my membership, without even playing with me in-game. They blamed me for not being 100% dedicated to joining, since I said there was a chance I would not like PvE at all. I defended myself in a short reply, and immediately got scolded for that too, saying I was "overly aggressive" in my reply and that I wouldn't fit in the friendly atmosphere of their guild. Let me assure you the atmosphere I experienced so far was far from "friendly".
Eventually, by the 11th reply, there was 1 guy who finally said "welcome".

Long story short, I sent a message to the guild leader explaining I found the welcome I got far from what it should have been, and respectfully retracted my application.

The whole experience was a very harsh one. But rather than labeling the entire PvE community as a cesspool of evil, I simply figured "shit happens" and found another guild, which was in fact a friendly bunch of easy-going people.

tl;dr : don't get your panties in a knot when you run into a bad experience.

The day they will remove NPC from PvP (how ironic) I will GvG again (and maybe HA). Starting with other new people and being away from GvG so long hencman will roll us unexp players to easy. And They should call it Player vs Bots. (NPC's are Bots)

Would be good if some1 organized GvGs ,rather than just talking about old days

One example: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/h...t10456201.html

We've collectively been asking this for about 2 years, ever since they removed VoD I've wanted it, and several other things to come back, VoD was easier to manage than this current tiebreaker, especially for newer players.

Any new players who have tried GvG in the past couple days have anything to share regarding their experiences and what they liked/didn't like?

I would love to get invited a long.
Catch me if I'm online. Align Verian

Not a new player, but I will offer the following:

I've played gvg with a pretty close group of folks for the past year- year and a half. We are not hard-core in that it's only a couple of nights a week, and while we try to win, use teamspeak, and play relatively meta bars, it's more important to have fun.
The last 6 months have been difficult because our matches were 2-4 per night over a 2-3 hour period, and 1/2 of those matchups are against teams that pretty well rolled us.
However, the other night we played 2 hours and got in several matches with the longest wait being maybe 5-10 minutes.
A couple groups rolled us, a couple /resigned, and the rest were decent matches. Best night in a long time.

I'd like to think the population was increased due to the ToT bags, but I can't say for sure. Either way, I think offering PvE rewards is genius. I hope ANet continues this line of thinking. The only thing I would do differently would be to offer 5 bags for participating. Maybe even scale the reward with time in the match.

In addition, I can't remember 1 single negative comment, even when we got rolled. Although, We normally don't see too much negativity. Occasionally, we'll see a disparaging remark, but on the whole, the teams we faced were silent or gave the usual 'gg' after a match.

For what it's worth...

I liked the willingness to help,and the freedom of choice to play a profession and build I wanted to. I'm pretty sure I need to work on position and reading the playing field better but for a first real attempt at GvG and playing with 7 new people,I really enjoyed it and like mentioned above,I think I need to be less heal-botty with bar usage so as to not run dry as quick..

I will GvG again though <3

I'll make this short:

GvG isn't exactly "fun" if one is being repetitiously roflstomped by top 500 guilds due to the failure that is the ELO system. The aforementioned is what I've experienced. Before anyone berates me for "expecting to win every time", lemme say something to counteract this accusation: No; in fact I expect(ed) to lose each and every GvG match ever played (I'm that pessimistic), but I somewhat expect to play against an opponent that is in the same bottom tier.

One reason why I won't GvG even as a guest for other places is because of the steep learning curve. That, and I'm not the kind of person who "builds connections." Thus, I don't bother.

Will it be possible for me to get in to GvG? I don't mind losing my first 100 games. I got into StarCraft seriously in like 2008, so I can handle it. But the question is, how do I find 7 other people who are also willing to lose a lot, and who will also improve eventually?

Played yesterday with Happy, Calista, and some others for three rounds. Two of the Guilds were sub 1000 rating like the Guild we were playing in, and the other was barely above if I remember right. You occasionally stretch some, but you won't regularly play against teams who are significantly better ratings. As for building connections, you can still regularly play with the same group and have a good time, you'll just have a harder time initiating matches since you won't have people to call on.

Absolutely, and you aren't the only one right now. Find me in-game at Ariena Najea.

Completely serious. Have we set up an IRC or some other public room/board/thing outside of GW that anyone interested in in joining can idle and we can fine people?

#buildwars was wonderful when it first started, but right now its kind of dead

Still waiting for my game to arrive :P I ordered the complete collection and my trial is over.

IRC sounds good. Where can we get a channel going?

Unfortunatly there IS in fact alot of smurfing going on, and it's more prevalent than I can ever remember. Our guild was recently picked up casual gvg again and it seems like a third of the teams we face nowadays are 6 guests from top guilds, and our friends from other guilds also fight these smurfs regularly. I know noobstomping can be satifying, but it really does add to the roadblock we have of keeping people interested in the format. Newbies don't enjoy getting constantly annihilated and are much less likely to continue trying.

