PvP Update - June 2nd, 2010

Every wand, staff and focus in the game should be obtainable with all attribute possibilities, especially in this case as its a new release and people have been asking for that so long.

Yet again. No love for wands, staves and foci.

Really only two decent changes here:

AB Spies = Great change. Probably the best thing in this update. It's been months since I saw AB this active and the ability to switch sides means less one sided matches. I actually had two 450 - 500 matches in a row. Before it was always a Luxon > Kurzick curbstomp.

And the second is...erm...uhmmm...

DERP


Well gratz anet out of all the things you did at least one thing was good this time!

The AB spy/Imperial Faction were the best parts of the update but... No random map rotations for AB, No increase to faction in AB to match JQ/FA, No bug fixes for FA and they came close to fixing RA but instead of title points they put in cash rewards. Also codex can still go burn in hell.

Great Job Anet!

/end sarcasm

Hopefully this will put an end to my frustration on wining 4 games in ra and losing in the 5th (before it was extremely annoying to lose in the game where you actually get points).

There is still to work in pvp area but well hopefully this will not be the last pvp update (not related to skills).

@Swingline pve players are used with cash rewards, so I kinda think the cash reward is an attempt to get some pve players to pvp.

"Still, we hope this bonus, coupled with a new system that's less irritating, will please veterans and newcomers alike"

really had to laugh when i read that, the glad title is a joke now and they still didnt bring ta/hb back, how could any "veteran" be possibly happy about this update

Their poor staff allocation is not my problem and not at all within my control. The bare minimum I'm requesting is fixes for bugs which have been there for several years.

There's a cop-out excuse for everything wrong with their game and rather than the problems being attributed to the developers, it's somehow, bizarrely, the playerbase that takes the wrap.

If you report someone for verbal abuse, it's your own fault for not pre-emptively using the ignore feature of for having the filter off. Trust me. The leecher system was completely delegated to a player-policed format which many players won't use or don't know how to use. The /stuck bug which has been there since 2005 has been addressed merely by adding a clumsy command so as to delegate the problem to the player.

As for testing, it takes time and effort, I'm sure, but that isn't a problem I can fix. Whatever happened to their free labour test krewe?

My gripe in a nutshell is: if you want to incentivise a playstyle then sort the associated problems with it, but don't just go around adding new stuff. It's laziness.

AB update was definitely great, I've seen SO MANY PEOPLE changing guilds and leaving friends just to max the titles.

The PVP rewards were decent, but the question now is whether they will stand the test of time. Many believe PVP (particularly GVG) will die down again within a week.

A bit longer in codex, until everyone gets their titles for HoM.

RA still seems to be as dead as of recent times. I would like to know though, do the points increment in RA. Say on the second win, you get 1 point, 3rd win-2 points, 4 wins-3 points? I haven't been active enough to try it.

However I do believe these updates were too little too late.

No, you start getting increased points after five wins, I believe.

Oh please, it's no more of a joke than it was before. Do you really think that winning in RA actually took skill? It was luck more than anything - luck that your team was half-decent, or that the ones you were facing weren't.

All it does is make it so that if you don't make it to five wins in a row, your time wasn't completely wasted.

I'm not entirely sure how it scales but i believe you get 100 points for a 25 streak.

Also sadly i believe your probably right, i'm feeling slightly more optimistic but i don't think activity will sustain longer than the month.

So much stuff still needs nerfing, whilst initially the activity is overcoming this i think it'll overshadow it after the monthly.

Enjoying it while it lasts though, getting ladder matches any time of day is a very nice change, and AB is very playable again

winning in TA actually took skill yea

This update was very decent.

Suggestions for further improving PvP on all levels directly or indirectly, not mentioning skill balance:

Important and obvious
- Reintroduce Team Arena.
- Unlock skills, insignias, runes and inscriptions for PvP characters (or at the very least for one character or profession per account).
- Improve the servers (especially in regards to ping).

