Guild-hall and Arena.Net on PvP

Like Blackace pointed out, it's been way more than 3 months. And in that time, Anet has not only neglected the PvP problems, they've also worsened them in many cases (why would PvP'ers leave the game if it got better?)

On that note, I'm not even sure that the devs are aware of what's being said about their own game. It's either that, or they're just really retarded. Through reading Gaile's and Alex' replies to fan forums, they've lost all credibility for anyone in the PvP community to ever trust them. Gaile kicking all the PvP players from the alpha just makes this feeling even stronger. Not to mention her stupidity in not including some of the best players in the game in the alphas(e.g. Ensign and Zrave) just cause of personal grugdes.

Fanboys and morons will always glorify Gaile and ArenaNet. I want REAL changes that will make this game good

No, people buy games to play them. I don't want to switch, I want ANet to provide me the game they were supposed to: Real PvP that's fresh and interesting

She probably wasn't good at math in grade school so she hates anyone who supports arguments with numbers.

I'm sorry, I thought they were bringing in FREE updates. Guess I forgot they were working on bringing 2 FREE new areas in for pve'rs. I'm sorry I forgot these updates take TIME and EFFORT. I also seem to have forgotten that several other posts say that they're WORKING on IMPLEMENTING new features for pvpers and observer mode. I want, I want, I want. Things take TIME. Learn that. It was not false advertisement. If you were truly a hardcore fan, then you would be offering suggestions and calming the so called "raging masses of pvpers" instead of bitching about how anet ripped you off. I want everything now now now. You create a small company and try to create a game that will appease everyone. No matter how good it is, someone will whine.

It started a skill base game, and it remains a skill based game. If you want something to counter the latest trend, work for it. Whining "oh this is a grind lets start a new thread to complain about it," isn't getting you anywhere. If you're guild is such a majority, then surely you can find a competant team of 8(6) to go and find that "magical" skill that you need to help you counter everything and will shut you up.

Reminder:

Intelligent discussion with no name-calling on ALL sides of the argument. Do not let this thread descend into a flame war or it will be closed.

Thanks.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what you people say, fact is, most people who started playing this from retail aren't exactly playing consistantly if at all, let alone those who came all the way from beta. Most people who support zealously are new at the game, and can't really argue about game mechanics and purely go on good faith. The game has no lasting appeal, and it's been out less then half a year. That's a sinking ship right there.

Am I saying it's hopeless? No. I'm saying Anet isn't doing their best, or their just not doing it smart enough.

But let me ask you this, you say all those things I propose take a long time, well hell, then what the hell do you want to stream with your AMAZING technology which is SUPER FAST when your production rate is 10000000000x slower then your distribution rate? That's like a ASSEMBLY LINE making 1 Car A Month. WHY BOTHER? And no, it's not even a car I'm asking for, I'm asking for a damn tricycle.

This is hilarious. That and the occasional GvG and we are pretty much identical. Just like every other PVP player. Wait I play PVE too, but meh, it was burned in 2 weeks.

Or someone drank you under the table with Black Dyed Dwarven Ale.

Wait, does this mean B.Net's WoW might even outdo Guild Wars in PVP? I see a SWERVE COMING.

I give this game 3 months tops before even iQ quits.

No, a guild member tested PvE aggressively. In fact, he tested whatever the hell ArenaNet wanted him too; ArenaNet wanted to test Tombs? He was there. Wanted to test PvE? He was there.

He can be pretty vocal, but what it boiled down to was he got kicked out for voicing his opinion. I definitely don't hold the same position on what he was directly arguing, but the underlying basis for why we have these problems was absolutely true in what he said.

Seems like you need to speak quietly to stay in alpha.

