Guild Wars 2

It’s funny really. I used to enjoy those Quake deathmatches and CTF maps, etc. where you got more or less insta-gibbed if an enemy saw you first.
Yet in MMO’s, where you still have a fighting chance even if you get surprised by an enemy, I just don’t enjoy PvP at all.
I think, possibly I just prefer the fast paced action with just a few powers. Bars full of powers, like we get in MMO’s, give you too many choices and that gets overwhelming under pressure and that’s just not fun…for me anyway.

I tried it a couple of times in this game, and I just don’t see what there is to it apart from having more players than the other team. I walk for five minutes and get set upon by a mob. I stick with my own mob and we decimate other players until we get attacked by a slightly larger mob. There’s no tactics. Terrain doesn’t matter. Taking castles involves standing around for ages shooting at doors.

I just don’t get it. Back to TF2 for me.

WvWvW is completely impersonal in GW2, which is very beginner friendly. You’re character is just a generic red, blue or green “invader.” To me there’s much less shame, if you can call it that, being downed by a live opponent versus a scripted AI mob. The result is the same either way, you get rezzed by friendlies or nearest waypoint and get back to the action.

Be thankful you aren’t playing eve if thats how you feel lol

Melchior.2135:

I play for exploration, story, and concept. If I’m good enough to get to the next stunning vista, or complete the mission and see the next part of the story, or earn the piece of gear that fits the look I want, that’s all I need.

I tend to approach accumulating skill with the game in kind of a backwards way – most players are constantly looking for the combination of skills, traits and equipment that produces the best effect, and training themselves to perform well with those setups. I tend to pick whatever fits the idea in my head, become disappointed with how it actually performs, but keep plugging away until I fully own my weird little niche. I become the Grand Kung-Fu Master of my crappy builds, and sometimes dazzle people with the performance I can squeeze out of them, but it’s backhanded compliments at best – “Wow, what was amazing… for an Air and Earth traited Scepter/Dagger Elementalist. You should switch to Staff or Dagger/Dagger, dump all your points into Water and Arcane, change out all the utility skills you actually enjoy and use the following Trait selections. Then you’d be REALLY good!”

Sometimes, that kind of persistence gets rewarded. The Devs tend to notice if someone achieves that level of expertise and still underperforms. If you’re the Reikou from City of Heroes, you’ll recall me as @Eisenzahn, and my years of dedication to Lunaticia, my Elec/Elec Brute, before the huge list of bugs with those powers got resolved and she became an Incarnate Trial Dominating powerhouse. Usually though, I stay locked away from “high performance” by my choices… able to get the job done in PvE, but in PvP unable to meaningfully contribute to a battlefield full of people who are totally optimized.

Sure, I could make an alt with a PvP Build and learn to play it. But it wouldn’t be MY character. Playing a build someone else optimized is like logging into someone else’s saved game. And trying to optimize the build myself is futile, because I just don’t CARE which powers are most effective, if they don’t also look cool and fit my concept. The best I can hope for is to some day luck into a build that fits my style and vision for the character, and also just happens to be PvP capable. Until then, I keep my distance.

Unfortunately I am not the Reikou you knew from CoH. Perhaps from Aion-Triniel.

Also wanted to post that a pet peeve of mine is players like you. The special snowflake type. Wanting to be different for the sake of being different.

If using a build that someone else has optimized doesn’t sit well with you, do you also reinvent the wheel everytime you ride/drive a car?

start out safe,stick around with people,use your range for attacks behind allies,slowly u will break that fear and go head on

Reikou.7068:

Unfortunately I am not the Reikou you knew from CoH. Perhaps from Aion-Triniel.

Also wanted to post that a pet peeve of mine is players like you. The special snowflake type. Wanting to be different for the sake of being different.

If using a build that someone else has optimized doesn’t sit well with you, do you also reinvent the wheel everytime you ride/drive a car?

If the build I find my own way to happens to be identical to a popular one, I don’t really care. If I got lucky and picked some stuff based on looks and concept, and it turned out that it was also powerful and popular? Hooray! That hasn’t happened so far. I really do not give a crap if the build is unique, just if it fits the concept. I make the concept first, then find the build that suits it. So far, that hasn’t overlapped at all with successful PvP builds.

I wouldn’t reinvent the wheel before driving a car, but I’d certainly adjust the seat and mirrors, and probably change the radio station. If the previous driver had the same height, build, music tastes, etc.? That’s cool, I’ll use his settings then. Now… if someone told me that moving my seat all the way forward and leaving the windshield wipers running at all times would improve my gas mileage by 15%, I’d find that interesting, but I wouldn’t do it – that’s what stepping into other people’s PvP builds usually feels like to me.

xtorma.1283:

I have never played on a pve server in any game that had pvp servers as a choice. Pve is predictable and therefore not fun for me. When i square up against people in pvp I have no idea what I am about to experience, and that makes pvp glorious. IMO.

