Guild Wars 2

I’ve owned GW2 for while and I’ve seen the progression of the game through various patches, but haven’t really played it much due to various reasons.

So this has given me a unique perspective on what a lot of players experience when they first get to the point of GW2 pvp.

While the PVE aspect to GW2 is good, I feel in order to have a complete and longer-term sustainable player experience, some pvp also needs to be participated in. And unfortunately, there are some problems (I feel) with how GW2 pvp is structured that make for a inhibiting experience, that means people don’t like/play pvp, and thus get bored with the game prematurely.

I think if I had to summarize the two biggest problems with pvp it would be the following:

1. There is a very steep learning curve to GW2Pvp. And the game does very little to help ease it.

- Short of jumping online and seeing a guide, a new person goes into the heart of the mists and sees random clothes, full skills and is given very little advice as to how to get ready to play.

1. Secondly, I think the main form of gameplay that people see, is simply the hot-join games. Which often have people leaving/joining, is chaotic and very little strategy involved. While it is subject to opinion – this doesn’t create the ‘importance’ required to make it feel like how you play determines your result. It feels more like luck and thus doesn’t reward the player which makes it even more of an addictive and fun experience

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• What do you think could be done to help PVP for newcomers? Do you think there is enough?

While I don’t want to make this a suggestion thread, merely a discussion thread, i’ll post my suggestions to see what your opinions on how something like this would work.

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• To address 1. The problem of steep learning curve.
  Honestly I think one of the reasons PVP is so daunting is actually because GW2 tries to make it easier by providing you a standard ‘kit’ of weapons, skills, and gear.
  It removes a valuable learning opportunity which the player could be directed to.

Instead of providing everything, give an NPC which ‘guides’ you through the Heart of the Mists in turn.

• He could take you to the weapon’s merchant and explain how in PVP items are separate and these are the ones that are available.
• He could tell you (like tutorial mode) to buy a weapon, and a sigil before allowing you to buy from the armor merchant and then buying your amulet.
• After gear, he could instruct you to choose your skills and traits and how traits are fully refundable.
• This step-by-step to the essentials of pvp mean everyone who starts, is given a full working knowledge of HOW to get ready for pvp, have a chance to see the build options available, and eases that learning curve dramatically.

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• My second point was how hot-join game are the main featured game-type.

While I hate comparing to other games on gaming forums because it tends to incite resistance or rage, I would like to draw your attention to the MOBA.
The MOBA gametype is a locked-in session for 40 minutes on average that when you join, you realize you’re in for the full length of it. This creates a unique set of restrictions that make the gameplay that much more fun compared to being freely able to leave or join.

I think GW2 should really feature these type of ‘locked-in’ gaming sessions as the MAIN form of pvp, if not, then at least just as evenly featured.

Instead of having a separate ‘Tournaments’ NPC, The PVP broswer NPC should allow people to choose any ‘game-type’:

1. Hotjoin Matches
2. Unranked
3. Ranked

Selecting these would then take you to the appropriate screens to join & start.

By consolidating the NPC you’re making it easier to identify which games modes there are and increasing the chance that people queue up for ‘locked-in’ game modes.

With more people logging into this game mode the queue times become far less of an issue and people will make a natural progression from Hotjoins to unranked, to ranked as they get better at PVP.

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I realize this is a bit long but I hope I’ve kept the writing succinct enough.
Wondering what your thoughts are, do you think these changes could help? Do you think there is a problem in the first place?
Let us know below!

I pretty much agree with what you wrote.

The way I did it was to level to 80 first so I knew my profession, then took the profession as specced for PvE into PvP and kept changing it until I was viable. Because that’s the one advantage to PvP. Losing doesn’t cost you anything. Your armor doesn’t break. Waypoints are free.

So you can experiment.

But overall I think Anet needs to make SPvP more accessible…there should be a real training tutorial, that explains it all step by step.

And something like Zhaitan battles in Guild Wars 1 where you could practice PvPing against AI in solo arenas wouldn’t hurt either.

The gearing and stuff needs to be put closer together. In fact I’m not even sure why you even need NPCs to begin with.

The other thing is that the rank and stat stuff seems lackluster. There’s no real detail.