Guild Wars 2

Hello folks,

I’ve been reading that forum for some months now, and I feel like lots of players have different views about what should WvW be. I’m therefore opening this thread out of curiosity on the question of balance between PvP and PvE in WvW.
I’m positive there’s no “correct” answer to this, and only opinions, so I’d be glad anyone respect each other’s view, and bear to disagree. I’m also aware there’re lots of other issues with the game overall and WvW in particular. I’m just curious about what people think on this topic.

Now for the basics : we’re talking about a WvW mode with objective to take, and a PPT PPK system. We’re not talking about figures, skill balance or skill lags or such things. So let’s imagine 2 extreme and caricatural situation :

• Pure PvP mode : no NPC’s at all, no guards, no lord (capture ring with tweaked capture duration), no dollies, even no objective upgrades. All should be done and driven by players (scouting, defending etc.)
• Competitive PvE mode : NPC’s able to easily kill lonely players, dollies, aethercannon, turrets, siege, various mechanics, self-holding map, almost automatic war. Players would take part to it, and “influence” it in a winning way.

Now, where would you put the cursor ? Where do WvW mechanics stop and PvE gimmicks start ?

Persnally I prefer the pvp option, however I think when a server gets the outmanned buff the NPCs should kind of take over until the outmanned buff goes away. The pvp option wouldn’t be great because of the 24/7 match and population wouldn’t be enough. Basically like when a server gets the buff, Siegerazor or whatever takes to the field with like 10-15 other NPCs and starts taking objectives. Of course the NPCs would need rework to be able to put up a decent fight

There are without doubt far more self-declared PvE players playing GW2 than any other kind but at this stage of the life of the game posters on the WvW forum heavily favor WvW as a form of direct PvP even though that’s very clearly not what it was ever designed to be.

What’s more, as is plain from almost all the changes ever made to the mode since launch, there has never been any intention to move the mode in that direction. Almost everything that’s been added pushes in the opposite direction, from the increasing power of siege and the added importance of structures to the creation of EOTM itself.

As has been pointed out on another thread, if a Server is winning heavily and WvW can be played primarily as PvE (Ktraining NPCs and structures and rolling over any opposition at no risk) then almost every server will find it has map queues. Similarly, when we had Tournaments and there were rewards that PvE players coveted, large numbers of PvE players arrived to play WvW.

Those players don’t post on this forum much if at all. Almost certainly don’t even read it. They do, some of them, vote in the polls though, which is why the results of those polls so often go the opposite way posters here would expect and prefer.

On that basis I’d guess most respondents here will veer strongly towards WvW as PvP. Between the two extremes you posit I’d put the pointer very, very slightly back towards PvP from where it is now. The current balance suits me except that i did prefer it when we had to work to upgrade our structures ourselves. I’d drop the auto upgrades but i’d also bring back Siegerazer and upgrade him a bit.

Wherever you pitch it, though, almost no-one will admit to enjoying it. People here go on about how great it was three or four years ago but there were precious few saying that at the time. Everyone was complaining as bitterly as they are now :P