Guild Wars 2

ArchonWing.9480:

Daddicus.6128:

The biggest reason was that while trying to get the mapping title (WvW), people kept killing me. Even if I wrote in chat “just mapping”, I was a target.

Enemies can’t see your chat.

Well, that would explain that.

Still, after getting behind in the learning curve, and my age, it’s probably out of reach. But, thanks for letting me know!

I am mainly a PVE er and I can only speak for myself, but I suspect there are many just like me.

I don’t like PvP because I’m terrible at it. I’m older than most and I’m just not a good button masher. Even if I was, I really don’t enjoy sitting on the edge of my seat and doing everything just right in a split second.

I fully understand that that is exactly what some like and I’m glad PvP is there for those who like that sort of thing.

As far as WvW, I actually enjoy some parts of it. You can either join a big zerg and just do what you can or kill individual guards, dolyaks, claim monuments or flip camps.

You don’t have be that good to to do any of that. I really think that people that don’t like PvP think WvW is more of the same. It’s not. Sure you might find yourself in a one on one fight or worse, but who cares.

If you die its no big deal. Just resurrect and try again. I have done this a lot, mainly getting the easy dailies in WvW. More often than not, I rarely see any real people, just npc’s.

As far as WvW, I guess what I’m trying to say is you don’t have to be that good to not only contribute, but to get some decent rewards as well as just having fun.

I’m a highly competitive person in real life both professionally and the real world sports I play. When I play GW2 during my limited time for computer games it is a nice break from that so I don’t bother with PvP or WvW really.

JustTrogdor.7892:

I’m a highly competitive person in real life both professionally and the real world sports I play. When I play GW2 during my limited time for computer games it is a nice break from that so I don’t bother with PvP or WvW really.

I understand that completely. If you are like me, you play for a diversion where you don’t have to perform at your best, just enjoy a alternate world to explore where you don’t have to worry if you fail.

The speed of pvp is all wrong right now . Hyperactiveitys like that I can only take for a short time .

Besides ,

How do I take my team into ranked Pvp ?

As for wvw it’s also ok in limited amounts . I’m not into blob vs blob and my server beings rank 7 or 8 was awesome for small battles.

Now we’re always teamed with 1 and 2 ranked worlds and it’s sort of a pain in the kitten to get anything done with a party sized group .

They keep “balancing” around the random crying here but also what is played in tournaments (which is bad also since it implies people run full teams of friends all the time in pvp). Zero consistency.

Threads like this always make me wonder why more people don’t like classical ballet, opera and free jazz.

Simple answer: not everyone likes fighting other players.

Give me Server with ping less than 100 ms ping and I’ll E-sport for A-net. Right now many people are handicapped.

I remember when Taiwan and Korean community was thriving they have different meta on PVP. And WvW commander are more about fight. Right now both of them are stale.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Threads like this always make me wonder why more people don’t like classical ballet, opera and free jazz.

I do actually

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Actually, there was a PTR/Community-testing period for the Desert Borderlands.

It can only be called PTR/Testing if there’s an actual testing involved (as in: devs are interested in result of said testing and those results have a chance of impacting the final version). In this case the community got shown something that was so advanced that devs weren’t interested in any feedback that might have suggested any more major change in design.
It wasn’t testing. It was a PR event.

But back to OP: i don’t generally play PvP because i’m not a competitive person, and also i no longer have reaction time and manual control good enough for it.
Additionally, I farmed a bit the reward tracks in sPvP earlier on a more casual basis, but the pressure during the seasons 1-4 (where the end reward seemed to be time-limited, and achievement requirements were a bit above casual level of play) made me burn out. At this moment i just can’t play more than one game without needing to turn off GW2 right after and chill out for a long time. Maybe if the past seasons were more like the current one it would have been better, but they weren’t.

TL/DR: i don’t play in competitive nvironment because i don’t really find that competitiveness fun. Add any sort of pressure to win, and from not so fun it turns very fast into extreme unfun territory.

Here’s a few reasons I don’t do pvp very much.

-Skill rotations are unbalanced. Example: an Engineer may need to pull off a really elaborate combo to do some serious damage. But a Thief can just spam a couple skills and do the same amount of damage. The amount of effort put into a rotation only to have another class trump it with something easier should not exist. If that rotation is really difficult, it should give much better results.

-Too much focus on very few builds. In a game where you can have many different builds, they should all be viable. Yes some more than others but not as extreme as in this game.

