Guild Wars 2

Quick background on me. Started playing in October, did mostly PvE, then discovered WvW. Loved the concept but had no experience with player-player combat and I’d panic every time enemies got near. So I decided to spend some time in PvP over the last two months to get more comfortable with fighting other players, and have learned to like it, at least to a certain extent.

Anyway, it seems a very small percentage of players use this part of the game, and PvPers are always arguing about why that is. Seems to me that it’s missing the point to have people who engage in an activity speculate about why those who don’t engage in it choose not to, rather than asking those people directly.

So, to those of you who don’t participate in sPvP: what are the major reasons why?

The reason I don’t play SPvP often is because it is completely separate from PvE. What I mean by that is: You don’t get rewarded in PvE for stuff you did in PvP – and SPvP feels like a completely different game from Guild Wars 2.

WvW rewards you by giving you coins and armor you can wear in PvE, but SPvP gives you nothing except rewards for SPvP. That’s the reason I don’t play SPvP often. Plus, SPvP feels so unrewarding that I can only play a game or two before I have to go back to PvE.

1. PVP is never balanced correctly so I never bother.

2. I’m more of a Co-op kind of guy.

3. I get bored waiting in the queue.

I did some world PVP back in vanilla Wow and that was a fantastic experience, but I could never get into GW2 PVP. I’m odd I know.

At the moment because I’m too busy farming ascended materials (cough dragonite ore…) …

PvE combat is incredibly dull compared to pvp, but I really want that Light of Dwayna backpiece.

Because I do not play any PvP. I am not ruthless enough.

The reasons I don’t play s/tPvP are mostly about the format. It’s too small and too fast and quite gimmicky.

I prefer hiking and rock climbing to exercise machines and climbing walls in gyms. Besieging a keep, not knowing whether it will take hours and hundreds of enemy and ally deaths to take, feels so much more satisfying to me than successfully bunkering home point till the 15 min timer ticks down.

The other thing I don’t like is the chat. I’ve never been into smack-talking. I understand some people really enjoy that aspect, and some people can just ignore it and still have fun. I’m glad there’s a game mode that supports it, so those people have their outlet (and stay out of the WvW/PvE chat, hehe).

Get bored of the same old conquest.
Have been waiting for new game modes(capture the flag,deathmatch, team deathmatch,etc) since the launch of the game. have given up hope.

Game type all being the same lead to it being boring. Plus the lack of reward, these are both being changed but its basically too late.

Because I play a class with a very core mechanic of stealth, but stealth is useless in this all conquest set of maps.

I prefer zerging down soloers in wvw. so fun to get the hate whispers when i join their groups.

morrolan.9608:

Game type all being the same lead to it being boring. Plus the lack of reward, these are both being changed but its basically too late.

Yep. the hardcore pvpers have all left and probably gone back to WoW or some other games. and the e-sport boat has already sailed away.

The main reason I feel why people didn’t get into pvp is because the separation. Having separate stats was fine, but that should have been it. It seems Anet realized this and started to add more PvE based rewards and more changes to help bridge the gap been PvP and PvE/WvW.

Unfortunately I think it’s too late. If most of this stuff was in a launch, the pvp population would be quite large.

The only reason I don’t play spvp in this game is because it has only 1 game mode. Yes, 1 game mode, that’s it…

If I want to play “Capture A B C” and hold it, then I can play Call of duty or Battlefield which is 5x more fun than this.

Unless they add more gamemodes, such as Deathmatch, free for all, king of the hill, Cage matches (that kind of stuff) then I will play it for sure.

On the whole I find it quite irritating. This game has always felt extremely sluggish to me, with long cast times on skills, delays between the skill casting and it actually doing damage to the opponent, skills going on cooldown even though they didn’t trigger properly, things like that. Put these together with the annoying downed state, stealth, clones, and the lackluster rewards, and there’s my answer.

I have to admit I quite like pvp. I only started playing it yesterday. My only problem with it is that it can feel quite clumsy. Not to mention some skills fail to connect even when you on top of your opponent, shield bash I find it happens the most with.

