As an avid player of many PvP-oriented games, I want to point out some major problems that are suffered by many MMO’s, not just Guild Wars. In addition, this may shed some more positive light onto the job that the developers have done here.
1. All MMO’s feature too many active skills per player
In GW2’s case: 8 active skill slots, plus more skill slots associated with pets/illusions, are just too much. This makes it impossible for devs to balance effectively.
For example, more competitive esport games (League of Legends and DotA, both of which are also 5v5) only allow 4 active skill slots per player….and these take a lot of effort to balance.
“N” number of class-exclusive traits does not make this any better. In GW2, one nerf to a trait can cause indirect nerfs or buffs to many active skills and/or overall builds. This chain effect, combined with the “spam-happy” style of combat (my next point), makes it very difficult to balance everything.
However, I do want to praise Arenanet for offering a lower active skill count than any other MMO with PvP integrated into it. Others have between 20-40, if not more.
2. MMO’s all feature “Spam-happy” combat
This congests the screen and makes many battles turn into AoE zergfests. The careful usage of skills, setting up “ganks”, coordinating teamplay, etc. that you see in many top competitive PvP games (especially MOBA’s) are rarely seen in MMO’s.
Consequently, the “spam-happy” nature of MMO’s makes battles cluttered and impossible to watch. Thus, you can see how viewcounts for PvP matches in MMO’s on youtube barely break the 1000 viewer mark…whereas matches in games like Starcraft and League will often break the 1,000,000 viewer mark. More viewers leads to more competition.
It is much harder to properly dissect a “spam-happy” battlefield rather than a battlefield that takes into consideration extremely precise positioning and well-timed activated skills, some of which contain extremely long cooldowns.
However, in comparison to other MMO’s with PvP, Guild Wars 2 is again ahead of the curve. The user only has 4-7 realistically-spammable skills, as opposed to other MMO’s that have 30+. Furthermore, the cooldowns in GW2 are often longer than in other games.
3. Congested map relative available skill slots (This one is unique to Guild Wars)
The map size in GW2 PvP is incredibly small, especially in conjunction with the available skills that each player can equip. Thus, the current meta really turns into doing as much damage as possible within a small capture point area (such as heavy conditions, AoE, etc.)
Furthermore, the positioning required to capture, backcapture, and bunker down control points on a small map is a mere fraction of the positioning and tactics required in other games, such as Starcraft, DotA, League, and CS.
4. MMO’s have a much broader focus for development teams
Gear, loot, PvE, etc….those take a lot of time for developers to balance and optimize. Valve and Riot games have entire teams of people dedicated to just balancing small numerical bugs within their competitive MOBA’s (such as getting damage accurately down to the last single digit). I doubt Arenanet (or any other dev) can afford to include such detail into their daily routine.
Closing Points
For those looking for a truly competitive PvP game, I suggest you look elsewhere. GW2 will never be that. Go play a PvP-only game, with a huge budget, that has its entire team dedicated only to balancing gameplay.
Those whining about “noobs” in PvP: get off your high horse. Your e-kitten and farmed rank (among a very small competitive population) in GW2 means nothing. Go achieve 5.5k+ MMR in DotA 2…that is something that truly takes skill among a vast sea (200k players during dead hours, 500k on weekends, all playing one map of 5v5) of highly-skilled competition. Be thankful that more people are even playing the PvP mode within an MMO.
However, if you want casual PvP integrated into a much larger game, GW2 does it better than just about every other MMO. Arenanet and its staff have done quite a good job of implementing a lot of features into one overall package….one that’s not designed to cater specifically to any particular subset of audience.
Be happy and thankful for this.
(edited by Good Tofu.9376)