-Elitism and salt. Omg, I can’t stress this enough. Superiority complexes and the amount of salt I’ve seen is overwhelming.

-Lastly I’m a casual player and I prefer to just chill and kill **** while having a drink. Not face roll my keyboard in frustration.

Because I don’t feel like I am playing party based PvP. I don’t feel my skills do anything, I miss GW1’s skill system too much, THOSE skills were impactful, I felt effects on enemy, on myself, on ally on which I’ve cast spell…

So I only play for Lore

Come to Maguuma and see why people there do not want to delve into WvW.
As for PvP, it’s just as toxic as any PvP in any game. I’ve started to just turn off all chat because so many people become furious. I’m personally there for the chests, the leadersboard is an kitten fight, that makes people angry. Only way to solve that is to put the chests in unrank and call it a day.

“Education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other”
- Terry Pratchett (writing about the wizards at the Unseen University).

PvP is a bit like that, but without the books. Instead there’s a wiki with some basic information and a couple of posts by Josh and I can’t find a lot of useful, up to date information on the internet.

Basically, the game doesn’t do a lot to educate anyone about anything (note, I’m talking about mechanics, not Lore or where to find Mankrik’s wife). It’s a problem in all MMOs that I’ve played but it becomes most obvious in PvP where you encounter players that have been playing since day one, think that everyone else should instantly know everything that they’ve learned since day one and think that snarky abuse will somehow impart that information. It’s not welcoming. I quickly grow tired of the /team “ZOMG NOOB TEAM UNINSTALL !” blockandquit players. In fact the angry man in chat is a huge issue.

A few of other things that don’t help are:

1. The game doesn’t respawn in waves, meaning that inexperienced players can constantly respawn and feed themselves to the other team’s players in ones and twos resulting in further frustration for all, including angry man. Should they hang back a bit? Sure but their desire is to get back into the fight and turn things around. If people respawned in a group I feel it’d result in fewer 100-500 blowouts.
2. The build system is too complex for newcomers (too complex for a balanced PvP game really, IMO), 9 classes with 6 trait lines, dozens of runes and sigils, and hundreds of weapon and utility skills. The sheer number of potential combinations is huge but the vast majority of them are still useless for PvP.
3. Roles and interrelationships aren’t clear. For example, thieves counter necros. How about if I’m using a terrible, non-meta build on my thief? Who do necros counter? They have two necros, does our team composition counter that? I sure as heck don’t know and can’t find any source on the web to indicate it.
4. The matchmaking selection just picks 5 players and puts them up against 5 other players with no idea of compositions or roles or… anything other than a rough idea that these guys are fairly close in terms of skill rating (itself not really an indication of actual skill with a class).
5. Switching characters, while possible, is slow and isn’t that obvious, how much better would it be if you could just choose your character in the PvP UI and the game loaded just that character? It would be great to be able to choose from predefined “heroes” with specific builds and defined roles? So I can pick my characters or take a look at the enemy comp and decide to select Stubb the Asuran “Melee Roamer Thief” or Logan the “Bunker Guardian And Long Distance Runner”.
6. Communication tools are very poor. A chat box in the corner of the screen is a very poor tool for a dynamic game mode. The player should be watching the screen and playing the game, not the chat box. Also the text in the chat box says “push far”… wait was that typed just now? Or 30 seconds ago? I was in a fight over home so I’m not sure. Standard call outs like “help mid”, help home, help far and so on would be good. They could be in the announcer voice to cut down on voice over costs. The pings aren’t much better (again, mini map is in the other corner of the screen far away from the action).
7. It’s a confusing mess of effects and requires a lot of knowledge of opposing builds. Is that guy about to heal or unleash hell? I sure as heck don’t know.

I’ll probably continue to jump into PvP here and there when a season starts but it’s not a good experience. The game needs a lot of work to become a good PvP game, IMO, and I really can’t see it happening at this stage.

i use to PvP quite alot, but the condi meta killed it for me. I still roam the majority of the time in WvW though, at least out there I can get some good fights and if the cheese condi specs show up, I can always avoid them (which you cannot do in PvP).

Speaking honestly, I don’t consider PvP because people take it too ruddy seriously. They can’t lose graciously, and their egos are just obnoxious.
Beyond that, the general imbalance between classes doesn’t interest me.

