Arena.Net and PvP

Please read all the points, Please respond to these points and not with anger. If I can do it, please can you?


This is the exact post of Alex Weekes unaltered.

Anyways here is a constructive, *ahem this is a slight twist for me*, post.

First I would like to outline some parts of the post

1. He starts off calling us a "Vocal Minority", brushing us off.

I am sure PVP in guildwars is not just for a "vocal minority"

2. There is a concern several top guilds has left the game

In fact here is a partial list:

Club G
NOXi
Vanguard
Blood Eagle
Fianna
Eight Versus Eight
Nuclear launch detected Nu
Spirits of War
LE
Elitist Jerks
LLJK
DrkH
LtH (ladder to hell)
BBB
Te
PANK
We are Godzilla You are Japan
DFx
Bleeding Edge
The Grind
RRKM (rock and Roll Killing Machine)
AOU
Legion of shadow
PIE
PUG
LotD (officially)
Havoc Legion
CoR

I too would be concerned if all the guilds where leaving.



okay instead of addressing individual posts, I am going to make this post unique to GWguru


I am upset that A.net will brush us off as a "small minority" of gamers that play PVP, and want fair access to skills and abilities.

I believe PVP is for everyone, I believe A.Net Promised a game that rewarded skill not timespent.

There entire attitude towards this is the opposite.

They Protect PVE characters and players at the expense of the ENTIRE PVP community and will make no Compromises.

They will continue to let guilds leave by doing nothing.

It is time for "actions to speak louder then words", where is the action Arena.Net

Faction was a broken system which barely rewarded most PVP players, only the best of the best.



I offer a solution:

and would love mannered responses only. Please ARGUE THE TOPIC.

increase faction so every 10 minutes of PVP time unlocks a skill, every 25 minutes an elite, every hour a random rune (of all types)

This can be done by increasing the ammount of faction gained, or lowering the cost of items and runes down by a factor of 25x for arena, 15x for tombs and 10x for GvG.


Increase the ammount of skills on vendors and include 80% of elites on vendors. So we can actually choose what build we want in PVE at early stages of the game and be unique.

Increase the ammount of skill points PVE characters get so they can compete with more available skills and make use of secondary switches.

The increase should be 5x to PVE skill availability and skill points.

These are my figures.

600 hours of grind to unlock things

will turn into 120 hours.

Which will allow casual players a hefty access to skills, and veterans the ability to play the game how they want. With every counter available and the ability to play without restraints.

It would make PVP more accessible too, and more varied.

I would also call for an END to spirit spamming and FERTILE SEASON stacking with Ritual's health.

I agree that this was just a bit silly of Alex. However he does not mean PVP is a minority I think. He means that the TOP pvp guilds are a minority on the masses of players. But calling it a vocal minority is just silly. Offcourse they are a minority on the masses, but a very important minority at that. Just silly. case closed.

yeah, i read from someone that he thought Alex didn't get the scope of the problem, because 'several means 2 or 3'. By my own interpretation of words, several would indeed be the number of guilds you list here.


understandable, see point 1.

yep. the grind is bigger then expected. agreed.

Just to put this in perspective: the PvE -ers from Europe are being denied two PvE maps because of the PvP situation there. So don't give me this one sided approach of pve lovers, there are troubles on both sides of the pvp-pve spectrum. I do however see that the withholding of UAS seems a way to protect the PvE crowd. And personally I have no objections to UAS. It is fair game, since anyone can make a PvP char.


speculative, you can not see in the future.

there is much in pvp that needs improvement, agreed.

the reward is a bit slow, but looking from positive side for a change: it is better then it used to be. But granted: you can get skillpoints faster in pve then pvp. But the unlocks for max weaponupgrades might be faster in pvp....

/SIGNED

there is a slight problem here: if I have all runes unlocked, the hourly bonus is useless for me, i'd rather spend it on something else...

since UAS is out of the question, adjustment of faction system is the most likely option. I'm not going to argument about the modifier. I've seen calculations, but still will refrain myself from this tricky part.


that is trick: I don't think they want the PvE made easier by allowing elites early.

yes, currently, this is mostly...well let's say you have one secondary for playing, and 4 others for getting atributepoints back and unlocking of a few (not enough to warrant playing) skills if you have skillpoints.

