Guild Wars 2

I want to see who killed me and further more i want people to know i killed them.

I cant run around seeking revenge or seek out that good fight because..

All i know is some some green guy killed me…

Is this on purpose or just an over sight?

It really takes alot of fun factor away from pvping.

It’s so that you can’t get into a ragefest with anyone while playing. They don’t want people to be able to harass anyone that kills people or loses to them.

This is something I’d really like to see too and it’s certainly a fair point to bring up. It’s worth noting however that the current system does have some advantages:

1) Cross server flame wars are confined to the forums.
2) It’s harder to give away allied positions (although still possible of course)

It’s to protect players from being griefed and to encourage casuals to join in PvP.

Casual players who are not as skillful as others would be targeted and continually harrassed untill they stopped joining WvW if their names were known. And it would lead to some frustrated players leaving the game for good. That is bad for business.

ANET is trying to encourage everyone of every skill level to join PvP and have fun.

I dont understand how you would get griefed.

Played DAOC for 7 years, had names. Cant recall anyone getting griefed in pvp because their name showed.

Just because you didn’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

And this isn’t about you or the minority of players that played DAOC. This is about the millions of players that don’t generally PvP and ANET is trying to encourage to give it a try. PvE players have a whole set of reasons why they don’t like PvP. Griefing is on the top of the list.

It’s a business decision. Try to understand that and then you’ll understand why keeping names anonymous is important.

If you played DAoC for 7 years you would know that it was not possible to talk to people in the other realms at all, even if you know their name. This is not the case in GW2.

Griefing isn’t just about talking to another player. Continually camping them because they are an easy kill is also griefing. That is actually more important to casuals then someone sending them a random tell. Tells can be ignored.

What do you mean Nabrok?

You cant talk to other servers in GW2 that im aware of.

Grim i seriously doubt its even possible to camp one person in this game.

If i knew that persons name, he could port anywhere, what would i do?…travel the entire map ducking zergs to “grief” that one guy.

Dware.4259:

What do you mean Nabrok?

You cant talk to other servers in GW2 that im aware of.

You can. You can whisper to anybody on any server.

You could also have guild members on other servers and they still see the same guild chat.

I like it this way, makes for less drama.

Dware, it would be very easy to grief players in WvW if names were shown. And since it happens all the time in other games then it should be obvious to you that it would happen in GW2.

Again, think of it from a business point of view. Try to encourage PvE players to join PvP. Ask them the reasons why they don’t. PvE players are by far the biggest spenders of money in mmo’s. If you alienate them then you lose a huge portion of potential revenue.

GW2 cost a fortune to make, they have to get their investment back. Making player toon’s names anonymous is the first and easiest thing to do to encourage PvE players to PvP. If you can’t understand that basic fact then I don’t know what else there is to say.

It’s an interesting design decision. I’m ok with it. I’ve played real pvp games before, and it could get personal, fast. That ramps up the excitement, but also the negative emotions.

Kill on sight lists, and bounties. We’ll have none of that in GW2.

/shrug

I really don’t understand that decision to block the name.

Every MMO had name, and nobodies ever said it was an issue?

If I know a player is weak, and I want to grief him, how will it stop me? You can reconize people from the way they looks. You can even get is name from the report option, so if somoene want to grief, they will do it.

and it’s really hard to grief somoene. Somoene send you offensive message? Block him. Somoene camp you in WvW? How is this even possible? Tell me how can you harass somoene in WvW? It’s really hard to find somoene once they spawned back, and why would they travel alone? no logic here.

If somehow someone is able to spawn kill you and you are alone, swap borderland!

Really I don’t see at all the logic of this no name invader kitten.

By trying to be too casual friendly and PC, the game get boring.

P.S : Personal rivalry are the best time I had in PvP. That’s what I remember when I remember UO and others. And most of the time, you eventually become friend with them.

@Kardiamond – “too casual friendly”

But that’s ANet’s selling point. The manifesto and not doing things just cuz every other mmo does.

You have to see that pvp, especially wvw is an add-on to the game world of GW2. It doesn’t even take place in Tyria, and pk is only ever by consent.

That’s the game they sold, so that’s the game they made.

From what I’ve seen, it’s been very successful, in that my guild has people who’ve sworn they’d never pvp, but they really enjoy going on our guild wvw zergs. If it got personal, that protective veil would be lost, and it’d lose its appeal to that class of player.

Note that you do see names in pvp.
(edit: by which I mean the ranked/competitive pvp system in GW2)

@Dware

I’m really surprised that you played DAoC for 7 years and don’t remember that no one’s names ever showed. It was impossible to talk to people of other realms. That is why there wasn’t any verbal harassment. Perhaps you didn’t actually play it for 7 years?

