PvP Update and What Went Wrong

Why should it be easier for a PvP player to get skills as rewards than PvE?

Step away from your PvP world for a minute and actually think about this...

It takes 20+ wins in HoH, or some other similar PvP environment to get 1000 faction points? And you're doing all of that at level 20 already. The PvE's started at level 1, and worked their way to level 20, unlocking various items and skills along the way.

Why should it be easier to unlock things, just because the PvP player has decided to take the short road? I play PvP, as well as PvE. If anything, I think A-Net has shortened the time it takes to get various items as a PvP player.

It takes time to get to level 20, in PvE. Time that the PvP player doesn't, on average, want to spend. And that is fine. But, why should the PvE player be penalized, by making it easier for the PvP player to get items, armor, weapons and runes? This game was intended, as I see it, as a combo of PvE and PvP. One would compliment the other.

I think that they gave the PvP only players too much with this update. I think PvP should spend a similar amount of time as the PvE player unlocking everything. If they ever do the UAS/UAR/UAW, that will completely unbalance this game. There has to be a reason to PvE. To do anything more than A-net has done, removes that reason.

PvP, or competitive play, in anything except Guild Wars is NOT about getting the gear you need to succeed. Skill, tactics, strategy... etc. Those are the things that appeal to most PvP-focused players, not getting things in order to do it well.

PvE is about getting stuff, so add PvE trinkets, clothes and glo-effects for their weapons. Allow PvP players to focus 100% on pure skill and strategy. Unlocking stuff is a PvE play mechanic that doesn't fit in PvP. Let each component build on their own unique appeal traits and not mix them up.

I want my five dollars as I pointed out of the whining not just PvP but PvE as well immdediately following changes (complaining about fixes when there is no way you could have ascertain yourself how easy or difficult something in less than 24 hours, is just plain ignorant. This goes for both PvE and PvP.)

Do want my paypal account number? I'll take M.O or cashier's check. I wouldn't send cash as I can't guarantee that I received and you will not get any proof. Let me know how we can work out these details.

arrendo ... i was on the CS ladder running in spot 114ish ... your making a poor judgement on this ... you really are. You CANNOT COMPARE THIS TO games like CS, SG, and HL2 ... I dont know how many times you have to be reminded ... but here goes again ... this game is revolutionary ... it is not based strictly to standards set by other games ... thats why it ranks number 1 in the stores since release. Most games rank number 1 for a 2 week lifespan ... this game is not meant to be like the past old standards ... it sets new standards for a new genre ... it is a combo game as stated above and THAT'S WHY IT SELLS ...

I played around with the system all day yesterday, my only real complaint is the cost of skill points. 2000 for a superior rune of your choice is perfectly reasonable - 1000 to maximize an upgrade component is downright generous. Faction comes in a lot faster than the numbers might indicate.

Skills are still badly overpriced, though. I've talked to a lot of people about it and no one is seriously considering unlocking a skill with their faction points until all runes and important upgrades are out of the way. Runes and upgrades are orders of magnitude more difficult to unlock normally, while unlocking skills is a neccessary part of PvP - and the pricing scheme does not reflect that.

For people sick of the skill point grind, this is a non-solution. One 'skill point' a night from *very* successful tombs runs is just not going to bring back the people who got sick of grinding skills. I'd say the cost of a skill unlock should be at least halved, if not dropped even a bit more.

It's a good system, the prices just need to be adjusted. The rewards do heavily encourage GvGing over all other PvP modes, but considering that GvG was basically pointless until now I don't think that's a bad thing. They just need to keep in mind that this is supposed to be a PvP unlock system, not a GvG unlock system.

Peace,
-CxE

to a certain extent you have to realize that GvG is PvP ... just not arena style ... I'm glad they encouraged the GvG because too many guilds sit uneasy not wanting to GvG and that really needed to be addressed. Poeple are scared to go down on the ladder so its always ... 'can this be unrated?'

I mean come on ... let there be life ... its a game. I agree the skil points should be halved ... they seem a little high ... but maybe that will come in the future ... they have to balance it with the community and test it out first this week.

YARGH!!! Evey update this happens, seriously, sometimes I feel like just never coming to a GW forum again.

As a PVP&E'r I love the new system... a little low on points givem for arena matches... but I like it. BUT!!!! This system would be 10000x better if ArenaNet introduced MORE maps. DO you see the guild wars map? It's like all... blank accept for 3 dots... your Guild Hall...Arena.....Tombs o.O Whhat I would like to see is an addition of new PVP "tournaments" and "maps". For instance, weekly tournaments in the dessert. Participate you get XXXX points, top 3(or w/e) you get XXXXXX points Win-win (plus points for kills). Then in the jungles, why not some Capture the flag, or Free for all maps That would be one bad ass scenario!! Think about it 8vs8, and the winner gets extra points The game needs to fill-out the map with new contests, and new battle arenas(like FFA). With more ways to win points I think it would be sooo much more fun.