Here's my numbers:

600 hours of playing over 3 months (PvE and PvP)
4 ascended characters (2 deleted for room)
366 skills unlocked (~80% of all skills)
all minor runes but 1
all major runes but 11
2 superior runes
approx 50% of upgrades (many lowest values)
125 hours estimated to unlock the rest of the skills


I started GW in retail as a PvP player who enjoyed PvE. Now that I've ascended 4 characters I can unlock the rest of the skills with the help of a 5th char who is on the way.

I like the unlocking sytem and the faction system but they take much too long to unlock items. I do not support UAS but I do fully support an unlcokign system that allows us to unlock much faster. Below are my ideas.

1. Increase faction gained in PvP by10x (or more) OR reduce faction prices by 10x. Also put priests of Blathzar in all Tombs, Competition Arenas, Random Arenas, and Guild Hall so that we can unlock with a PvP char instead of having to relogin on a PvE char to unlock items.

2. Remove skill points completely. They do nothgin but add grind to an otherwise enjoyable game.

3. Increase drops in all areas instead of nerfing the high drop areas. I had 1 gold drop while leveling my latest RP char. In addition to this, make teal armor drops salvage into minor runes, purple in major runes, and gold into superior runes, ALL THE TIME.

PvP is still very enjoyable for me (now that I have enough skills to make most builds needed) but the path to this point was much longer than I had hoped.

Across all characters, I have played for 580 hours 15 minutes over the past 3 months

Within that time, I have unlocked about 85% of my skills and a measly 30% of all runes and weapon upgrades.

What can be done to encourage me to finish this off?

Nothing, its too late. I'd rather slit my throat than play in Post Ascalon again

How many topics like this have you made? I'm just curious...
Because every time I look here, I see a post by you that is closed within an hour or two and you seem to really want to annoy the admins here. Your lucky they have such great patience because if it were up to me, I would have banned you a while ago.

Now onto the topic discussed.

Your suggestion to find a way to stop spirit spamming is simple. THINK!
My guild and I have come up with a pretty simple, though overlooked, build that destroys those who simply spirit spam when on the HoH. It is also versatile enough to compete in the other types in Tombs. Fertile Season + ritual is not overpowered. If I must, I will post this build in the Campfire on Friday just to see if we can get the spirit spammers to stop.

Secondly, I agree that faction must be increased or the cost decreased.

"I believe PVP is for everyone, I believe A.Net Promised a game that rewarded skill not timespent."
People exaggerate. Welcome to the real world.

"Increase the ammount of skill points PVE characters get so they can compete with more available skills and make use of secondary switches."

Perhaps lower the exp requirement to 10k / skillpoint?

I dont understand people that demand UAS.
PvP players should know skills good enough to be able to get 40k experience every 40 minutes in the underworld, maybe even in half the time if they do it really good.
Thats basically UAS.

1.071 hours play time /age (last 2 months)
5 players trough the game. (2 deleted)
456 skills unlocked (thats all of them including Signet of capture and ressurection signet)
all minor runes unlocked
16 mayor runes unlocked
4 superior runes unlocked
(im giving away free unidentified runes in ascalon if i know i already identified all of that kind, no matter what rune it is.)
I dont know how much upgrades I have unlocked and how far, actually i barely care right now.

just 1 a 2 weeks ago, i was probably on the same level as you.
partly solution:
farm --> buy unid runes
in high level areas, the xp should be good enough to get a skillpoint or two also every few runes. it worked for me.
the weaponugrades also comes faster when you farm. i'm not a farmlover, but if i have to unlock fast, i'll do it.

around 625 hours played last 3 months
still to unlock:
24 skills
1 major war
4 sup war; 2 sup ele
some weaponupgrades minor, most of the maxed out weaponupgrades

a guild can succeed at pvp but not organize farming nights so they can buy the unid'ed stuff? cmon.

I've tried farming and it bored me to death. I don't want to spend my leisure time preparing to have fun in a video game.

