Guild Wars 2

Seriously, the camps have sharks now, that’s way too much PvE.

At least they got rid of the jumping puzzle.

To be fair there were always sharks (was just in Bay) and that’s one of the few things I tolerate because it’s sharks.

On the other hand, I just feel like the concept of actually fighting other players was lost somewhere down the line thanks to the gimmicks that populate both PvP and WvW. And if you think about it, in either mode you’re generally killing other players if they get in the way if you’re following the so-called intended design route.

I’m genuinely thinking that they do not understand how high this priority is for a number of players. It might also be possible they just don’t like that concept because people’s feelings might get hurt. Actually, I’m dead serious about this. If people are QQ’ing about losing to NPCs in PvE, being defeated by another player is just going to lead to a longer trail of tears mostly screaming nerfnerfnerf. Wait, that’s already happening. But I was imagining the type that enters WvW is a bit far away from the “carebear” end. Or maybe I’m crazy; I dunno.

Now, it’s certainly possible to regard WvW as PvE with incidental PvP combat, since the wiki does state that WvW was meant to be a bridge of sorta between PvP and PvE, but I would rather prefer Player vs Player with incidental PvE. I don’t really know people that aim for the former that play WvW a lot except if you play after midnight but YMMV.

This isn’t actually a rant. It’s sort of a fear that the degree of miscommunication is far greater than expected.

I always saw WvW as Open World PvP, a place where PvP happens, but there’s also PvE elements. Sort of like how in every other MMO with OWPvP on a server, you can fight anyone anywhere. There’s PvE involved, but the spice of potential PvP heightens the experience. In this case there’s more PvP involved because objectives are PvP-based and there aren’t any real PvE reasons to be on the maps, so ANet painted themselves into a very PvP-centric corner if they wanted to maintain a PvPvE hybrid approach to WvW.

Pve is stupid in WvW, isn’t there enough in this game? Really Disappointing launch

ArchonWing.9480:

Snip.

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P: Well, WvW should have this and that. And some rewards, and stuff stuff stuff.
A: Alright! We can do that.
P: Wait, but I want to fight other players while doing this
A: You what?
P: Well, I didn’t think I had to tell you that I entered this game mode to go against players and not your AI.
A: But we’ve improved our AI. Just look at the new Maguuma Jungle zones. You’ll get a similar experience in WvW while you work for your specializations.
P: Yea, that’s nice and all, but the idea of going against an unpredictable human opponent is not the same. And we like to succeed by using our skill; we don’t want to win just because we played more to get something.
A: But what about the exploration?
P: What about the exploration? The map is revealed to begin with.
A: Oh, does that mean you want it so the map should be covered until you explore it?
P: NO, I want to make it so that I know where I’m going, being a strategic game mode and such.
A: Are you sure you’re not talking about PvP? We’re holding a tournament soon.
P: $#%@^$# Kittenkittenkitten
A: Well, are you going to buy gems?
P2: Anet plz let me and my 66 friends get into this full server. This is killing WvW
A: Ah, we see. So this server has not enough people. We can fix that.
P: About those fi…
P2: NOOOO! You’re supposed to take points like Anet intended. Stop violating my game mode.

P2 gets his 64 friends to zerg the thread, drowning out P

6 months later
A: We are proud to announce our new World vs World. Now players will have to explore the map so they can seek their enemies. But before that, they will have to gain abilities like jump mastery and climbing mastery. Doing so will require 1000 hero points which you can get in our new PvE zones!
P: We never asked for this:
F: Yes you did. I copy and pasted your entire post history and found 567 instances of progression and exploration
P: That’s out of context.
F: Stop whining! They put in all this work, and all you want to do is whine and be handed everything.
S: Yep, still the same game from 2 years ago. Glad I quit 4 years ago.

That was pure gold.

