Guild Wars 2

This is an inquiry, if we can understand why PvP has been so bad for so long, maybe we can fix it.

I’ll start with a theory, devs feel free to koin in and correct me.

1) The games traits, skills, and gameplay are designed around PvE first.
2) PvP is then envisioned, with the goal to be an esport. The team centers a lot of time upon the flaws with gw1, the most natural esport of an mmo to date.
3) Downer state is introduced, with stomping, so those who know nothing of the game can spectate.
4) Testing begins! but critical feedback is ignored and those who get frustrated with the silent treatment and flame poor design decisions are kicked from alpha
5) The PvP team is made small, on the premise that PvP evolves content on it’s own in the form of Meta.
6) The game is launched without spectator, ranking, match making, what have you.

7) The small PvP team attempts to finish their games infastructure while fans walk away dissapointed
8) The PvP team finally finishes some basic tools for pvp only to look around and realize that oh yes, the gameplay really isnt condusive to pvp. particle effects clutter the screen, targetting systems are clunky and several classes spam out NPCs to clutter the screen. To say nothing of how teleports that make people feel cool turn out to demote strategic gameplay and positioning — and class balance mechanics, like ranger damage and pet survivability, are calculated with PvE in mind.

9) The devs give in on a key decision, to have only one game type, though they kicked alpha testers for that sort of suggestion… and are now using their limited development resources to try and accomodate us.

This is what ive seen, skipping over all the poor balancing decisions along the way

They’ve just made bad business decisions. They focus on the wrong thing at the wrong time, and when you repeat that for a year, you lose your playerbase. It’s entirely subjective to say what the wrong vs right thing is for them to focus on, but based on the results we have 1+ year out, it’s pretty clear they’ve made the wrong ones.

I would’ve liked for them to fix balance and the deplorable lack of build variety before even entertaining the idea of e-sports. Having people watch all of the glaring mistakes made in pvp development en masse (or as en masse as you could get given how low the population is) is just a horrible idea. They thought that would have a positive effect? Really?

Zegai.8256:

They’ve just made bad business decisions. They focus on the wrong thing at the wrong time, and when you repeat that for a year, you lose your playerbase. It’s entirely subjective to say what the wrong vs right thing is for them to focus on, but based on the results we have 1+ year out, it’s pretty clear they’ve made the wrong ones.

Only pvp people think that though. PvE people actually think they aren’t getting enough attention and the devs are balancing skills based on tpvp, which they don’t want. So really, the root of the problem actually lie in the player base.

PvE people think the devs are focusing on spvp – which is a terrible decision – and Spvp people thinks the Dev are focusing too much on PvE – which is also a terrible decision. So it doesn’t matter what dev decide, when they make content for one area the other will complain.

When you separate spvp from pve what you get is two different kind of people both asking for different things, and it certainly didn’t help that the two aspect of the game (tpvp and pve) are using the ESSENTIALLY the same skill. (some are different, but not all.) So everytime a balance patch comes about people think the devs are catering one another and start qqing.

showatt.9413:

Zegai.8256:

They’ve just made bad business decisions. They focus on the wrong thing at the wrong time, and when you repeat that for a year, you lose your playerbase. It’s entirely subjective to say what the wrong vs right thing is for them to focus on, but based on the results we have 1+ year out, it’s pretty clear they’ve made the wrong ones.

Only pvp people think that though. PvE people actually think they aren’t getting enough attention and the devs are balancing skills based on tpvp, which they don’t want. So really, the root of the problem actually lie in the player base.

PvE people think the devs are focusing on spvp – which is a terrible decision – and Spvp people thinks the Dev are focusing too much on PvE – which is also a terrible decision. So it doesn’t matter what dev decide, when they make content for one area the other will complain.

When you separate spvp from pve what you get is two different kind of people both asking for different things, and it certainly didn’t help that the two aspect of the game (tpvp and pve) are using the ESSENTIALLY the same skill. (some are different, but not all.) So everytime a balance patch comes about people think the devs are catering one another and start qqing.

PvE players should shut the kitten up.

PvE in this game is awesome ( if you put aside the fact it’s not THAT hard and there are no raids), ever eveolving and with new content every 2 weeks.

Dungeons, armors, events: FULL OF IT.

I’ve never seen an MMO doing so much for players. PvE players, of course.

So they really should just shut the kitten up.

The stats are built around PvP first; I’ll give you some examples.

The primary method of damage mitigation in PvE is not getting hit. That means dodging, or if you have access to them, blocks. Toughness will not save you from a big windup move, vitality will not save you from a big windup move. No heal is big enough to save you from those either, so healing power isn’t so great. Due to damage conditions being limited to 25 stacks condition damage doesn’t make a huge difference in PvE, especially against objects that can’t take conditions or be critted. Most CC, bosses are immune to. The non-CC conditions are still severly limited in duration against bosses.

So right there, that’s toughness, vitality, condition damage, condition duration, precision, crit damage, healing power, and many forms of crowd control, all of limited PvE use. Those stats, then, are used for PvP primarily, and all of them with the possible exception of vitality make a big impact in PvP fights.

Not even touching the rest of your post there. You can’t possibly know most of those things except the state in which the game was launched. No point addressing speculation.

They kicked people from alpha for critique? Lol, I knew Anet was bad but THIS bad?

showatt.9413:

Only pvp people think that though. PvE people actually think they aren’t getting enough attention and the devs are balancing skills based on tpvp, which they don’t want. So really, the root of the problem actually lie in the player base.

