Arena.Net and PvP

I'm still pessimistic at the notion that it requires a large number of unlocks to play pvp. And I'm annoyed that there are guilds (mine included, a little) that are holding off on pvp because they are too busy farming.

The way I see it, at the rate I'm going, I'll probably have all the unlocks in a few months, let's say halfway between now and the release of the expansion pack next year. So does that mean, if I stick with it till then, I'll be playing the "perfect" guildwars, whilst all those people who got bored and left will be missing out? I dunno. If faction rates were increased like people suggest, I'd probably have everything by now. I'm not sure how that would affect the rest of my playing time. Maybe good, maybe bad. (I also enjoy pve.)

I think mostly people are annoyed at having less skills than their competition - it becomes a race to neutralise some percieved disadvantage before actually playing.

Perhaps the solution is to tier the arenas, tombs, and gvg. Not on some easily smurfable ladder, but on "Average Percentage Unlocked Per Team Member - 20%, 40% and 70%".

That way beginning players on their first character can make a template character and play team arena/HOH and not get instantly destroyed by some coordinated team build. (or going to Ascalon and getting destroyed by some people in Droknar's armour..)

And super-farming-rushers-unlocked everything already can play against each other. And everyone gets their level playing field.

And we'd preserve the steady drip of goodies to keep people interested in the game.

Unless, of course, ANet are planning to continue adding free goodies before the expansion. In which case faster unlocking is ok.

one.

the 50%+ categories willl be empty

two

this doesnt really solve anything

three

it has been proven the system sucks for pvp, check www.guild-hall.net

next

PVP unlocks in GW cant be compared to BF2, BF2 the matches and top competition wont be playing with unlocks, they will have a fair setting.

Also BF2 unlocks dont give you an advantage most of them suck, its like unlocking a second flare that does 3 less damage but has a slightly different animation. The stuff we complain about is completely game breaking.

What about playing BF2?

You may have some points, but I really can't stand the kind of blackmail you just post. This is getting silly, way out of proportion and definitly immature from your part. With that kind of behaviour, I really start to wonder why A Net picked you as a tester to start with.

I sure hope A. Net will know better than screwing this game up because of you.

Louis,

The game was originaly made to be PvE and then PvP once you beat the game and/or got bored. Anet is right about PvP being a "Minority" Go to 3 major mission towns and notice how many people are there then notice how many people are in PvP areas. PvE is obviously more in demand.

Why ruin the fun of making most of the skills available in the first few citys . You need some motivation to go and finish the game and putting in elites in merchants delete the purpose of having them be elites other than the fact that you can only have one.

But it's such a GOOD one for those blast from the past posts.

Actually we have not even got through the 2nd season on the game yet. Not even equinox yet. (IE faction update was around the last seasons equinox)


Sorry date from a day or two ago, but you get my drift...

Anyway... There is a larger problem in PvP. unless you are ranked 3 or higher. forget about it. No one will invite you at all... they make you do a /rank command and unless you have a rank 3 or higher your out. This is sooo Wrong in SOOO many way. its as bad as racism with other countries joining parties...

In effect No one except the high ranked people want to play in tombs PvP... Because they made it a lockout elitist group, just for them. Fine. that's just great. drive away more people from another aspect of the game. is it any wonder the PvE community doesn't want anything to do with you PvPers normally. and are sick of hearing you bitch about stuff that for PvE players is rather easy to deal with. Because Gee. they have gold and Gee the buy and capture stuff all the time... Without crying about a UAS UAR button? We have SOOO moved past that now, and there is no pleasing some people no matter How easy Anet makes it for you to unlock new skills... IE Faction... So if you are going to leave, great no loss... maybe your elitist club will break down and regular players will be able to play PvP again in the future...

This is the most initiating flame I have ever seen posted towards a harmless topic.. Wow.

For absolutely no reason at all, you accuse him of starting trouble, just because his threads are locked?

Are threads locked because of Original Posters a majority of the time? From my experiece on forums for the last few years, that is very rarely the case.

have you looked thought GHMs posts? almost every single thread is locked and he even had a thread critizizing the mods.

Just FYI. These topics tend to be controversial. They are openly discussed on The Guild Hall Forums and are not closed down unless they really need to be. The name "Guild Hall Messenger" alludes to this. His posts mirror some of the more active threads/issues discussed there. There tends to be less discussion of those topics here at GWGuru.