If names showed, you better believe that there would be verbal harassment. There already is with you being able to speak with people from the other servers if you get their account name and friend them that way. Then you get their character name and can speak to them as much as you want. Most people don’t know this though thankfully.

I think I may have found a solution that would work for both sides and I posted in a new thread. Let me know what you think.

Sals.9534:

Dware.4259:

I dont understand how you would get griefed.

Played DAOC for 7 years, had names. Cant recall anyone getting griefed in pvp because their name showed.

It is the pussification of society, everyone is a fragile little flower, Parents can’t stand to see there little Timmy’s feelings get hurt. To the point parents don’t parent anymore, they just give in to keep the peace.

We are slowly becoming a bubble boy society.

Yep, no names in Guild Wars 2 is a symptom of the downfall of western civilization.

See how crazy this gets?

When you read stuff like this, it’s no wonder ArenaNet went with no names.

It also standardizes the length of everyone’s name.

No tiny asura with the name “Dot” hiding behind a snowflake.

Sals.9534:

Dware.4259:

I dont understand how you would get griefed.

Played DAOC for 7 years, had names. Cant recall anyone getting griefed in pvp because their name showed.

It is the pussification of society, everyone is a fragile little flower, Parents can’t stand to see there little Timmy’s feelings get hurt. To the point parents don’t parent anymore, they just give in to keep the peace.

We are slowly becoming a bubble boy society.

Umm.. first of all, Dware was wrong about names showing in DAoC. WvW is modeled after DAoC’s RvR… along with having no names shown at all and no communication possible at all between realms (although it is possible in WvW). This isn’t some sudden change that has never happened before in MMOs.

Honestly I am one for having names show… they took the amount of effort to make their name database be a global server instead of a separate database for each server. This already screwed me out of my top names I would usually pick in any MMO. So all that time I spent figuring out a new name was wasted because in the end I am just clumped together with the rest of my server with no real individualism.

I like knowing who I am fighting, and having that nervousness come up when I know someone is a real good player.

Lets get real, no names really is not protecting new players in any way. The only thing it is doing is covering up bad game design of players being able to speak cross servers.

Also if taking out names in WvW was to prevent griefing, then why didnt they do the same in sPvP where is is actually possible to grief someone?

Griefing is already happening. If you see the report video’s of the hackers they use the same method to get your account info to whisper you cross server. Having visible character names in no way reduces the amount of effort it takes to whisper you cross server. As for a means to identify and kill a person over an over, it is just as easily done based on appearance.

Thrumdi
You need to look at the big picture to see what I’m rambling about.

Everything needs a helmet, everyone needs to watch what they say. This wasn’t case 25 years ago. There was no such thing as political correctness. Go speak to an older man, they speak what is on there mind. Was it the right way? Not sure but society as a hole has changed, is it for the better? I don’t think so. This way of doing things promotes learned helplessness.

Take a look at Everquest there was no such thing as locked encounters, it was free. Now everything is based of anti griefing, these safety features where created because a select few had to ruin it for others.

Call me bitter but that is how I see the world, everyone gets a medal for participating.

Take a look at schools and the way they test, everything is open book. I don’t remember that back in my day, you had to have stored in your brain or you failed. Now you get a second, third retry. They don’t fail kids in grade school anymore, even if the parents are asking for it. It is parents putting there own fears onto there children, adults need to remember your child needs to experience things in order to deal with them, if you keep them sheltered from everything bad, they will never be able to deal when something really bad happens. We are seeing that today with depression rates in teens increasing in the last 15 years.
The school boards no longer listen to the teachers, they listen to the parents; the boards are always in fear of being sued.

What I’m saying in short is everything is made easier so no one has to deal with negative emotions, because a select few can’t handle the stress.

So back to the OP and the other reasons players had stated, it’s so people that can’t handle the stress of PVP can also enjoy it.

That to me sounds like the bar being lowered.

I know Anet has reasons for not showing names, However last night I ran into another thief we went 1v1 and neither of us went stealth but we matched up perfectly so perfectly we downed each other at the same time and his final dagger hit me only a millisecond or two before mine hit him but his hit first so he rallied. We both right click report to get name and pm each other saying great fight. It is times like this I wish i could see the names not the times I get owned. I could careless someone cathing me from invis or just 1 shotting me I prefer the good close fights.

Just right click to report and you can get their name and message them. I do this all the time.

It’s all cool if they want to be casual friendly, but there is a limit. I really don’t understand why showing name would make people stop playing?

I agree witht he boy living in a bubble thing, they are trying to overprotect people.

When you remove any emotion and rivalry in the game, you lose the special feeling you can get.

Go read @Inconceivable post, I personnally love that idea.

If you want to play in a Carebear world it’s all good, I really don’t mind. But if we can have both, please let us have it.

