Guild Wars 2

I am from the USA, so I can only speak for my culture. Readers from other areas, feel free to add your perspective.

I see a lot of posts on this forum from people dissatisfied with WvW because their server does not have a good shot at having the highest final score in a matchup. Obviously that score measures something or we wouldn’t bother to record it. But must we accept it as the only meter of the value of an activity?

Guild Wars 2 is a game. And it’s not even a real game. It’s 1s and 0s, pixels of light. No one can win a college scholarship or a big free-agent contract by winning a WvW championship. Jade Quarry players have yet to appear in Nike commercials.

In the USA, we have this focus on championships in our culture. If a team doesn’t win the Super Bowl, their season was a failure. If a golfer beats 154 players out of 156, he or she “lost.”

Was my sports team’s season a failure if they didn’t win the league, but I had some great times with friends, enjoyed some wins, and saw some amazing performances and thrilling finishes along the way? It was a disappointment, but not a failure.

We’re robbing ourselves of the full enjoyment of our (or our team’s) accomplishments. If I’m playing a game with friends, hit the shot of my life, but my team loses the game, that was still a pretty great shot. It’s still a time to enjoy and a story to tell later.

There’s nothing real at stake in WvW. We can choose what our definition of fun is. If we need a “scoreboard,” we can pick the final score, or we can tally how many badges we get. How much karma, how many levels, how much guild influence. We can try to leave the map redder than we found it. We can hope for a daring escape or kill to remember.

If we have to win the final score to have fun, we’re robbing ourselves of some good times.

Some may say that’s the mentality of a loser. I say, if I have more fun than you, I win.

So… Why do you have to post something like this?

Ariel Cor Leonis Inferi.2894:

So… Why do you have to post something like this?

Because for every thread like this, there’s 20 others complaining about how WvW is not fun because of <reason>.

+1 to OP. If more people will learn to put less emphasis on the scoreboard and the stupid “tier” your server is in and more emphasis on playing WvW the game will be a much happier place, and so will these forums.

I guess because it is exactly what servers like Vizunah (never played against them, just from what i read) are doing currently.

They are just playing to win, even doing multiple shifts not sleeping at all so they need weeks after to recover.

That said, my guild also plays mostly for points but we also have a lot of fun during our raids. Got a little video for you ^^ You may not be able to understand the texts or voices in the backgroudn because it’s german but you will for sure understand the pictures:

Ariel Cor Leonis Inferi.2894:

So… Why do you have to post something like this?

So…Why do you have to post something like this?

OP, you’ve hit on something I’ve been curious about reading some of the threads here in the W3 forums in particular. I’ve been curious about what extent people have played organized team sports in the past, and how that experience translates in one’s attitude toward winning or losing in a video game.

I want to say that people who did play some sort of team sport probably have a higher tolerance for not coming in first, but that could be a very wrong assumption.

I see it in many of the threads with Dragonbrand (Probably most of the others as well, but since I am DB, that’s where I look most of the time.)

Constantly we see “Great fights today X,Y, or Z!”

We are in second place in total points and really have no hope of “Winning” this week but we don’t stop.

The fights ARE fun. =)

There is naturally differing levels of competitiveness in people, some care about the fun they get from just having a go some derive it from winning. The current system caters for all.

I agree with the OP… WvW the way it is now focus on having fun… rewards are cool but when they make a difference to win fights they become chains and you play only to get more rewards or you will not be competitive… fun is over… at least for me.

There are issues to be fixed, and stuff to be improved but right now I have a lot of fun on WvW.

I get what the OP is saying, and the intent behind it is good.

But if “fun” is the objective, then why provide point totals at all?

Because points provide a goal. You can have fun in multiple ways.

Kumu Honua.2751:

Because points provide a goal. You can have fun in multiple ways.

But here you say it: “..points provide a goal”. WvW has a goal — a goal beyond just having fun.

That’s why people complain about points, because points are a poor goal. The aim is to become first in your tier, but that is largely determined by factors outside of the game.

If second or third place is just as good, then first is not a goal.

You can have both though.

Your goal is to get points. The fun is the combat that occurs trying to get more points and preventing the opponents from getting theirs.

I don’t see how they are possibly mutually exclusive at all.

Kumu Honua.2751:

You can have both though.

Your goal is to get points. The fun is the combat that occurs trying to get more points and preventing the opponents from getting theirs.

I don’t see how they are possibly mutually exclusive at all.

I guess I see it as the goal isn’t really just to get points, but to get more points than your opponents, i.e. to come in 1st place.

You can still have fun and lose the overall point total, so I agree with the OP there, but that doesn’t mean that the point total doesn’t exist.

I would just like to see the goals readjusted to place more emphasis on the battles themselves, instead of a week long point total that is largely a part of factors outside of the game.

Kumu Honua.2751:

You can have both though.

Your goal is to get points. The fun is the combat that occurs trying to get more points and preventing the opponents from getting theirs.