I think more inter-forum communications might be a good thing.

well, between him threatining to quit if anet didn't magicly fix the game in 5 days, or that post about anet being able to fix everything in less than 2 hours, and recreating a topic that was locked because he was flaming too much, and being banned from TGH forums, I wouldnt say that it is only because the topic is controlversial

no see this is the idiocy of people of course they have everything unlocked but thats not the point
the point is
THEY HAVE NO COMPETION OTHER GUILDS CANT GET ALL THE SKILLS
they are alone they have nothing to compete with all the other guilds got l3itch slapped by arena net

im sick of this shit im leaving

don't let the door hit ya

end yourself, dargon. griefers like you are the worst. all you want is to turn GuildWars into a no-fee World of Warcraft. =(

To start with, I'd like to apologise for the "vocal minority" comment I made at TGH ... it was a poor choice of words and not reflective of what I intended. With that said, let's move on:

We're testing a variety of adjustments to the game currently, in addition to working on getting Sorrow's Furnace ready for release. Furnace is going to be great for those who enjoy a bit of PvE. For the PvP players out there, however, we're also testing a range of changes targeted at addressing some of the feedback we've been provided by both testers and players on the fan forums.

We're testing skill balance adjustments. We're testing accelerated means of character and account advancement for both RP and PvP characters. When we introduced Faction, we introduced an adjustable framework. Our initial goal was for Faction to be able to advance a PvP character at a roughly similar rate as an RP character. This gave you a choice for character advancement. Now we're committed to improving the rate of advancement for all characters, regardless of whether they are an RP or PvP character.

You've asked for it, and we're going to make changes. I know there's many of you who feel that it's taking too long. I just want to reassure you all that we're making progress towards what you want. It's progress that will bring improvements for all players who want to PvP, and that's why it's taking a little time.

Thank you for the reply Alex, as a PvE and PvP, I highly welcome changes which benefit both parties, not just one or the other.

On another point guys, programming is not a 5 minute join, and I think Alex is more or less saying the "Rome wasn't build in a day".

And adding new PvP doesn't happen in a day as well.

Look forward to seeing the planned changed when they come.

Thanks for apologising Alex - I think you realised now how much that upset us. I don't know how many people will take this at face value since it's been a while since you said that and the uproar it caused. But I'm willing to give you the benefit of doubt. Please fix the faction as suggested by the link in my sig.

I'm not even really interested in the PVP aspect.

I mean..until they add something like Castle or Fort Sieges and varities of that type..I don't think us the casual player find much interest in it...

Thanks for your post Alex. I am glad to hear that you guys are going to deal with the RP and PvP simultaneously. Im sure you guys have already thought of this, but should we implement the things that we have requested, we may have the problem of people hogging the arenas for faction.

We all understand the problems with farming, and know why ANet has nurfed it. However, although PvE farming is dead, ANet initiated a new kind of farming: Faction Farming. How often have we wondered what would happen if our demands for 32x faction were met? If we significantly increase the faction, the uber players will begin to hog the arenas and even the above-average player will have lots of difficulty winning games. This will result in increased annoyance, unsatisfaction and anger at the majority of the people that attempt the arenas. This may eventually lead to people getting bored and quitting the game. Just as tombs has been adversly affected today by spirit spammers, arenas will also be ruined by faction hoggers.

How many times have we thought about that aspect of increasing faction? Sure it will induce competitive play for a while between the few uber players, but the majority of normal players will lose too much to be happy. As mature players of the game, it is important that we understand such issues before attempting to solve our issues.

As I am not one of the game designers it is impossible for me to see the whole picture, so in the end the numbers must be determined by the game designers, but I will make a solemn attempt at finding a good solution:

1) I know many of us will not play the entire PvE again (especially me, though i LOVED it), but let us be a little selfless for a bit. I sincerely believe that the ideal solution is the very way ANet wants it to be: through PvE. PvE should be designed such that in the very first-time-through, one should unlock almost everything, for all professions and for every kind of thing. No 2 items found should be the same. Infact, I would design it such that if one has the patience to play the game for the third time through, one should be guaranteed to unlock every possible thing in the game (first time more than second, second more than third, but by third all is done). So ANet has been thinking along the right lines (i.e things should be unlocked in the most fun way possible) but with one serious problem: The had not realized that we need to have EVERY SINGLE thing unlocked, because PvEers today, will be GvGers tomorrow, and as they should have learned by now, GvGers need everything unlocked.