Most guilds are around to have fun, not work

Also please post a more thought out post, not knocking your argument but more then a one liner would be nice.

Here was BE's problem with farming. It would be hard to get 4-6 players on the same spot in GW, most of the time everyone has characters in different areas. For instance a secondary in Nolani and a main who has beat the game. In order to quickly get unlocks, they would rush the secondary.... Basically everyone was spread out thin and it was hard to organize a guild run.... and we did do UW and FOW runs.. but in the end if there are 8 of us on, we will not PVE over PVP.

We believe in FUN not PAIN. While this is oppinion I hope you respect the fact that PVP guilds, like to PVP.

Agreed. This is reasonable, and jives with a statement made by Jeff Strain in which he said he wanted players to be able log on to Guild Wars for even so much as ten minutes before dinner, play that small amount, and still feel they accomplished something.

Yes. Please. I absolutely despise how the PvE channels you through a specific path for your character, diminishing your build options. Look at Elementalists: I'm not going to argue that Fire isn't amazing for PvP. It is, flat out. But I'm sure there are a few people out there who would like to try the other elements. Unfortunately, they're waiting till at least Lion's Arch to pick up useful Earth and Air Magics.

I also remember when Elites were obtainable pre Desert in early release. I never saw how this was particularly broken. You still had to hunt down and obtain said Elites.

I also wholeheartedly support anything that makes PvE players switch over into PvP easier. Its a hell of a gut punch for most, and it can prove very very discouraging.

With regards to Spirits, several points:

1) Fertile needs to not add Health to other spirits. Fertile + Wards + A Ranger with Oath Shot throwing them back up means you're never going to make any progress.
2) Nature's Renewal needs to be heavily reworked so that it doesn't completely obliterate the use of Enchantments and Hexes in a build. Side by side with this is the fact that Enchantment Removal as a whole needs to be reworked so that Nature's Renewal is not the only viable option for efficient and/or mass Enchantment removal. Recharge rates need reductions.
3) Oath Shot itself could probably stand to be scrutinized, as well.

Furthermore, on a general skills note:

Ether Renewal: I'm sorry, it should not be possible to regain 90 energy in 10 seconds through usage of this skill

Word of Healing: Could we please fix this so that it calculates the healing in the correct, -useful- order? Its completely ridiculous that it heals first, then checks to see if the target is under 50% HP, then applies the second heal. On a high Divine Favor Monk (Read: Any Healing Monk), the first heal is almost guranteed to shoot all but the most battered targets above 50% Health, making the second half of the spell useless and reducing this Elite to little more a slightly buffed Orison.

Draw Conditions and Divine Boon: These need recharge times. As Ensign said in another thread, 0 second recharge spells are just asking to be abused in combos.

Last I checked, this thread was about issues and fixes, not UAS.

Furthermore, 1000+ hours to unlock skills is ludicrous and you're still missing a ton of superior and major runes. This is a problem.

Oh people did that.

It's called PANK.

Organized gvg ladder farming in order to earn huge amounts of faction in a short amount of time. Gee that's really needed with our good skill acquisition setup that anet has blessed us with

How people can think everything is okay when they see that list of a large number of top guilds leaving is just beyond the vast depths of stupidity. Even fanboyism can only go so far...

The top tier of players cannot be replaced. They represent the culmination of year(s) of experience and information that the 'new' top tier will not inherit. The hardcore pvp community is what keeps games alive with the least amount of company effort and losing them is the biggest deathblow to the game there can be for the future. Current sales are not everything; reputation also means a big deal. Blizzard proves that perfectly. Their enormous successes with starcraft and diablo is what got their huge sales for wow/wc3, even though those 2 games were a pos in comparison to the former two.

Changes need to be immediate and decisive. Minor faction tweaks like we saw last time simply isn't enough. People need access, most of all the casual player. Renewal needs to be balanced (remove the enchant/hex removal effect completely; 2x cast times is very strong). Fertile should not affect other spirits. It was even worse when fertiles stacked so people had 5 digit hp numbers but it's still abysmal now with how long it takes to kill fertile powered spirits. Enchant removal needs to be buffed or with renewal gone everyone good will be cross stacking enchants left and right. KOR did not dominate the last bwe just because they had really good players/teamwork.