Isn't that ironic then? The thing we laugh at Bnet for is that even their own fanbase laughs at their actions, but in GW, they won't even allow it =/ Ok ok, I'm getting outta line. To be fair, like they said, the team is split in two basically, so you can't expect much. A constructive thing would be to hire more people, I mean even blizzard is doing it, and their blizzard. Anet as good as their core was, can't be expected to polish and balance while still making something new. I think it's more of the upkeep and such, and their organization was lacking for future planning. I mean, we were promised updates and fixes on the fly, the streaming tech allows them to do so. But no fixes besides very big ones were fixed "right away". Clearly this tool of streaming tech has been undermined. I say use it more.

PvE skill: Firestorm + Lava Font
PvE skill: I farmed 1.2 million XP in a week with Zealot's Farming doing the same thing over and over

PvP skill: who cares ? every original idea you have gets shattered by NR
PvP skill: tactics and movement yes, I agree
PvP skill: finding broken combos and beating srcubs with it
PvP skill: a ladder that means nothing
PvP skill: holding the hall cause you have a drone that hits Oath Shot and Fertile

As I said, get a clue then post.


Counter NR builds and don't post until you can do it easily. Yea noticed how that one spammable destroys 200 of the skills in this game.

As I said, get a clue then post.

Making a condescending and insulting thread towards top level PvPers isn't getting you anywhere either

If by Bnet you mean Blizzard, no matter how disgusted I've felt leveling up characters in this game, my distaste for Blizzard can never be matched. That company is a joke.

But it might survive longer then Anet. What does that make Anet then? A one hit wonder?

hopefully

and I wouldnt call GW a hit, its a good selling game. Nothing spectacular.

Blizzard made Starcraft; that deserves them quite a fair bit of credit even if they did lose their reputation for making crap like wc3 and wow (while subtly trying to kill sc).

Looking through everything on this I honestly have no idea what anet is doing. Every plausible answer just seems so stupid I can't think they would be following that course of action. Kicking vocal/pvp players from the alpha? Spending 3 months on band-aid solutions? Do they want the game to fail?

do you guys know how hard it is to fix these things? You cant just open up a DEV version guild wars and type in "/Fix grind" and let the computer do its work. It takes lots of effort to figure out how to make it balanced, for example, if they took out NR people would be screaming for a enchantment-removal buff. Now how would they buff enchant removal? type "/Buff enchantment removal"?

The people who continue to play this game actively...

-Haven't beaten it yet
-Are waiting for it to be fixed
-Are in the top successful PvP guilds
-Have low standards for games

And those guys in the top guilds are starting to quit too... LotD is gone. So are many others. And I wouldn't expect to see Fi hit the ladder any time soon.

The PvP in this game is decrepit. GW died and was reincarnated as a piece of shit that only fanboys defend, and yet give no propper defense other than "A.Net is doing a good job". What the hell have they done? They needlessly screwed the PvP community, started kicking the PvP alpha guilds, falsely advertised, and changed the very basis of their "competive" online RPG. Not only is this game not competitve in the slightest bit, it's hardly a "Role Playing" game at all. (yeah, you might find someone in ascalon internation district 1 saying 'damn... the searing sucked, huh?'... but that's about it)

If they want to fix their game, which is obviously broken, all they have to do is the following... these ideas are collected from multiple people.

-Put in UAS. Quit making us do arbitrary tasks so we can have fun. It's annoying as hell. If you don't want to put people playing on RP characters at a disadvantage, UAS for PvP characters, and unlock all RP characters skills while in a competion area.

-Start balancing things again. Why the hell did they stop on release? I haven't seen spirit spamming to the point at which people get disconnected fixed yet, nor have I seen an end to putrid, air spike, and smite spamming. If you see the same cookie cutter build on the way to the Hall of Heroes for more than a week, there's something wrong. Fix it.

-Make PvP matches actually require skill. Take NPC's out of GvG. A team should die. Not be able to make a miraculous return simply because they camped out next to their Guild Lord, 2 arcanists, and a handful of archers.
Next, make Burial Mounds like Scorched Earth. No ganking.
Then, remove all King of the Hill maps. Including the hall of heroes.


