Guild Wars 2

In Gw1 pvp had it’s own set of skills. They were the same as pve but they had special restrictions, longer cool downs etc. Will WvW in GW2 have this or will pvp here kill pve like every other mmo? Seems to me pvp was far more advanced in GW1 then it is here.

I think many players would prefer this ‘fragmenting’ to the current state where some skills are only useful in one format as their drawbacks make it too pointless to bring in the others. As is stands right now, many skills are PvE, PvP, or WvW specific because you don’t see them ever used by skilled players in the other formats. Weapon skills, and weapons in their entirety, are hindered as well.

I’d say currently entire classes are PvP-specific.

I don’t think you can actually have a system which has skills that work exactly the same in both PvE and PvP, as they both have different focuses and needs.

Take Confusion as a condition for example. Its a condition which forces you to make a split second decision on whether to attack and take noticae damage or stall until its gone. In PvE, this entire concept just doesn’t work.

1. Enemies don’t make decisions, they just attack. So this condition then turns into a copy of bleed or torment.

2. In PvP, the damage it does is considerably significant because of the low HP pools players have. In PvE where enemies have huge amounts of HP, with bosses having astronomical HP totals, that couple hundred damage it does is rendered into insignificance, especially because enemies attack less frequently than players.

You can’t just up its damage to make it useful in PvE, because then in PvP, it would end up destroying players.

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

i really wonder if u have maintained a standard answers word file on your PC, just copy and paste one every-time you have to answer something.

I think it would be a great idea.Anything that breaks repetition is a great idea, if done correctly and balanced.

salluks.6017:

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

i really wonder if u have maintained a standard answers word file on your PC, just copy and paste one every-time you have to answer something.

You know, it’s people like you that makes devs want to stay away from gaming forums. I genuinely feel sorry for them every time I see crud like yours.

Not constructive. Not informative. Offers nothing but a sour taste in one’s mouth.

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

IMHO, you already have that. Just about every class has skills that are so useless in WvW that no one uses them. Look at Guardian pets. That’s almost a quarter of their slot skills rendered irrelevant. Fragmented or gelded. You decide.

DevonCarver.5370:

Rebalancing skills for three separate modes is way too much work

It’s like I’m really in the PvP forums reading something from Allie

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

So the way this was handled in GW1 was bad?

It is objectively good for skills to be the same in WvW as they are in PVE. The entire idea is that your character is entirely transferable. A good build will do fine in both settings. This makes WvW more accessible to the general populace… and helps keep the PVE and WvW communities together… which is a good thing!

Pretty much the only thing that seems fine in PvE but has trouble in WvW is thief stealth. But w/e.

Honestly offhand I cant think of what a WvW-focused skill would be. Changes to banners so people carried them around as buffbots/leaders? Like if you are carrying a banner, people running toward you have improved move speed. That’s the only thing that comes to mind.

Or perhaps skills that revolve around buffing or controlling guards/mercenaries…. Temporary environmental weapons? I don’t know.

New thief elite, “Scale Walls” ;p

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

You are supposed to be the WvW lead, the enthusiast, the champion arguing our case to the rest of Arenanet. It so often seems instead you are just making excuses for WvW to stay a mini game, not become a fully supported game mode. Please aims higher, aspire to more, build the end game so many of your players want and deserve.

Google this: DAoC Realm Rank
=D

Worked pretty good in gw1. But I bet it was a pain in the…. for the dev’s to maintain this.

Things were so wildly different in GW1, it’s not a fair comparison.

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

But skills are different in WvW already, because GW2’s combat scaling (AoE and cond caps) does that. As soon as the number of opponents goes over 5 the relative effects of skills change radically. They may look the same on paper, but in practice some skills are nerfed into insignificance by those caps while others are unaffected.

you go over 5 targets in AOEs in PVE quite easily

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

Devon,

Why you guys answer only these threads where the question is obviously against the current model and the answer is simple?

Please stop choosing the easy way and provide us some actual solution or at least let us know that you are seeing the REAL problems were a complaining about on a daily basis…

“It is hard to balance for three. Lets balance it just for pvp and let it work for all. and dont care %51 of the skills/traits are unused”

Look at thief if you run a thief in WvW and then go around in sPvP you have a 4 sec reveal that is huge and will throw your timing off especially if you play 1 game mode more than another. That is the most extreme example but a good example.

Then what is effective and what isn’t between the other game modes it just wouldnt be inviting having to remember how each works in each setting etc.

Look on the front or second page of WvW discussion people complaining about condition “meta” like this is sPvP that actually has a condition heavy meta. 1 class gets burning or a new rune set comes out and all of a sudden we are in a condition meta? Or its the small man teams and roamers complaining about it. I small man roam all the time but I know in the grand scheme necro’s getting burning and runes of perplexity don’t have a large impact on if Garrison in my home borderland gets taken. Who would be right or wrong?