You and I have a very similar outlook on PvP. The changing circumstances and the unpredictable nature of human beings makes it so much more interesting to me than PvE content, and I say this as a pretty below average PvP’er that probably loses more than I win. lol I remember the first time I did PvP in any game was Star Wars Galaxies. I remember my hands sweating and my heart racing the whole time, it was awesome! All these years later there are still times I get that way.

Just pretend the other players are objects, dehumanize them and you’ll be fine. Great way to do this is disabling chat. As the matter of fact it works in real life too. Afraid of that cute girl rejecting your dinner invite? Turn her into an object, then you can always tell yourself, well at least a human didn’t reject me.

Scared? Really? I ride the escalators in the local mall without holding onto the handrail. What?

WWW I am not scared of. Now SPvP I freeze up lie a dear in headlights.

Hycinthus.6483:

I will probably try WvW soon, but last time I went, the map was huge and it was sort of overwhelming I didn’t know where to start.

I would really really recommend staying out of WvW right now, lest your fears compound from your experience rather than subside.

In WvW, you either A: Feel like a meaningless number in a mindless zerg or B: Feel completely useless fighting solo against a mindless zerg. Not to mention the fact that thieves currently rule unopposed by blatantly abusing an exploit that Arenanet refuses to address or allow players to report.

If you really really want your monthly that bad, hazard it, but if you just want to have fun, there’s no reason to even enter WvW as it isn’t any fun at all right now. I really want my monthly, and I’ve been toiling through it for several wasted nights in a row, not even halfway there yet…

OP- I think you should just get out there in WvW and see what it’s like!

The first time I ever had any experience with PvP was in Aion and believe me, I was scared too. I avoided it until an Eylos came through a rift and I had no choice. It was close at first but then I lost the upper hand.. I tried to run away but that didn’t work and I died. But my heart was pounding and and.. I was totally addicted! I died a lot at first but got better as time went on. You might find you really enjoy it.

Hycinthus.6483:

I think I have a PvP-phobia. I’m just scared being killed and hunted by other players. In PVE it’s fine because I can run away, and the monsters will lose aggro. But being hunted by players seems too personal to me, this is why I cannot do PvP or WvW. Am I the only one feeling like this and is it weird?

Also, I know that when I do PvP against another player, I will most likely die, so there is no point of me to PvP at all, since all I’ll be doing is respawning over and over. Any suggestions ?

Nothing compares to the rush of adrenaline surging through your body when you 1st start doing PVP.

All PVP players were at some point in time PVE only players.
it’s when you get tired of predictable AI movement and responses that you take the plunge into what is the ultimate “you never know what will happen next kind of gameplay.”

My suggestion would be to start with structured 1st, simply to avoid big repair bills because as a fresh new player to this game type it is inevitable that you will die a lot as you acclimate and adjust to the faster pace and randomness of it all.

PvP is awesome, and if you are at all remotely interested in it, just do it.

A good PvP matchup (be it WvW, sPvP, BGs in other games, etc) is, IMO, way more interesting than any PvE encounter.

Sure, there are things to learn that you don’t know, but that’s fine – you won’t learn them until you try it. You may find you don’t like it and that’s ok.

I’d suggest trying to find “the zerg” in WvW and just seeing how it goes. Pay attention to people in map chat that don’t appear to be kitten hats to get the flow of things, and go from there.

By far my most enjoyable time in GW2 has been the WvW matchup that my server (Yak’s Bend) was in that was like a 10k point difference after a week. The faceroll matchups, overall, aren’t fun for either side (been on both), but even in those weeks you’ll be able to find close battles – just not a close war.

I haven’t really tried much sPvP here yet, so not sure how it relates to other games (BGs/Warfronts/etc), but if it’s similar – pay attention to objectives and try to accomplish them. And if it’s not similar – just ignore me on the subject.

Try this OP. Do WvWvW either solo or with friends/guildmates. Pick a map crowded with your allies, and follow zergs around. As you cap points along the map with your group, you’re bound to encounter enemy players. But since you won’t be alone, you won’t be too much of a target. This should hopefully get you used to the feel of PvP (and hopefully reduce your anxiety to the point where you become comfortable doing it). Good luck!

Theres no real point to team pvp at all. Cept for bragging rights, but still imo not worth getting into.