Try contacting the people in this thread: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/h...t10456201.html

If they have 6 guests from different guilds, it is pugging, and not smurfing. smurfing is the exact 8-man team playing under another (usually lower ranked) guild name. It does a LOT more damage than pugging, since a smurf is usually a well-oiled team without the rating to show for it. A pug is still a pain, non the less, since fighting 8 veteran players, even when they usually don't play together, is already an extremely tough battle for a new guild.

I can indeed believe pugging is going on a lot atm. When people cannot play for their own team (not enough people online, ...), they try to find a spot as guest. Especially with the lowering of the member requirements, it is now really easy to quickly fill up your guild with guests, if you have an active friendlist.

You can not really blame them, after all, all they want to do is GvG. And since their own guild's not playing (top guilds usually only play when most of their core's online), they fill up a guest spot somewhere, anywhere.

The fact that you fight them 1/3rd of the time, isn't because there are tons of pugs, but because there aren't enough "normal" casual guilds playing. With more of those guilds, the chance of running into those pugs will decline automatically.

That being said, would guilds be interested in a scrimmage database? Similar to the QQ guest thread, we could make a list of new guilds (maybe impose a rating maximum) with 1 or 2 contacts, so other new guilds can contact them for an unrated scrimmage.

Endorsed by the community.

Wholly approve of this.

Just saw this thread...so many years late. I miss the old ass days of rift wardens and spirit spam, ether renewal smite bs, lara valor holding on lulzy ranger spikes, AeC, sB and tons of other korean guilds playing. Was so fun.

I was also in the group with leeloof when he got rank 1 so many years ago. Mad memories.
House Redfalls smiting in gvg just destroing people.
Gimmick EP dominating the ladder by a mile.
RenO and WM just raping face.

There's so much more.

It would be nice to have players who were intimidated by rank discrimination for so many years to just go pvp and have fun no matter what. I also do know that this is a thread regarding a GvG crisis, but back in the day, every tombs scrub went and got a tiger before they moved to GvG. I approve of this. GW PvP has need a life infusion for a while now.

I guess if anything, I'm glad that the pvp community is doing this. I have a bit of a rant forthcoming since the topic has been brought up.

My PvP experiences in this game have been all terrible, not because of game design, game mechanics or skills, but because often I've run into the rotten apples, so to speak, of our PvP community. Arenanet can only do so much when it's the community itself that has been killing the PvP in this game for the past few years. 'sides even Aion's PvP was less frustrating for me and it's saying a lot since I disliked the game's end content.

One vivid example are a group of 4 players who synced in RA but their 4th player ended up on the other side, rather than continue playing or explain to anyone they chose to ruin the match for me by running around in environmental hazards and throwing the match away.

I'll still be willing to participate but I still feel like it's better just for me to give up on PvP in this game now after it has wasted so much of my time, I've spent months doing nothing but PvP for nothing. oO

[EDIT: Shortened post a lot.]

People continue to use RA as a reason why they are wary to try GvG, RA is 5% GvGers, 20% HAers, 50% Idiots, and 25% New players. Please don't use RA of an indicator of what the true PvP community is like, press B, and pm some people, much better indicator.


When I play RA, which is rare, I'm thankful if my Elementalist has Elementalist skills and not dagger attacks and teleports, and if my Ranger actually has interrupts and not some combo pet/hex build.


RA is essentially a roll of the dice, you hope you won't get three idiots on your team but the odds are questionable.

So.... Just a week after forming a newbie-friendly gvg guild, I've already run into a major hurdle, namely, inactivity. We have had tons of people wanting to join after I posted my advertisement; most of these people are never online or they have left the guild once they realized that we would not meet our goal of a daily gvg or once they realized that we would be losing more than we would be winning. We've had offers of help from high-end gvg players but they've usually given up on us once they realized how truly awful we are So now we have maybe two people online at the same time on most days. A week is still young for a guild but still....this is a bit of a turnoff.

And in my experience so far, the attitude of pve players is way more of an obstacle than the attitude of pvp players. Right now, every time we've played, we've had monks who fail to catch spikes with infuse, mesmers who don't know what to do with diversion, warriors who frenzy willy-nilly, rangers who waste their d-shot on unimportant skills (that would be me) and so forth. I see that as part of the course for a newbie guild, but most pve players seem to have this idea that the only thing that's been keeping them from winning halls and ATs is rank discrimination and elitism, and so when we fail to win its everyone else's fault except for theirs. Or else they get completely crushed by the realization of the depth of their suck and just leave to go back to their pve guild. We all suck - that's the POINT - if we didn't we could join a top 100 guild and wouldn't have the need for an entry level no-skill-needed guild.

tl;dr I made a newb-friendly gvg guild and am now spending most of my time in RA and AB

If we come up with a good plan to revive GVG, I'm sure ArenaNet would help us promote it.

