Guild Wars 2

People who played GW1 tell me that skills could be completely different depending on game mode.
Why not in GW2?
This would make changes like the recent thief nerf that was arguably done for PvP less worse.
Please A-Net: Separate PvP from PvE.

iirc they said they didn’t want separate PvP and PvE skills because it would be too confusing to the players to have skills that were different depending on where you were.

^ as above. Saves confusion for players that enjoy both PvP and PvE game modes.

Some skills were separated, and now with the recent patch, they are not. For the reasons stated above, and others, possibly. The Devs have posted about it, not long ago.

Where are these mentally deficient players who get confused by simple things like skills being slightly different between PvE and PvP? I’ve heard the “players would be confused!” thing a lot, but never met such a player.

Also, when it comes to splitting skills I’m pretty sure anyone who would be confused by small differences like “this skill does less damage in PvP” aren’t the kind of players to read tooltips or even notice the difference anyway.

GW1 differences between PvP and PvE tended to be very drastic because ANet had the stance of nerfing things out of the metagame, which is an entirely different problem. If you don’t want a skill to be viable in PvP you should probably straight up disable it and that would be a lot less confusing than having it last 90% less duration or whatever.

Too much work. Confused players is just an excuse.

Khristophoros.7194:

Where are these mentally deficient players who get confused by simple things like skills being slightly different between PvE and PvP? I’ve heard the “players would be confused!” thing a lot, but never met such a player.

Also, when it comes to splitting skills I’m pretty sure anyone who would be confused by small differences like “this skill does less damage in PvP” aren’t the kind of players to read tooltips or even notice the difference anyway.

GW1 differences between PvP and PvE tended to be very drastic because ANet had the stance of nerfing things out of the metagame, which is an entirely different problem. If you don’t want a skill to be viable in PvP you should probably straight up disable it and that would be a lot less confusing than having it last 90% less duration or whatever.

Isn’t it obvious? The reason why you don’t see any confused players is because there aren’t any due to the way things work.

They designed things to prevent player confusion and I’d say the system is working as intended.

Mea.5491:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Too much work. Confused players is just an excuse.

This.

second this, we aren’t idiots.

To add my insight into this, you need to consider the history of skill balance changes in GW1.

This isn’t about players being too confused; it’s to prevent them from having to nerf skills for PvP into oblivion.

In GW1 the reason why some skills were split for PvP is because they were too powerful. Sometimes the skills were nerfed to the point they couldn’t be very effective in any situation or build, thus limiting your options.

And if they can’t figure out a way to balance a skill for PvP they would nerf it so hard nobody will want to take it, effectively removing it from game play. A good example: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27s_Boon_%28PvP%29

Trivia: This skill was modified in the August 21, 2008 update to effectively remove it from PvP. Its modification was explained in that update’s developer update.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/ArenaNet:Developer_updates/20080821#Monk

Smiter’s Boon is a key skill in smite-heavy PvP teams that were generally overpowered and which too strongly discouraged the use of hexes and conditions. Their combination of healing, damage, and removal invalidated a lot of alternative builds within Team Arenas and has had a negative impact on GvG combat.

We recognize that the changes to this skill will essentially remove it from play. In the future, we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of this skill that would be viable but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use.

And the developer’s explanation of how they decided to change the skill http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2yigwn/thank_you_pax_east_fans_had_a_great_time/cpad1gq (This explanation seems to have been posted 3 months ago)

We would end up seeing more of that in GW2. With skills split for PvP your options would be reduced due to some skills being nerfed. As it is right now every single skill and trait you have is perfectly viable in PvP, even if some builds aren’t as effective as others. It also prevents the need for extra developer time going into having to balance player skills for multiple game modes. This way they just balance things once and use the extra time to work on other things like fixing bugs or coming up with new content (or outfits for the gem shop LoL).

As I recall it, ANet also found it easier to balance professions if they didn’t have to keep track of two versions of every skill.

I wonder if there is a happy medium in removing some skills from PvP and replacing them with something appropriate to PvP or vice-versa. There are just some skills/mechanics that are always going to be too weak in PvE (because the AI is so artificial) and too OP’d in PvP.

It happened very very late in Guild Wars 1’s evolution too. It wasn’t something that was done for a very long time. It certainly wasn’t like that during the time when Guild Wars 1 games were still being released.