Guild Wars 2

So I understand that most guilds that run gvg are ones who play wvw heavily.
I also understand that its one of the few things a wvw guild can do if the matchup is terrible. From the videos I’ve seen, they carry over zerg fighting strats like stacking blast finishers in water fields, using stealth to open etc, so i know there is complexity. But i cannot find a ball of 20 people wailing on each other interesting. I’ve seen at least one video where the person commanding was autoattacking for the majority of the fight, just running around tagging bodies. For me, 10v10 is too hectic to be interesting, but too small to be really interesting, ie when two large zergs duke it out over a large area.

As for conflicting with regular wvw, is an 8v8 custom server geared for deathmatch that different? Its a whole lot easier than playing a fair game in a impossible to balance game mode. Its great that you guys made an emergent game mode, but its a square peg trying to fit in a round hole. You guys can iterate faster than anet can.

TLDR, what makes GvG fun?

One of the main attractions of the MMO genre is the ability to play with other people on a massive level. sPvP relegates you to 5 or 8 people respectfully forcing large groups of players to sit out. Nobody wants to sit out.

Even if they were able to make an sPvP map capable of 15v15 play which they haven’t demonstrated the ability to do yet, it still would be no good. sPvP like traditional WvW is inherently boring. No one wants to sit on capture points or siege for large amounts of time.

TLDR: You can bring all your friends and it’s not boring.

If you don’t find “20 people wailing on each other” interesting, it would be hard to explain. But basically it is the same reason as normal WvW open field battles of medium to larger size. And I’m using this term broadly. Like fight in Garrison lord room would also qualify.

If you take a look at how GvG scene came into existence, it was for simple reason: Guilds were running on WvW and then were coming to the forum for recognition of their efforts in “wiping x times enemy blobs” only to read comments like “what are you talking about, it is your side that was x10 more and then some, including piles of siege in the backline”.

So the idea was obvious – remove as many random factors that are outside of control on both sides and see who will be standing tall in the end.

GvG team numbers are such for the same reason – it is same teams that run normal WvW raids, it is basically the ballpark of usual WvW guild raids. My definition (which I like personally, but others may not feel like it) is that it is minimum number of players that is required for WvW raid to have a chance to stand on their own feet no matter what enemy is throwing at them.

If you’ve got to this point reading, you can probably answer yourself why sPvP custom arena 8×8 format does not resonate among WvW guilds as GvG platform.

GvG is just a practice arena to get bigger zergs down in WvW.

In essence, it’s even competition (competitive fight) that makes it fun. It has nothing to do with the numbers or scale. Just that it’s an even fight and therefore competitive. The same thing that makes 1v1 fun and 3v1 not fun.

rhodoc.2381:

GvG is just a practice arena to get bigger zergs down in WvW.

Made my post look overly verbose. Hate you!

:)

Some people like 8v8, some 20v20. Unfortunately, there is no support for 20v20, so we have to take our own initiative. If there never will be some kind of support for this, aka a gvg arena or something similar, that’s fine.

We’re not cheating, hacking, exploiting, etc. We just want to sometimes be able to fight other guilds just like we would encounter them in WvW, but with equal numbers and less random factors.. And doing so is only possible in WvW.

Again,

Colin Johanson

It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game

If they truely believe the philosophy they keep talking about, then they should have no problem with this.

It’s more fun, more tactical, more technical and more skill-ful than any part of this game. /End

You like to solo roam and go kill random players. You are absolutely wrecking 90% of the people you run into. Are you skilled? Somewhat. You are at least killing some people just trying to get to the nearest zerg.

After a while, you get bored with killing people that can’t really compete with you. Killing unsuspecting pugs is fun, but it loses its allure after you’ve done it over and over again. You want to challenge yourself; find someone who can fight back and give you a run for your money. After all, you can’t be the best if you aren’t winning against the best.

You check the forums and read about fight clubs. This is where most of the like-minded people like you go to fight and test their skill against each other. It sounds appealing, and you start regularly attending.

This is pretty much the exact same thing for GvG, but with larger numbers. Instead of synergy within your own build, you are making sure your group has synergy. Instead of you calling all of the shots, you have someone else that is coordinating everything that happens within your group.

I would argue that managing people into a well-synergized group (builds, personalities, personal skill, composition) takes more skill than becoming the best solo roamer is. That is the allure of GvG – highly competitive group combat.