Should we make some kind of team to get it going? With a forum?

I'd love to GvG, but i'm Australian, so the timezone thing really sucks for me. I mostly watch the euro guilds in Obs mode, which is as close to a gvg as I've come too since I came back to guildwars a couple of months ago.

Would love to join a team that plays during Australian peak times (7-10/11pm) if anyone knows of any groups that need a complete noob that is willing to learn and will dedicate that time each night, then pm or whisper me in game.

Sagittarii Zayin - AEST (GMT+10)

Maybe changing tournament hours could help...Anyway , i think they should just do something as " an all" , like reviving whole PvP with an update , because i still believe GvG will be kinda empty at dead hours ( GMT 2am--5pm) and active then ( GMT 7pm-11pm)

I would love to see a revamp of the whole PvP scene - but to really give it the time and effort it deserves I'm afraid I don't think you'll see these changes any time soon. Not before mid next year at the very least (bearing in mind all the PvE stuff that is happening).

Actually, I mentioned the exact same remark in one of the huge "rank discrimination"-discussions years ago, and everyone went crazy over it, calling me an elitist and so on.

Rank is not an absolute measurement of skill, but it does show a certain level of experience and especially for the basic skill levels, most of that comes automatically with experience.

The only way they'll ever get better, is when they have the ability to recognise their own mistakes, and try to prevent them in the future.

Don't be alarmed though, when I swapped my old PvP guild's recruitment policy to "free-for-all", it took us 3 weeks of try-outs to fill 2 spots with promising "newbies". So 1 week for a whole team would be very very fast

One thing you can do is compose a questionnaire of "basic gvg knowledge", and filter recruits based on that. You can ask them some questions about GvG (about the mechanics like guild lord, flagstand, morale, ...) and then you can give them an 8-man build as example, and ask them to write a small essay discussing the main idea of the build, as well as the key roles of the different people, and the key skills for those roles. You can also ask to sum up some of the main direct counters for said build.
A system like that has 2 major advantages: it checks for PvP knowledge without discriminating based on rank/previous guilds, and it immediately checks the recruit's dedication (filling in a questionnaire + writing a small essay isn't something people do when they don't really want to). While the time invested per recruit for you goes up (you have to check the questionnaire and the essay), the chances of it being a good, active recruit go up as well.

It might just be worth a try

Yeah, attitudes really are a huge part of the problem. Not everyone's cut out for PvP.

The only thing I can suggest you to do is to keep trying. As you go through more players, you'll be able to find more who fit better. As for guests, get new ones and keep asking those who you and your guildies find to be more helpful than others.

Keep trying Venla, when you make a good guild you recruit 10 and 2 stay. Then you recruit another 10, 3 or 4 stay. Don't give up just yet. Keep trying to setup gvg's even if you have only 2 people in your guild on.

EDIT: Rotten's idea is also a good way of weeding out random people.

Yea, most pvpers will always be willing to guest and just the effort on your part shows alot, pm me anytime and if I'm free I will come.

I would advise any players with interest to tune into the mAT mumble coverage.

It should be an informative and fun time.

the problem is, not everyone can pvp

requierments for pvp:
somewhat mature, have to deal with raging flamers
thrive in a competitive environment
be able to schedule when to play
somewhat intelligent
persistent and dedicated


and even if they meet those reqs, they might not like waiting for 20 min for a match, then losing because they are newbies, and having to find 4 new players because 4 people raged

I would ask a couple of simple questions.

Whilst you are trying to revive PvP in GW (be that GvG or HA) you all assume that people have pvp knowledge and just nowhere to play (for instance the try-out, give a person an 8 man build and have them write an essay etc...)

1: What about the people that are completely newb to PvP, say coming from a PvE background, does this mean that unless they can grasp and understand all aspects of PvP mechanics they are not allowed to be trained or to participate in PvP?

2: What about the people coming back to GW after a long break (I myself haven't played for 2 years and am having to catch up on build changes/skill changes etc...) do you also say they cannot PvP as they are not upto date on existing mechanics?

It is all well and good saying "we want to revive PvP" yet to me the same old problem exists, everyone wants to win, no one wants to teach new people even the basics and if you don't cut it then you don't get a team for anything.

Simple truth is everyone forgets they were either taught how to play or learnt alongside a large group of active PvP'ers (which do not exist any longer) the reason why you have no competition is that there is no "academy" there is no pool of people learning GvG therefore there is nothing coming through the ranks to make more guilds to PvP against.

Maybe once you address this (which basically means throwing elitism to the side and being willing to train people from scrub level upwards) then I fail to see how anything will change.