2) The only viable way for farming skills or runes will become faction should we increase it. This will force everyone to hog this method, and many people who would literally enjoy PvE farming more (since it is less tense and easier because they dont HAVE to win) would be at a major disadvantage. Thus, PvE farming should be improved. There HAS to be balance between PvP farming and PvE farming, and currently it is already towards PvP farming, and if faction is made 32x (or 16x whatever) it will be infinately towards PvP farming. We need to diversify the farmers so that they dont hog any one method, because farmers there always will be.

3) But many of us will not play PvE again so 1 doesnt work for ppl like me. And 2 aggrevates the very problem we have wanted to reduce since game inception. Thus we now need to find a solution for the more mature players, without forcing them to faction farm. This is a very difficult problem and is what everyone has been debating on, however we must try and solve it with the aforementioned issues in mind, and try to have a broader picture of what the game is intended to be, and how our solutions affect that goal and ALL the people that play it. Thus we need to increase unlock rate without inducing farming and keeping the game as fun as possible:

a) Skill Points:
Skill Point acquisition is a function of XP. But we must not forget that level-up rate is also a function of xp. Thus if we amend xp acquisition, we are bound to affect level-up rate, which btw I believe is perfect right now. Thus we cannot change the xp, and I propose we leave everything as it is, except one thing. Skill Points are only obtained at level 20. Thus we can simply reduce the xp requirement at level 20. My suggestion would be that we make skill point acquisition 3 to 4 times faster, thus level cap should be between 5000 to 7000 instead of the current 20000. Do remember that PvP wins give XP too, but I would not change that as I think this will help balance the skill-point acquisition rate with faction-acquisition rate when we increase faction-rate. Balance is good.

b) Faction:
Faction definately needs to be increased. My suggestion is 4x, though I do think even that is high considering the fact that we are increase skill point acquisition. Actually, 4x is probably still enough to make me want to farm team arenas (last time i did 61 undefeated, during which I hogged ta for a couple of hours). Nevertheless, I think 4x is good because we are going to add a third dimension to lure the uber players away towards more fun competitive play instead of faction farming.

c) Advanced Competitive Play
This is the third dimension. We need a way to drastically increase unlocking rate for the elite people in the game who need to instantly randomly try different gvg builds, yet avoiding any form of grind (even faction farming). We need a way to kick the high-ranking guilds back into action with advanced competitive play.

i) Ladder (current system)
The amount of faction received from GvG needs to be increased significantly. Instead of 200-500, we should make it 500-2000 per win, where the higher the rank you defeat, the more the faction each person in the party gets.

ii) Leagues
These will be large tournaments where a team is not immediately eliminated on a loss, so that they have another go at attaining the high faction received for each win in here. Kind of like a Fifa League, so in the initial part of the leage each win gives perhaps 1000 faction and when you enter playoffs near end you could receive something like 5000 faction per person in team for a victory.

iii) Smaller tournaments or any official competitive play
Any kind of official competition should basically have a significantly increased amount of faction.

We must also remember that one must still need to put in a bit of work to achieve things. So giving infinite faction for a win beats the whole experience ANet has been trying to develop. Faction can infact be a strong motivation factor for winning games, but if everyone already has every skill, then that kind of drive will not be there and a decreased sense of reward for a victory.

Thank you Alex for a wonderful game so far and for listening to our suggestions.

Makani Blade

Blah blah blah, this post is a bunch of mumbling. You have no math to prove your points, just long winded paragraphs that no one wants to read.

If you have a point somewhere in that mess, read the link in Divinity's post, and then use the same manner of presentation to get your point across. You can't just say "hey Anet, increase everything 4x because that will want to make ME farm arenas and I think that is fair." Who cares about you.

The sad reality is, PVP-obsessed screaming people ARE the minority! LMFAO!

Walk around any district, see all the guild capes that are in that list of his up there, and tell me with a straight face they ARE a majority. How many of those people wearing 90 billionk armor stand still. FOR DAYS. no matter how much I swap districts or log, those bastards stand there.

My argument sounds unrelated, but it IS the subject.

PVP is NOT the main voice here, no matter how badly some want it to be, it simply isn't reality.

Yea, why care about what a few thousand people may still want, if a few thousand people aren't a majority? Why appeal to a minority? They make less money for Arena Net, since, being a minority, they purchase less games as a demographic.

Good point.

It was a nice gesture to apologize for the "vocal minority" comment. Thanks.

It would be a truly redeeming gesture to just get these PVP changes on the fast track. For some of us, it's been almost 4 months the game has been an extreme let down in the PVP department. And that this all happened nearly "overnight" with release, it's equally hard to believe things take so long to fix. So we're left to either gripe (and probably get banned for it from every site eventually) or wait and wait and wait.

