Recently myself and many others that I play with have felt disappointed and concerned in the direction that Arena Net seem to be taking their mmorpg’s PVP.
I previously played GW1 and I started this game doing a mix of sPVP, WVW and PVE but eventually moved away from PVE and WVW all together after the implementation of ascended gear. The hints from anet at an increasing level cap and vertical progression really took me by surprise and made me feel as though GW2 was moving away from the much loved GW1 gear model. When asked about the implementation of ascended gear (vertical progression) Mike O Brien told us:
“Arena Net (sort of) held a hard line against all VP with GW1 — no VP ever, year after year — and it wasn’t that fun. It was stagnant.”
source
Fair enough that arena net want to take GW2 down a new route but I’m sure the fans of the original franchise would have something else to say about that.
So I decided to stay in sPVP as i knew that gear and level inequality wouldn’t touch the heart of the mists, this remains true and isn’t cause for concern. What worries me now is the direction anet has moved with the latest patch and the quickness nerf:
“overall, we want to slow the game down so that new players aren’t dying to certain specs in 2-3 seconds. So the quickness change is one step towards that.”
source
I understand that many new players do have problems with Frenzy hundred blade, back stab heart seeker, 100 nades, QZ bow spam and all the rest, but I think that by altering these builds to “slow the game down” anet has also significantly lowered the skill ceiling for guild wars 2 PVP and removed some of the incentive for new players to continue playing and increase their personal skill.
It required good reaction time with stun breakers, and damage mitigation to avoid these burts, which i felt was a major area in the guild wars learning curve. as well as recognising these select skills and looking for the tells, avoidance through spacial awareness and in some cases teamwork.
I feel that this (on top of lack of PVP content) is a major reason for the dwindling number of twitch streamers and youtubers that upload PVP content, a quote from WvW player SlicGW on youtube really sums up my feelings responding to a question asking if its before or after this quickness patch:
“All of this is before. I do have clips after the nerf, but everything is SO SLOW. All the other classes got nerfed. So, I kill slower and die MUCH slower, the whole pace of the game is even slower/more boring? to watch. I’m afraid that even if I tried to make it exciting, a 15min video would only have room for like 2 good clips.”
source – in uploader comments
Because I think many people watch streams and video content of games because of the high skill content that the player themselves aspire to or want to compare to as well as the fast paced nature of the games they’re playing. and the success of these outlets is a major contributing factor to the success of the game as an “esport” and the game as a whole.
Perhaps instead of making PVP more new-player-friendly to attract players, anet could of introduced more incentives to pvp, adding laurels was one step towards this (ignoring last months solo Q problems), but I’d love to see some unique skins, or ascended gear that could be bought with glory (or mystic forged?) and brought into PVE and in the long run new PVP game types other than just conquest.
I feel that there is a lot of irritation and angst in the pvp community as well as a lack of trust between Anet and their players which really makes me worry about the future of the game.
I sympathise that those working for anet are only human, and often too much is asked of them, but I would like to see more clarification about balance changes, as well as transparency on the future balance and the game as a whole.