I personally would love to GvG, however as I said I am back after 2 years away, the guild I am part of is inactive, 99% of people on my FL are offline, I have Rank 5 Hero and am considered low ranked scrub even in HA now (everyone want r10+ for parties) therefore I have no entry chance into GvG at all as things currently stand.

I hardly think I am the only person in this situation which again contributes to it being nigh on impossible to partake in GvG (it is hard enough getting a HA group lol)

While waiting for a full team, you could always sync RA, AB, Codex to improve your skills. Heck, jump into CB while it's here. While it's not the same, there are some things you can pull away from the experience- skill recognition, timing, pressure.

You also have the option to ask to guest with some of the folks who have offered you help.

Don't give up.

I Back this thread wholeheartedly.

I love Gvg, It's the only reason I've played for so long.

My only problem when I tried to get back into it after a few months play was the fact that Guild Pugging/Smurfing lower ranks.

As an established mid ranged guild with full core online, had a hard problem beating 4 top 50 players offense and the Henchie backline. That shouldn't be able to happen.

It's very hard on morale to improve if you get stomped on by people when all you are trying to do is improve at your own level and all you get is people in top 100 against you because they are smurfing/pugging because they can't get games at their own level.

The damage was done to Gvg a long time ago. I'm hoping that with this thread and that Anets actually going to try help GvG out again that they can undo what damage is done and things will improve.

I am playing GW for 3 years, but never even considered trying GvG. In our guild, we only abused the GvG button for 1 vs 1 fun fights. Generally, I associate PvP play with disrespect, elitism and verbal abuse, so I ignored and abstained from every PvP. Only recently, I learned that this may be the case for the random-format PvP like HA or RA, but not for the more organized format of GvG.

It's funny coincidence, but just 2 or 3 weeks ago our former guild leader, who left the guild for joining a GvG guild, showed up in our Teamspeak with a friend and invited us to GvG. He talked quite passionate about it. They had a long break and wanted to rejoin the game.

They offered to lead us, help us to set up a team, providing us with team builds tailored to our ability and character preference, and give general tactics lessons during play. It sounded interesting. Some people accepted the offer, and first test matches against ourselves were fun. The most difficult part is probably to get all players together at least one full evening per week. Let's see where he will lead us.

Nobody is a "complete newb", since everyone plays Guild Wars. You know the game mechanics, and how the skills work. Everything that's left then to learn is PvP specific stuff. There is a vast amount of guides and information out there, not to mention basic common sense will get you a long way. You don't need teachers and trainers for everything. Being a bit autodidact doesn't hurt. Did you learn everything you know now in PvE because someone held your hand and explained it?

It never hurts to read through the game updates, which is the fastest way to be up-to-date again. The basics never changed, just some of the stuff (tie-breaker, skills, ...) received an overhaul over the last years. Simply observing some matches afterwards as example of how it goes now, should get you up to speed in no-time.

There are enough guilds willing to learn you "the ropes", as long as you show a basic understanding of PvP (which can easily be gained by reading guides & stuff), and show enough dedication.

My proposition about the essay of the teambuild was simply to screen both. I in no way meant that you should be expecting a perfect insight into the exact mechanics of the builds, but as long as the recruit identifies roles, and is able to show at least some insight in skill usage (once again, easily learned by either some observing or plain common sense), that at least shows he has potential.

To summarize my point: you cannot expect veterans to pre-chew everything for you and "regurgitate" it into your brain. You'll have to show some effort yourself to learn how to PvP. GvGers being helpful when you have some questions, is something you can expect. But expecting an online full-time teacher is a bridge too far. Everyone plays this game to have fun, after all, it's not a "job".

I honestly think one of the biggest problems with the top end of american GvG is the fact that people just tend to devolve into assholes the more competitive the format gets. Of course there are exceptions like GeAr and various members from all guilds; but instead of wanting to improve to be at the top of the american GvG community, people want to improve to beat the people that have been shit talking them for months with little to no provocation. Pretending the GvG community is putting forth 100% effort to keep the game alive is wrong.

HAVING SAID THAT, I know for a fact that this system can be changed. One of the best methods I found for getting better is don't go it alone; try to find another guild (or guilds) that want to get into GvG and buddy up with them. Form alliances, guest, pug, and scrim. It seems pretty hopeless since there are so few american guilds left, but even making an attempt to branch out and make connections with other guilds will improve the atmosphere. If there are 80 people out there interested in GvG but never really bothered because of elitism or the community, forming guilds and alliances and trying to improve together will basically double the american community.

EDIT - I also want to make sure new players know that asking players off obs DOES work. In general, you can get help from many top players. I was mostly discussing what happens when new players actually do try to reach that competitive level of the top guilds.