Thats the best philosophy ive heard all day. We all don't have hours every day to prepare to have fun in a video game. Yoshi's Cookie video game for the Regular Nintendo = best game ever.

Well, that is because there's a lot of thought right there in just one sentence. You can say a lot without 1,000 word essays. But since you like lots of words, here we go

Before I go on, I am not a fanboi, I come from the 'broken home' of pvp, Ultima Online. Great game, horribly unbalanced zerg fest player vs player. I have also tried out SB, Eve, SWG, DAOC. They aren't so great either. WoW, yah right, successful yes, but the online game equivilent of wearing one of those colored bracelets. I wouldn't be surprised if they had a T-Mobile commerical where Snoop Dog is texting other celebs how to defeat so and so boss. Then Paris goes "Snoop plays a necro in WoW? That's so hot!"

Also want to note, I came here specifically for the pvp. I make it a point to spend two levels in each applicable arena as I go along because I want to be good at pvp. I applauded the changes to xp and factions. This is what this game is about. Competition on a level playing field.

Is there unbalance with some having everything unlocked and everyone else not? Of course, now. But that won't last long and it is not hard to do it to get caught up. And anyone starting the game now is at the same disadvantage.

It is a hell of a lot harder to be in the top rankings as a group for pvp then it is to farm as a guild for a little bit and get everyone's needs unlocked. And those top guilds were not all over the place in the game like yours was. I am thinking they were all ascended. And for them to be successful, they had to have at least 8 people playing a lot. We aren't talking average guild here we are talking the elite. The best. They are so because they go above and beyond to strive to be the best.

That's why I don't get it that a guild that can achieve that can't spend a week farming to get what they need unlocked. I know I know, that's a lot of great pvp fights missed, but still.

The problem here is patience, not UAS.

Now is that thought out enough for yah? har!

Yes a UAS button is not the answer.

Basically the only thing I'm not happy about this the fact the older group of PvP people seems to continue to blame newcomers (Such as myself) and PvE for the decline of PvP overall.

It's like their saying... "well it not our fault, it's theirs... so there!"

The faction point system is fine, however as the Opening Poster said, its too overkill at the moment, a reduction in the overall number of points needed in PvP to lock things could be the answer. Since as it stands getting 3000 points for an elite takes ages.

Personally with my PvE ranger I have gained 4145 points, but all have been spent on weapon upgrades so far.

None the less Guild Wars remains ONE of the most popular onlines games at the moment, here is the list of best online games, based on player numbers as stated in the lastest copy of PC Zone magazine:

These figures are correct as of July 2005 - "PC Zone Magazine Semptember Issue"

1. Lineage 2 ( appox 2.2 million players)
2. World of Warcraft (appox 2 million players)
3. Lineage 1 (appox 1.9 million players)
4. Final Fantasy XI Online (appox 500,000 players)
5. Guild Wars (appox 400,000 players)

Guild Wars has more players then, Everquest 2, City of Heros, Planetside (which is last) and Dark Age of Camelot!

So tell me, how is Guild Wars dying?

First off im feeling a thread dejavu.

Anyhow more importantly
Those figures would most likely be accurate by total copies sold, which has no indication for region % of playerbase or current active users. Although, EQ1 before they stopped showing server populations would have ranked higher than the current listing for FFXI. Im a bit hazy on how popular UO became over time, but it pre-dates all of those as well. Longevity speaks volumes for a game, while copies sold are more like box office sales, not tracking multiple copies per user. Also looking at the list bias, it wouldnt include such things as console games or other genre of PC games. Although your numbers remind me of a discussion i had awhile back regarding the state of tribes nearly a year ago.

I just thought of something else.

If these top guilds were around for so long why haven't they unlocked what they needed to at this point? Zeru said they have 'year(s) of experience and information', so why are they the ones who want UAS? They should have unlocked what they needed by this point.