If Anet pulls it off with the right fixes it will be collosal redemption. Now back to waiting and trying not to get banned from anymore sites, I guess.

I think both extremes can be a little audacious, which contributes to both Alex and Gaile's occasional lapse of professionalism. I can only sympathize with them having to put up with the fanbase so much, because it's kind of their job.

In the end, people can apologize and be forgiven, that's healthy. What's not healthy is harboring some crazy internet grudge when someone slips and lets his frustration out in his post. Both sides of this applies to Anet Employees, PvPers, PvEers, Casual Players, Hardcore Players, Forum Mods, Beta Testers, Mr. "I got into this game a month after release and currently my War/Mo is at Yak's Bend. ", the Minority, the Majority, Wombats, and Circus Clowns.

People get heated and blow off some steam. Those things won't bring down a Video Game or an Internet Forum. However, PvP vs. RP, Pirates vs. Ninjas, and various other polar opposite pissing contests aren't worth dragging down a community.

this is not personal but a general comment on what you sais expressed by others as well as you

UAS/X was the quick dirty fix to test the highend game and to show what was possible after you had to use the term *JUMPED THROUGH WHATEVER HOOPS* they had in the game.

remember that they didnt add everything you hate between the last beta and release it was the main programing and the UAS was simply removed from the retail code

also you dont hear the PVE community complaining about their nice premade level 20s being removed

they said it would be made in small steps with each step being tested for a while to see the results

if 4 months seems like a long time to you thats you and not necessarily me or whosits

patience

The whole "Vocal Minority" incident shows that even the professional PR people lose their cool sometimes, and shouldn't just write off people on forums if they lose their cool sometimes.

Everyone knows that. UAS as it's mentioned now is suggested as something you get after you beat the game once or something of the sort as an option for PVP players.

Also, UAS was not the only thing that gave a very wrong impression of the game... skill acquistion as a whole was never represented as so grindish, and there were other ways to get skills, as well as easier access from sellers that ALL got removed. The form it intended up in was just nonsense for the PVP fan that had played all the betas and read all the interviews that indicated something entirely different, not 600 hours to get the skills so you have a full deck that can counter, adapt, and really be useful.

I'm sure he never intended it to cause trouble though. And I don't think any of the response at TGH was meant to either, it was mostly just comedy for someone to use that term in then most posters put it in their sig. Some minority. But whatever... more waiting and waiting and waiting now for a change, who cares who says what, I just want the game to be the "skill over time played" again so I can enjoy it, not quit my job to play it.

Not to belabor the point, but it's not necessarily a insult to be a vocal minority.
I took it to mean that although there are people voicing thier views here, there are hundreds of thousands of people who don't that need to be considered. If you were to measure what goes on in the GW community just by these forums, you might miss out on the silent majority that enjoy the game just as much.

No harm no foul...play on

The problem I have with the Vocal Minority/Silent Majority thing is that it's too presumptuous. While Alex should have never said that in the first place, more damage was done to the community by people taking that phrase and using it in their arguements over what they think Anet's intentions are and will be in the future.

The truth is, it should not be about pandering to side A or side B, whether they are the small group of established players that are vigorously trying to change things or the majority of players with less experience in Guild Wars that are defending Anet with equal ferocity.

Indugle me in being presumptous and perhaps hypocritical in this estimation, but I feel these two sides are BOTH vocal minorities and the majority of Guild Wars players want Guild Wars to be improved all around and would prefer it's community not to act like two cantankorous street (forum?) gangs always at each other's throats.

Player loyalty is important to Anet, but so is getting new players into Guild Wars. Considering that, all the petty bickering and forum drama is a lousy way to show you support of Anet. But, perhaps I might be the only one who thinks the community is one of the biggest flaws with Guild Wars.

Anyhow, enough of my rambling. I just wish ya'll would behave.

That's like saying no one should listen to a critical review of something, just go by ticket sales and then we can all agree on it's overall quality by ticket sales.

By that logic Britney Spears is one of the greatest musicians in human history. Nuff said.

Well the vocal minorites make up fansite communities. The silent majorities are the casual masses and weekend warriors who populate the arenas and are still working their way through the game. I have several friends in that category, and honestly they're happy with the game as is.

Then you have two vocal minorities - the hardcore PvE side, and the PvP side. Yes, they're both minorities. Both are pretty extreme, at that. The hardcore PvP side wants UAS or equivilents that let people buy the game and instantly have maxed characters, and that simply is not going to happen. The hardcore PvE side is perhaps even worse, wanting to turn the game into a bad version of World of Warcraft. No, I don't think that either side should be taken super seriously.