~prime

Yeah, really. You'd think they'd show at least a little gratitude, but, no, it's "bitch bitch bitch" the minute the update goes live.

ya, i'm getting sick myself of the crap that people post here myself. better not to egg it on


can the mods make a forum for those who are complaining? i'd never visit it. :P

he was talking about algren cole and if u had any wits about u, u'd be able to tell. but i gotta say that in general ur posts never add anything of worth to the discussion. all u seem to be able to do is parrot what the elite pvp'ers say. when it comes time for any in depth comments, ur analyses are always shallow, unoriginal and mostly wrong. normally i'm not a confrontational guy, but u can't seem to keep from posting ur comments everywhere and it's getting more and more difficult to ignore.

please get smarter. or failing that, refrain from posting inane comments.

Us roleplayers need to infest some time as well. if the prices were lowered it would be nothing to just get some elite skills.
I realy like the pvp thing. ( I realy like the pvp part as well ) and i think its good that the prices are so high for the skills. Ok perhaps variable prices for the runes. Minors arent so good as Majors so why pay so much for them. I was assuming that anyway before I seen prices.
In a day ( perhaps an hour of pvp ) i got like 116 faction ( 8 consecutive wins )
If you havent got so much time at hand every day, than ure going to take longer than someone who has got a lot of time. And you just got to accept that. I cant play for 5 hours on most days. Just like 2 hours or something.
Isnt this the same thing when ure hobby is fixin cars or painting
What are you going to do when ure friend or neighbour has more time and finishes his cars or paintings earlier?

He is completely right. If only people realized this, there would be no argument. Don't think the new system unlocks skills faster than the old way? Do the old way then, rather than coming and complaining for nothing

It's not for nothing. You know better than this Manadar, I am sure you understand that technically it IS an alternative, but is NOT a practical alternative or fair one.

My brother just got off phone ... 1st time noob tested this faction crap out with a template .... 2 hours over 500 faction points ... stop crying and start battling ...

^^^ this guy speaks the truth. i got 300 in 2 hours ( a bit less actually). maybe you just suck pvp joke. you got asked for pvp option. here is pvp option. perhaps they didnt make it too powerful at first because the pvers might start complaining. For now, im happy its in, i had almost gave up on actually unlocking the skills pve. What a toil....... hail anet!

EDIT: Probably everything I have said has already been said in this thread, but still, it's compiled here I guess, and it shows my personal point of view.... Plus some new messages were posted because I didn't actually post this until like 20 minutes after writing it.


I honestly don't see any reason to complain at all about this update, no matter what you are complaining about. It just makes it so you can unlock skills using you're prefered game mode. Before, you were forced to play PvE to unlock skills, runes and mods, but now if you enjoy PvP more, you can still earn them, even if it is slow. The skills part doesn't mean much to high level players, but it could be useful if you want to earn skills for classes that you don't have a character with (and if you aren't willing to change secondary professions in PvE). Aside from skills, it's also great to be able to get runes and mods without having to play a whole lot of PvE, and you can choose which ones you get through this method, whereas in PvE you have to identify them, and so it's random. This system is especially good for people (like me) who play lots of both PvE and PvP, and whose only current goal is to gain things like runes and mods. Getting elite skills is fairly pointless through this method because of the price, but there's no reason for ANet not to include them, and the price makes sense relative to the others, which are not too expensive at all. It will take a long time to get them, but the system is meant for people who PvP a lot, so it won't take any longer to unlock mods and runes than if you farmed and got lucky and identified things.
To sum it up, don't complain at something that speeds up unlocking mods and runes, and it makes sense for skills to be there, and if you think that using faction for skills is pointless, then don't do it, just get some runes or mods. It's still worth it for them.

I play mainly PvE, I don't really have any interest (yet) in PvP, so as far as I'm concerned if this patch helps those PvP'ers get what they want quicker then more power to them. I have no problem with that.

Someone already mentioned this, but anyways, it seems ANet didn't intend for this new system to help us unlock all skills in one day. It was meant for us to much more easily unlock all those weapons and runes we were missing. At least now you can go into Tombs or GvG knowing you have the best equipment possible, along with 8 skills of your choice. Noone should have an advantage on the battlefield. More skill grinding gives you a wider selection of different tactics, but you're no more powerful than the other team you're facing.