WvW, or as I call it, Walk v Walk, is 90% following a zerg around and tooting warhorns until something actually happens. Usually, it’s an undefended fort or lol-steamrolling over an unprepared pair of roamers. (I’ve been on the opposite end of the latter. Hilarious~.) It bores me.
Even more boring, when the map you port into is being utterly dominated and there’s no population on the map to speak of. It’s pretty useless to even try at that point.

Ashen.2907:

Faereilos.5106:

Endless Soul.5178:

For me it’s a physical reaction. My body can’t take it with my condition. The last time I had to PvP for my guild (there were only a handful of us on, and we needed this one PvP mission to level up the guild and they begged me to join them) I came away with fast breathing and shaking hands. I thought I was having another crisis.

Years ago I played other games where you shoot each other down in airplanes with no problems. Now, my body rejects it all.

Don’t get old kids!

Glad I’m not the only one >_< When I’m fighting against another player my anxiety causes me to shake and lose focus, and ingame it looks like I’ve no idea what I’m doing. Sometimes it gets so bad I have to turn off the game and do something else. Having to wvw for my gift of battle is pure torture right now…

Just do the non competitive WvW dailies. Takes a bit longer but you will get there without as much anxiety.

Oh I am pretty sure they cause anxiety as well. It was daily camp the other day and I killed this guy taking a camp easy. Like killing a level 40 upscale or something.

After he whispered a lenghty line involving about 10 different kittens and how I ruined his daily.

Stuff like that makes WvW worth playing.

I PvE’d for some time before PvP or WvW even became visible to me. I was probably a happier player in those innocent days.

WvW, at least in my perception, tends to be massively imbalanced. That’s not fun. Re-enacting Masada is interesting once. Doing it 20 + times a night gets old fast.

PvP… well, the environment tends to be pretty unfriendly. I’m contrary and hard headed, so I stick around. Friends of mine have come to one session and vowed never to return.

In my opinion, many PvE players would be seriously turned off by exposure to PvP. The PvE world is about epic storytelling and heroic acts. PvP is about cutthroat competition.

Dawdler.8521:

Stuff like that makes WvW worth playing.

If you think killing a “level 40 upscale” is something worth bragging about…

RoseofGilead.8907

This is just my personal reasons for not doing sPvP and rarely doing WvW:

I don’t like fighting other players. That’s it, really. I’ve never cared for PvP in any game I’ve played; it’s not fun for me, so I don’t do it. So, since sPvP is all fighting against other players, it’s not really my sort of thing. Thus, I avoid it.

Now, I’ve done a fair amount of WvW. I enjoy the PvE aspects of it (killing npcs to take objectives), but, as with sPvP, I do not enjoy fighting other players. If someone comes along and is obviously trying to attack me or someone in my group, then I’ll fight back. But that whole part of it still tends to not be very fun for me. So, I tend to avoid WvW, unless I’m just in a mood to do it or need something from that part of the game.

Pretty much my feelings exactly. I tend to only venture out into WvW-lands early in the morning when there’s little chance of encountering someone, or just to kill the warg right around the corner. I will put up a feeble fight if I am confronted, but prefer to avoid or just port back to PvE-lands.

I don’t go into PvP-lands or any of the festival PvP experiences at all.

I prefer to have other players as potential allies, not as enemies.

Before GW2 I got talked into a wargame. I was constantly having to rush to my computer at inconvenient times (like when going to sleep) because people would track down when you were most likely to be inactive and launch an attack to hit then. When I left the game I promised myself NEVER to do that again. I play games for fun. Not for stress.

I WvW most of my time in the game now. Guild Wars pvp has gone from pure garbage to mostly garbage and it took years to get there. I have no hope that they’ll ever make it right.

Simply put, it’s boring.

Spvp – you don’t run the meta? Get out. There really is no fun to it when everyone is running the same spec 99% of the time. In open world PvE, I can face a boss as one spec, and try a new spec the next time.

Then there’s the toxicity in chat. Yeah, that’s always fun.

Lack of cooperation. It’s a team based mode but too many people want to be the hero. Why should I put up with that frustration? Sure, it happens in open PvE too, but at the same time, because a player knows how a meta works, it has a better chance to succeed. Has any ever noticed that meta event maps get easier as time goes on? Where there is less failing to always succeeding? (Note, not counting bugs or glitches here).

And let’s face it, losing over and over and over just wears you down and makes you feel like crap.

As for WvW, I feel it never panned out how anet wanted it to. To me, whoever is in first, the other two would gang up on. But instead, it seems the top two beat down on the little guy for resources and once in awhile scrimmage to fight for first.

It got old real fast.