But as others have said, pvp just dose not feel as rewarding as PvE.

Essence Snow.3194:

Going to be honest and stereotype….

People don’t PvP b/c of Pvpers. They are usually the most toxic group of players to be found in this genre and thus most avoid them best they can, which involves not PvPing.

i disagree with this statement. in gw2 the pve players have been the most toxic group of players to me. the elitist zerk only mentality, the heavies only group, the champ farmers. pvp chat is just the occasional hilarious madtyping.

Pretty hard to play when the developers insist on removing any and all builds your class has, PvP or otherwise.

But even if that is (ever) fixed the win condition completely breaks the mode. It supports two and only two build types, bunkering and counter-bunkering. There needs to be a broader win condition, or multiple win conditions in each map in order to support multiple builds. If you aren’t playing a class that can do one of those two things, you are helping your team lose. And if you are playing a class and build that either bunkers or counters bunkering, it gets really old, really really fast.

I played a little SPVP when game 1st started for about first 3-4 months then I quit completely, then tried it again a little bit when they made new maps, hotjoin, etc.

My reasons, which reflect many other players to various degrees and in no particular order are as follows:

- Been there done that. Played MMOs and various other games since the “dawn” of their existance. This particular mode in its entirety is boring to tears for me.

- Little to non-existent reward for the time spent which I can use in the rest of the game.

- Only 1 game mode, no CTF or Death Match or anything like that.

- Often openly hostile community, which is also far more immature then in other game modes and which later wonders why other people do not join them. Example: Hop into a WvW match as a newb and you can get VOIP info in map chat with lots of helpful people in it who are glad to have you with them vs. being called a whole bunch of names in the PvP arena chat.

- Unbalanced teams. AFKers, etc. Organized teams vs. complete pugs which on top of that often send you a bunch of hostile whispers etc., then again wonder why they don’t have more people playing with or against them.

- Bad class balance. Builds available in other game modes not available in SPVP, skills working differently, etc.

- Bad maps and overall bad design, example: playing a class with not much available stability or knockbacks / knockdowns on skyhammer map.

- Lack of GvG. Example: I would love to be able to play my specific builds with my team in an instanced map with objectives such as CTF in a 20 vs 20 or 15 vs 15 format. But due to the builds not being available in SPVP and a plethora of other restrictions this isn’t possible.

- I also do not like the whole devs take on SPVP and game balance. They made a completely seperate game mode and are often breaking stuff in the other primary and far more fun game modes “in the name of SPVP” via SPVP class balancing. So their attitude and general direction they take turns me off from it, add to that the above mentioned player hostility etc., and it becomes a complete turn-off.

For me it’s just not a format I’m interested in. I much prefer taking my time and exploring to my own schedule and my own agenda over rushing to complete goals in a fixed time. I can spend hours in PvE exploring a map and getting completely side-tracked from what I intended to do.

PvP matches don’t support that mentality at all. You go in with one fixed goal, a short time to complete it and when you’re done the whole thing resets and you start over. It gets boring for me extremely quickly.

I’m really hoping they add capture the flag; that was always my favorite game type.

Shufflepants.9785:

I’m really hoping they add capture the flag; that was always my favorite game type.

i hope they remove immob stacking before they implement ctf.

Needs more map variety. (also applies to wvw)

Also, I admit to not like teaming with pugs.

It feel static.

-Kept running into the same build over and over again… and even when there was a different build, it is just a slight variation. (or just pure kitten build that I don’t even notice)

-A good amount of matches play out the same way as well.

-unfriendly players all over the place, placing blame on others instead of themselves.

-there is not much room for “outplaying” the opponent like in FPS, making it even more boring. If I want structured, I play some other game.

-not efficient leveling nor gold production; I got characters to level, stuffs to craft, money to make.

-WvW is much more interesting and dynamic. WvW hardly ever play out the same way and it is still PvP, why sPvP then?

