Guild Wars 2

I am having fun in wuvwuv lately having dinged 80 (didnt want to try it out while leveling). It really surprised me when I noticed I cant see enemies names or their real clothing.. they all wear blue or green. All this presents some issues:

1Why bother dressing up my female asura as intimidating as possible if my enemies will see her with just regular red clothing? Why include things like transmutation stones then? Sure your friends can see you that way, but still… I just dont get it.

Why cant I see my enemies names? I might have found a former foe from a few games before when we crossed our paths and engaged in an epic battle, but I wouldn’t even know it was him if I ever bump into him again.

This combined with the single-color armour makes it feel like I am fighting regular NPCs instead of actual human beings.

I also thought, cant remember where I read it, that arenanet would give each world their own official forums as sort of their offline “base of opperations” I thought it would be wonderful and make it easier to plan strategies, or guild recruitment or barracks talk, or just get to know my world’s inhabitants better outside of the game, but still no sign of them… sure people are free to make unofficial forums but it wouldnt have the same impact or viewers as would official forums in this same site.

I like this game a LOT, but these 3 things really irk me… what are your thoughts?
Sorry for my english

Its World vs World vs World. The rivalry is between worlds not players.

Judging by the many posts on this forum I’d say that there is quite a bit of rivalry already, you just need to dig through all the whining.

Eventhough WvW is a server based system, personal rivalries can really really make a difference in the perception of “fun” in a PvP mode. I’d like people to remember me and my guild tag and I want to remember names and guild tags of people who stomp me too. Tags already visible, but I don’t think it’s enough.

Personal rivalries are all good and fun but the bigger issue is that people grief when they have killed someone.

/tell xplayer “owned”, “pwned”, “noob”, etc. etc.

I also like personal rivalries but I think ANet made a good decision not letting you see the other players names to prevent these kinds of exchanges

Noting you only recently hit lvl80, you must have missed all the smack talk that had been thrown around between servers daily. Just need to read any XvYvZ thread and /popcorn.

I like Anet’s design of not identifying individual player. Wait till you experience personal targeting and stalking by enemy player/guild/alliance and you will understand the virtue of this design. It is not very motivating to be good at pvp and killing enemy player which lead to their whole guild and alliance marking and targetting you throughout the entire 4 WvW maps. And their guild member will create a lvl 1 char on your server, join WvW and start to abuse you verbally on PM.

Anonymity of identity is good in this case.

Thats like saying we should ban TV because of violent programming.

You can also be griefed in Lion’s Arch chat, maybe we should get rid of global chat as well? The best solution is to ignore the trolls and move on.

I agree Samfisher, I want to remember players and I want players to remember me. Spamming emotes can easily be fixed so that shouldnt be an issue at all, just silence players if they spam it and thats it.

People still dance on your corpse when you die. And a few matches ago I saw people spamming emotes. So thats your argument thrownout the window right there. I just wish the characters I play against had faces and names.

I dunno what this is all about. I target specific guilds, and I remember enemies based on their armor/face style, even when their colors are changed. Rivalry is part of the nature of this.

4 maps, 3 sides, hundreds of people and matchups that change every week. What are the chances of you actually running into the same person on a regular basis?

I think that if they colored the enemy players names instead of armor, that would be a simple fix. I agree with you that it’s hard to recognize people. The toon you met out in the middle of nowhere and had a great fight with becomes nothing but another part of the red, blue, or green blob. You can’t recognize them again unless they have a really distinct set of gear.

You can read guild names, but you’re right. It feels like the enemy and you are anonymous in there.

Tzash.5748:

4 maps, 3 sides, hundreds of people and matchups that change every week. What are the chances of you actually running into the same person on a regular basis?

Any prominent player will be targeted by someone or some group the moment he can be identified.

“Hey, he’s at Arah’s Gate. Chasing him north…”

I like things just they way they are, tyvm.

I would love to be able to display my name.

How about this: You get the OPTION to display your name after completing certain WvW related achievements? Having played in WvW a long time (resulting in obtaining said achievements) surely would mean you become a bit more ‘known’ in the world, just like in real life, soldiers or generals that do extraordinary things are remembered for it.

Or at the very least, WvW titles related to your experience and performance in WvW, rather than just ‘Invader’ all the time.

Edit: Or both!

Right now they got issues displaying you at all. Maybe when they fix these, hehe.

Seriously though, if lag is the issue for the all around invisibility change, I wouldn’t mind the enemies having one skin per race, class and weapon. Uniqueness is overrated when it’s either too laggy to use your abilities or you can’t see anyone friend or foe.

I hate to keep bringing this up in every thread i post in, but until they stop this free transfer nonsense, there’s no such thing as rivalries.