And just as going to fight clubs improves your personal skill, doing GvG’s improve your group’s skill. Every time you fight another guild, you learn some of their strategies, what both of you did right and wrong. You can analyze and figure out why guild A beat guild B. And with that information, you can get better.

AggieTechGuy.4901:

You like to solo roam and go kill random players. You are absolutely wrecking 90% of the people you run into. Are you skilled? Somewhat. You are at least killing some people just trying to get to the nearest zerg.

After a while, you get bored with killing people that can’t really compete with you. Killing unsuspecting pugs is fun, but it loses its allure after you’ve done it over and over again. You want to challenge yourself; find someone who can fight back and give you a run for your money. After all, you can’t be the best if you aren’t winning against the best.

You check the forums and read about fight clubs. This is where most of the like-minded people like you go to fight and test their skill against each other. It sounds appealing, and you start regularly attending.

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This is pretty much the exact same thing for GvG, but with larger numbers. Instead of synergy within your own build, you are making sure your group has synergy. Instead of you calling all of the shots, you have someone else that is coordinating everything that happens within your group.

I would argue that managing people into a well-synergized group (builds, personalities, personal skill, composition) takes more skill than becoming the best solo roamer is. That is the allure of GvG – highly competitive group combat.

I think roaming and GvG are apples and oranges in mindset. And the better comparison you try to make from first part to second, would be from roaming to havoc squads (~5 players) where the combat is still very much reactionary and twitch based, where above this number at GvG levels its much more meta based and about executing a plan vs adaptation, which is the allure of the roamer.

GvG is not really just the same thing with more people, because its about the individual subsuming his own decision making (including in fight action, when to use prime abilities, and build designing) to someone else. The most important person in a GvG is the person designing the team composition, understanding what for the current game build is making for the best skill and class combos, etc.

The best comparison I think to be made for GvG is actually something like a PVP version of raiding. The same organizational level and teamwork that drives people to like raiding is apparent in a lot of aspects of a successful GvG team.

And of course, easy to understand why it generates pride at the Guild level, something that is very lacking to achieve in this game elsewhere.

Pendragon.8735:

I think roaming and GvG are apples and oranges in mindset. And the better comparison you try to make from first part to second, would be from roaming to havoc squads (~5 players) where the combat is still very much reactionary and twitch based, where above this number at GvG levels its much more meta based and about executing a plan vs adaptation, which is the allure of the roamer.

GvG is not really just the same thing with more people, because its about the individual subsuming his own decision making (including in fight action, when to use prime abilities, and build designing) to someone else. The most important person in a GvG is the person designing the team composition, understanding what for the current game build is making for the best skill and class combos, etc.

The best comparison I think to be made for GvG is actually something like a PVP version of raiding. The same organizational level and teamwork that drives people to like raiding is apparent in a lot of aspects of a successful GvG team.

And of course, easy to understand why it generates pride at the Guild level, something that is very lacking to achieve in this game elsewhere.

I was talking more about the underlying reasoning for it. While all of the activities you and I mentioned are different in the skill required, in my opinion they all share a common goal: learning how to become better at what you do with a higher level of competition.

Since so many people seem to commonly accept roaming / fight clubs, I thought it would be a good way to show how GvG really isn’t all that different.

Pendragon.8735:

GvG is not really just the same thing with more people, because its about the individual subsuming his own decision making (including in fight action, when to use prime abilities, and build designing) to someone else. The most important person in a GvG is the person designing the team composition, understanding what for the current game build is making for the best skill and class combos, etc.

This is very limiting description. It may be one way to look at it but in better teams there’s much more personal decision making going on, and team composition/synergy/tactics are objects of constant open discussion.

AggieTechGuy.4901:

Pendragon.8735:

I think roaming and GvG are apples and oranges in mindset. And the better comparison you try to make from first part to second, would be from roaming to havoc squads (~5 players) where the combat is still very much reactionary and twitch based, where above this number at GvG levels its much more meta based and about executing a plan vs adaptation, which is the allure of the roamer.

GvG is not really just the same thing with more people, because its about the individual subsuming his own decision making (including in fight action, when to use prime abilities, and build designing) to someone else. The most important person in a GvG is the person designing the team composition, understanding what for the current game build is making for the best skill and class combos, etc.