1. Too much particle effects especially when more than 1v1, can’t see what is happening

2. Too much lame mechanics like downed state, stealth and clone spam

3. Conquest becomes lackluster quickly

I loved pvp in gw1, but here I just can’t seem to get into it. Though playing with friends can be fun, it still feels like I’m in ‘team arenas’ from gw1, a place to practice your pvp. I don’t feel like I’m in an important match like it was in guild battles or hall of heroes.

Because there isn’t any fun casual game mode that would be little bit like www, but in smaller map and matches would last like 20 min.

Capture the point PvP is boring, but we get nothing more due to them wanting to create an esport and only focus on one thing.

It’s all we have and just gets old after a while.. even Random Arena from GW1 would be more interesting to add to GW2.

It’s not enough like Fort Aspenwood: I feel like there’s no real goal to work towards as a group other than run around frantically to stand on circles.

Tedious maps like Skyhammer.

Lots of boring builds that revolve around bunkering points, because capture the point is boring and promotes boring builds,

No reason to play any class that isn’t Warrior.

No cash reward like how I farmed Z Keys in GW1 to sell. They added gold though recently but I still get so bored by it to bother. Really need some more game modes. Plenty of other Esports have different game modes.

Not rewarding enough.
Not fun enough.

Not had a bad word said to me, I must be lucky.

anet team,

please take note if you want to attract more PvE / WvW players over to sPvP.

i’m foreseeing this thread get moved to sPvP subforum…

I love PvP, when my teammates are friends and my opponents are also friends, where people can experiment and have a good time, nobody is shrieking at their teammates in frustration or threatening to find their opponents in real life and brutalize them.

In other words, I like competition without animosity.

Unfortunately, none of my friends are still playing this game.

azizul.8469:

i’m foreseeing this thread get moved to sPvP subforum…

That would be an unimaginably stupid move on the moderator’s part, shoving a discussion about not playing sPvP over to the section only frequented by people who DO play SPvP.

So yeah, it’s inevitable.

Tongku.5326:

I played a little SPVP when game 1st started for about first 3-4 months then I quit completely, then tried it again a little bit when they made new maps, hotjoin, etc.

My reasons, which reflect many other players to various degrees and in no particular order are as follows:

- Been there done that. Played MMOs and various other games since the “dawn” of their existance. This particular mode in its entirety is boring to tears for me.

- Little to non-existent reward for the time spent which I can use in the rest of the game.

- Only 1 game mode, no CTF or Death Match or anything like that.

- Often openly hostile community, which is also far more immature then in other game modes and which later wonders why other people do not join them. Example: Hop into a WvW match as a newb and you can get VOIP info in map chat with lots of helpful people in it who are glad to have you with them vs. being called a whole bunch of names in the PvP arena chat.

- Unbalanced teams. AFKers, etc. Organized teams vs. complete pugs which on top of that often send you a bunch of hostile whispers etc., then again wonder why they don’t have more people playing with or against them.

- Bad class balance. Builds available in other game modes not available in SPVP, skills working differently, etc.

- Bad maps and overall bad design, example: playing a class with not much available stability or knockbacks / knockdowns on skyhammer map.

- Lack of GvG. Example: I would love to be able to play my specific builds with my team in an instanced map with objectives such as CTF in a 20 vs 20 or 15 vs 15 format. But due to the builds not being available in SPVP and a plethora of other restrictions this isn’t possible.

- I also do not like the whole devs take on SPVP and game balance. They made a completely seperate game mode and are often breaking stuff in the other primary and far more fun game modes “in the name of SPVP” via SPVP class balancing. So their attitude and general direction they take turns me off from it, add to that the above mentioned player hostility etc., and it becomes a complete turn-off.

This says it all basically.

It is too hard for me to understand what goes on in a fight. I get the general idea, but none of the specifics.

• I don’t know the tells. Which attack to dodge and which to take, which skill to interrupt and which can resolve.

• I can’t follow my opponents moves. Why did I not win that fight? What skills is he/she using to nullify my attacks? Where do all those conditions come from? Does he do that with skills or is it hidden in the traits?