There is a silent majority that is being ignored here, though - casual PvPers. While the casual PvE in this game is excellent - chopped up into missions, sensible party formation, no serious uber-items or skills and the like - the casual PvP is seriously lacking. If I wanted to hook up and do some PvP with a friend who just got the game, I'd have to help him rush to complete or nearly complete the entire game to get the skills, then run around in arenas and faction unlock important equipment - even with dedicated help you're looking at probably 20-30 hours just to get a single competitive character from scratch, with help, and more like 50-100 hours if you're trying to feel your way there on your own. That's simply unacceptable for a game that uses PvP as a selling point. I don't know what the solution is, but people need to be able to jump into PvP the same way the jump into PvE, headfirst with a short learning curve.

Peace,
-CxE

Um I just meant I don't think he was dissin anyone here and they have to consider all points of view. Not to take it as a insult per say.

Not sure what sort of tangental point you've got going there....but I will take it for what it's worth

I think argument for increased faction and even UAS also apply to casual PvP players and PvP-curious-PvEers since the easier it is for them to get involved the betetr they will enjoy it. New players coming into the game face a wall a barrier to entry that they don't have enough skills to counter or to make a build the PUG they are in is asking for.

I agree. Most of the people who argue for things like faster unlocking rates (whatever means necassary) are the ones who actually have signifigant portions of the game unlocked already. Sure its great for them if its implemented as the remainder of the grind will be reduced but others will 'benifite' much much more. When I was yelling about farming nerfs it certainly wasn't for me; I had everything I needed from monsters already. I realize that other inspiring people who come after me will have a hellish time trying to get the same things. Of course, I'm not totally selfless. The end goal of this is to bring back a competitive environment in Guild Wars which would be greatly benificial to me as well as the general community.

I think I'm missing something here...maybe I shouldn't post without doing more reading, but I've already spent too many hours reading forums that would have been better spent farming

Why are the two (PvE and PvP) linked at all? ...seems an interesting concept but one that doesn't work in reality unless you want to pit the 'haves against the have-nots' and that always ends in tears.

I don't play PvP, primarily cos I pretty much suck at PvP games, so I haven't really explored this side of it yet and don't fully know what's available even. I do know that having played UT for many years had I been pitted againt a rocket-launcher with a pistol, it would soon have lost interest. Similarly the 'skills' learnt or the fact that I can just about hold my own in PvE has absolutely no bearing on how to play in PvP. I went into a PvP one time and lasted 20 seconds. Where's the problem in UAS? Different games.

I like the idea that events in PvP can influence those in PvE (FoW etc.) but really these are limited. As someone has said the PvE side is too static, too predictable, again the options to do 'things' are limited, primarily it seems, at the moment, to dyeing your clothes. The updates presumably will be much like LOD for D2 just an extra area or two to explore maybe an additional char to play and there's nothing wrong with this. If I get bored of gameplay repetition (where after sometime you're really just left with a pretty game) I'll just not buy them.

However, I do believe that PvP is the way to go, or at least what brings people back to a game. PvE is fun with friends up to a point (there's only so many times you can do the same stuff over and over), the challenge (and fun too, with the right people) is to become better at using skills to counteract your opponents.

How hard would it be to seperate the two rather than trying perhaps to be overly ambitious?

I'm with Tuna. I got just about everything I need, so faster unlocks are for my own sake only in the sense that things that benefit PvP and allow new players to immerse themselves in it quicker also benefit me.

exactly! the biggest proponents for faction reward increases are probably the people who need the faction rewards the least. the proponents of anti-farming nerfs are the people who already had unlocked a lot of runes, gotten a lot of gold, or whatever. the people who are wanting pvp playbalance restored are the same people who are abusing the broken skills.

they aren't being selfish and trying to one-up their competitors. they want the game to survive, succeed, and the most important factor, to be fun.

Amen, the backlash against this astounds me...

Yup, same here. I agree that faster unlocks will benefit the casual player and therefore strengthen the community at large. It would behoove ANet to implement such changes. Someone in this thread gave some statistics regarding the number of players (about 400,000) and while that is a solid number my guess is that it allowed ANet to break even financially - nothing more. Remembering that there is no monthly charge to enhance revenues. The "gravey" will come IF they do well in the expansion AND/OR if they can pull gamers away from Blizzard and the like. I think they're doing okay right now but the pressure will become even more pronounced if the numbers fall.