I am fine how it is now I just would rather the WvW stay closer in line with PvE than in sPvP. I am still waiting for the thread where people complain about spirit rangers in WvW so I can chuckle.

DevonCarver.5370:

Yes. Not only was it incredibly complex to maintain it became completely unwieldy to players as well. GW2 has made a great number of changes to systems specifically to avoid the complications we created in GW1. Not creating multiple versions of skills for 3 areas of the game would be one of those changes..

So the majority, the PVEers suffer continual skill nerfs and fidldling about while you pander to the incesant PVP QQ?

Yeah, that seems a good solution to me.

Kraggy.4169:

DevonCarver.5370:

Yes. Not only was it incredibly complex to maintain it became completely unwieldy to players as well. GW2 has made a great number of changes to systems specifically to avoid the complications we created in GW1. Not creating multiple versions of skills for 3 areas of the game would be one of those changes..

So the majority, the PVEers suffer continual skill nerfs and fidldling about while you pander to the incesant PVP QQ?

Yeah, that seems a good solution to me.

if this was a real issue you would just see an across-the-board hp nerf of all pve mobs by like 10% or something.

its not an issue.

Dark Aidget.3879:

Things were so wildly different in GW1, it’s not a fair comparison.

Amen…

DevonCarver.5370:

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

So the way this was handled in GW1 was bad?

Yes. Not only was it incredibly complex to maintain it became completely unwieldy to players as well. GW2 has made a great number of changes to systems specifically to avoid the complications we created in GW1. Not creating multiple versions of skills for 3 areas of the game would be one of those changes.

I appreciate your candor, trouble is it’s also one more reason for many of us to go elsewhere. Sorry, but to be equally as blunt, I’m not concerned with the degree of difficulty it adds to the job of balance. The developers are paid to deal with that. If I tell my boss something makes my job too hard, he’ll nod and hire someone else. That’s the gig we signed on for as developers. I guess your boss is more easy going than mine, or most in the industry. If your superior comes in tomorrow and says “Do it..” you’re in the same boat as me. Do it or look for work. No easy solution. The result for now is pvp kills pve yet again.

It would be interesting to see the WvW players that have NOT played GW1, try the pvp system there. I bet a high percentage would prefer it. I’ve played a fair few mmo’s and the one positive thing all the hard core pvpr’s have said that tried GW1 pvp, is/was they liked the system and preferred it.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

I appreciate your candor, trouble is it’s also one more reason for many of us to go elsewhere. Sorry, but to be equally as blunt, I’m not concerned with the degree of difficulty it adds to the job of balance. The developers are paid to deal with that. If I tell my boss something makes my job too hard, he’ll nod and hire someone else. That’s the gig we signed on for as developers. I guess your boss is more easy going than mine, or most in the industry. If your superior comes in tomorrow and says “Do it..” you’re in the same boat as me. Do it or look for work. No easy solution. The result for now is pvp kills pve yet again.

It would be interesting to see the WvW players that have NOT played GW1, try the pvp system there. I bet a high percentage would prefer it. I’ve played a fair few mmo’s and the one positive thing all the hard core pvpr’s have said that tried GW1 pvp, is/was they liked the system and preferred it.

Devons boss is not about to come and tell Devon to “Do it” if the boss himself doesn’t intend for it to be done that way.

If you go back and look at any SOTG they have said they didn’t want to use that system with all the skills like in GW1 all the separation and stated why they aren’t using that system. Colin Johanson has said the same thing. Allie has said the same thing in the sPvP forums. You should be noticing a theme here. That theme is that they aren’t going to do a mass skill split and they definitely aren’t going to use the same system as in GW1. It’s been stated multiple times over and over again.

So if your going to another game and leaving then peace out if that reason is that you want the skill split like in GW1 because it’s not going to happen.

DevonCarver.5370:

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

So the way this was handled in GW1 was bad?

Yes. Not only was it incredibly complex to maintain it became completely unwieldy to players as well. GW2 has made a great number of changes to systems specifically to avoid the complications we created in GW1. Not creating multiple versions of skills for 3 areas of the game would be one of those changes.

This is pretty much along the lines of kittened. I don’t mean to insult you as an ArenaNet employee or as a person but this is total ignorance to how Guild Wars 2 (and Guild Wars 1) works as a game.

PvE, PvP and WvW are TOTALLY different game modes. Currently the game is getting PvP balance for a predominately PvE game. A vast, vast majority of players are PvE players and if you’re balancing it for something they don’t play, it’s going to kitten a lot of people off.

This was a mistake you made in Guild Wars 1 and you had to fix it. The fix WORKED. Your PvP players learnt the PvP skills and the PvE players learnt the PvE skills. If you wanted to join PvP you had to learn to play. Same thing with PvE.