• For the most part, I’m just running around killing/dying and capping points. In no particular order. I have some idea of where I’ll be most useful (wherever they need a +1 for a numeral advantage), but there is rarely any real team-strategy. (I’m rarely playing in teams, and if I am, the strategy typically stops at: go close and join us mid afterwards… after that… chaos. Combat moves fast and requires all my attention.) Unlike the strategies I used to love in RoC DotA 3.7, where we planned our strategy before the game and then reconsidered a few times throughout the game according to our opponents moves.

• Up until a few weeks ago: PvP wouldn’t help me get ascended gear. It still doesn’t, but I’ve come to realise that ascended gear is a major lifewaster, so it’s not really an argument anymore.

In short: I like to understand what’s going on. And while playing PvP in GW2, I typically don’t have a clue.

azizul.8469:

i’m foreseeing this thread get moved to sPvP subforum…

o hai there.

ah if that happened, it would really sad.
because this is a question for the PvE / WvW people who seldom / do not play sPvP at all.

sPvP population still needs a boost and PvE / WvW is a good source to filter some over. especially the WvW crowd.

i think need more rewards.

This is not meant to be a complaint post; I’m simply reporting my experience and how I felt during PvP:

When I step into the HotM, I immediately feel overwhelmed.

I’ve done the first-time-through tasks of learning some of the basic PvP mechanics, but I still feel so under-prepared for a game of PvP. Understanding how to use a treb does literally nothing for my knowledge of how a PvP game plays out. There’s no go-to ‘practice game’ against AI to even get my bearings.

I tried the ‘learning by doing’ route, but I still felt like a chicken with my head cut off. I went into games and tried to hold a capture point with my guardian (because I read somewhere that it’s something that I should probably do), but I got killed very fast, and I don’t even know how/why.

What I’m really looking for is a practice game, even if the AI is heavily scripted. That way I can at least build a mental template for the basic flow and timing of a match before I hop into the real thing. Then I can adjust as necessary.

Hopping into a real queue from the get go comes with so much baggage that actually gets in the way of learning the basics.

I’m not a big LoL player, but they really know what they are doing with their tutorial game. I’m not ashamed to say that I need someone/something to hold my hand while I learn PvP. Anet doesn’t provide this, so I get very frustrated very quickly and go back to PvE.

I feel about PvP what many people feel about PvE: I shouldn’t need to look extensively outside of the game to understand what is going on inside of the game.

Easy… I hate PvP and nothing is going to change that.
I am completely uncompetetive and I hate people being rude and mean and what not which (sorry to say) happens a lot in PvP in my experience. (I admit to not really knowing much about the current PvP community in GW2, and I admit that the PvE community can be quite toxic too in certain areas and aspects… I tend to avoid those too)
Besides you don’t want me, seeing I have 0 competetiveness (yes I can say that if I want to) in me and I hate the feeling of it and I am (maybe thusly) mostly rubbish at it.

Better games exist for pvp.

I’ve tried PvP and I go there to play on occasion. The reason I don’t like it much is that there isn’t enough to do. I wish there were more kinds of PvP—for instance, stuff like the Lunatic Inquisition they have during Halloween. Just fighting for control of points on a little map gets dull after a while—so I wish there were a greater variety of competitive activities in PvP.
Also, I hate how PvP is disconnected from the rest of the game. Having to obtain new PvP armor and weapons and reset my build/traits is irritating.

In no particular order.

- Combat wasn’t really enjoyable. The downed state just felt ‘wrong’. I’d defeat an enemy solo then someone else in the team would rush in and finish them off. Of course, most of the time I hopped into PvP matches I’d end up on a team getting its kitten beat so bad. Like, 100+ points down with not much of a chance at a comeback.

- I also hate the default PvP armour. I’ve spent hundreds of gold tweaking my character’s looks, and don’t care to spend more to make ’em bearable to look at in an alternate game mode.

- The rewards are only usable in PvP. Actually that’s probably the main reason I don’t bother with it.

Judge Banks.9018:

Better games exist for pvp.

Like what? Warhammer closed servers and private server doesn’t yet work that well so i can’t think any better games.

Essence Snow.3194:

Going to be honest and stereotype….