PvE people think the devs are focusing on spvp – which is a terrible decision – and Spvp people thinks the Dev are focusing too much on PvE – which is also a terrible decision. So it doesn’t matter what dev decide, when they make content for one area the other will complain.

When you separate spvp from pve what you get is two different kind of people both asking for different things, and it certainly didn’t help that the two aspect of the game (tpvp and pve) are using the ESSENTIALLY the same skill. (some are different, but not all.) So everytime a balance patch comes about people think the devs are catering one another and start qqing.

True, but I was talking solely about their pvp decisions. Take Skyhammer for example – horrible map that forces you to play either a different class or to completely redo your build to play well. They realize it’s not balanced and still needs a LOT of work, so they take it out of tpvp but not solo q? What kind of logic goes into a decision like that, and how does an asinine decision like that get the approval from the other devs? It’s not good enough for tpvp, but hey let’s force it on solo q. It’s an even bigger gripe for me because people typically would rather solo q now instead of tpvp because it takes a year and a day to get 5 people and make a full group. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I preferred the old q system.

The fault is not with sPvP in itself. It’s that ArenaNet spoke so highly of sPvP, and promoted it so strongly, before the game was even released. They basically shot themselves in the foot. If they had just been honest from the start, and said “we want to work towards making sPvP an eSport, in a year or two”, things would look very different now. People who left sPvP are disappointed because they didn’t get what they were promised. They expected a close to finished game mode, that was ready to go into eSport in a few months, but instead they got a beta game, that still isn’t finished a year later.

Corian.4068:

The stats are built around PvP first; I’ll give you some examples.

The primary method of damage mitigation in PvE is not getting hit. That means dodging, or if you have access to them, blocks. Toughness will not save you from a big windup move, vitality will not save you from a big windup move. No heal is big enough to save you from those either, so healing power isn’t so great. Due to damage conditions being limited to 25 stacks condition damage doesn’t make a huge difference in PvE, especially against objects that can’t take conditions or be critted. Most CC, bosses are immune to. The non-CC conditions are still severly limited in duration against bosses.

So right there, that’s toughness, vitality, condition damage, condition duration, precision, crit damage, healing power, and many forms of crowd control, all of limited PvE use. Those stats, then, are used for PvP primarily, and all of them with the possible exception of vitality make a big impact in PvP fights.

You mean:
“the current boss mechanics/PvE mechanics are poorly implemented and not suitable for the stats that currently exist in game”

If 5 players in team A in PvP can be prevented from taking a point by the opposing team B of 5 players, and some of the players of team A can even be killed during this fight, a fight that could last for 15min, which means this team A is basically given a run for their money – all of this using a >>given and limited set of mechanics<< (the GW2 mechanics/stats)…
Then surely a team A of 5 players in PvE could be prevented from “killing a PvE boss” for 15min, and be killed during that fight too, giving them a run for their money – using the exact same >>given and limited mechanics<<.

In other words, the game has good mechanics and the stats make sense overall. What matters is how well these good mechanics are put to use.

Perhaps the problem is that the company has simply failed to use the current game mechanics to their full extent in PvE.

Just look at the way a PvP team do it and create a “one man top team” boss: constant cleansing, auto rez, blocking, huge burst, can stomp, uses positioning, etc.

Once again, the mechanics as they are can make a fight long, entertaining and interesting in PvP – so why not in PvE? (of course with some changes here and there)

I’m sure observing PvP games, there are a few sets of key positions and skills used by people that can be used to create scripted chains for PvE bosses/opponents.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure I got it worked out.

The devs work their best around random.

Take GW1 for example, the game was amazing, yet 2/3 of the skills the devs made were useless. They just shotgunned out options and by chance some of the kitten they made was good.
It was very good.

Take GW2… the devs constricted it with caring… they wanted it to assuredly be good soooooo bad that they cut out the random shotgun approach and went for complete deliberate control.
2/3 of what they made was still useless.
But that 2/3 is now in a place that it is devastating to the game.

The map choice (solo-skirmishy conquest) puts an extreme emphasis on your class/spec to what you can do, making imbalances way more obvious, making depth extremely spec dependent… meaning the abilities have to be extremely well made for the gameplay to have a shot at being engaging…
Yet without the leagues of random skill to choose from, they couldn’t accidentally make depth and engaging gameplay through the abilities…

MMOs get their depth, typically, from the positioning and teamwork in a team v team engagement… GW2 tossed that for… for a focus on specs…
The gameplay suffered terribly.

A quick list of the failings that came from their new approach…
-The map lacks any of the depth of MOBA maps so obviously will never hold up to esports standards. Anyone who isn’t a bunker is pushed to be a burst dps because roaming is best done by burst.
-The stats, the physical stats scale so well together that you have to have high power and crit allot to deal viable physical dmg. That pushes heavily for a burst or bust meta (see the issue? there is supposed to be balance, pro’s and cons for burst, not pro-pro)
-Condition removal seems built around conditions being mild debilitation. Speccing is setup as if most specs can and should manage without any condition removal. That is leaps, bounds and a few more strides from ‘how conditions are setup’.
-The lack of teamwork… Anet added in little to no teamwork innately in classes, you typically have to sacrifice a utility for a long CD that works with team-mates. That is outright deadly to the casual playerbase of an MMO.