Hey there, my name is Neglekt and I work for esportsgaming.net covering GW2’s competitive PvP scene (our sites in the process of re-launching, so most of the GW2 content won’t be view-able until the relaunch is done, so yeah).
The purpose of this thread is to explain the frustration that the PvP community has had over the past few months (over the updates) to the PvE community, and why PvP feels neglected even though the past few updates have been “PvP updates”. I understand that all aspects of the game are equally important (they all benefit from the other’s success), and PvE deserves plenty of love as well, I just want both communities to be on the same page as far as game development goes.
This game was advertised as a future eSports title, and the general understanding was that it would launch with spectator mode, custom games, a basic ratings ladder, and gameplay that promoted watch-ability, since streaming viewer bases are what drive a competitive title into tournaments/sponsorship. Even replays were expected by quiet a few people.
But the game released 7 months ago without a single one of these core features. Since then, virtually nothing has changed for PvP – paid tournaments were added then taken out, 3 new conquest maps were released; which are pretty much the same maps as the old ones, re-skinned with 1 or 2 new objectives tacked on (3 nodes in a V), and that’s it. The only real balance changes we’ve seen have come from the recent quickness nerf and the disabling of wep swap during matches. Other than that, almost nothing has changed in sPvP.
I feel that anet portraying these patches as “big pvp updates” is unfair to both communities, PvE’ers are becoming upset because they see PvPer’s getting spoiled with “rich content updates”, and then complaining about them, and PvPer’s are getting upset because well, we rely haven’t gotten what’s been continuously “coming soon” for the past 7 months, when we desperately needed the core features mentioned above on release to start growing this game as an eSports title.
You can even find podcasts with people involved in the esports industry like this one released in September assuming that these core features are likely “right around the corner”, and that the game looks naked right now but will probably get these features after the basic bugs are ironed out. I find it disturbing that I can watch these podcasts and find them relative to the state of today’s pvp when they were created half a year ago.
There’s still a lot of people who are saying “the game is still new” or “it’s only x months old, give it some time”, and I feel that I should address them here as well. These are BASIC features, we aren’t asking for a lot here. Firefall has nearly all of them (and then some) and that game is still in BETA. Why a game that’s been out for half a year, that was marketed as an eSports title on release and sold over 2 million coppies has less PvP features than a F2P game that’s still in development is hard to understand coming from a PvPer’s point of view.
Again, my intention is not to flame PvE or WvW, they are 2 aspects of the game that make it a worthwhile experience to play. I just want to explain to the people that may not venture into PvP why the community is always in distress after these content updates, and to also ask for your support in helping us to get these features into the game! Happy Wednesday!
TLDR: pvp hasn’t changed since beta, even though these past updates have been portrayed as “PvP content updates” -they rely haven’t affected pvp at all.
(edited by Zodian.6597)