300 in two hours? Man, what was I thinking!? If I knew I could earn points at a rate that would give me roughly one skill every six and a half hours, I'd be all over it!

Right now, PvP rewards is not a viable way of collecting skills. Runes and weapon mods yes, but skills no. So what are we supposed to do to unlock every skill in the game? Play through it three times? Or should we just get used to only playing with the two classes we start with?

Wow, yet another thread with people hurling childish insults at each other and basically foaming at the mouth. It's like going into a bar and overhearing a conversation like this:

"I don't like the pretzels"
"The pretzels are fine, are you stupid or something?"
"They're too salty, you moron"

*fist fight ensues*

While I know you probably aren't referring to anyone in particular, but I've been trying to refrain from using insults because, as you said, it's childish. However, you've got to remember that a large portion of the players in the game are children, and naturally that extends itself to forums pertaining to the game.

The insults don't really bother me though, as it's usually only the people who can't come up with a halfway decent argument for their point of view who have to resort to attacking other posters instead of attacking their arguments.

UAS UAR will not happen outside of alpha beta builds cause everyone will always and forever use the most elite of everything never looking at other skills or runes, or upgrades again. thus no reward for being good EVER. because nothing left to unlock for a reward.

My opinion... take it, leave it, ignore it, tell me to f--k off and die (as normally happens), I don't care anymore... and neither does NCsoft and ArenaNet. As started on many many posts on the subject. UAS/R is Gone. face it.

The beauty of this game is that there are no "best of the best" skills. Everything has it's counter, and the number of combinations of skills you could use in a build is enormous. Considering that at most you'll be playing with 8 of those skills at a time, I think it would take quite a while to try out every single combination of skills, so it would take some time before people started clamoring for new ones.

In my opinion, there are only two reasons someone could be against the UAS/R. First, they may feel like all the time they spent unlocking skills goes down the drain with UAS/R, but the whole point behind UAS/R is that they don't have to put anymore time down the drain in order to play the game how they want to play it. The second reason I've come up with is that some people enjoy grinding and will do anything within their power to preserve it. Of course, there isn't much I can say to these people other than to look into a game called Progress Quest. I hear it's really great if grinding is what you like doing.

I used the UAS/R in beta, and I liked it fine.. I'm just saying the developers ALLOWED it for beta builds to test them only. its the beta people that feel slighted by the fact they have to play the game to unlock. Whatever.. I played both I liked both, and I still like it even without everything unlocked, I'm just getting sick of people not reading the dozens of posts out there saying that arenanet WILL NOT be doing the UAS/R except in alpha beta builds, and complain about it constantly.

What is UAS/R?

I'm not bitter that I have to play the game to unlock all the skills, I'm bitter that I have to spend HUNDREDS OF HOURS playing the game to unlock all the skills. Sure, that may be great for losers with too much time on their hands, but I'd think that most casual gamers would like to be able to have access to all the skills sometime before the next expansion comes out. Should they get shafted, just because they can't put in the same kind of time a hardcore player can? They paid the same money for the same game, what makes them entitled to less than the hardcore player?

And to the people claiming that we need to work to earn our rewards... I don't play videogames to work, and I doubt that many do. I play them to have fun, which is the intended purpose of a game. There is enough work to do in rl already without having to extend it to a place where we should be able to just have fun.

Would you have fun if the end goal was given to you right away, without any effort?

IE: beating the final boss of the game in the first five minutes of the game with only one hit

Let me illustrate here..

Half-Life 2 / Doom 3

Fun games. Great games. Plenty of action, plenty of difficult spots the entire game through.

The end? Plenty of buildup and suspense, you're sweating it expecting a major battle.. then they toss you a battle pathetically easy to beat.

They handed the ending to me and I felt disappointed and lost my feeling of 'fun'.

If you had no motivation towards skill/upgrade acquisition, you would play the PVP for a month and then move on to another game.

Under the current system, your motivation can be to create another character to play in PVP.

I like the new PvP system because now I don't feel like I'm wasting time when I PvP... "oh wow..I've earned 20,000 XP on this PvP character... lets go buy a skill...oh...wait"

Most are missing the point here. It's not a matter of making the game easier. Its making the game where people dont HAVE to do PVE. I have gone with 4 characters all the way through to the end. Still don't have all the skills unlocked even doing all the quests. I have all the major/minor runes unlocked and a vast majority of the top items. I am still missing a LOT of superior runes. I thought this would be a cool way to end my cinematics nightmare but good grief.

