Guild Wars 2

All I see is more and more content that encourages zerging in this game. With the addition of the megaservers, we literally cannot escape zergs.

I personally enjoy the challenge of doing things by myself, or in a small group, and relying on my skill. To me standing in a massive amount of particle affects pressing 1 is not heroic at all. I play video games to feel like I matter, feeling like you make a difference in this virtual world is exciting (which is what I imagine is the reason many people play, even if they don’t want to admit it.) Zergs/Zerg content takes that epicness out of the game, and forces you back into the reality that you are just one tiny being amongst many, and it really doesn’t matter if you press one or not, things will just continue as they were anyway.

What happened to the epicness of this game? The feeling of being a hero? If you look at the personal story, the reason so many people hated it was because it was all about Traherene. People want to feel like the hero, like what they did is awesome and made some difference. Maybe I’m just too much of a fantasy lover, but Guild Wars 2 has lost that appeal to me now. The megaserver took what semblance there was of that left and destroyed it. Now you just take a number and stand in line to receive your loot. It feels like a chore. Working for rewards that aren’t pleasing because in actuality all you did was run as fast as you can to press 1 as fast as you can so that you get loot before something melts.

I doubt anyone from Anet will read this, but honestly the zerg content and zerg centric changes are killing the game. There is no feeling of greatness, no epicness. Community destruction aside, even if you were guildless and didn’t belong to a tight community before, these zerg centric updates just take the fun out of the game. It makes me sad to see this game deviate so far from its manifesto. When did the players become mere numbers to be corralled, and ceased to be your loyal customers that you cared about?

So I finished my champion phantom title last night (I only needed 30 more wins when the patch went live), and after playing pvp non stop for the past few days I know why sPvP will not succeed in this game without some changes.

To start off with I know that I will most likely get people who are angry about what I say in this thread, but the truth is it is something that needs to be said.

The reason that sPvP is so small of a population is because of the toxicity of its members. It isn’t an Anet problem (although they have stuff they need to work on), it is a community problem.

I wouldn’t consider myself an expert pvp person, but I wouldn’t say that I’m new to the format either. I’m usually matched against 80s (by the new standard) and have faced some of the “big name” players in matches before. Most of the toxicity wasn’t targeted at me the last couple of days, but just seeing it directed at newer players made me so sad.

Every single match someone would make a comment about those kitten PvE players joining and ruining PvP. (And for reference I was in TeamQ, SoloQ and only a few times in hotjoin [like 3?])

“Those dumb noobs ran to beast first! GG "
“God you suck go back to PvE”
“All these matches are awful now that the PvErs came in.”
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING AT THE ORB?!”
“All they want are their rewards, they are awful”
“Why don’t you uninstall the game already?!”

And trust me there were much worse comments that aren’t appropriate to post on the forums.

I personally love all formats of this game, and play them all pretty equally. But I can say I will be playing pvp less because I have enough stress in real life and don’t need to come home to see such toxicity. You can blame Anet all you want for the problems with the PvP population, but the truth is they are trying. They gave us a great patch with some fun mechanics to it that will draw in new players. And all this community is doing is attacking them and making them feel unwelcome. You want to face more skilled players? Well they have to get skilled by practicing. A person doesn’t just join sPvP and automatically is amazing. They have to play games, learn the mechanics, better understand their class and others. But if people make them feel so unwelcome why would they ever want to stay that long? Trust me the rewards won’t outshine the way they are treated like garbage. Those are human beings with emotions, lives, feelings behind those keyboards, and you should respect them as such.

This community really needs to shape up. I’m ashamed after what I’ve seen the last couple of days and it makes me not want to associate myself with sPvP much anymore. So please people be nice to newer people. Don’t berate them for not being as good as you yet, teach them so that one day you can actually face them and it will be a challenge for you.

EDIT: My point is proven by the post near mine that is entitled “Too many noobs in tourneys”. And the first post starts out with “I hate them so much”. Deplorable…

Because we are the Gates of Madness after all….. And this is how we roll in Bronze

So as an avid WvW player I seriously dread the new megaserver addition. They have openly said there will be no more separate worlds in PvE/PvP anymore.

Well you may ask, they are leaving WvW alone so how does this hurt you?

It hurts WvW because they are tearing down server identity in all other game modes which is where we have to draw from to get new players. If there is no longer a server identity except for in WvW, there is no reason for someone to play WvW who isn’t already into it right now.