Astralporing.1957:

Dawdler.8521:

Stuff like that makes WvW worth playing.

If you think killing a “level 40 upscale” is something worth bragging about…

He probably just likes drinking wine.

PvP suffers from the same thing that all “RPG” style games do when they attempt to go “competitive”, and that is that they are impossible to balance. Shooters, in general, are great for PvP balance because player skill is nearly the ONLY deterministic factor whereas RPGs have team comp, class, stats, and gear all with equal or greater impact on result than player skill. This forces everyone to run the same few sets of combinations so that player skill can eventually determine outcomes again. Chess is a great competitive game because both players start with the same pieces. Can you imagine how bad it would be if one player got to start with 3 Queens and the other guy had all pawns? That’s basically what PvP is in all RPGs.

WvW has the same issues, but zerg size becomes the primary factor. Because they did not enforce population controls normalizing population balance (and because those maps are way too huge for the populations that they have), most of the servers wound up dying forcing them to come up with the pairing system which further removed layers of enjoyment (lack of community feel, constant re-pairing maintenance, etc.). The entire concept needs to be reworked from the ground up.

I do like fighting against other people and I’m quite the competitive gamer in other games, just not gw2. Personally because gw2 combat doesn’t feel like fighting at all, it’s not much of an action game (it;s far from it), it’s more of a moba.

I like combat in a way that hits stagger or flinch (because there is no concept of this, there are no “jabs” in the game), no running while flailing ur weapons (try running while throwing a punch it’s going to be weird and off), the element of zoning and pokes. Without these, combat won’t really interest me much in terms of PvP.

WvW is a bit worse, it’s the commander and his call-outs that are really fighting, everyone else doesn’t really require much in terms of the player’s mechanical skill itself. Before anyone touches on “roaming” I’d rather go sPvP for that, I don’t get roaming at all, it’s quite a waste of time running around just to get 1 or 2 quality fights and it’s not even an even playing field in most cases.

Just to touch on pve, anet’s approach to encounters does get dull really fast due to the fact that to clear any content, especially raids, the approach is a procedure rather than fighting. Because of this, replayability is quite low. e.g. i think CM100 is really fun at start, but grows real dull fast because player is not interacting with enemy (no AI). Enemy just does his own thing regardless of player input, position and situation

tl;dr: Combat isn’t good enough for me. Combat that require more from the player’s skill and is evidently distinct enough to be noticeable across skill levels are games that interest me for pvp (not talking abt ranking but the idea that u just really got outplayed based on skill completely). GW2’s combat does not really allow this in terms of fighting itself.

This is just my opinion and mostly because Im very focused on combat and martial arts in general so my views are a bit biased on some elements closer to fighting games and a few action games that have used these elements well

IndigoSundown.5419:

Astralporing.1957:

Dawdler.8521:

Stuff like that makes WvW worth playing.

If you think killing a “level 40 upscale” is something worth bragging about…

He probably just likes drinking wine.

Only the very best is good enough. It doesnt hurt when they send a mail with a cheese wedge to go along with it (yes, that has happened).

But I do find it amusing that astral entirely missed the point. That’s what makes the forums worth coming back to.

I used to WvW quite a bit for a few months, a bit after release. I’ve also tried my hand at pvp’ing, also for a few months after/during WvW’ing (skill gap is noticeably btw).

There were two common reasons I’ve stopped both. Class balance, and rewards. I understand that times have changed since way back when, but I’m have a hard time finding the desire to come back. Class balance I understand that it’s a hard thing to do… But in both cases, the class(es) that I did want to play, had a role I did not want to play. I’ve tried playing other classes with a more desirable roles, but those classes weren’t as fun or interesting to me to keep me long enough. Rewards, way-back-when there wasn’t tracks, felt very underwhelming. Especially for WvW. When the fights, the moments, where so epic… but the rewards were so trash and meaningless – so much so that made me think “What the hell is all this for?” almost in a depressing manner (I know fun, but that thought just ate away at it). I’ve also started to flip at around that time, which made it even more depressing, knowing that what I made in 3-4 hours of play I can easily make in 5-10 minutes of flipping.

PvP specifically. Besides balance… Stale map/mode/metas. Not much incentive to play, besides fun – which I can get more out of a MOBA (back then) if I wanted PvP “fun”. PvP tends to get toxic real fast if you start to try… Once you start trying you start to get annoyed with people – inevitable in any team based pvp game that puts with you randoms that may or may not care about winning (or doing things properly – ei. running a half decent build). So without much incentive and with the inevitable annoyance by people, PvP didn’t last too long. Though, whilst pvp’ing off nights and wvw’ing other nights, I do remember becoming very good in terms of fight in WvW.