(I’m F aren’t I? lol)

Every objective in the game is basicly PvE, the whole game mode kinda is based on these objectives. WvW is and was never supposed to be just PvP on a large scale, they reconize players want this and are making guild arenas and os for those players. They have always had WvW be more focused on objectives with controling them related to fighting players, however the players like to avoid each other making the game mode feel very PvE. If you are more descriptive than just ‘less PvE’ maybe they can understand what you are talking about. If you just mean less mobs on the side of the road, I feel there are less or the same as the old maps and now you can’t rally of them so they aren’t a problem. If you mean the event in the middle of the map, that is designed to promote PvP activity in the area (although how it works isn’t the most ideal, if you lose 100% to 0% is just as bad as losing 100% to 99%). Be more constructive in your feedback, I honestly think that 80% of complaints are just people complaining to complain and say stuff they see other players saying. Most of they time when people propose real complains they get looked in to and sometimes handled.

ArchonWing.9480:

P: Well, WvW should have this and that. And some rewards, and stuff stuff stuff.
A: Alright! We can do that.
P: Wait, but I want to fight other players while doing this
A: You what?
P: Well, I didn’t think I had to tell you that I entered this game mode to go against players and not your AI.
A: But we’ve improved our AI. Just look at the new Maguuma Jungle zones. You’ll get a similar experience in WvW while you work for your specializations.
P: Yea, that’s nice and all, but the idea of going against an unpredictable human opponent is not the same. And we like to succeed by using our skill; we don’t want to win just because we played more to get something.
A: But what about the exploration?
P: What about the exploration? The map is revealed to begin with.
A: Oh, does that mean you want it so the map should be covered until you explore it?
P: NO, I want to make it so that I know where I’m going, being a strategic game mode and such.
A: Are you sure you’re not talking about PvP? We’re holding a tournament soon.
P: $#%@^$# Kittenkittenkitten
A: Well, are you going to buy gems?
P2: Anet plz let me and my 66 friends get into this full server. This is killing WvW
A: Ah, we see. So this server has not enough people. We can fix that.
P: About those fi…
P2: NOOOO! You’re supposed to take points like Anet intended. Stop violating my game mode.

P2 gets his 64 friends to zerg the thread, drowning out P

6 months later
A: We are proud to announce our new World vs World. Now players will have to explore the map so they can seek their enemies. But before that, they will have to gain abilities like jump mastery and climbing mastery. Doing so will require 1000 hero points which you can get in our new PvE zones!
P: We never asked for this:
F: Yes you did. I copy and pasted your entire post history and found 567 instances of progression and exploration
P: That’s out of context.
F: Stop whining! They put in all this work, and all you want to do is whine and be handed everything.
S: Yep, still the same game from 2 years ago. Glad I quit 4 years ago. [/spoiler]

I laughed. Thank you for continuing to try and push people to give more substantive criticism (and condense it into substantive feedback for Anet).

I don’t think trying to analyze where WvW fits on the spectrum between PvE and PvP is the healthiest way to think about it. WvW is large-scale, objective-based PvP. Structured PvP is small-scale, objective-based PvP. They’re both objective-based PvP, and in any kind of objective-based PvP, you’re going to have elements where players are interacting with non-player objects. Whether it’s lords, guards, walls and gates in GW2 WvW, bombs in CS, flags in CTF in tons of different games, the payload in TF2, creeps in DOTA…I could go on.

My post (which was me being facetious in case anyone didn’t pick up on it) is just me poking at the generic complaint of “too much PvE” that I see thrown around here a lot with regards to the new WvW BL map (and on the sPvP forum with regards to stronghold). It’s turned into a catch-all complaint that has no meaning whatsoever, other than to help the complainer express a vague dissatisfaction that they have difficulty putting into words.

WvW is a PvP game mode. Period. It involves competing against other players to try and earn a higher score. Or it involves just running around and killing other players, if you’re into that. What some people seem to have a problem with is the objectives involved. Some of the new ones in particular, like the shrines and the oasis event, seem to bother people. That’s fine, I’d love to hear their complaints. What about those objectives exactly do you not like? Just saying “too much PvE” is absolutely meaningless.

I don’t want to add a low quality comment, but I want to point out that only half the complaints are “too much PvE”. An equal or even greater number is saying “not enough PvP”.

I followed a commander around for an hour on what I was told was the new reset night, took all the keeps on our home BL, saw 5 enemies putting up resistance, and no seige. Was lost most of the time.