The only thing UAS helps are people who are new to GW or haven't unlocked anything. New as in recruits for a guild. Can get someone up to speed very quickly if they have UAS.

This game was supposed to be close to grindless for PvP players. Continous farming and doing the game 3 times when you don't want is grind.

These figures were provided to the mag by the guy who runs MMOGChart.com

They are based on not sales, but subcribers to the game. And since its one of the most accurate sites on the web (If not the best), I say they are accurate.

He hasn't added Guild Wars to the live charts on site right, but the magazine figures don't lie.

A few things:

Poor unlocking system means a stagnant ladder without much competition. People don't find waiting many minutes for ladder matches fun and it's not hard to figure out that many people don't ladder due to lack of skills. Raising newbie guilds to fame is one of the hardest things possible in this game and a huge reason is because of a bad unlocking system. GvG isn't as luck based as tombs is (blame the bad maps) but the lack of competition makes it just as bad. Lack of competition is never a good thing, and it's impossible to deny that lacking skills is not correlated at all to this.

I doubt every top player wants to grind an insane amount. Some probably simply said forget it and didn't bother putting in hundreds of hours going at it. Many probably didn't put in the tons of needed hours grinding at the arid sea, ettins, giants, zealots, or tengu and they're just as behind as the rest.

It still falls back to copies sold in direct relation to accounts that were activated not actual users. For all intesive purposes each copy/key would be unique to each account. It cant also track cross usage, as i know i would have fallen within 3 of those listings at the same time.

Its not that the numbers are bad per say, they are more misleading.

Good point, but as it stands people that have the game, can and will return.

Be good if game companies would provide clear figures and make it less guess work.

I had something really important to contribute to this conversation about halfway down the page, and in catching up on the posts I've forgotten again...

Well, I certainly agree with the faction ideas. As the embodiment of the casual player (I had the game before the non-beta part of it even began, and yet I have met people who started playing last month and have a higher /age than me), I have to say that all PvP outside of the 4v4 arenas is extremely foreboding. The fact that my guild consists of 3 people who regularaly log in doesn't help, but that's beside the point.
I think the addition of lowered faction prices might help a little to get me more involved with serious PvP, but from what I cansee the amount of holes in it just about makes me not want to start.

Well that entirely depends on the company or the corporate policy involved.

I personally wont be doing the same song and dance ive seen SOE produce in 3 of their titles again, regardless of the title genre or development team involved. The approach they have made is something ive come to strongly disagree with over time. But that doesnt mean i wouldnt use something produced from SCEA. They are totally different applications and genres.

To be honest, there are very few games that i actually consider "going back to", because the reasons why i left had little to do with the content of the game. This is in terms of the environment presented, not any other aspect of the content.

I play pretty much all PVE, PVP has only a passing interest to me (to dispense with what is unimportant to the discussion I DO have a reason it is of no interest, but it is unimportant).

If you do quests, and get levels you will never have to worry about skill points in PvE. Many skills can be attained through quests. I am not making a comment about the distribution of said skills (for people who want to make other than fire builds, the beginning is a bit fire heavy). as for the increasing the number of skills, that would suit people who are unlocking but for people in PvE, that would decrease some of the challenge (not that there is too much) and thus increase the complaining that the there is not enough content. I dont know much outside of the classes i play, but poison which has a constant - regen on people would have a much more powerful effect on the lower level creatures in the beginning. I view elite skills (well almost all of them) as being more difficult to get for a challenge.

the problem i have is that the first part of the solution requires something that would be a little less than minor rebalancing of the way PvE is played.

As for time played before i descend into the perenial 'who's /age is larger pissing contest'
700 hrs
All minor runes unlocked
3/4 major runes unlocked (approximation i am at work but close based on memory)
10~13 Superior runes

...See I kept it civil

And why is that? With all due respect, we're talking about skilled and experienced people, Leonardo Da Vinci is still another matter, and none of them cured cancer. So definitely, yes, they can be replaced.