You have the damn solutions given to you. Impliment them, or lose money (since we know that's all you corporate jackasses are about... like every other game developement company... ever)

I really have no knock on their games, but their support is horrendous. I can understand that you need to support your cash cow to the fullest, but why should I have to pay a monthly fee to get you to notice me?

I keep wondering whether or not enough content can be made to even satisfy PvErs in the first place - the only possible thing that springs to mind is the creation of new PvE scenarios that offer much more replay value than the standard explorable area.

I personally don't see the game as having longevity without working on making it a good PvP-focused competitive game.

I don't disagree with this in the slightest. My respect for blizzard support dropped to about nil when they shut down gamei and kept making useless patches which halfway seemed to be designed to screw up replays.

And obviously kicking all the PvP testers is the way to make a balanced game?

I actually had this conversation with a bunch of people in vent about the whole premise of why would Anet do this. If you look at it from a business point of view it technically 'could' make sense.

You make a decent game, and build up huge hopes of it. When it does go live it looks awesomely impressive, and gets rave reviews. Except to the alpha testers trying to fix issues within the game, no one really has a problem, and with no monthly fees people think they have hit the nail on the head. Everyone buys this game, and if for nothing else, buys it for the fact that it has no monthly fees. Anet sits back and makes millions.

Now here is where the fun part comes in. Why bother pleasing people from this point on? People leave the game because of the lack of improvements and update quality. Technically this benefits Anet because the less people playing the game after buying it already, means the less bandwidth and servers you have to dedicate to running the game. Anet already made their mark with reviews for the game, so their only threat would be from the alpha comunity of testers. Granted, the alpha community is a powerful one, but by far probably won't make an impact on the majority of potental customers towards the game (although they could make a lasting impression on the company and future games). Anet saves money.

Now comes the argument of future expansions. Hard core, die hard, gamers will always buy atleast the first expansion, hoping for something great and new. Anet will get business from that. The casual gamer can swing any way, and they will depend on word of mouth of how good the expansion is from others. If Anet were to release a major expansion, with huge changes to the game, they might even be able to get people that quit back (ie releasing content they should have been done in the first place). Anet also said that not having the expansion will not in any way 'gimp' you compared to the people who do. I find this impossible to believe (unless it was purely for PvE purposes), but that is for another topic. With a huge expansion release Anet may even be able to draw some people back to the game, making even more money. Anet wins again.

Anything after this really doesn't matter because the money was made, and profits can be used for future games, going in a big circle over and over.

I mean, yes it is of course just a humble theory of a few people (most of them probably drunk), but when you compare it to the dirty practices of most big business (which is exactly what this is remember, don't ever forget that), it starts to make alittle sense. Anet is paying a group of people to make the best solutions to this game to make money. Are they experts, only the number charts could tell, but never forget that you are a customer, and they are going to try and squeeze everything single penny out of you with the least amount of effort on their part.

Buisness projections have stated that there has to be an expansion around every 6 months with most of the players buying it to cover the costs, thus retention of players has to be a priority for their continued survival.

This is the part where if you piss off the community prior to the expansion, can and have, crippled other games' growth over time. What usually get left over after that are the die hard fans and the botters, with the occasional new guy. This person may or may not walk away after asking questions and getting flamed by the die hard fans.

Very OT, but i played that game to death, along with its pre-cursors before much of the balancing took place. While it was fun for the time, the balance and gameplay became stale as it was the same set of tactics to win over and over again. In reflection, i was not a huge clicks per second fan either, but more of a quality over quantity person. This generally drove my fps style, but meh whatever. The old versions of those games left a bad taste in my mouth, which will prevent me from ever playing them again despite what changes have occured years later.

Link please.

I left TGH ( did say A.Net but I wouldnt leave A.net) a long time ago because of this kinda stuff. Please tell me that their nonsense isnt carrying over the Guru...please.

Yes, I understand that PvP dosnt have a UAS button and that people are pissed because the BWE isnt like the release, but thats because it was a Beta Test. The reason people got all those skills is because they needed testing. There was only 3 days to test and that is not nearly enough time to test all the skills in the game UNLESS they gave the option for UAS. I guess maybe they shouldnt have.