I like it this way…I like it better when i can easily fool myself to think that the opposition is evil etc…If i get the feeling that there is a real person with feeling/emotions etc that i fight against…I suddenly dont have the same urge to kill him…

Yes…i play more for some kind of immersion (me and my friends versus the forces of evil), and not so much to be competetive against other players.

for me the anonimity takes away a lot of the immersion. It’s a game of war, strife, violance, murder, mayhem. any sort of conflict gets accompanied by complete lack of reason at some point and hatred towards the enemy as group or individual. my mmo experience has been one of (ingame) vendettas and rivalries towards the ‘they’ and the ‘him’.

They are the enemy,
their leaders should be marked for death and be killed first,
their heroes should be hunted until the end of the world.

so much immersion missing in wvwvw for me.

I miss individual identification as well. We just have to suck it up and realize that WvW is designed to be a sort of carebear candy-land where you have a more stress free PvP environment.

That’s why there is so much QQ about everything from WvW players about OP this and that and all the “fairness” issues (nightcapping, orbs blah blah). It’s also why Anet said they are only balancing around sPvP.

sPvP has the death spam and names showing and all that. The two worlds are separate, I just prefer open world PvP so I’m still playing on that side of things despite the lack of rivalries and community building. Maybe things will change over time?

You can always create your own guild so your guild tag effectively becomes your name, but that kind of sucks.

Just to play devil’s advocate here.

Let’s suppose everyone’s name is displayed in WvWvW.

I’m out running out of my spawn and stop to fight somes mobs that are around a resource node. After I kill the last mob, and at 25% health a enemy thief named " omgipwnu" pops out and finishes me off.

I’m having a bad day, and this really kittens me off. In retaliation I report the thief’s name as offensive.

Likely player omgipwnu will not get in trouble however, the retaliation reports will start to clog up Anet’s resources.

Just a thought…..

I’ve been playing WvW for weeks and trust me there is a ton of rivalry, between servers, not individuals. You learn to “hate” the enemy, and I’ve seen plenty of hateful remarks being thrown around in the map chat.

With the color scheme and the general “Blackgate Invader” tag it’s unfortunate to actually make a name for yourself and be a unique individual. I wish I could remember back in my DAoC days, there was a common nightshade that I ran into that always hung out at Hadrian’s Wall, darn lurikeens…. Naming scheme could entail your “Server Name Invader” and underneath it would be the player’s name. I hate being a specific color in WvW.

With the guild’s claiming keeps/towers/supply depots and the small amount of color and icon designs, iit would be nice to know what guild is holding what spot. I haven’t thought how they could display this, maybe give the option to add text to guild banners (but not on armor) or use their 1-4 character tag at the bottom of the banner or on the map.

I would like to stand out from the (insert color) mob in WvW. I wanna be that guy that you occasionally see roaming in a small group or solo. Come at me bro!

All the opposing ideas in this thread are from people who dont want to feel offended… seriously, if you are the type of guy that gets offended easily, you shouldnt be playing MMORPGs or any online multiplayer games for that matter… the anymosity on this game strips the fun away from all of us that are mature enough to see it only was sibling playfulness.

Rivalry is an issue.

If your guild is established on your server and people are trash talking to you on your own server you can’t do anything about it because you’re forced to play on the same team.

In Lineage 2 (the grand daddy of GW2’s sieges) it was server competition and every week allegiances always changed. Mega alliances usually split into two and rivaled each other.

People are scared to have their name associated with pixels that get killed. That was Anet’s goal, and it’s being confirmed in this thread that it’s working. Some people get bent out of shape when they die, and even more-so when people can identify them. They’re shielded by anonymity in WvW, which lessens the emotional breakdown of people who take dying in games personally. I’d wager that there is a number of players who would play WvW entirely different, or not at all, if names could be seen.

Then just give them the option to hide their names? Just because a few babies feel hurt when they die we all shouldn’t have to be forced to protective masks to hide our heads.

I just cant follow the logic of some people here…

Nah I don’t care for the name of the person who I killed or killed me. Just a game. I don’t NEED to know who it was at all. It has nothing to do with emotional breakdowns or pseudo psychology. World vs World is about teamwork and capturing objectives.

During a massive battle I don’t really care about a particulars name, even if you manage to cut to 40 players every single time to kill me or something. I also don’t care what gear you are wearing or your particular dye theme. It is all irrelevant to me.
So keep it as it is. I do like to see their portrait though. Never forget a face!

I agree with the poster that I do wish there was some sort of personal rivalry or individual player recognition. Sure some people take personal rivalries too far but that can’t be said for the whole population of players who do enjoy it. If rivalries get out of hand, it isn’t hard to counter them. Block them, report them for harassment, run around with your guild/friends. Recognizing your enemies and being like “oh crap, it is so and so” gives excitement to my fights because I know I will be fighting someone worth fighting. It gives me more of a boost to my fight and I know I will smile if I win or rage and try to do better next time if I lose. It’s all about how you handle it but isn’t that the same with every other thing in life?