They also represent the culmination of months of arrogance. Many of them felt like divine entities just because they played in the Alpha/Beta versions of the game. Thanks god we also have people like Ensign, aka modest and helpful top tier players that contributed in a huge way to GW community. I'm an old CS/CoD player that would like to point out one thing: being "a pro" at any game means, first of all, being helpful to people who don't have your experience, being nice to others, fair, respectful and serious. The exact opposite of many players from the top Guilds you mentioned, who were just skilled players full of crap and arrogance, griefers that couldn't be called "pro", not even by mistake.

I agree, but every "top tier" who played in beta and had a little bit of common sense knew that UAS was not to be implemented in the retail version of the game. It was blatant. Daydreaming didn't help in the past and won't help now.

Quoted for truth. I'll add that spamming spirits is ruining the PvP experience and I'll bet that 14-15 spirits up at the same time, with consequent heavy loss of fps on low-end machines wasn't exactly in the mind of the developers.

Yeees. So, programming a PvP orgy (I'm talking about the Battleground patch) that often turns into a horrible lagfest, where spoiled kiddies united under the "We roxorz" flag own adult people who'd like some strategy and a little bit of fun is a "big deal of reputation"? Releasing a PvP patch right when GW is stealing your players (now that is a curious timing from Blizzard) would help their reputation? Releasing a game with poor, old generation visuals and horrible collision detection would improve Blizzard's reputation? We're in 2005 and in WoW you kill mobs/human players 6 feet behind you by swinging a Tauren hammer in the air like a perfect idiot. I'm not expecting MMORPGS to have Half-life 2 visuals/animations, but come on...Blizzard's been never bashed on forums and communities like it is now. World of Warcraft is little more than an old school, "I'll-show-you-the-carrot-if-you-grind-like-a-beast" traditional MMORPG.

As I've already stated before, I don't mind if some supposedly top tier players with a sick degree of self-esteem and arrogance leave. Nonetheless, you're right, it's not a good thing: in my humble opinion, GW has brilliant, complex PvP mechanics, but for this very reason PvP is constantly in need of minor tweaks. Spirit build is a joke, and a mid if low-tier team using it could hold the HoH for ages, provided they can get there.
Then again, this "large number of top guilds" can be (and will be) replaced by new guilds as experienced as the ones that left, and maybe even a little bit more mature.

That said, there are many possible reactions to the current situation. An adult chooses to wait for some tweaks or leaves at once. Maybe he criticizes Anet's choices/policy in a good mannered, well thought out way, like you did. A spoiled kiddy, on the other hand, cries out loud complaining, making the community a worse place for everyone.

Sorry for the long and passionate (I hope not as passionate as a flamebait ) post.

[QUOTE=Mormegil] [QUOTE] edited for space. I think you make a fine point. but it was a bit long to quote

One thing I do not understand, and a point you raised...does age convey experience? I mean I was not alpha/beta or any of the other greek letters well except Theta Xi, but that is unimportant. I see in these posts no shortage of people saying how long they have played, and i do not understand the value of that. In some essense it is much like the /age thing....an interesting statistic but has no effect on game play. No one who is not then will be able to compare their exp, no matter how valid. It becomes an arbitrary arguement then. Age is important for relating things but i think for a video game, people tread a bit too heavily on it.

So, the game is not as you saw it in the beginning....but alot of people still have fun with it in its present form and many don't really care as much. As for numbers to this effect I hold a rather unscientific poll with groups i am in asking their feelings...complaints even from people with alot of expericence. The major one is small content, but even that is not often voiced as a down fall, but more of a hope for more in the future. Albeit this is PvE.

If you would like, i could formulate my findings into a hypoth test and run it....with a population like this i bet i could get the standard deviation down a good degree....come on a poll....just run through groups you are in asking their opinions....lv 20's only....

First, some postulates here:

Postulate 1: Top-tier competitive gameplay comes from the hardcore PvPers.
Postulate 2: A well-made competitive game will earn the attention and longevity of hardcore PvPers for the least amount of tweaks and new content available.

As time goes on,
1) the "it's new" label on the game disappears and
2) the existence of games that cater towards hardcore PvPers will draw them away (both new and old).