Minor suggestions (or with less consensus)
- Introduce in-game online and offline messages i.e. letters.
- Reintroduce Hero Battles.
- Disable <9 req items in PvP for PvP characters.
- Remove the flux effect.
- Introduce a guild "zaishen chest" for money and items in guild hall.

Several of these suggestions are easy to quickly implement and I think an overwhelming majority of players would agree with most of them. PvE would also be improved (letters, guild chest and ping).

Umm...that stuff is already unlockable/unlocked. Everything you unlock through PvE or with Balth faction is available for every PvP character on that account.

Unless there's something else you mean by that, but I don't really know what.

Not necessarily, playing through PvE doesn't unlock everything for you unless you specifically work for it. I've been playing for nearly 47 months and I've still got stuff locked.
And of course it's impossible to create an immediately competitive alt-account for PvP without spending a ton of cash.

It's all unlockable, but I never understood why A.Net made it so not everything was immediately unlocked.

Yes. Over time, better players win more matches and go on longer streaks than worse players.

What percentage of all unlocks do you really get from playing through the game normally? It might be higher than it used to be, since you need to unlock skills for hero usage now too, but it's still a reasonably significant obstacle to getting into PvP straight from PvE.

Wow, i want to come back into gw just to see what the hell is going on. I got mixed feelings about the glad title, feels like gw has morphed a lot. I'm not sure what I'll find when i log back on after i dl it again. Ah guild wars, I don't know how to quit you.

And yet still team makeup is generally going to be a deciding factor more than anything else. Even a good player is going to lose more often than not if the team is terrible. That's the main reason why I find RA frustrating (not that I think I'm good and being held back by others, because I'm really not, but because it's such a crapshoot).

Honestly, I don't know, as I'm one of those "get every skill ever" people, so between playing PvE and using faction, I have just about every skill unlocked on my account. I do have nearly every rune/insignia/inscription unlocked, and I really don't farm, so I'd say that you probably can unlock a decent percentage of things just playing PvE. Of course, you don't need everything, of course, and I'd say that unlocking max weapon mods and inscriptions is more time-consuming than skills.

In an individual instance, perhaps. That kind of thing evens out considerably over time, though. If you're good enough, you'll be carrying your random teams to wins that a replacement-level player would never have gotten.

As for unlocks, in my experiences trying to get new players to GvG/HA, there's invariably people who don't have the right skills or equipment. You can't assume that they'll be able to run whatever you need them to, which is a pretty big deal. This can be mitigated somewhat by scheduling your activity, I suppose, but that's heavily dependent on how much interest there is. It's something they'll actively need to work on; if they're only looking to play one of the organized formats as an experiment, it's kind of a turn-off.

In other news, judging from ladder history, guilds at the bottom of the ladder are already being used to sync, presumably for boxes. I'm curious to see if Anet is planning on dealing with them.

hero battles too please

Another plea for a return of Hero battles. Just disable /resign and GG.

I'm a little-above-average PvE player, though never did any speedclears but DTSC, played through the game with 1,5 characters, never farmed anything for too long except for Glint's. I'm a beginner PvP player, although quite decent in RA and Codex, though not ranked high in titles; in Codex, not ranked at all. I used to be a good trader and farmed the cash for my titles in Kamadan, but that's irrelevant, as i never used a single Flame of Balth, nor i bought more than maybe 10 skills via trainers.

I have everything unlocked.
Even before the unlocking, getting a needed skill wasn't a problem. I tried to follow the rule of having at least 3k Balth faction at any given moment, obtained via ZE usually, sometimes via JQ, just in case i needed to unlock something at this very minute. Even without it, relogging onto main PvE char and paying 1k at certain skill trainer ain't that big deal - and most useful skills are trained somewhere.

