Guild Wars 2

This may have been answered by ANet in the past, but I’ve never seen it. What’s the reasoning behind not showing enemy player names in WvW?

I think the benefits of showing names are enormous and I sure would like to see this changed.

Super-skilled players get to gain notoriety "That guy “____” is a beast! It took 4 of us to take him down!"

It also allows the community to police itself better. If players are using shady tactics or cheating, they can get called out on forums.

One of the best parts about nagafen/EQ2 world pvp was loving to hate our enemies and getting to know them pretty well over the years. That’s never going to happen in GW2 unless this changes and it makes me sad panda

Wraath – [DDH] Darkhand
Eredon Terrace

Make a special only-for-me guild tag and go on the battlefield if you are so bothered by it…
Making guilds are cheap and guild names do show up when targeted.

Its to avoid harrassment, which we’ve already seen directed at guilds. Player names would be even worse.

I guess. Are people really that thin skinned though? Maybe make it an option to either display or not display?

No I didnt, but you should read the forum rules to see why its just not going to happen.

EDIT: Nvm, you ninja edited.

Should have an option to turn this on or off. Stupid being anonymous.

I think it’s to make WvW impersonal so people don’t get bent out of shape when they’re bested in a fight. It’s part of their campaign to make WvW casual-friendly and approachable.

Like mentioned above it is supposedly about avoiding harassment and to make it so that players who are new to the format do not feel intimidated by it.

However, I think that those reasons are not strong enough to allow players to be near completely anonymous which in turn allows some players to use cheats and exploits in a safer way because they know that the other side has a harder time reporting them since the player name is not shown. Although there is the option of right clicking an enemy player to report him, the problem with that is that you must be able to get him into your target fast enough to actually invoke the report function before he disappears from your screen. Also the fact that the report form doesn’t give me any way to add additional information about what I observed doesn’t help either.

Not showing player names can also lead to a situation where more and more players who have become a victim of someone who cheated or exploited start blaming the whole enemy server instead of that single person that is at fault because there is no way to identify that person. Consequently there is a tendency to put the blame on the whole server or enemy guild.

I assumed it was because players on different servers might have the same name and this fixes that? I have never seen any mention of anything like that, perhaps everyone has a name that is unique to all of the servers.

admcd.4503:

I assumed it was because players on different servers might have the same name and this fixes that? I have never seen any mention of anything like that, perhaps everyone has a name that is unique to all of the servers.

All guild wars name are across all servers.

It also avoids collaboration.

If I can see his name, I can whisper him. Makes it very easy to set up “Hey, let’s gang up on _______ server” or “Let’s trade this supply camp” deals.

What everyone else said. it’s to avoid targeting. Even armor gets recolored to their team color so you can’t pick out people based on what their armor looks like.

You can actually see there name if you press the report button, it says there name and to chose a reason, but then you just exit out, and boom now you can digitally stalk them. if your into that dorta stuff O.o

In my opinion it’s better like this, in sPvP names should be visible (they may be, I haven’t paid attention), but in WvW the focus is on the team and not the individual so I think guild names are a good idea but hiding player names kinda prevents the ego thing from being a major factor.

I mean, I see the utility in showing names, in the early days of DAoC it was great for exactly the reasons that the OP described, but the way the PvP community in games has devolved, there are a subset of PvPers that are concerned first and foremost with looking awesome to everyone and not necessarily being a team player. The way things are in GW2 you don’t get that reward for being “that dude that solo-killed 4 people” but you DO get a reward (in terms of guild notoriety) for being “That guild that took Anzalia’s Pass from a group 4x their number”.

So the way I see it makes the WvW game about guilds and teams rather than individuals, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Individuals acting on their own are not going to positively impact the performance of their server as a whole anyway.

The reason: WvW isn’t PVP, it’s RTS. That’s why you don’t see your personal kills at the top of the screen, only your team’s score. That’s why you dont’ see players name, personal vendettas would break the team vs team mentality.