Pradton.8576:

Nah I don’t care for the name of the person who I killed or killed me. Just a game. I don’t NEED to know who it was at all. It has nothing to do with emotional breakdowns or pseudo psychology. World vs World is about teamwork and capturing objectives.

During a massive battle I don’t really care about a particulars name, even if you manage to cut to 40 players every single time to kill me or something. I also don’t care what gear you are wearing or your particular dye theme. It is all irrelevant to me.
So keep it as it is. I do like to see their portrait though. Never forget a face!

I don’t remember player names detracting from teamwork and objective play in Shadowbane or Darkfall. I think the lack of names is an over-stepping effort to protect users from the boogie-man because of the over-sensitive and over-politically correct tendency of current generations and times.

Not showing player names – fine.. But changing their cloths also? What does it give you Anet? It sucks. Really.. Why should i bother getting cool armor if people can’t be afraid of me :o

Tzash.5748:

4 maps, 3 sides, hundreds of people and matchups that change every week. What are the chances of you actually running into the same person on a regular basis?

Sometimes it’s pretty good. Sometimes I would run into some of the same thieves and rangers, and I could tell they were leveling with WvW as was I. The character would look the same, and their playstyle was the same, and they were in the same guild they were before, but they may have changed up a piece of armor every now and then. And I would say “hey it’s that guy, I remember him from Victor’s that one time DIE UNBELIEVER”
I’ve seen someone telehacking, then saw him again later with no helmet, but I knew it was him because the rest of the armor was the same, same guild… and same account name when I went to report him.

If they haunt the same battleground at the same time you do and work in a lot of the same places, you may see them again. Because I know I do.

I don’t care about the whole name thing, but I’d love it if people could see the effort I put into collecting and dying my armor set. It has great aesthetic and it would be great to be known as “that brightly fall-colored sylvari mesmer that constantly eludes my wrath.”

Give the option to hide names or create a generic name. Then those people worried about being killed or killing have the option. I bet you’ll see most players running around with their real name displayed though. It brings a lot more fun/rivalry/sport into it.

I just read another post on end-game WvW progression and I saw a great idea. Someone mentioned that we could have some sort of ranking system with titles given to those top players. I think that would be good as players have something to strive for, there is some recognition for hard work, and players can recognize other players on the battlefield somewhat. Sure it will probably have some faults but I think it should be worked in.

My biggest concern would be the performance aspect of doing this. As it stands now, dye colors don’t even have to be part of the consideration when rendering a bunch of characters. As it stands, the last thing we need in WvWvW are additional performance issues for the sake of dye colors.

Ok, in DAoC you could see the name… I’ll tell you why.

You can’t /send that person, you can’t create a character on their “realm” on that server. If you did it with a brand new account (it happened, that’s what griefers / complainers do), you could simply get the ban for both accounts. Either way that creates overhead for the game and the players.

In this game, you CAN do all of those things, you can even simply /send them with your character that is on a different server, so you don’t see the name.

You can see the guild tag though, and since it is Guild Wars, it makes sense that your rivalries would be related to a guild.

On a side note, I’ve never heard of anyone who doesn’t want to show their name because they DIED… lol But, I suppose it happens.

aaron.7850:

I am having fun in wuvwuv lately having dinged 80 (didnt want to try it out while leveling). It really surprised me when I noticed I cant see enemies names or their real clothing.. they all wear blue or green. All this presents some issues:

1Why bother dressing up my female asura as intimidating as possible if my enemies will see her with just regular red clothing? Why include things like transmutation stones then? Sure your friends can see you that way, but still… I just dont get it.

Why cant I see my enemies names? I might have found a former foe from a few games before when we crossed our paths and engaged in an epic battle, but I wouldn’t even know it was him if I ever bump into him again.

This combined with the single-color armour makes it feel like I am fighting regular NPCs instead of actual human beings.

I also thought, cant remember where I read it, that arenanet would give each world their own official forums as sort of their offline “base of opperations” I thought it would be wonderful and make it easier to plan strategies, or guild recruitment or barracks talk, or just get to know my world’s inhabitants better outside of the game, but still no sign of them… sure people are free to make unofficial forums but it wouldnt have the same impact or viewers as would official forums in this same site.

I like this game a LOT, but these 3 things really irk me… what are your thoughts?
Sorry for my english

They do the color thing because 1, you have to render that many more colors 2, it creates a sense for unity against a certain enemy, and 3, it allows you to tell what you are fighting at a glance without having to actually read Henge of Denravi Invader and so on. i still suggest dressing up your asura. Skins can still be seen and colors are always seen on your own team. My guild actually has a set of guild colors and people begin to associate with that on your team, also creating a larger sense of unity. Plus it is fun!