What made it hard to get into advanced PvP is, mainly, the elitism coming from people who play those formats seriously and lack of real interest from people who don't.
Being myself a person who'd like to get into HA/GvG and focus mainly on that in GW after completing HoM, i really tried hard to achieve it. First i hoped to get PuGs in HA, even if created by myself, consisting of rookies with no rank (like me) - we'd at least see how it works, try some builds out, get a bit of field experience. To no avail. Without r6+, your chances to PuG in HA are next to none.
The next obvious step was to join a PvP-oriented guild. I was in several of them, and each of them had at least one of three greatly repulsive obstacles on my way to PvPhood: (1) the elitism - despite saying they recruit everyone and let everyone play with them, learn in their groups and so on, one core group was present, with substitutes, letting rookies play maybe once in a week, maybe less. It was more so annoying as, if a strict elitist was the party leader, i got kicked out of the group after one-two failed fights, like it was solely my fault - and again, no place for newcomers to learn. (2) several guilds were filled with kids, either of age, mind or behavior - or all. Not trying to teach by telling what's done wrong and what are the basic principles to follow. Raging over on vent with their squeaky voices, pretty much about everything. I'm sure PvE guilds also have a decent amount of idiots in them, but the emotions of PvP easily let the inner moron out of many people. And finally, (3) lots of 'PvP guilds', especially those consisting of fresh PvPers, low ranked players, turn out to focus on personal PvE goals rather than decent organisation of PvP. It's occassional to set up for HA/GvG there and the group disbands after losing once, essentially staying on the noob level all the time.

I have no idea how to change the above, as there's a great gap in the mentality and attitude between dedicated PvPers and PvP newcomers.
What ANet did with JQ, FA, AB, RA and Codex attracts people to at least some PvP format. I think they can't do anything to get more people into HA/GvG anymore, it's up to the playerbase itself.

I can understand you very well. I can give you a couple of advice that can be very useful (at least is what I have learned).

First of all you have to decide what is more important for you, as your pvp experience is concerned. And mainly you can choose between
A) Playing with very good players
OR
B) Having fun playing.

It is very very very difficult that you find people you like and that are good at the game. Not because they do not exist, but because those people probably already are in a guild, play together and not always they are looking for new people to join.
People that at this stage of the game are looking for pugs to pvp, means that or they are new to pvp or they do not have a flist, because they are bad or bad tempered.
So you have to choice whether to go with flaming good players, or with nice bad players.

Once you choose your way, try to have fun. Try to build your friendships in HA first, entering unranked teams and building up a flist. Eventually you could end building a gvg guild and playing also in that format. It is not a easy way, it took to me and my friends almost 2 years to build a guild that can play in gvg with some results. But it is still possible. You have started in the right direction going into HA and trying to build your own team. Now its time to build your flist, and start playing with all the same people.

Tried to. I'm not easily turned down and i never whine or even get bothered by losing in those formats. My goal is to get decent myself and form a decent group one day, but i'm aware it's not to be done ad hoc. Still, i'm not familiar with most builds in HA, r-spike being the only one that i played more than once, as a ranger to that, and coupled with no ranking, it makes it damn hard to PuG there. Especially that other non-ranked players seem to be turned down faster, resigning from HAing at all, going back to PvE or RA rather than wait until eight non/low-ranked rookies assemble at once.

To be honest, i'm on a GW hiatus for a long time now, mainly because of my disappointment and hard times getting into the PvP community, even of 'bad players'. Think i'll stick to getting LDoA and grinding RA next time i get back to GW, unless something really changes until then.

You should try to increase your glad title and return to HA during events/zquest when more people are needed.
I personally take in team people with high glad rank, even if they are low ranked HA people, because I know thay can pvp good.
With glad 2-3 you can easily enter HA group 4/6
Try to learn the most used builds and focus on them. Try the build in RA and or AB/JQ/FA it is very helpful
Dont try to enter teams too much ranked, they will never accept, with rank 0-2, you can try to ask rank 3-4, if you are glad 1 and they are not stupid, they will accept you, especially if you run simple builds.
A good way to find team is to monk, even if it is not easy.

Nope. But why must I use a fugly pvp toon while I can use my nicer pve one. And ye, if I want to pimp my char, it'd better be one that can access everything in the game, not just pvp. Freedom FTW

Functionality > aesthetics in PvP.