Guild Wars 2

I absolutely have no idea why people are against splitting skills to pve – pvp. Can anyone fill me in why splitting skills is a bad idea? I think its a great idea imo, you can nerf/buff 1 side without ruining the other.

They already have split some skills, so obviously it isn’t a bad idea. There’s just no precedent that every skill should operate differently in PvP than in PvE, when they find one needs to be split I’m sure ANet will split it.

I know its a good idea but i need the input of the peoples that think why splitting skills is a bad idea, when i ask the question on the class subforum all i get is “l2play, nubs, etc etc”

It always makes me feel like I’m cheating. Like ‘hey, if this is OP against other people, why can I do it to NPC’s?’

I guess a more practical argument is that it would encourage sticking to either one or the other. Sort of like when you play game X for a few weeks and go back to game Y you aren’t quite playing optimally for a while, though not quite as severe as that (so far) I would think.

probably because they believe you can balance both pve and pvp with the same skills?

which in fact you cant, WoW is proof enough for anybody.

WvW and PvE are tied together, they are both for the same character. Splitting skills apart would take away from having a character in a game world. I want to go in there and know that my character works. I don’t want to change skills and gear sets all the time.

If they want to change things for the arena then I don’t think anyone should have a problem with that.

KevinEvo.7061:

WvW and PvE are tied together, they are both for the same character. Splitting skills apart would take away from having a character in a game world. I want to go in there and know that my character works. I don’t want to change skills and gear sets all the time.

If they want to change things for the arena then I don’t think anyone should have a problem with that.

I didn’t meant splitting it equals to changing the skill entirely, what i mean is changing it subtley just like GW1, CD change, Buff Durations, etc etc. That sorts of things.

And yea most of the “l2play” comment is from the sPvP area

They have ta use a particle accelerator seventeen miles long just ta split atoms, can ya imagine what it would take ta split entire skills?

Splitting skills can lead to some bad dynamics around not being competitive if you don’t gear up for the pvp skills, or vice versa.

If I for example have worked hard to get a full exotics set doing dungeon runs and then decide I want to go do WvW, should I really be penalized for that and have to grind tokens to gear up for it all over again? Similarly, if the WvW fanatic in full invaders gear decides he wants to go do a dungeon run with his guild, should he really have to go buy or farm a pve set of gear if he doesn’t want to?

They already have the mechanics around sPvP to make it easier to balance itemization issues in tourneys and what not, surely that is sufficient? WvW is such a zerg fest any way that gear disparities really don’t matter that much in that context.

While I’d prefer it if skills didn’t have to be split, it seems that with the never ending nerfs to some professions (e.g. thieves: first heartseeker and pistol whip were nerfed and now backstab will be next) due to whining based on PvP pefromance it would be better to split them since things that might work in pvp will be of very limited worth in dungeons and vice versa.

Northernmaster.8461:

I know its a good idea but i need the input of the peoples that think why splitting skills is a bad idea, when i ask the question on the class subforum all i get is “l2play, nubs, etc etc”

City of Heroes did a complete split between PvE and PvP power effects many years back. It was a pretty massive failure, even the CoH Dev team admitted, and effectively killed PvP as a part of that game, except for a tiny die-hard population. But ANet is in a very different position than Paragon Studios was back then. For one, this game has been designed from day one to have PvP play a major role – CoH had it tacked on quite some time after launch, counter to the “vision” of the original lead dev. ANet is also a very healthy team in terms of size and resources, while CoH did their major PvP/PvE Split patch not too long after being acquired froM Cryptic by NCSoft, when they were running the game on a tiny skeleton crew (about 1/8th the size of the crew working there when NCSoft inexplicably pulled the plug on them). And most importantly of all, GW2 makes it possible to exit the Tutorial, enter the Mists, and never set foot in a PvE zone again. CoH players HAD to have a functioning PvE build (although that game was a lot more forgiving about what’s “functioning”), and couldn’t level effectively on PvP content alone – a problem that eventually prompted them to give everyone a second full build that could be swapped between at level 10.

So… yeah. I don’t know why ANet shouldn’t… or why they should, for that matter. I don’t know this company well enough yet to make guesses at their goals and decision making.

I can only assume that some people find the skill system overwhelming and stressful already without having the added hassle of having to understand the difference between PvE and PvP versions of skills. I know it came as a rude shock to some of my guildies to learn that they would be using ALL their skills at endgame and not just their favourite four. But to be honest that type of player is unlikely to enjoy PvP very much anyway.

The reasons in favour are not just balance but also fun. For example, a combination of skills might allow you to stun-lock an enemy so it can’t move at all, but require a lot of player talent to work and have quite obvious counter-tactics. That might be balanced, per se, but you still wouldn’t want to have it in PvP because it’s simply not fun to be stun-locked, even if you could have beat it by taking different skills or something.

It is essentially a necessity to split them. Too many times over the years have I seen games ruined by trying to balance the two together.

I can see a perceived frustration in not being as powerful in PvP as in PvE due to splitting. Of course, this would be for the benefit of all the players. However, I must admit I was a bit shocked at my confusion damage as a mesmer in PvP the first few times I ran a condition build.

I believe Anet wants players to be able to switch back and forth between PvE and PvP without experiencing those kind shocks and changes in gameplay. If you get into a natural groove with a certain build then have a lot of its skills change on you, then you might loose out on the synergy and your usual playstyle with that build. This is essentially what occurred in GW1 with a lot of the skill splits. You’d go do some PvP and notice that half your bar changed and certain skills were then not as viable as you were accustomed to.

For me the more they hammer flat and homogenize things for pvp, the less of a reason exists for taking “your” character into PvP. For sPvP they already removed any gear advantage, and everyone is the same level. If they split the skills and flatten those nicely, you might as well just be playing a first person shooter where everybody is the exact same, because all of the above is just the roundabout method of achieving that result.

“It is essentially a necessity to split them. Too many times over the years have I seen games ruined by trying to balance the two together.”

Actually, I was going to say the EXACT opposite, WoW being the perfect example.

Think of it this way.
PVE is simply PVP vs bots.

so we can conclude that if you balance the game around PVP then the game is in fact balanced for PVE as well.

A well done combat system accomodates BOTH without the need to have seperate skills for each since they are really just 1 in the same.

Splitting skills eventually leads to bad game design.

If you start splitting them, you’ll in a worst case scenario effectively double the skills you have to maintain and balance in their respective area. If you however tailor PvE content to be similar to PvP (in that mobs dodge like players, use the same conditions and lots of similar skills), it not only reduces managing the skillset you have to design, balance and maintain to only one, but it also creates a more linear learning curve, in that PvE experience to some degree carries into PvP and the other way around, because your skills are the same and the enemies are the same – at least to some degree.

So essentially making PvP and PvE alike has so many advantages over differentiating between those two and creating different mechanics (leading to completely different metagames) for each.

norc.5073:

Splitting skills eventually leads to bad game design.

If you start splitting them, you’ll in a worst case scenario effectively double the skills you have to maintain and balance in their respective area. If you however tailor PvE content to be similar to PvP (in that mobs dodge like players, use the same conditions and lots of similar skills), it not only reduces managing the skillset you have to design, balance and maintain to only one, but it also creates a more linear learning curve, in that PvE experience to some degree carries into PvP and the other way around, because your skills are the same and the enemies are the same – at least to some degree.

So essentially making PvP and PvE alike has so many advantages over differentiating between those two and creating different mechanics (leading to completely different metagames) for each.

even just slightly altering the skills in term of Cooldown, Duration, etc ? It works fine in GW1 though ( from my own personal knowledge, so it can be wrong )