WvW. The reward thing as I mentioned kind of was one thing. It also played into another. WvW feels like this big and epic thing… that gets underplayed, undervalued, or underappreciated by devs. Like you can build so much on top of WvW alone, in terms of game systems (rewards, politics, so on). Besides that, if you’re just running in a random zerg, nothing too epic happens, or not often. At which point it starts to feel like PvE, with just kittentier rewards – and makes you think “why am i doing this again if it’s basically PvE?”. If you’re running in a good (+20 members when WvW’ing) and coordinated guild, then it’s loads of fun. Getting in a guild that does that is “hard?”.

Edit:
Oh and the inaccessible (from WvW/sPvP) ascended gear – back during those times – didn’t help either. The feel of being less than optimally geared in WvW…

I really enjoy sPvP.

I keep trying to get into WvW, but the gear grind keeps me out.

For WvW at least if you’re stuck in Dragonbrand, Borlis Pass, or Anvil Rock, this kind of salt (?) might drive you away from WvW.

Frioniel.7126:

For WvW at least if you’re stuck in Dragonbrand, Borlis Pass, or Anvil Rock, this kind of salt (?) might drive you away from WvW.

Oh is monkey back? Yeah he does that.

I love pvp. Well…I used to love what it was. I came from many years of WoW where I enjoyed all aspects of the game – pvp, wpvp (not ganking, but attacks on towns that would draw enemy guilds out and more people would gather so you experienced everything from a skirmish to all out war), rp, pve – I loved it all. I loved being outnumbered in battlegrounds and seeing if I could survive.

When I arrived in GW2, I just straight into pvp and really enjoyed myself. Fights were a decent length… a little shorter than some WoW fights (and I like me a decent brawl!), but long enough. Spec were varied. People experimented.

Then it shifted to seeing the same specs over…and over…and over. People running away in 1vs1, people only initiating if they had a team mate and you were alone. Fights got short. You either decimated them or got decimated yourself. I don’t mind losing, but really…a 2 second blur of combat that is basically CC-massive attack-death is not exciting at all. When I decimated someone else, it almost surprised me. Either way resulted in “Wth just happened?”

WvW went from roaming bands to massive zergs avoiding eachother (see Warhammer Online). When they do meet, its fun, but that is rare and fleeting.

I miss being able to customize my gear and runes a bit more in spvp. That took a lot of fun out.

Then add the need for many players to open their mouths and spew toxic krait juice over everyone. Totally unnecessary for a game.

And it’s not the game mechanics as much as it is the players. You see it across all MMOs. Meta specs, cookie cutter builds, toxic actions and words. I am not really affected personally by toxic behaviour, but I really don’t need people like that around me. They have no self control and are getting too charged up over a game.

At the end of the day GW2 offers me a better pve experience than WoW did. The npcs don’t feel like mindless drones that just hit you with a weapon or single spell. I know I latched on to pvp for something more challenging than pve where you had to counter many kinds of spells and abilities, and GW2 pve actually gives me that. In fact, sometimes I get more enjoyment out of an npc fight than a player fight (I’m looking at players who run away with their cds are up and they can’t CC-massive attack).

Sorry for the long winded garble…I’m still waking up.

My own 2 cens…

I like pvp, and I like it in this game. What I don’t like is toxic players.
Like, i don’t play a game to be stressed out. I have work for that, and I think that too many players – especially – in unranked or lower ranks, can’t just have fun if it means respecting people.
Dude, you’re in Bronze or Silver? You are definitely not the pvp god you think you are. Giving advices is far more effective than trashtalking an entire team. Toxicity because one team wiped at mid (there’s always one…)? Just serves your ego.

And my biggest issue with it is that it seems to be the norm here, people seem to think it’s okay, that it’s normal to be toxic because it’s competitive.
Well no it’s not. And until the community gets more mature I will only do pvp very casually.

WvW is a whole other matter, there is not enough incentive in my opinion to play it.

Because these game modes are just minimally supported by Anet

PvP lacks build variety, can’t play competitively with a team of friends, small rewards, all the maps are the same and it’s not as good as GW1 GvG.

WvW has server issues, all your friends are scattered on different servers so you can’t play with them. Gameplay is not as fun as it used to be – blob size now defeat skill, no incentive to play – long matchups with predictable outcome, EotM still has no objective or reward.