I dont think people would be complaing about UAS if they hadnt gotten the Privlage (sp?) of using it in the first place. I do like the faction though. I think they should raise it a bit cause it is tough to get enough faction for it to be worth anything. Also I think they should delete the guild ladder seasonally. That way people who should be at the top will be. Anyways just my opinion

Those tests seem to be more about testing their bandwith and server capabilities opposed to testing the skills. You could also argue that they were also a marketing manuver used to have some near free advertising for the game under optimal conditions. 3 days of running numbers of skills could be done internally, while the conceptual argument for combinations could have happened at any point in time and did not require a player base.

if anyone has played Novaworld's Joint Operation: Escalation, that game seems to show what will happen to this game. Novaworld released a patch that severly made the game unfun, illogical and stupid. They finally said they would release a patch to fix it all. They said that about 1 year ago. They held beta tests and said the patch would be released in WEEKS. 1 year later, the patch hasnt happened. The community is in a uproar about everything wrong with the game, Novaworld ditched the Joint Ops' community when they made their new Black Hawk Down game.

For Arena.net's case. They have pissed off the crowds, say they will try and fix it and yet that hasnt came yet. They are going to make a new expansion. People will buy it thinking that it will fix everything. In a short while there will be people pissed, either on the PvE or PvP side and the game will die.

Also another example of this is Blizzard's [Battle.net's] Diablo 2: LoD. The players were split against hackers and legits. The Legits won, and a new patch came out fixing all that was wrong with the bugged items, but inorder to please the hackers, they made items similar to the hacked items. Eventually people missed all the hacked items that they had and all the fun it was, but eventually people moved to "Open Battle.net" where one can hack all they want. Eventually that got old. People still playing Diablo 2: LoD heard of a new game called Guild Wars. People from d2 all moved to GW in hopes that it would be better. The beta's were great compaired to the corrupted economy of D2. GW came out. GW thrived. A few months later, the economy was shot, patches did help, yet not enough and the people are pist. When another company makes a game, everyone will move to it, and then either it is great or it sucks. Whenever something with a game goes wrong, another game is made, people move to that game and then the process is repeated. Guild Wars seems to be heading down that path. But in a last ditch-effort for money, they decide to make a new expansion which will draw the crowds the false hope of it being the fix. The fix will do nothing, the creators will be richer and then the game will fail like all the others. Only a few will stay.

The game can be fixed even though it seems doomed, yet aparently they dont want to fix it. The only way to fix PvP is a drastic change. As said by Alex from gw even said it himself that there wasnt going to be a drastic change. If you dig a whole thats really big, it would seem that it would take just as much effort would be needed to get yourself out of that whole. By that one phrase, A.Net has just said they arent going to give the effort required. So theres a [email protected] good chance pvp will fail. Only the hardcore pve'rs will stay...

Yeah, pretty much. That was what I was trying to say. It is not about you people, it is about the money. And despite what you think, pleasing you does not necessarily mean more money. In big business the quick buck will always reign supreme.

*edit*
Yeah I suppose that may be true. I still think that people that are upset with how things are now opposed to how things were during the BWE's should relize it was a test and not a solid "This is how things will be when we will release the final game".

The reason I have such a hard time Believing(sp? lol dosnt look right to me..) that it was just a marketing tool is because I have beta and alpha tested many diffrent games and have made custom spells for NwN mods. Its alot faster if you have alot of people testing them and giving you feedback then it is to just have a few people test it to see if they are working correctly.

I know GW has been out awhile but sometimes I wonder if people understand that creating a spell or a system is not easy. Alot of the time it is a huge script with thousands of lines of nothing but code. Its not something that takes a day or two to do. I know people are prolly tierd of hearing that.

Also didnt the last update please alot of players at the beggining? Now all the sudden it seems to have pushed a button with the PvP community. Saying that they arnt working on fixing it is not really true. They had a full update that was nothing but fixing AoE and PvP things. If anything its a small step forward rather then a small step backwards.