Too much PvE!!! There I said it and if a Dev doesn’t understand the complaint, they can ask me directly. Otherwise, they (the dev’s) should understand and accept the phrasing as being the environment, in general, either has too much of an affect on or is inhibiting combat in some fashion. There’s no need to “be specific” for you, another player, when there’s no developer interaction taking place.

BrickFurious.7169:

Some of the new ones in particular, like the shrines and the oasis event, seem to bother people. That’s fine, I’d love to hear their complaints. What about those objectives exactly do you not like? Just saying “too much PvE” is absolutely meaningless.

hum the central event….
The big lag when this event start ?
The fact that this help the stronger server
The fact that this just will make more KT on the map…
That this event just break all your door (basic gate > open, reinforced > 20% > fortified > 50%). You don’t have enough man crew to make the event against your ennemy and now you have to spread your people to repair and defend…
At least if that kitten only attack outer gate but no… This destroy inner too….
Oh yes and I like the fact to kill dino to power a giant laser….

This event is to strong, he only help the biggest team on the map and help to make more KT. This event should just be removed totaly (because of lag), or at least remove the canon and give reward chest. 3 level of chest for each team (first / second / third). Because actually it’s all or nothing. You know that if you can’t win you will earn nothing. Then no interest to at least try to slow the ennemy..

For the other stuff I don’t care… The lord are easy to kill. Just don’t try to attack them with a full map blob.. I have killed keep lord at 3, and tower lord at 2… Alone it’s difficult, but I can with a lot of time.
The supply camp are easy to take, just the T3 are annoying alone, but easy at 2.

The problem with that is that you have no more fight to defend the supply camp. Because no one care. More dolly, auto upgrade free of supply, less max storage. And no WP on side keep, then it take too much time to run to south camp to try to defend them. Before with the WP you will try to defend at all cost the supply near bay and hills. Because you was close to your WP and same for the ennemy.
And controling the supply camp help a lot for the upgrade inside the keep.

If you remove WP, supply for upgrade you remove the fight around the supply camp.

This is because all the bad mechanics…

Brow.9425:

I don’t want to add a low quality comment, but I want to point out that only half the complaints are “too much PvE”. An equal or even greater number is saying “not enough PvP”.

I followed a commander around for an hour on what I was told was the new reset night, took all the keeps on our home BL, saw 5 enemies putting up resistance, and no seige. Was lost most of the time.

What gets more confusing is that sometimes players use these complaints interchangeably, when they really mean very different things. The “not enough PvP” complaint I definitely get, although I’m seeing more people starting to trickle into the new BL maps. The new HoT PvE content + Halloween really decimated WvW populations, it’ll be a while before they’re at full strength again (full as in the same strength as just prior to HoT).

In the meantime…if you haven’t learned the new BL map yet, there’s no better time than now. Lot’s of freedom to just roam around and explore it.

DeWolfe.2174:

Too much PvE!!! There I said it and if a Dev doesn’t understand the complaint, they can ask me directly. Otherwise, they (the dev’s) should understand and accept the phrasing as being the environment, in general, either has too much of an affect on or is inhibiting combat in some fashion. There’s no need to “be specific” for you, another player, when there’s no developer interaction taking place.

If you leave your feedback up for interpretation, you open the doors for changes that you didn’t want.

Then you blame ANet for not reading your mind.

I did quite a bit of PvE on Alpine BL. I regularly took camps, killed yaks, saw no resistance in towers/keeps, tried to ninja towers/keeps with small groups, killed ambients for LF, tried to harvest that ore node that was just on the edge of the sentry in the southern central island area (mostly to see if I could mine it while still standing in the circle), and killed sentries to claim the land.

So what exactly is too much PvE? Are shrines really just pushing it over the line, because sneaking in and sniping a shrine to remove a benefit from a defending force in an area isn’t strict PvP? Is it the middle event, which is designed to feel like an open-world locus for PvP (like a world boss on an old PvP server, where you have to kill other people who have come to kill the boss before you can kill it yourself)?