I like WvW a lot more than I like SPvP. I like the scale of it. It feels more like open world PvP because of the size of the maps.

But because I run a guild and not everyone in my guild is on my server, I hate that I can’t play with my guild, so I don’t run it as often as I’d like.

That said, I mostly play games for story or immersion into a world. WvW and SPvP, I don’t feel that my character is motivated to kill things. These guys aren’t “the enemy”. There’s no real lore behind it, except for a vague excuse to kill the other guy.

When I played Prophecies in the original Guild Wars, I had a reason to fight and hate charr. I saw what they did to Ascalon. I was on a grand adventure.

PvP doesn’t do that for me.

I don’t pvp or wvw seriously due to what I perceive as toxicity and imbalanced gameplay.

In PVP I do moderated dailies only. I do not participate in league play. Thank you Bear for your daily room.

In WvW I build up for track progress and then AFK for 8min at a time. After eight minutes, I do something to keep the participation bar going, then go back to start and AFK again. This is mandatory for acquiring a Gift of Battle.

I don’t like WvW because I spend most of the time going from place to place and because almost everything is decided by who has the bigger zerg. Too much dead time and not much actual skill.

As far as the travel time, the maps are too big with too few travel options (you can’t even glide to take shortcuts). There is just too much dead space everywhere, and the few waypoints there are (and there aren’t enough for the size given the lack of things to do) are too often contested.

For the second, this is just the nature of this type of PVP. More players will almost always win a fight since they have more skills to burn. But combined with the slow travel, this mean you can spend 5 min going somewhere, get swarmed, and gain nothing.

Boogiepop Void.6473:

I don’t like WvW because I spend most of the time going from place to place and because almost everything is decided by who has the bigger zerg. Too much dead time and not much actual skill.

As far as the travel time, the maps are too big with too few travel options (you can’t even glide to take shortcuts). There is just too much dead space everywhere, and the few waypoints there are (and there aren’t enough for the size given the lack of things to do) are too often contested.

For the second, this is just the nature of this type of PVP. More players will almost always win a fight since they have more skills to burn. But combined with the slow travel, this mean you can spend 5 min going somewhere, get swarmed, and gain nothing.

The funny irony of this is that a lot of players used to say the WvW maps were too small!

I like to sPVP from time to time because I get to stretch some combat and tactics muscles that I don’t always get to when I’m in PVE. I tend to PVE more because I’m a quest/story/lore nerd. So when I run out of story, I’m more likely to PVP to avoid grinding all the time for armor, masteries, etc. Some day I’ll venture into WVW.

Dawdler.8521:

Ashen.2907:

Faereilos.5106:

Endless Soul.5178:

For me it’s a physical reaction. My body can’t take it with my condition. The last time I had to PvP for my guild (there were only a handful of us on, and we needed this one PvP mission to level up the guild and they begged me to join them) I came away with fast breathing and shaking hands. I thought I was having another crisis.

Years ago I played other games where you shoot each other down in airplanes with no problems. Now, my body rejects it all.

Don’t get old kids!

Glad I’m not the only one >_< When I’m fighting against another player my anxiety causes me to shake and lose focus, and ingame it looks like I’ve no idea what I’m doing. Sometimes it gets so bad I have to turn off the game and do something else. Having to wvw for my gift of battle is pure torture right now…

Just do the non competitive WvW dailies. Takes a bit longer but you will get there without as much anxiety.

Oh I am pretty sure they cause anxiety as well. It was daily camp the other day and I killed this guy taking a camp easy. Like killing a level 40 upscale or something.

After he whispered a lenghty line involving about 10 different kittens and how I ruined his daily.

Stuff like that makes WvW worth playing.

People with this attitude are the reason people avoid the Toxic wastelands known as WvW and PvE.

I’ll stick with the Meta’s in PvE…..

No comment on arena PvP, since I don’t play it due to it not being my cup of tea.

But people not playing WvW, I can explain; The WvW community can be extremely elitist and non-inclusive. I’ve seen countless cases where newer players hop into WvW and instinctively follow the shiny tag, only to then get shouted at due to not being on coms/bad spec/rally bot/guild raid/ you name it. When this happens to YOU, would you consider returning? I wouldn’t.

This is probably why EotM (the "fake WvW") is more popular, anyone can hop on in there and follow the tag, and experience larger scale PvP without being shouted at.

