Guild Wars 2

A month has passed and I decided to step in with something more than just a humorous posts here and there.

What I am aiming at is starting a wide discussion about sPvP’s future. What we as a community need to do is take the collective effort and provide our insight to familiarize ArenaNet with different points of view. Together we can improve GW2 PvP and make it as good as it can be. Ideally this thread could gain some notice from developers and the community as a whole and become a place they could look in search of ideas.

Before I start the whole discussion I would like to say that it will be largely connected to the original Guild Wars game, which I believe was much better in many ways. If you want to comment with standard ‘it’s a completely new, different game’, I’d appreciate if you refrained from replying. Thanks.

What’s also important, I will be mainly talking in reference to GvG/HA, since these two were essentially standing for PvP in Guild Wars. If not stated differently, that’s our standard reference point.

Where it all started?

The whole design philosophy behind the combat system and PvP (as well as PvE, but I won’t be talking about it that much) that led us to where we are today was pretty simple. ArenaNet saw obvious drawbacks the original Guild Wars game had and wanted to create something better. Unfortunately, there were limitations (both through engine and design) that made it impossible to implement the ‘vision’ in Guild Wars 1. This is when and why Guild Wars 2 development process started.

What were the key factors that led them do that?

1. Firstly, everything Trinity-related with a great emphasis on healer (Monk) profession. To play any kind of serious PvP in GW1 you had to have a dedicated monk healer and prot (damage mitigation specced monk). Whether we’re talking GvG or HA or TA, you always needed a monk. This was greatly stopping some people from playing competitively because they just didn’t have decent monks. It wouldn’t be that much of a problem if the healer roles weren’t limited to virtually two builds with some skill variations. This was causing problems with teambuilding closing the PvP community.
2. Secondly, the team size was 8 players. This one’s pretty simple – either you had an 8 player team or you didn’t have (a competitive) team at all. It was another limiting factor.
3. Game complexity and difficulty was another limitation. High-end PvP was revolving around things like kiting, set swapping, coordinated spikes and cooperation between split groups just to name some. All of those on top of knowledge of meta builds and maps as well as player’s personal skills. Speaking of skills – there were hundreds of abilities that provided endless build options (with relatively few viable options) which were almost impossible to balance adding fuel to the fire.
4. Another thing that comes to mind is elitism and titles. I haven’t experienced it myself, but it was obvious that people starting the game some years after its release had extremely hard time getting into PvP. It was resembling a corporate world with its necessities like networking (reliable Friend List) and achievements (LF r12+). To play competitively you had to have a full team of friends who knew each other. To be accepted into a good team you had to be good of course, but you also needed proof in the form of PvP titles. The aforementioned factors made getting titles a very difficult and time-consuming objective.

We could probably think of more, but let’s stop right here. Suffice to say there were serious barriers for new players blocking them from playing and enjoying competitive PvP. They closed the community making it hermetic eventually leading PvP into stagnation and death.

At the same time, PvP was extremely fun, challenge-oriented and exceptionally rewarding. Holding Tombs was giving your realm Favor of the Gods back in the days. Winning in GvG tournaments would give you in-game wealth and recognition for your guild. GW1 GvG is probably the most challenging team PvP to date. It gave few years of extreme fun to people who could play it and compete with each other.
With that said – it didn’t work for the majority. Anet saw that and wanted to make things right.

What did they do to make things right?

During the development of Guild Wars 2 and its PvP in particular, games like LoL surfaced to create a whole new PvP experience. It had simple objectives, it was accessible, casual friendly, free-to-play, entertaining and addictive. At the same time, it allowed many play styles and setups. With one mode it was easy to focus on balance and expansion.

I believe this had great impact on PvP design in Guild Wars 2. Designers wanted to create combat and PvP that wouldn’t force teams to particular profession setups. They wanted it more casual, so that new players could join and play. What they needed was less complexity – achieved through less skills and one mode to make it even simpler to tinker with. Titles are rather easy to obtain and anyone can get them PUGing tournaments. Teams are small making grouping easy. Pretty much any barrier we talked about was eliminated. Yay!

But was it really for the better? Do we have the ultimate Guild Wars 2 PvP experience we all wanted and waited for? There is no single answer to this question and it varies from person to person. I can only try answering it from the perspective of a veteran Guild Wars player. The key to answering it is ‘Conquest’.

I personally believe that the current sPvP mode is responsible for all the negative PvP feedback. Conquest creates difficulties – it forces some profession choices on players (Guardian on Clocktower), makes some professions and builds superstrong in comparison to others (Necro fighting Mesmer) and favours counter-picking. It all can be solved with proper skill changes, but is it really a solution?
I think the problem with Conquest is much deeper and it caused dozens of my friends (including me) stop playing tPvP. We all agreed that this game needs more complex and more interesting PvP mode.