I know alot of people are posting here before actualy testing this stuff out. Did you people not see this?
"Runes must be unlocked in order, from minor to major to superior. For weapon upgrades with variable statistics, you must unlock one lower power upgrade before unlocking the maximum power upgrade."

This is insane. Its not like you pvp for 6 hours to get 3k points and unlock what you want. Hell most people don't earn 3k in 6 hours. Its more like 18 hours. Bottom line is this game now has as much grind as any other game I have played without having the vastness of other games. It's like shooting yourself in the foot over and over again. I have to say if the grind isn't reduced I will just go back to the daoc non toa server. Its not as balanced but the game has more depth and I have already done the grind there. I thought this could be my casual game to play.

As far as easy, yes I want it handed to me. I want to kill you in pvp then laugh about what happened in voice. I don't want to go man if we just had access to these skills to counter.... If I wanted pve, I would play a pve based game. This is where AN screwed up. They tried to make it both games instead of sticking to the orginal PVP aspect and telling the pvers to go play Endless Quest or sit on a sharp stick. They are rewarding PVP play with BS PVE rewards.

Err...no.

Let's assume you have a decent guild, because if you don't, you should find it before whining here. You create an effective build, you call targets and such. You are 8 human players (pretty important pre-requisite). You just go to your little, nice, happy Guild Hall and arrange some matches.
If you win you get at least 200 pts each time, but lets assume you lose. In that case, you'll have to face more and more crappy guilds, which means you will probably win many times. Your rank goes up, a bad bad guild challenges you, your rank drops. You fight with crappy guilds again, you win. Then you lose. Then you win. Repeat.

Try it for like 3 hours, and you'll get around 2k pts that you've earned while having fun and (hopefully) playing in a competitive way while learning something by your losses.

My Guild isn't Uber (ranked 150-200 right now) and I got 2400+ faction points last night, plus almost 2000 tonight playing two hours.

Come on. Stop crying like babies already, please.

You know, one thing I don't understand. People complaining that they have to PvP in order to unlock more stuff for PvP, so they can PvP If you get a lot of faction, you're doing well, and it's not like that extra skill will make you #1 all of sudden. If you don't - it's not like it's because of that single rune you are missing and which, once unlocked, will let you defeat anyone without breaking a sweat.
In short - don't PvPers play PvP anyway? And now they can get something extra for it?

So what you want is to not play this game

I mean.. EVERYONE wants this goal so what do we do?

Give everything to everyone and then label them all winners?

It's like you're seeking to beat a game that has no ending

you know I think someone just posted the reason why most of these complainers do not play GUILD wars. they play Hall of Heroes and Arenas. because they can not get to the guild hall cause they have not joined one or they have not run to lions arch to get a guild hall in PvE. So NOW I am understanding the problem some of you have... sure If I depended on PvP Tombs or arenas alone, there would be a lot of time between unlocks. but Guild battles results in a unlock every few hours of play. If anything this PROMOTES GUILD wars above all else... so I like it even more now.

Plus I already had most of the majors unlocked through PvE, so I started unlocking Superiors today... Unlocking in order is NO problem to experianced players.

oh and UAS/R = Unlock All Skills / Runes ... it used to be called that a long time ago for short.

Recently people are saying UAW now too which is Unlock All Weapons.

So the Brief for all of them is UAS/R/W.

Probably each of these has been said by someone else, but not all at once. =)

The PvP update is clearly a step in the right direction.

Starting the prices high to start and then going down is obviously better than starting low and then raising prices later. Let's all presume that Arena Net is smart and knows this, and expect that if prices change at all, they will go down.

ArenaNet clearly wants to enable players to purely play just PvP. It's worthwhile to pretend that PvE doesn't exist and examine the system that exists otherwise.

At the same time, PvE obviously is a bar that can be used to measure PvP. If it's wildly easier to build a good PvP character in either PvP or PvE, then there's a balance problem. Since PvE has its own special considerations for character development (the storyline, balance vs. monsters over time, etc.), From a practical viewpoint, PvE has to set the rate at which skills and items are acquired. So Arena should try to make PvP match up to the current PvE rate.

One of the best ways for Arena to do this is to highball the price, watch for a couple weeks to see how long it does take people, and then they can adjust the price so the rate will match. This makes us all guinea pigs, I guess, but at the same time it's clearly just giving us stuff we didn't have before. So I won't worry that it's overpriced just yet. Because no one really knows how long it will take.

This benefits the combination PvE/PvP player the most. They can get most skills by playing through PvE, and pick up a few hard to get skills by spending Faction.