Why don’t we remove any name from the game? Everyone anonymous. Like that, you won’t be harassed even in the PvE world. Risk free for everyone. Let’s remove chat too, since somoene could insult somoene else and we could lose players.

Where is the line?

People in this thread are hilarious. Solving world hunger because of no player names.

It’s very simple.

When a player is not targeted, leave it as it is. Once targeted, show the name. Implement kill spam.

People thinking this was an anti griefing choice are completely out of their mind. Names are shown in sPvP.

For some reason everyone in gaming is a huge carebear now. This would have been unacceptable 10 years ago. I blame WoW for carebearifying everything. Game was the pinnacle for carebears.

It is absolutely absurd that A-net did not make a Open World PvP server.

Griefers will Grief, Whiners will whine.

If they cant handle it with names, what makes you think those same people aren’t going to find a way to complain in a different way… posting about the OP class he just got killed by, talking crap to guilds, or general just put up an attitude.

Im sorry but i feel like just because we dont have names on enemies that actually directs the whining and griefing more towards Team Chat, and Map Chat during WvW. And no one wants to hear how you lost or how you think this might suck. They’ll turn to raging on their own allies just to blow off their steam and calm down and spend more time whining to people who are trying to play the game then actually bringing themselves to try and play better.

Guys, there will always be noobs. There will always be flamers/QQers/Griefers/etc. and theres nothing that we can really do about it. If they could have their way, they’d have all the classes they dont play nerfed and they’re class buffed instead of learning how to utilize their own class and effectively and plan a strategy accordingly.

People always look to blame something else, instead of reflecting upon themselves, in order to make themselves feel better.

Whether we have names or not, i dont think it would “increase” the QQing/Whining.

I almost wish i could get those whispers of other people on servers just saying “OMG OP MOTHERKITTEN GO DIAF” i kinda miss those after giving them a nice spanking. I have to settle for them talking about my guild instead >_>

- Tzenjin [AoN]

Updating name and color information for each enemy player increases the amount of data that must be sent to the client. Currently, there is not enough bandwidth to send all the data efficiently enough for many players to see enemy zergs before getting killed. While this might be on the nice-to-have list, there are good reasons why it is not being done right now.

I doubt bandwich is the issue here, since they are already sending the account name of the player.

The reason why they didn’t do it, I think, is that they thought it would be better for casual gamer. And I disagree

Don’t know if it has been said yet but why not make it optional? Players who decide to display their name should have the possibility to turn it on.

Is there any proof that ArenaNet stated that they would not have any names shown for the sake of casual players? I have never heard of that before. I feel like people are just spreading rumors about what supposedly ArenaNet said. I could be wrong on this, but I’m just going with what I (haven’t) heard from them.

Also, there seems to be a lot of people who think that no names shown in this kind of PvP is something that has only recently occurred. DAoC (2001 MMO) had this exact same thing with their RvR… which is what WvW is based on. It’s not like suddenly an MMO in today’s time is doing something that has never been done before and that is somehow representative of the “carebears” of today “ruining” MMOs. Mythic had their reasons of why not to show names in RvR (and instead show off realm rank titles) and I’m sure ArenaNet has theirs (hopefully will introduce WvW titles).

I think there are enough performance issues to worry about, and I’m sure Anet made a conscious decision to limit extraneous information displayed in WvWvW. You can see the guild tag, that’s enough. I’d be happier if they didn’t show any tags at all until the player is within clear LoS. Tiny asura should be able to hide behind bushes/snowflakes without a red nametag saying “shoot here!”

I personally think WvW is world vs world, meaning team work and large scale organization skill should be rewarded (fame or whatever) instead of personal skill, you got sPvP for that??

I like hearing something along the line, omg SBI is so strong, or wtf, WM is coming, lets run… You only start to get better result for equal number fight in WvW when you work as a team, and personal fame here does not matter.

But this is just my opinion, and I do understand the need for individual wanting to stand out from a group of ppl, so they get focus fired becos (s)he was so good at personal skill that (s)he is simply OP… yea right

So yes, an option to allow showing your uber name tag is nice. But if anet short on resource, lets fix those other important gameplay issues first.

Not sure if this has been brought up but you can find out who killed you and send them messages. It does take a couple steps but it is there.

Vixena.3821:

@Dware

I’m really surprised that you played DAoC for 7 years and don’t remember that no one’s names ever showed. It was impossible to talk to people of other realms. That is why there wasn’t any verbal harassment. Perhaps you didn’t actually play it for 7 years?

If names showed, you better believe that there would be verbal harassment. There already is with you being able to speak with people from the other servers if you get their account name and friend them that way. Then you get their character name and can speak to them as much as you want. Most people don’t know this though thankfully.

LOL the names most DEFINETLY showed dude…what are you talking about?

The rivalries and smack downs happened daily on VN, that was the whole fun.

It didnt show on their toons head was in your chat box dude, come on.