Also.. the people who alpha tested the patch seemed to like it. Now that alot of them have been kicked off it seems it really sucks? Im not trying to start a fight with them but which is it? All the questions I ask are me seriously trying to understand what is going on and why everyone is so mad. Not to be an ass but I dont take anything serious from someone who was kicked off the alpha. Not because you are bad people or anything but your opinions may be a bit bias because you were removed...

So to make a long story short... play the game, or not play the game. You've already bought it, ANet has your money, the rest is inconsequential? Sorry, but I don't buy that. They need good sales on the first expansion to keep things going, and people bad mouthing the game on every gaming forum won't help. I have to believe they are at least trying. It might not be hard, and it might not be exactly what people want... but some effort has to be there.

Now about the hardcore PvPers... I hate to say this, but how self-centered can you be? I understand what you want, I've even sympathized with it. In response I was called condescending. How is that constructive? It's hard to generate sympathy with your position when all you do is lash out at people who offer their comments. I saw similar things directed at Aniewiel. There are more points of view than simply yours. You might want to consider what others have to say rather than dismissing it outright because it does not conform with your view of reality.

If there wasn't a reputation involved, Anet could just pull the plug right now and it would be no skin of their back. They have already made millions and millions of dollars off of the game. Anything after this is just milking it for what you can, stringing along people to buy the expansion, with little or no effort, getting what they can out of you as the customer.

That is business 101....

All I do is PvP, but that has to be the best thing said in this thread, and probably on these forums for awhile heh....

well aracos, its the fact that someone figured out they could "paint a picture" of evil arena.net by pasting their past said words with present and saying they are different. not that im saying that arena.net isnt shooting themself in the foot, but the hardcore pvpers wanted to play this game competitively, not play the rpg. i personally hate every second of rpg that i play. and yet thats all i do so i CAN play pvp. and when i make a miscalculation in my builds, i must start from scratch and play rpg more. I even created the Invincimonk Build by scratch so I could pvp, yet ended up using him for RPG so i could get gold to buy fissure armor to look good while i pvp, and also to pay for my new rpg chars i make to unlock skills. also the gold i get is used to actually BUY the [email protected] skills in the first place. another bonus is the exp gives skill points. and here i sit, bored with the game and more interested in the forums than the game which the forums are about because I cant try my good ideas because I dont have time for it or the patience because it would require massive ammounts of hours trying to skill cap, level etc. so really im pissed off at the grind that is screwing us over. the pvp'er are pist because arena.net said its a COMPETITIVE GAME meaning it was ment for pvpers. so dont say pvp'ers are self centered because they bought the game with their money and got less than they expected. they have a right to be pissed off....

yet still i agree with about pvp'rs lashing out at every comment, i see your point yet i belive both sides are wasting their time getting pist at eachother when a.net should be the ones that we are talking about... i guess... im just really tired right now

I never said they didn't have a right to be pissed off. I understand why they are, and I sympathize. If someone told me I couldn't play the game the way I wanted to, I would be pissed also. However... the attitude taken by the majority of the PvPers in this topic (and by extension their whole community) is NOT constructive to any sort of solution. They bad mouth ANet, call them liars, and then lash out at anyone else in the community that has a different perspective than they do. That's not going to help anything. It's not going to "win" you any support from the rest of the community, making it harder to apply to ANet for change. And if you all just threaten to leave... ANet has NO reason to do anything you say. So in the end... that approach is worthless.

I WANT ANet to fix PvP, I really do. I want this game to be successful long term, and for that to happen, everyone in the community has to feel like they are being heard. Personally I don't care if they give PvP characters UAS. It doesn't affect me at all. If they have to change skills around, so be it.

I'm willing to be part of the SOLUTION, not the problem. So let's have a constructive discussion about what can be, and needs to be done, not just flame away at anyone who's perspective differs from your own.

EDIT: Just saw your edit. We all get tired from time to time... even gamers.