This was one of Guild Wars’ strong selling points. It had lots of mechanics that you had to learn. If you wanted to get good, you had to pay attention to things. Sure, Guild Wars 2 is different and the target audience is different. You want to make things easier to understand for people that want to get into PvP and WvW, I understand, but this isn’t the way to go about it.

Here’s an example,

Conditions in PvE are quite frankly, kitten. They are garbage beyond measure and it’s why you’ll rarely see necromancers or bleed warriors in speed runs. However, the amount of times I’ve been absolutely destroyed by a condition mesmer or necromancer in WvW is insane. Conditions absolutely wreck in PvP based situations.

If you want to nerf conditions for WvW/PvP, you’re nerfing them even further for PvE. If you want to buff them for PvE, you make them OP in WvW/PvP and that creates balance issues.

You can’t balance all 3 game types under 1 skill set. They are different games with largely different playerbases. You are not going to have PvE noobs jumping into PvP all the time, simply because it’s PvP. Most people who want to start PvP will want to actually learn how to play it. The only two game modes that can maybe have the same skillset is WvW and PvE, simply because WvW is mostly P+Siege+EvP+Siege+EvE. You have many different things you’re dealing damage to and taking damage from and a lot of it is not players.

Please, please, please don’t make the same mistake of Guild Wars 1. Understand that PvP balance doesn’t work for PvE and WvW. Understand that you can’t do it. Players will easily see the transition as long as you present the information correctly. This is your core problem. You can’t have 3 skillsets if you don’t show the players they’re actually different.

The way to fix this is to give skills a generally similar function but alter the numbers and exact mechanics for each format. Say for example, poison is a slow DoT with average damage, but reduces healing, in PvP, but in PvE the numbers are changed slightly. Say it might do less damage but the heal reduction will go up.

Or 100b is a chained, rooted auto-attack and it does high damage, but it does more 2x more damage and doesn’t work on stunned foes in PvP (not aiming for perfect balance, it’s just a bad example off the top of my head).

You can not balance PvE and PvP under the same skills. It will not work. Your team needs to stop thinking “ep1c e-sporrtzzz xD” and start thinking “How can we provide genuine balance between classes and present the transition between game types as best as we can?”

Listen to your players. I do both High-end PvE and I’m a WvW commander, currently building a WvW guild on my server. Sure, I’m not the best, but I understand the implications of your current stance on balance, better than most.

You’re doing it wrong.

DevonCarver.5370:

Yes. Not only was it incredibly complex to maintain it became completely unwieldy to players as well. GW2 has made a great number of changes to systems specifically to avoid the complications we created in GW1. Not creating multiple versions of skills for 3 areas of the game would be one of those changes.

That is a problem because the system that you use already has multiple copies of the same skill, and you don’t want to create toons of skills that will require toons of time to get changed or to fix bugs. At the moment evry skill has a copy for evry combination of traits, and i think that WvW weapon skills works in the same way of others skills with WvW abilities.

Just think the Necromancer staff, it has 4 copies of the same skill. If you split them in WvW PvP and PvE you will need 12 copies of the same set of skills.

So the majority, the PVEers suffer continual skill nerfs and fidldling about while you pander to the incesant PVP QQ?

this has been a complaint in every system with pvp/pve equivalent skills. it rarely has grounding in fact, as imbalanced skills are usually flat imbalanced regardless of context

i still remember people complaining in champions online about ‘PVP skill nerfs’ when those same skills were letting people solo dungeons. :P

You can not balance PvE and PvP under the same skills. It will not work. Your team needs to stop thinking “ep1c e-sporrtzzz xD” and start thinking “How can we provide genuine balance between classes and present the transition between game types as best as we can?”
Listen to your players. I do both High-end PvE and I’m a WvW commander, currently building a WvW guild on my server. Sure, I’m not the best, but I understand the implications of your current stance on balance, better than most.

epiiic eeesports when pvp is seperate? sPvP is insulated from PvE/WvW balance.

so how does that make sense?

DevonCarver.5370:

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

So the way this was handled in GW1 was bad?

Yes. Not only was it incredibly complex to maintain it became completely unwieldy to players as well. GW2 has made a great number of changes to systems specifically to avoid the complications we created in GW1. Not creating multiple versions of skills for 3 areas of the game would be one of those changes.

Absolutely love to hear this. I hated the way skills in GW1 could be completely different from PvE to PvP!

Well after a lot of thought, I’m taking a break from GW2, it’s uninstalled and resting comfortably. I think MMO’s are just headed in a way that is not fun for me anymore. 10 years has been a good run, but for now it’s time to go. This isn’t a wah wah or I’ll quit ending, it’s just me realizing it’s time to go.

Best of luck to Anet, so long and thanks for all the fish!