People don’t PvP b/c of Pvpers. They are usually the most toxic group of players to be found in this genre and thus most avoid them best they can, which involves not PvPing.

This right here. PvPers are the worst of the community (same in most games).
I played PvP in many games for many years and was very successful. Once I started playing GW1, that was the end. GW2 has not gotten any better. I don’t need the smack talk, rage, or foul language. If I want to see people acting their worst I will go watch an episode of divorce court.

It’s a largely separate game that, since the addition of bloodlust nodes, is more or less strictly inferior to WvW.

How anybody that’s spent any amount of time in PvE can say that the PvP community is rude/toxic is completely beyond me and so bass ackwards I can’t even tell if it’s satire or not….

Lfg zerker only
Lfg lvl 80 only
Lfg experienced only
Lfg no noobs
Lfg no rangers
Lfg must show gear
Lfg heavies only
Lfg warriors and mesmers only
Lfg noobs will be kicked
Lfg 10,000+ APs only
Lfg ‘all of the above’ O.o

This is completely flawed logic tbh. I’ve done almost everything PvE has to offer, leveling and gearing 8 80s with a 9th slot for messing around, and I love it for the most part. There’s not really much that demands any skill though outside of dungeons, so I find myself doing those or FotM mostly. To pretend like PvE is just filled to the brim with stand-up, awesome, helpful people and that PvP is filled with a bunch of hateful trolls who threaten “to find where you live IRL and brutalize you” is completely rediculous and fallacious. I mean do you really believe what your saying. I’ve played since launch and have done more than my share of PvE content and am also rank40 in PvP and I’ve never seen so many elitist tools ever than trying to find a pug for a dungeon run. Apart from a bit of good natured trash talking, people in PvP are easy going BECAUSE they’re NOT playing for rewards which is the problem with the elitist/jerk part of the PvE community. People in PvP are there because they enjoy it, not because they’re grinding for some digital reward and fell the need to be rude for the sake of ‘maximum efficiency’ and shaving 2 mins off of a dungeon run. Granted there are occasional bad apples in PvP who take it way to serious and flame the chat or whatever, you will never be ostercized, ridiculed, or kicked from a group because of your profession/build/rank/etc. Most of these claims are completely unfounded and probably come from people who’ve never even qued a single match but hyperbole is always good for self justification I guess huh. I do agree though I’d be more likely to spend more time there if there were new/more game modes.

All of the above, but mainly because the Dev’s seem incapable of devising a system where each team has a the same number of players at all times.

Junkpile.7439:

Judge Banks.9018:

Better games exist for pvp.

Like what? Warhammer closed servers and private server doesn’t yet work that well so i can’t think any better games.

World of Warcraft, Aion (Because of the flight factor), Runes of Magic (Because of the GvG castle defense factor), League of Legends, Rift (The combat is much more fluid and you can actually play multiple game modes and stuff), Allods, and heck even Fiesta has better PvP. And I absolutely despise that game.

Tman.6349:

How anybody that’s spent any amount of time in PvE can say that the PvP community is rude/toxic is completely beyond me and so bass ackwards I can’t even tell if it’s satire or not….

Your experience may differ, but I stand by my opinion. In GW1 from begging, GW2 from Beta, both daily. Never seen a more toxic bunch of players then in these 2 games.
As to LFG, that’s what you get for trying to do anything with a pug. Pugs are the second most toxic group and should be avoided at all costs.

2 main reasons…in addition to all the ones above.

1. My pve/wvw weapons, armor and food is separated from pvp.
2. The down state kills pvp…

In a tiny map with weird re-spawn times 2v1 happens far too often and there is no point to taking someone down just for their buddy to rez giving you no chance what so ever to win 2v1.
Unless you are one of the blessed classes with stealth stomps and 20 mins of stability.

PvP in this game is frankly garbage…. and I wish they would get rid of it so they could focus on making wvw and pve better.

Because it has PvPers in it. If I wanted to be subjected to that behaviour, I’d play CoD on xbox live.

I’m grateful that the game allows me to avoid the children.