If the PvP entry barriers (the high amount of grind and, to a lesser extent, the absolute need to have a decently-sized network of PvP friends playing the game to a similar extent) and the corresponding amount of highly competitive PvP (low, especially in GvG) remain the way they are now, hardcore PvPers will leave for another game.

There really isn't anything that drives new hardcore PvPers (or PvE veterans) to replace that void, either. The rate at which the average GW players become good PvPers is low, due to a PvE campaign that doesn't adequately prepare players for PvP (for reasons mentioned by Zeru and others in the past) as well as the PvP entry barriers. New hardcore PvPers also don't have much reason to come to this game because of the same PvP entry barriers and the same low amount of highly competitive PvP going on.

This only hurts top-tier competition, both in quality and in quantity.

I see a positive feedback loop resulting in the elimination of top-tier competition. For a game that lacks PvE longevity, said elimination is very tough to view as acceptable for the game's future.

as to a positive feedback loop, i do not see it. HEHE cant find the pole on the unite circle (discrete because people are not continuous). If the top teir leave, then it will become casual pvp.... point being it will find a new stability. like the abrupt change in the econ they made...people cried over the sharp changes, but the transient resp died out and prices are seemingly dropping back to normal or evelating....

I question the quote about low avg PvE becoming good pvp....does one have to? the campaign does not adequately prepare you because it is not meant to prepare you. Maybe at times give you a flavor of it, but that is not its purpose.


also i see in your postulates are valid would the only concern be PvP, but you also forgot that there are PvE's that are not involved in that. I understand that you are not headed in that direction for your post (i assume), but you mention PvE without assurting anything about their motivations.

Even if the existing top guilds that left get replaced it will not change the fundamental problems in the slightest way. Hardcore grinding PvE guilds will always have a advantage because once they decide to swith over to PvP they will have a far greater chance to succeed due to a huge selection of unlocked skills. Over time they will be the new elite with no one to compete while the casual player who has only a fraction of skills unlocked will never get the chance to be a top PvP player. In the end these new PvP guilds will leave too and GW does not have an infinete supply of new PvE player who are willing to play PvP on a high level and PvP will become even more of a joke because the one's left are the PvE players with their PvE toons who just like to play PvP once in a while.

Thank you all for making this a meaningful conversation. Please keep it that way so that the thread doesn't descend into an "us vs. them" scenario or an "ANet Sucks" thread. We all got enough of that yesterday.

Thank you again!

The positive feedback loop only concerns the top-tier players.

Sure, it may acquire some stability in the future with casual pvp being completely dominant but is this the desired outcome? Is this best for the longevity of the game? What of the solid competitive game base that Guild Wars currently has at its core?

The campaign's purpose doesn't change the validity of my statement, I think.

Wow this is the most meaningful mature, thread I've ever read on a game forum.

Everyone has made mostly valid points...

Recently my guild had a bunch of our top pvp people quit and we had to start from scratch, I've spent the last 3 weeks farming, raising characters, bartering for upgrades, and building up to a point where I can play almost any class effectively...

I've already beaten the game 3 times, and I don't want to know how much farming I've done, we've been largely successful at GvG ~200 rank with the new players we've been training...

but then we hit the spirit teams... 5 in a row... you know something is too powerful when its getting abused like that... but anyway.

To get to a point where everyone can work ONE team build effectively we've had to work our tails off, we've gotten about 3000 faction and thats already down the drain,

To put it simply :
Faction costs are too high for PvP Players -- To unlock an elite it would litterally be faster to start a new character and get them to the elite with the help of runners and guildmates, there is no feasable way a PvP player not in a guild willing to help them would ever be able to make a custom character. So its a waste to spend it on skills or elites, and you could farm runes faster, so really all you should be spending faction on is rare weapon upgrades, which you better of unlocked the weakest version first anyway!

Skills are spread out too unevently.
Someone made the point that all ele's have to be fire till halfway through the game.
This is very true, you can't have any diversity untill pvp.