WvW was extremely crowded at launch, remember that? Those were the days where commanders simply focused on leading their group, rather than micromanaging every individual player and having high demands. Naturally I am aware that the "meta" evolved since those days, but if you’re asking why less people play WvW compared to PvE, then here is (a notable part of) your answer.

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

The fact it “made his day” to know he attacked someone just doing the daily just showed the toxic attitude he had. If he had said “Oh I didn’t realize you were only doing the daily” would be one thing but he took pride in the fact he was able to be toxic.

Ever heard of sportsmanship? It was a thing before Trash Talk took over sporting events and now its taking over games. My coach always said “Act like you are not surprised you scored a Touchdown”.

He never said it “made his day” those are your words, the only reason he knew the guy was going for a daily was because “he whispered a lenghty line involving about 10 different kittens and how I ruined his daily.” That’s an actual quote.

So what did Dawdler do then? Did he report the guy? No, he kinda laughed it off, “Stuff like that makes WvW worth playing.” Another actual quote from the guy.

I wonder if Dawdler had said “I was hurt and horrified by the abusive whisper and haven’t been back to WvW since!” would you feel the same way? I bet you wouldn’t but he didn’t say that so now he’s the bad one.

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

Did I say direct quote? His remark that this made his WvW worthwhile pretty much said as much.

Hey if you like to play like a “toxic spore” by all means it is the way the game is set. I just answered why “I” felt it was avoided.

No it didn’t say anything like that, your interpretation was incorrect, probably because you expected toxicity. Probably much the same reason you’re being so aggressive in your defence of what you say now.

I don’t PvP or WvW but I occasionally go to WvW if I need to do a quick daily. While I’m in WvW I play by their rules, it’s a competitive game mode, and I’m sure not going to give any WvW player grief because they won’t stand aside to let me do a daily.

Pifil.5193:

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

Dawdler.8521:

Oh I am pretty sure they cause anxiety as well. It was daily camp the other day and I killed this guy taking a camp easy. Like killing a level 40 upscale or something.

After he whispered a lenghty line involving about 10 different kittens and how I ruined his daily.

Stuff like that makes WvW worth playing.

People like you are part of the reason people avoid the Toxic wastelands known as WvW and PvE.

Ummm… Dawdler’s “crime” is that he was actually playing WvW as the mode is intended to be played.

He came across an enemy player trying to capture one of his world’s camps and killed him, defending his world’s camp. Then the person that he killed sent him an abusive whisper.

Nothing Dawdler did was wrong and he continues to get abuse over it.

I can’t (and won’t) try to speak for Lite Ning here, but I will say this…
It wasn’t that Dawdler killed an enemy player in a PvP environment. Defending your servers camp is what you are supposed to do there.
It’s the fact that he, apparently, took obscene joy in crushing someone that clearly wasn’t at his level…
It’s all about that player attitude again.
A chest-thumping sore winner is no better then an angry sore loser

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Pifil.5193:

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

Dawdler.8521:

Oh I am pretty sure they cause anxiety as well. It was daily camp the other day and I killed this guy taking a camp easy. Like killing a level 40 upscale or something.

After he whispered a lenghty line involving about 10 different kittens and how I ruined his daily.

Stuff like that makes WvW worth playing.

People like you are part of the reason people avoid the Toxic wastelands known as WvW and PvE.

Ummm… Dawdler’s “crime” is that he was actually playing WvW as the mode is intended to be played.

He came across an enemy player trying to capture one of his world’s camps and killed him, defending his world’s camp. Then the person that he killed sent him an abusive whisper.

Nothing Dawdler did was wrong and he continues to get abuse over it.

I can’t (and won’t) try to speak for Lite Ning here, but I will say this…
It wasn’t that Dawdler killed an enemy player in a PvP environment. Defending your servers camp is what you are supposed to do there.
It’s the fact that he, apparently, took obscene joy in crushing someone that clearly wasn’t at his level…
It’s all about that player attitude again.
A chest-thumping sore winner is no better then an angry sore loser

Exactly, thank God someone can read and comprehend all at once.

WvW: I did it for a while. Found a nice non-rep guild I could join once a week for a raid. That guild eventually died out and I simply lost interest. IMO there’s nothing fun about joining a pug tag and running around all day and most organised guilds require repping, 3 raids a week, etc which I’m just not willing to do.

Roaming imo is just boring. Most 1v1s are absolute kittene compared to PvP, it takes a very long time of wandering around before you find someone to fight and then there’s the annoying getting ganked by 5 ppl. It’s just not worth it for that tiny bit of action.