1. The first complaint is – maps are boring and too small. When playing you usually get stuck in getting from one point to another, fighting enemy there, neutralizing points and capturing them. There is not enough space to start interesting fights, to dodge and use line of sight. In Conquest it’s usually a matter of focusing an enemy and using number advantage. What I believe is more interesting is moving around and fighting 2v2 in places where things like standing on a point don’t matter.
2. Another thing taking away fun is the main objective and score system. The main objective is to get 500 points before enemy team does that. Now, killing enemy Guild Lord was a good objective, taking opponent’s Keep is a good objective, defeating antagonists is good objective, fighting terrorists planting a bomb is a good objective. Heck, for some even planting a virtual bomb and stopping dudes from defusing it is a good one. These are good objectives because they feel good. Getting 500 points doesn’t feel at all.
3. Being forced to capture and hold points is solely causing some professions to outshine others. I would love to see some 2v2 action with a guardian not focusing on launching enemies out of a capture point and actually protecting me creating bubbles to mitigate projectiles in open. A great way to counter Phantasm mesmer is to kite his or her illusions which cannot always be achieved if you want to save your point from being neutralized or captured. Bunker guardian is probably the most boring thing you can do in Guild Wars 2 and it’s pretty much necessary, thanks to capture points. What I’m trying to say is – let people focus on having real fun fighting on the go instead of rooting them in certain places. It isn’t fun and it forces unnecessary balance decisions just to make everything fit the convention.

Now, there’s an obvious solution – GvG-style mode in Guild Wars 2.

• A simple objective – take enemy Keep (by killing a tanky Lord)
• Few bigger maps with a Keep for each team, Lord NPC with his entourage inside it.
• NPCs being very offensive but also not very tough, making a fight with them quick and challenging (current NPCs in the Legacy of the Foefire seem fine, maybe a bit stronger)
• Split-oriented, with anti-zerg measures – like a 50% damage reduction on NPCs and Gates when more than 3 enemy players are present.
• A side-objective like flagstand in the middle of the map providing advantage for the winning team.
• Time cap of let’s say 25 minutes.
• A score to measure kills, etc. for every team that can be used to pick a winner if time is up.
• At least two routes to every base significantly distanced from each other, also multiple routes to the middle of the map allowing for some dirty-collapse tactics.

I like to think of this idea as of taking some insanely entertaining parts of WvW like protecting Keeps and slightly bigger groups and putting it into structured environment with max stats, best gear and without zerg’n’lagfest.
I can imagine it as 4 players playing 2v2 in the middle of the map, continuously taking the side objective from each other. The objective buffs the team allowing splitting players to push the main objective by taking down the gate or killing an NPC.
Each team can have someone to protect the base and roam across the map to help in the middle or in enemy base. I know I and my friends would jump into it immediately.

But what’s most beautiful thing about this approach – Anet already has the mode done in GW1. The design part is done, what’s left is the implementation.

What’s ahead?

Don’t get me wrong – Conquest isn’t a complete fail. It definitely achieves many important goals they set. The thing is – they could do much better than that. Many people like it and will play it for a long time. Me and most of my friends from original GW feel disappointed having played GvG and HA, both being more fun beyond comparison. And no ladder/ observer mode/ additional maps can improve the experience by the required amount. It just wears off too quickly and is too repetitive.

What I’d like to emphasise is – We all as the PvP community can help making PvP experience the best possible. Let’s provide our feedback and ideas. If we show how much we care, we will have them in game sooner or later. We can make this a PvP-evolution and suggestions thread to provide basics for further discussion and PvP development.

The only obstacle I can think of is Anet standing by Conquest as its flagship and main supported mode. The ideal solution from my point of view would be to create a new mode to replace Conquest as a main, e-sportish mode with Conquest becoming a more casual Random Arena-type battleground.

TL;DR
Conquest mode is the main reason for the imbalances in PvP gameplay. The assumptions that led to its creation were alright, but it just won’t work in the long-run. Replacing it with something like GvG from original Guild Wars with more entertaining objectives tailored with new mechanics and capabilities in mind could lead to the PvP we all want so much.

You and I think pretty similar thoughts

We also both write gigantic walls of texts.. lol

It’s a good read and I agree with you in spirit and have only a few asterisks here and there to apply. Instead of stating them explicitly, I want to post the link to my post. I would like to see a constructive discussion going to figure out or at least draw attention to the extreme lost potential of GW2 pvp.

My post is here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Lost-potential/first#post278783

People have been telling ANet to implement other modes since BWE 1. There are no signs of new modes, or even 5 vs 5 hot join. There is no choice. Play conquest 8 vs 8, get stomped by established teams, or stomp pugs. Join a desolate server to play with friends? Random pugs will join in and interrupt 1 vs 1s.

It’s not even about implementing other modes. I am all for fewer modes. It becomes impractical to balance around the other modes and they are just imbalanced battles where people get a high ego and don’t learn anything effective about playing the game.

KogarasuMaru.7036:

People have been telling ANet to implement other modes since BWE 1. There are no signs of new modes, or even 5 vs 5 hot join. There is no choice. Play conquest 8 vs 8, get stomped by established teams, or stomp pugs. Join a desolate server to play with friends? Random pugs will join in and interrupt 1 vs 1s.

This guy understands the situation and what we’re dealing with here. It’s very bleak and hopefully ANet will come up with something soon.