Elites are too deep in the game.
This is true for both pvp and pve characters, you can't get hundred blades till the last mission, what the hell is the point of that? -- I can't get Powerblock till Perdition block, thats kinda a Domination defining spell...

point duely noted. I was just implying, probably rather hamfistedly that there is a correlation between the two. What changes they can or would make to one will have an effect on the other. Striking a true balance i think is very hard. I can understand the point of PvPers but I wonder WHY they designed it the way they did, and maybe in knowing that, a solution could be reached.

EDIT ** the point of that is alot of old players saying the way it was/ supposed to be. My quandry is over whether it was SUPPOSED to be that was or whether it was that way by coincidence and it was supposed to be something else.

As a side note i dont know about the use of the term positive feedback, i would go with a fading channel or even a low pass attenuation channel ...hearing someone say postulate and PFB got my attention

Gaile Gray responded to this here http://www.guild-hall.net/forum/show...048#post278048

Gaile gray accidently misread it as being alpha guilds..

In which case she was right, but I explicitly said, all guilds..

Later on I listed alpha guilds that had quit which most where listed,

Basically to put more on this post.... I listed all guilds that had quit and Gaile accidently read it as alpha. Just a simple mistake. I can see how she was not in a very good mood though while reading the post (a lot of flames) and could understand a small oversight.

But I would personally voice my oppinion that she did not reply to any arguments and is probably smart to do so.

so was tetris....but lets face it it is not the same genre. compare like with like....personally I always loved Medieval total war....because it took hours to prepare for something....forcing you to think in the future.....is that relevant....no.

I loved medieval Total war because of the epic battles you could zoom in on etc so awesome seeing a cavalry charge... The turned based strategy part was okay too.... It was good mix that allowed both, for instance online or instant action you could play with every unit and combination without touching the turned based or vice versa.

aka

we want to put the "play" back in Play guildwars.



It is discouraging to see teams and teams of people that love pvp leaving because of the huge time investment... no one wants to spend 600 hours

1) Vocal Minority refers to people who post on the forum, if you think the majority of people who play Guild Wars are registered on a forum, you are not thinking straight. I imagine A-net gets just as many or more, requests/suggestions from player email, and reports as they can pull out of all the wars that happen on the forums. Those of us that do post on forums, are a vocal minority, and should not think otherwise.

2) Several top guilds have left the game? ok, I guess I can believe this, except half of the guilds listed I have seen winning hall of heroes in the past 2 weeks, so maybe their ripoff guilds, but who am I to say. And who are you to say they have quit? Do you know them all personally, perhaps they stopped playing for some other reason, maybe other guilds were not putting up enough competition, maybe they found out after ton's of hard work, that other top ranked guilds were buying their guild rating. When I see a post from the Leader of Blood Eagle, that they are no longer playing GW because pvp sucks now, then I'll be worried, but not now.

3) you want increased faction, thats fine, I like the faction system, I know of no other game that even gives you the option to skip straight to the fun stuff, even though alot of people even complain that pvp is a grind...People will never be happy, unless they are #1 and have perfect equipment, and 100% unlocked, but then they will be bored and complain for more content, so it's never ending is it. Faction does make it easier for pvp only players to unlock stuff. Faction is good, and you want more, ok.

4) spirit spamming does need fixed, but this is just another new discovery, like Vengeance and the other overly powerful skills, and it will be fixed. If all these alpha/beta testers are so smart and experienced, then I don't see why they would quit because of a recent development by the players.

This just seems like another attempt to bash a-net because their trying to give us new free content, while making fixes on a regular basis, but for some reason, they won't make you an elite, and so your unhappy. If I am wrong about this, I'm sorry, try not to sound like a troll.

edit: nobody wants to spend 600 hours what? playing the game, taking down other players? Having fun with their guild? It's only a grind if your only goal is to unlock everything, and you look at pvp as "road of grind" to get there. If you look at pvp as having fun, then I don't see how anyone could be complaining.

I think she not very pleased by your badmouthing of A.net, you have to stop to think is posting all this really going to help the situation, your more likely making it worse. Gaile is right, maybe you shoud just drop the subject and let A.net address it as best they can.

They are already aware of the issue, and you don't need to keep posting all this.

Does it really matter what a few guilds in the Alpha have left? Its only a minor number.