I don’t see how they are possibly mutually exclusive at all.

You can have both, but you can have neither in addition to only having one or the other.

It is a week long competition and the final score does represent something, but I don’t think it represent’s everything. I have zero control over what goes on in WvW when I am not logged in, there is nothing I can do about thin populations, or night capping so I try not to allow those two factors to decide how I am effected or weigh my personal victories. when playing a server with vastly higher population, or “off peak” coverage or both, your server is more than likely in a situation that it will not win the week, but I fail to let that allow me to feel like every hour between then and reset is a loss despite what efforts are made.

I agree with the OP, there are so many different things you can do out in WvW and I feel like each and every conflict out there is boiled down to a win or lose situation. that’s where I keep my score.

There are nights that we can go out and stomp everything in our path. without looking at the point score, that night was a win in my book.

There are nights that we get wiped up and down the map, those nights fall under a loss, needs improvement, or learning.

There are nights that it can be a 50/50 win lose ratio. that can be a win or a loss depending on what you get out of it, imo.

none of that stuff falls into consideration when looking at the stripped down, basic, ground floor aspect of the point system, therefore I really don’t think that the score system can or should be a be all, end all for me to base my feeling towards the match for the week.

the last few weeks Ebay has been winning our match up. they have population over us and normally start the weekend off strong and maintain. i knew 3 weeks ago we would not win the week, but we had a ton of fun out there when we were online. to me, that’s the win as well.

topping off the week with a legitimate win, meaning that the match was a 3 way duke fest, is icing on the cake. Right now there are lots of population slants giving multiple servers matches against servers with many more players. and it’s extreme!

using ebay as a most current example to my circle of influence.

Ebay has the numbers in our match to withstand a lot of what DR and IoJ can toss at them across the 4 maps. the point spread by wednesday is clear that EB is going to win. but DR and IoJ and EB keep at it, the active maps are still very much active and there is a lot of great combat between the 3. but Ebay will still win the week. This does not mean that Ebay will win every fight between resets.

If Ebay moves up a tier, they will probably be close to the same position IoJ or DR is in against them this week. So how much do they really win? Anyone who has been on a server that wins by landslide knows that it really isnt much more fun than being the team who loses by a landslide. unless Anet starts manually moving players and whole guilds across the 8 tiers to level it out, this stuff is going to exist on many of the 8 tiers.

personally, the stagnation between matches is more annoying than anything else.

i disagree with you OP.
an player who play for fun , will not be dedicated to his team ,he will not sit at an treb for 20 minutes hitting same wall, he will not run 4 times from supply camp to keep to repair. he will run arround random and aim for another random frag. if he get it he laugh, if he lose he cry. If 70% of your server will play like this you will lose, you will go down few tiers and in the end you will give up.
Play to win guys

Rayya.2591:

i disagree with you OP.
an player who play for fun , will not be dedicated to his team ,he will not sit at an treb for 20 minutes hitting same wall.

This isn’t a play to win or a play for fun mindset. This is an individual thing. There are people who like the siege game and some who dont on both sides of the Fun/win argument. just like there are people who like to fortify and people who don’t. people who like to zerg and people who don’t. I think too many people feel that their source of entertainment should be everyone’s and that will never be the case.

I’m not a play to win only type. but If i am needed on a treb, i’ll do it just like a lot more play for fun folks I know.

Rayya, if you don’t play for fun, what do you play for?

I think the OP makes it pretty clear that the point isn’t that you can’t set objectives or that you have to go for an instantly gratifying play style; the point is that if your objective is to win every match up you are going to be quickly disappointed, because these are 3 servers in a match up with unbalanced teams. You should set objectives but they should be according to what you can realistically accomplish and how you want to play this game.

Rayya.2591:

i disagree with you OP.
an player who play for fun , will not be dedicated to his team ,he will not sit at an treb for 20 minutes hitting same wall, he will not run 4 times from supply camp to keep to repair. he will run arround random and aim for another random frag. if he get it he laugh, if he lose he cry. If 70% of your server will play like this you will lose, you will go down few tiers and in the end you will give up.
Play to win guys

Some people may play like that… but it is not like that for all those that play for fun… I will say for myself… I play for fun but it does not mean I do not care for tactics and for winning… more than once I upgraded a tower and ketp accelerating Yaks alone just to help my server to have a safer place in enemy borderlands… I have followed many good commanders that play to win… the difference is that I dont care about the reward, I play to win and to help my server, but I do it for fun… I do not do that expecting to receive a reward.

I say that because many people looks like they only have fun if they can get something that will give than an edge if they win… thats the difference and thats what I think OP is talking about.

Nice post Sergo.

I think folks need to remember that when the game starts to become a second job, it’s time to evaluate what you’re getting out of it.

When do I get my participation trophy? Thanks, and can you put inscription on it? “All hail Dredrum with out his participation all hope would be lost”