Wow, I really should check my threads out more often *blush* I see you have some problems.

That's what I hope everybody will soon understand. Arena Net offered this as an alternative, but it is not a practical one because the faction costs are horribly high for skills. Runes are meh, the minors and majors should be a bit less, but I think superiors can do fine where they are currently at. The nice bonus they gave us was the weapon unlocking thing. That's actually helpful because it's insanely hard to unlock max stat modifiers.

Also, I really think that UAS/UAR should be put to rest. I've been pushing for it since before release, and I know that Arena Net won't do it. There is no point, it is evident they want us to grind to unlock everything. Fact of the matter is that this patch is flawed. The system works, I'll say it again, but it doesn't matter if it takes too damn long to get a basic skill or an elite skill.

Please, if you want to flame each other like morons, use improper spelling, discuss about UAS/UAR, argue about whether PvE fanboys should even give a damn, or anything that is just way off base and not pertaining to the patch, don't do it in this thread.

It's sad to see people calling others "whiners" or "babies". This is an open discussion where people are entitled to their opinions, it is rather those who supress the voices of minority (or majority depending on one's perspective) that are the "whiners". They cannot bear to see instability or dissent. Without ideas this game would be another boring MMORPG, please don't supress creative minds, it hurts all of us.

I would rather get the opinions of real PvP players rather than PvE players who pop into arena once in a while but really don't care too much about what they've unlocked or the importance of strong team builds.

I believe this patch was intended for PvP fans to be able to play PvP and unlock EVERYTHING they needed at a pace equal to or faster than that of PvE. However the pace is much slower, the amount of PvP matches required to unlock one skill is not at all proportional to that in PvE. The arguement that we shouldn't complain because we are doing what we like is HORRIBLE. That is saying that PvEers are required to beat the game 2 times through before they unlock the monk class or the ability to use elite skills and that they shouldn't complain because they are doing what they like.

I enjoy PvP for the PvP. If there is a string or incentive attached, I better be able to get it fairly easily, just like the incentives for playing through the game in RP mode. However the PvP incentives are so hard to attain and so NOT WORTH THE TIME that I would rather grind UW for a 10ish hours and get my skill points that way. It's easier, faster, and guaranteed.

Make the amount of time and wins in PvP drastically decreased to have a pace equal to that of getting the skills in RP. And don't worry about technicalities of 3 hours to get an elite, that shouldn't have even been a problem (they moved elites from skill trainers after betas). If there is an OBVIOUS advantage to doing something one way or another, it's not worth it to do it the hard way.

This is a classic example of Arena Net trying to appease the public with a half-done patch that shows their neglect towards not only their customers but the future of their game as well. Instead of drawing people back, this patch has appalled many a PvPer and been "the straw that broke the camel's back."

That's what went wrong. Don't let your biases get in the way, it's evident that you are a fanboy of PvP or ArenaNetPvE when you start swearing and using poor grammar and spelling. I won't bother reading your post, you are obviously not thinking deeply enough into the situation, and your post most likely won't introduce anything of value into our discussion.

I hope that everybody can understand why many of us feel that this patch was not as good as it was made out to be, and why many of us feel that we have been lied to. If you actually take the time to understand what I'm saying you will know that I'm just asking for a reduction of Faction costs and basically an explanation as to why this went down the way it did.

I couldn't agree more forums are a place to share your views, unpopular or not. Seems to me the two types of gameplay are close enogh linked that you can't do one without affecting the other.

I think the high requirements are justified. I didn't read the whole thread, but if you reduce the amount by a factor of 10 the outcome will be completely rediculous. Only 300 faction points for an elite? Whatever.

I believe this system is fine how it is. This is an additional reward for honing your skills in battle. It is not really a viable way to unlock all the skills. Just get your hands dirty with a little PvE and you won't have to worry about the high cost of the skills.

The thing is if you read the Update notes before the patch you will notice it says being able to advance your character whichever way you like. Currently its only kind of true you still have to PvE to get even near what you would get in PvP there is not really much option, Added to that you must still PvE to get the locations to unlock with what you earned in PvP.

Many of US? Most people are fine with the new update, its only those people who never can be satisfied. If you reduce faction costs, Then people will start complaining that it is too easy. If you dont like it, play pve or dont play at all.

Well, I didnt read all the previous posts. I just wanted to say that for the first time I like everything in an update (compared mostly to the runes updates). I beleive it is most rewarding. I was quite happy to notice I made 16pts in a single random 4 vs 4 match. I beleive they have tweaked it to be the most balanced possible (unless someone find an exploit or something).