Those designs may fail, and if they DO feel like too much PvE, that’s interesting feedback. But don’t try to claim that you don’t have to be specific. Along that vein, you could go to the sPvP forums and say “There’s too much imbalance”, then expect them to balance it for you.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

BrickFurious.7169:

My post (which was me being facetious in case anyone didn’t pick up on it)

It’s all about the jumping puzzles, man!

I guess it didn’t occur to people that some of the best fights could happen while wrestling over these monsters and thier power cores.

Had so many fun fights there now

Chaba.5410:

BrickFurious.7169:

My post (which was me being facetious in case anyone didn’t pick up on it)

It’s all about the jumping puzzles, man!

I just had a great idea. Wait for it…a “jumping to conclusions” puzzle. Like, it’s a puzzle, but with a bunch of conclusions that you can jump to.

Nightshade.2570:

I guess it didn’t occur to people that some of the best fights could happen while wrestling over these monsters and thier power cores.

Had so many fun fights there now

nop, too much lag during this event if you have some people connected…. 2s skill lag don’t make the fight fun….

BrickFurious.7169:

Chaba.5410:

BrickFurious.7169:

My post (which was me being facetious in case anyone didn’t pick up on it)

It’s all about the jumping puzzles, man!

I just had a great idea. Wait for it…a “jumping to conclusions” puzzle. Like, it’s a puzzle, but with a bunch of conclusions that you can jump to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure

Definitely a far higher PvE focus, what with the Vitality/Power stacks being cut out of WvW mechanics. Now we only get increased effects when hitting/killing guards or lords from those WvW trait lines.

I miss my stacks awfully

And yeah, I wasn’t looking for Edge of the Mists gameplay in borderlands combat. We don’t need all these cliffs and bridges, we need fun sieges and open combat and strategy (like little groups knocking out partially-upgraded towers and camps while big groups distract defenders).

BrickFurious.7169:

Seriously, the camps have sharks now, that’s way too much PvE.

Hand down the shark-repellent Batspray!

Swift.1930:

And yeah, I wasn’t looking for Edge of the Mists gameplay in borderlands combat. We don’t need all these cliffs and bridges, we need fun sieges and open combat and strategy (like little groups knocking out partially-upgraded towers and camps while big groups distract defenders).

I would argue that fighting near cliffs and bridges are actually quite fun and requires more awareness than fighting on flat open terrain.

Swift.1930:

I miss my stacks awfully

On the flip side, I was so glad to see stacks disappear from the game. A PvP scenario that already has power creep doesn’t need more buffs that require NPC farm time to feel like you can go out and fight.

stacks gone is good..

Sich.7103 made a good post.

WvW is all about strategy and tactics. And fast fun. Taking camps for supplyies, towers to support keep battles, or have more suplies, watch points on routes and Keeps for siege. A mix of diffrent scale gametypes. Romaing, Tower battles, siege weapons, Zerg fights and Keep battles. All this flowing and well reachable (not running minutes up/down stairs).
A map that does not support this is a WvW fail. The new map feels like this.

Nate.3927:

Swift.1930:

And yeah, I wasn’t looking for Edge of the Mists gameplay in borderlands combat. We don’t need all these cliffs and bridges, we need fun sieges and open combat and strategy (like little groups knocking out partially-upgraded towers and camps while big groups distract defenders).

I would argue that fighting near cliffs and bridges are actually quite fun and requires more awareness than fighting on flat open terrain.

But again, we already had Edge of the Mists for that! The sprawling Alpine hills were brilliantly designed, and WvW borderlands used to be my favorite map in Guild Wars 2 (Guild Wars 1 had some awesome similar maps in the Eye of the North expansion). Not just favorite for WvW, which they were brilliant for, but favorite in style/layout/terrain/construction.

I’d not remove the new map if I was Anet (certainly not after they spent resources building it); I’d use it as an alternative WvW map.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Swift.1930:

I miss my stacks awfully

On the flip side, I was so glad to see stacks disappear from the game. A PvP scenario that already has power creep doesn’t need more buffs that require NPC farm time to feel like you can go out and fight.

Well… not like the stacks made us all-powerful; they just made it possible for small groups to be more effective during non-peak times. Now if someone’s just finished taking a battering from guards when a player ambushes them, they won’t have that slight edge to get them out.