PvP: Simply put I don’t like playing stuff I’m not good at and with 3-4 raids a week I just don’t have time to become better. I enjoy it every once in a while, but not enough to play it on a regular basis.

We players come from all ages and backgrounds. Having spent my R/L career fighting for safety, fairness and workers rights in the workplace, my opinion of people in general and what motivates many of us has suffered considerably over time so I simply place more value and receive more satisfaction from my own achievements. That is not likely to happen in WvW.
After a career of fighting people, I find PvP to be just more of the same. Little balance or fairness or justice possible, coupled with what I consider pointless requirements to force us into those modes makes it extremely unlikely that I will take part. I guess I always considered WvW and maybe PvP as end game content, but I’m there and it still hasn’t happened. It’s actually the requirement to play a specific game mode for a specific reward that is keeping me out. I think that if the requirements were dropped , I’d be there, or give it a serious try..
The other side of it is that as we get older we generally have the financial ability to do more exploring, but the world is rapidly becoming a much more dangerous place, (points at the election) and here, in this big beautiful game world we can do a lot of exploring and if we die, we get back up.
I have had numerous retirees ask me if I still play online games and how can I still stand more fighting with people. When I explain cooperative PvE to them and how enjoyable it is to explore this world safely, many try the game and are still playing.
I’m glad those other game modes are here. Maybe one day I will be motivated to rejoin them. I hope this gives you a broader perspective for the question asked.

Can’t speak for others, as for myself.

PvP’s conquest game mode overly rewards defense over offense, a team without a bunker does not win against a team with one or more, and its the only role two or more of is preferred. This mode enforces such a harsh meta that there is no build diversity, no strategy, no tactics, no depth of play anywhere to speak of; every game boils down to who can stall better. I have zero interest in standing inside a circle and refusing to die, and I can’t imagine who would.

There is no amount of tweaking that can make this game mode enjoyable, it needs to be replaced, and three years of balancing around it has made build diversity worse in every single game mode.

WvW has never felt like epic large scale battle as it should have, when I first heard of it I imagined battles like Helms Deep or the Thousand Orc Army, what we got looks like a grade-school cafeteria food fight. Organization not only goes unrewarded, it is punished compared to a haphazard rotation of throwing bodies at each other and hoping the other guys run out first. And any “epic” properties are completely thrown out the window because of the same design mistake- stacking.

The very idea of “epic” brings to mind the principle of scale, impressive size and numbers, and when you can fit 100+ players in a 1×1 ft radius stacked inside of each other, it destroys all sense of scale, any hope or appearance of that group of players being impressive or weighty. And removes any need for strategy by making it nothing but a a bunch of individuals with no interaction with each other, just acting on the closest object available to be acted upon.

WvW will never feel like anything but one mindless zerg against another until stacking is removed or at the very least heavily discouraged and put at a disadvantage compared to organizing, placement, and movement as a group.

I have a feeling its been covered already in this post, but as far as i see it these are the reasons I’ve sen for more people not playing in those two modes:

1) Both modes have a certain “type” of player that can be toxic. In PvP its a bit worse, but both have their fair share of people that go out of their way to be jerks tbh.

2) PvP can be crazy fun, but if you’re a new player or just don’t have the twitch skills necessary to play it the game mode can get really frustrating really fast.

3) There is ZERO incentive to play WvW “properly”, and its just become a free for all zerg and roaming fest with little strategy and now with the team ups of servers even LESS motivation based on “server pride”. Early on I went into WvW and was drawn in by both the push and pull as the 3 sides fought for control and points, as well as the “this is my server, aw yes” feeling. It sucked me in. Its even informed my sig on the forums. That being said, the day they introduced megaservers that all changed. I couldn’t recruit easily and it just took the wind out of WvW. Then they added in the team ups (to ham-fistedly deal with the low pop issues for certain servers) while also completely erasing the identity of the “sub servers” that are in team ups. Couple all of that with changing how scoring works making it all very pointless to hold objectives and then having players need to play for AGES just to progress a fraction of a way on a rewards line as compared to PvP and yeah. If the game mode can barely hold onto long time WvW players, its not going to grab new players for long.

I might PvP or WvW now to knock out a daily quickly, but thats about it. I’ve tried getting back into WvW like before, but there is no incentive. And PvP is more a distraction than anything I’m drawn to seriously in part due to the toxicity I’ve experienced in there.