The best comparison I think to be made for GvG is actually something like a PVP version of raiding. The same organizational level and teamwork that drives people to like raiding is apparent in a lot of aspects of a successful GvG team.

And of course, easy to understand why it generates pride at the Guild level, something that is very lacking to achieve in this game elsewhere.

I was talking more about the underlying reasoning for it. While all of the activities you and I mentioned are different in the skill required, in my opinion they all share a common goal: learning how to become better at what you do with a higher level of competition.

Since so many people seem to commonly accept roaming / fight clubs, I thought it would be a good way to show how GvG really isn’t all that different.

Well, roamers and havoc teams aren’t really creating out of the way battles, but are attacking weak locations and harassing the enemy servers as much as they can. It takes about as much skill as a GvG, if not more. I once saw a group of 3 guys (Tchu on Gandara) take on about 20 germans and none of them went down.

In some way GvG is as much team-work as that but on a larger scale and usually in planned xvx battles, between people with equal numbers and (debatably) equal skill.

Alright, fine. Some other activities could require the same or more skill as a GvG.

I still think, though, that many people start doing GvG to get better and test themselves against other guilds. That’s the reason my guild started doing it, and it is also the same reason I started doing some fight clubs.

People get bored of being zerged down 50v20.

Or they get bored of being accused of being skill-less zergers.

GvG is just WvW, but with the numbers imbalance removed. Asking why people like GvG is exactly the same as asking why people like WvW.

The fact that GvG doesn’t involve seige or towers or complex terrain is purely down to the fact that ANet doesn’t support the game-mode and we’re forced to go somewhere out of the way (windmill).

I’ll say it again: GvG is just WvW, but without the numbers imbalance.

Allows hardcore guilds to min max their group setups and analyze post battle adjustments something of which is hard to calculate after post random zergs.

Most of the hardcores sometimes run as guild only with commader tags off so they typically run into numbers much greater than them.

Guilds like Red Guard would not be as skilled on the field if they did not practice GvG matches. Do a search of Red Guard GW2 battles on youtube, those guys ran like one flowing unit.

Roaming 8 mans like in DAoC better fits WvW than GvG does and contributes more, but because this is GW2 they are emulating game play, sorta, from GW1.

I liked the dog poop analogy, +1 to you, sir.

GVG started when servers with greater population fought those with lesser ones. In the interest of gentlemen sportmanship, guilds fought each other head on instead of points since one party already cannot fight back. (these things started at the t8 servers)

It is a duel of sorts which became popular and well loved by most if not all WVW guilds.

For GVG enthusiasts and players it is a serious thing. Rules are fair, numbers are similar, builds deviate of course but is always good fun.

Since most of us, like me mainplay in wvw, it’s what we really look forward to. Seeing our hero guilds battling other server guilds and hoping for that win.

It came to the point since we already forgo what PPT is, and just played for fun, GVG became the best thing in WVW, and the maps became simply that, a map to do gvg.

It is also a good means to gauge enemy teams and learn new tactics. We made allies who would either transfer to us or we’d transfer to them.

In the old days two guys fight and then become friends.

Exactly what Sovereign says. GvG’s and duels (either in group or solo) are only PvP that is actually even-matched. WvW can barely amount to being fair, and TPvP is hardly PvP, it’s more capping points than anything else.

The hardest 1v1s I’ve ever had were in GvGs. People out on the fringes, like staff eles, get into all sorts of trouble with thieves or d/d eles or whatever while still having to cast their aoe on the group and dodge the hammers.

Beating up random enemy zergs though? They’re bad enough that I can go full glass and not have troubles. Fighting bad players is boring. Fighting bad players in sPvP? Even more boring.

GvG’s really took hold when Anet nerfed direct competition in WvW.

The first change was the AC buff. Before, guilds could test each other during sieges. But with ACs just wiping everything out, most skill was lost.

Then there were the months of randomized matchups. In that environment, even more competition evapourated from WvW. So people made their own.

Random matchups also killed the PPT game. There was no point working for PPT if it had no effect on who you would fight the next week. Before you fought for PPT to move up a rank, or maintain your current ranking. The ultimate goal was to move up a tier based on PPT.

So, Anet has no one to “blame” but themselves for the rise of the GvG scene. Which makes the reaction of that rogue Anet employee even more baffling.