Guild Wars 2

I’d like to preface this post by saying my experience with GW2 has been very satisfactory. I’ve been seriously gaming for over 15 years and I’ve had some of my best gaming experiences GW2. I don’t regret playing and this IS NOT an “I quit” thread. I would however like to give my thoughts on GW2 PvP from the beginning in hopes to clear up some of the bad mojo going around and hopefully subdue some of the blame the devs are getting.

GW2 as a competitive game has as much potential as I have seen from any other title but most would agree there is a lot of work that needs to be done. Right now, GW2 PvP is in a very tough spot because a significant portion of serious PvPers have quit the game and won’t look back unless there are significant changes while at the same time the game has proven very inaccessible to new players which make it difficult to fill the void left by the initial departure of so many players.

Comparing Diablo 3 and GW2 is rather interesting. Ironically a lot of people quit because it didn’t have PvP even though it was promised. We all know how that reflected upon Blizzard. They went from being the most highly acclaimed game development company in the world to arguably the most hated almost overnight. Many people still resent Blizzard for what happened with Diablo 3 and a lot of us played Diablo 3 right before GW2. I feel some of that resentment against Blizzard has manifested in GW2 and carried over to Anet.

GW2 has sold over 3.5 million copies. That is a HUGE number. We would expect there to be a many more people PvPing. It can be estimated (http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1liii8/less_than_17000_people_have_played_solo_queue_in/) that only .0048% of people that purchased GW2 have participated in soloq. Of the estimated peak concurrent players (450,000) about .038 have participated in soloq. These are staggering figures and its indicative of WHY Anet isn’t spending their resources on PvP. THIS IS NOT THE DEVS FAULT. Some may argue that the reason people aren’t PvPing is because the devs didn’t do what was needed to retain and attract new players. The devs have said many times it’s not a matter of what they need to do but in what priority they need to do it. These are VERY difficult decisions to make when there is hundreds of changes that need to be made but they can only choose a small fraction of them to work on. We cannot expect the devs to be perfect. The issue is made worse when they do make a mistake because they just don’t have the resources to fix it before the players became disenchanted.

The core issue of GW2 PvP is that the few dedicated PvP developers they have, are working with such limited resources they just aren’t able to fulfill the expectations, demand and potential of PvP. The root cause is that GW2 PvP was never able to monetized and with the significantly larger pool of GW2 players doing PvE, there is no incentive for Anet to fund it’s development.

I think the best way to increase the numbers of PvPers is to revamp the reward system. Cosmetic gear should not be given freely. Glory should be a valuable resource that is used to buy specific pieces of gear. Alternatively players should be able to purchase any piece of gear with gems. Right now 50% of the cosmetic items in PvP are not available to players and this is a tremendous opportunity to monetize those items. People will and DO buy cosmetic items and I think that is the only way PvP can be successfully monotized in GW2. I’m not an economist but I also feel that if PvEers could gain something from doing PvP it would make a huge difference. I don’t PvE so I’m not sure about the details but there should be SOME incentive for PvEers to PvP. It’s by far the majority of the population of people playing GW2 and if they monetized PvP gear this could be a huge financial opportunity and pursue development of PvP.

I am very thankful for the hard work of the GW2 development team especially since they have been blamed and hassled to no end. I love this game and I know many of you do too. At the end of the day GW2 is thier baby and I believe they have enough love and genuine interest to do their best.

All in all, I enjoy playing GW2 PvP. I still have hopes (I think we all do) but there is no reason to set ourselves up for disappointment when GW2 still has a lot to offer. Hopefully this thread will help players ease their expectations and enjoy GW2 PvP for what it is and not for what they want it to be, while at the same time helping them see that the Devs are NOT our enemies. The more we hate on the devs the more it disenchants them to help us and go the extra mile to meet our expectations.

The best thing we can do right now is RALLY BEHIND THE DEVS and show our support for a game we love in hopes that the people who can make the BIG decisions will see the light and make an effort to fulfill the potential of this great game.

Sincerely,

BLINX

You can’t increase your PvP numbers without increasing the viability of the PvP itself. That means dev resources must be spent to improve systems, balance more often, and add features. It’s not just depth of features, but breadth of features that is lacking.

There’s ways to monetize, but their design from outset did not monetize PvP. The skins were done by glory. The finishers were done by glory and chests. Nothing was behind the gemshop. Now there’s permanent finishers there, but they could allow people to wear gemshop town clothing hats in PvP, and boom, monetized skins for PvP.

However, this overlooks potential brand damage being done. Eventually there will be an expansion. They feel they can do things via Living Story, but another box sale will come along. That new box sale is where you often get people back who left early. People see it as a “revision” and it does bring folks back. Eventually, there will be a Guild Wars 3, too. However, what good faith is left for the PvP community to come back?

GW2 sold to the PvP community based on promises and the strength of the first game’s PVP. That is two reasons for the PvP community to care that I doubt exist in the minds of those people at this point.

You can’t wait for people to show up without giving them reasons to show up. You will never make a money-maker out of GW2 PvP until you make the PVP itself matter.

The Box says world class pvp.
It should never have been built and hyped if they wouldn’t give enough resources to deliver on that promise.

Super Riceman.8702:

The Box says world class pvp.
It should never have been built and hyped if they wouldn’t give enough resources to deliver on that promise.

Regardless, there is nothing that can be done about that now. It is what it is.

People should REALLY start to consider their actions. Complaining about the devs makes the problem worse….