You don’t see enemies names so this doesn’t end up like other games where everyone trash talks everyone else. If you are so close to your former foe, you will most certainly recognize them or their play style/skins. (I can most times, and they can too!) I would rather not see their names, then have to come back to the forums full of: “TOBLE WHAT A HACKING kitten ONE SHOT AGIAN!?” Or “Slayerjerk123, you suck so bad lololol1!!!1!11!!” how clogged would our WvWvW forums be after that?

As for the base of operations, it isn’t very hard to create your own and I think Arenanet intended for alliances to be self-organized since there isn’t an official “Alliance” function in GW2. I’m sure Henge has one, I know NSP has one getting up and running soon and I am sure many others have forums either up or in the works. It’s something you should take up with your alliance. Plus, think on it; if it was moderated by Anet staff, how do they know that other teams don’t just make a noob account on your server to listen in on your personal strategies. They don’t. You, moderating your own, could have a more classified section for commander chat and so on and will be able to personally watch who knows what, making things a lot less difficult in the long run.

The server rivalries are the best. I can’t wait for another chance to fight Maguuma, for instance. (Tarnished Coast here)

Everyone on this thread seems to have not mentioned emotes.

/dance (on your head), /laugh at your corpse or the worst /sit (teabag) your head – can be very demoralizing after you were hounded across a zone by a 20+ mob as an idividual. I do accept it’s part of the game and just get up, brush myself off and get on with it.

It is war we’re talking about here, after all. Don’t expect people to be nice.

So yes, you can goad and be “greify” to people, just there’s a layer of anonymity added.

I do rememer what people look like and stand out “killers” or “leaders” of the oppo look like and yes I constantly have mini vendettas with enemies every day.

I do run into the same people on a daily basis.

If someone uses ingenious (thieves aside as they’re broken) methods or tactics, stealth, cunning, whatever to beat me, then I just grimace and tip my hat to him.

I make myself hard to kill and I respect anyone who can take me out.

Server and personal rivalries do exist and if I see an enemy colour and they’re isolated or I think I can take them – IT’S ON – and I do feel that mob mentality. It’s almost an impossible urge to resist. I love it! I also realise people will feel this against me.

Such a shame I can’t effing see anyone to respect them anymore. I am blind now in WvW and ANet don’t seem to want to fix it.

Ok, not going OT here .

TL;DR Expect rivalry. It’s war. Idiots exist everywhere. You can grief with emotes.

Toble.2968:

They do the color thing because 1, you have to render that many more colors 2, it creates a sense for unity against a certain enemy, and 3, it allows you to tell what you are fighting at a glance without having to actually read Henge of Denravi Invader and so on. i still suggest dressing up your asura. Skins can still be seen and colors are always seen on your own team. My guild actually has a set of guild colors and people begin to associate with that on your team, also creating a larger sense of unity. Plus it is fun!

You don’t see enemies names so this doesn’t end up like other games where everyone trash talks everyone else. If you are so close to your former foe, you will most certainly recognize them or their play style/skins. (I can most times, and they can too!) I would rather not see their names, then have to come back to the forums full of: “TOBLE WHAT A HACKING kitten ONE SHOT AGIAN!?” Or “Slayerjerk123, you suck so bad lololol1!!!1!11!!” how clogged would our WvWvW forums be after that?

As for the base of operations, it isn’t very hard to create your own and I think Arenanet intended for alliances to be self-organized since there isn’t an official “Alliance” function in GW2. I’m sure Henge has one, I know NSP has one getting up and running soon and I am sure many others have forums either up or in the works. It’s something you should take up with your alliance. Plus, think on it; if it was moderated by Anet staff, how do they know that other teams don’t just make a noob account on your server to listen in on your personal strategies. They don’t. You, moderating your own, could have a more classified section for commander chat and so on and will be able to personally watch who knows what, making things a lot less difficult in the long run.

1- Im pretty sure rendering colors on clothing does not affect performance at all… look at other mmorpgs. Hell, look at other games. Its just a color, a single mesmer chaos storm is more resource heavy than rendering the color dyes of 1,000 people.

2- Trash talk will always exist, no matter the game.. its even possible in GW2, they can just right click your name and send you a whisper. Again, look at World of Warcraft, you are not allowed to talk to the opossing faction in bgs or world pvp, but they can still see your name and your actual armor. Has this been detrimental to its rivalry quality? No. It actually enhances it as it makes war more personal.

3- I really believe you are just nay-saying for the sake of it.. so you are now actually against arenanet giving forums to each world? Other MMORPGS offer forums each server and it has many positives to it. I just dont see how you are rationalizing this… I cant take you seriously sorry. Its thanks to people like you that games dont improve.