By destroying the server identity you break the pride that people have in their server. It’s like being from a country. You may not realize it, but you are loyal to your country just because it is what you inherently belong to. If someone insults/assualts your country you feel obligated to defend it. But if your country is just some label that you are sorted on just like a social security number, then you really feel no affinity to it at all.

I see this as being a huge downslide for WvW as people will lose that sense of pride that makes them want to fight for the betterment of their server. It becomes just some abstract label now that doesn’t really mean anything.

This change is so destructive that do the very few pros really outweigh all of the cons? I thought we want to build community, not destroy it…

I think it is awful that they are offering this. Invalidates those of us that hated doing things like World Exploration, and would rather do WvW but we had to do other game modes. But because Anet favors PvP thinking it will save this game they get a legendary for winning a tournament. I like PvP and do it myself, but giving away something that people grind for for 6 months to people that just mastered one game mode is wrong. Precursor, or one gift I guess is ok, still over the top, but giving away the whole thing is such a slap in the face to the rest of us. A title would have sufficed. Still makes them stand out, but doesn’t invalidate others’ accomplishments.

Thanks Anet…

Allie Murdock.8152:

We will be removing all rank requirements for the Gift of Battle in the February 18th build and further evaluate what those requirements will be. We do not currently have an ETA for when rank requirements will be reinstated.

Why? There is so much PvE that is required out of a legendary. Now you don’t have to step foot in WvW longer than to buy your gift of battle since you put badges in achievement chests. I thought this was a great move to make a legendary actually have you try more game modes before getting a legendary. Now you just have to PvE for the whole thing :-( Ever since adding the badges into AP chests the gift of battle no longer is a sign of trying out WvW, which is what it was intended to be when you could only get badges from being in WvW.

First off. I recall Jon Peters saying this most recent livestream that they want to make less differences between skills in PvE and PvP. I think this is actually the reason that PvE (including WvW) is so imbalanced right now.

Since I know the devs are logic based people I want to use this post to examine the pros and cons. Please feel free to add your own in the responses.

Side Note: You will notice that WvW and PvP can be considered vastly similar in the way that they play and PvP balance applying to WvW would actually solve many of the current balance problems in WvW.

Pros:

Objectives are different, ergo the skills impact play differently:

In PvP the objective is to score more points than the other team. This is done on most maps by capping and bunking points. The combat style is close quartered and you are solely concerned with keeping the other team from scoring more points. So skills that deal damage in an aoe ring (mark of blood necro balance) have more affect than they might in a wvw/pve situation where you do not need to stay in a small ring in order to accomplish an objective.

In PvE the objective is (usually) to kill mobs in order to get to a certain place/kill an end boss. The mechanics of the bosses are very variant, and so are the obstacles that you have to overcome in order to get to where you need to go. Because of this variance, skills that are solely geared around capping and holding points/killing other players that are more intelligent than AI are going to function in odd ways in this environment. If a skill is highly powered in PvP it may be near useless in PvE or vice versa. For example Healing signet in PvE is over powered because of the slow attack speed of mobs and the limited use of poison by mobs vs PvP where players attack rapidly and know to poison you if you are using HS.

In WvW the objective is to have a final score that is larger than your opponents at the end of the week. This is accomplished through holding capture objectives at 15 minute intervals, stomping other players, and killing sentries. The map space for this is quite large so fights can often take place in very large quartered areas. Mobility plays a big part in combat (the ability to escape reset health, let cds expire etc.). The fights can also range in size from a 1v1 situation to 50v50. So in a situation like this a skills related to mobility (teleports, stealth, etc), can be far more powerful than they are in PvP where stealth is not nearly as useful of a mechanic as it negates capture point contribution.

This is not a sarcastic post!

I really enjoy the evil puppet lady (guild’s nickname for her) fight!

There is just something about it that makes it feel challenging, but not like a giant zerg fest (Like Teq was and which is why a lot of us didn’t like it). My guild is predominantly a WvW guild that hasn’t been a huge fan of the LS, but we convinced our guild to make an attempt on the fight, and even our most anti-PvE players asked if we could try again the next night!

I love the incorporation of siege, the smaller 20-25 man fights, the ability to use finishers, and the ring mechanics. We had each lane cheering on the others, and it really was a lot of fun to do. I have most of the achievements, and yet I keep going back to do the fight again because I enjoy it. We even had a dev that recently transferred to our server fighting along with us.

Just wanted to give you guys that, oh so hard to find, positive feed back.

(Give the guys that came up with this fight a raise! [and if at all possible don’t take it away!!!!])