When I bought the game I was promised that it would level the playing field between the Casual gamers that are low on time, and those that can afford to waste their life on computer games.

Right now it still takes dozens of hours of repeating old content to get the skillpoints for a new builds. Right now Guilds sill have to spend hundreds of hours of unfun work to prepare for PvP.
Right now many of the basic PvP issues raised during beta are still ignored.

Casual gamers in GW are screwed, and those for whom the wasted hours mean nothing are praising ANet for a job well done.

Then we were promised a solution and recieved - Faction. A method that's even slower at gaining skill points and only really helps those that already have a working GvG build.

How can you expect people to remain calm and be constructive when ANet is doing everything to frustrate them into leaving?

How can you expect the people that already cleared the game once and don't want to do it again to calmly tolerate the grind that's being forced on them by the poor skillpoint balancing?

How can you expect people to remain calm when facing months of problems with the way the ToPK Tournament (tombs) is implemented? (and open invitation for abuse and ganking)

People have self-respect and dignity. Everyone speaks out, whether privately among the guild or on a public forum. People are gradualy losing patience.
It is natural that the more time is wasted, without even a RECOGNITION of the problems, the angrier people get.

=/

P.S. Here is the proof of the lies. Right in front of you.
http://www.ncsoft.com/eng/ncgames/gw_intro.asp

yup :P yet its hard to say that protestors never win. thats practically whats happening. people said what they want, and now they are going to rant untill it happens :S and the amazing thing is- its 10:30pm and im tired WTF! i stay up till 2am every day!

EDIT: and vayrag, thank you for saying EXACTLY what this whole thread is about... that was kinda like copying and pasting there....

Ouch. You know when you alphas post about what is going on and that you were kicked maybe should add the truth to the reason instead of trying to mask as its because you were vocal..cause obviously you wernt vocal enough? Atleast thats what the quote from an Alpha tester just said at TGH.

Hmm hopefully that part about them not realeasing as much because they are working on chapter 2 isnt totally true hopefully they will contenue to work on both.

if by wednesday, we see no patch or state of the game letter, then refer to my 1st post of the thread on page 3... they will be doing what Novaworld did...

The idea that a pve char should be able to compete with a pvp char is a weird one. Aftr all, is UAS would be introduced, then people with pve chars can also make PvP chars. Its open to everyone. That said, since they have taken a stand on it, it will not be introduced. case closed, unless an uproar appears.
The post screams 'give us some more time to work with'. Having read many, many posts by betaplayers I can understand they feel fooled by ANet. However it is true that they try to fix their mistakes. They have introduced a way to unlock through pvp, and have 'fixed' that a week later. Altough not with the figures some wanted to see, it was still progress. Progress comes slowly, and patience among gamers seems...non-existent. Sometimes I get the feeling a few of them bitch around in ways they would never have the balls to do so in real life, because who can really touch you online?
Is the grind big? you bet ya! Will they fix it soon? Probably not to the degree everyone hopes, but maybe to a certain level. And the grind is (probably, havn't played it) still better then WoW with their dorky level 60's.

Someone asked for a link, and i provide a link

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=34555

The math is fuzzy, but the general gist of it is about right.

Also: No UAS, EVER. ANet has specifically said so and told us to stop being babies about it, even if the idea is sound.

This is exactly why I can't believe ANet simply doesn't care, as some posters have said. They need to have expansion sales to sustain the game.

You know, I used to be against UAS (as a mostly PvE player) and then I realized... it doesn't matter. They only people that would leave PvE permanently if they implemented UAS would be the people who don't care about PvE anyway. And those people tend to be a pain in the neck to party with. But... with ANet saying flatly, no way, it doesn't really matter. :P

I don't care about specific methods and your arguments over proposed solutions. Its way beyond that.

I just want to "Develop a richly personalized character that can explore multiple professions and hundreds of unique skills".
I just want to "Be rewarded based on your gaming skill, not hours played"

I shouldn't be discussing ways to implement it. I payed for it!
God damnit. =/