Guild Wars 2

@Diage

Best of luck to you then, mate. I’ve felt for a long while now that half of GW1’s player base could have put together a more solid PvP game than what we have now, just off of there GW1 experience alone. ANet had all the tools and resources they needed, all the dedicated fanbase a new game could ever hope for, and a completely unique PvP system that had its players raving. Before launch, this game’s many promises and premises seemed (at least to me and a good deal of others) to be a progression/improvement on the system that was well loved. Personally, I was looking forward to a fresh start in the GW world, as I stopped playing at Nightfall’s launch due to time restraint (having played since launch). Instead, we were given World of Charrcraft.

Hindsight may be 20/20, but I’m not sure what ANet expected to happen when they’ve centered the game on its PvE content while treating PvP as some kind of sideshow (lol @ eSport aspirations, they couldn’t have POSSIBLY been taking themselves seriously with that one). What’s more is that the PvE content is relatively bland, easily soloed, and becoming more WoW-like with every update. Content updates are generally just temporary events, yet the player base still faithful to the game will rave about how fast this new content is being pumped out. Actual permanent endgame additions have so far simply been new dungeon treadmills that mirror those of the very games the GW team had once strived to break away from.

Why?

Perhaps the casual PvE crowd they’ve attracted likes buying gems more? Maybe ANet saw the enduring success of WoW and thought they could get the same results by mirroring Blizzard’s game. What they fail to realize is that there are 32178234 other games that have been doing just that for years. Nobody’s gonna beat the heavyweight champion of casual MMO gaming at their own game, it won’t happen.

This is essentially why many have considered this game a failure. Instead of tapping into the HUGE player base they had practically handed to them, they chose to do a 180 and be like every other MMO on the market, with a few gimmicks. This is why game’s population has taken a near-unrecoverable blow since launch. This is why OP’s idea will ultimately be fruitless. This is why s/tPVP will be forever plauged with unbalanced FotM cookie cutter builds, a strong FPS mentality, and a poor to nonexistent community.

These are things that, at this point, I feel ANet MUST be aware of, but choose to not act on, or even simply acknowledge.

P.S. as for the balancing of your game, a strong offence is of course necessary to crack a solid defense, but should be achieved through the combined efforts of the team a la GW1. This is why damage should be reduced – it would force different coordinations rather than having a few powerful DPS’s running around killing anyone as soon as a mistake is made (kind of similar to what we currently have, no?)

@alcopaul

I think you missed the point of my post.

I’m well aware of what [MATH] did and accomplished – I’m not challenging that. In fact, I never really had anything against your guild or even the hordes of IWAYers plaguing the Halls. IWAY was always a gimmick, and it did not take long at all for any team I joined to develop swift and effective strategies for dealing with it. Admittedly, I specifically remember losing to [MATH] at least twice in my time, but that’s just how the game goes – we were outplayed.

No, I’m not challenging [MATH]’s ability to be effective IWAYers (lol @ effective and IWAY used in the same sentence).

What I AM challenging is your viewpoint that the PvP in GW2 is superior, more intricate, dynamic, diverse, etc. than GW1. I cite your history with IWAY as the reason for your misguided opinion. In fact, I can see WHY you would believe that. IWAY was even more of a hack-and-slash fest than the mess we have now. I’m well aware of the strategy employed by the typical IWAY warrior, and any additional professions brought along were equally basic. Furthermore, the IWAY unit is one that closely mirrors the the GW2 unit — a bunch of self-sufficient DPS hotheads running around and doing their own thing, occasionally coordinating some kind of focus fire here and there.

THAT, alcopaul, is why I don’t believe you have any idea of what you’re talking about when it comes to GW1’s PvP intricacies.

Also @alcopaul, no offence, but I find it kind of silly that you ran with the IWAY exclusive [MATH] yet pretend to know the intricacies behind GW1 PvP.

Just sayin’.

This could potentially be corrected using the system already in place. Nearly all classes do possess a quasi-support role of some sort, the problem is that they’re much to weak to sustain a team against DPS that is much too strong. In my opinion DPS should be lowered across the board, and each class’s unique support build/abilities should be made more powerful in the context of team play. Furthermore, each class should have a viable means of shutting down said support, as well as other interesting role options (again, look to GW1 for inspiration here). The trick is that each player can’t do all these things at once, but would rather assume a role in a group that may accomplish all these things. The best part is, as each class’s mechanisms for each role differ, a wide variety of team building is made possible. This was my initial hope for the removal of the trinity, and is completely doable in the system already implemented in this game – with some intense tweaks and balancing issues, of course.

In my opinion, this would be a biggest step ANet could take towards reviving the incredible and unique PvP of GW1, all while retaining the ideas they have made for the new game. There are plenty of other excellent ideas in this thread alone to improve and add to the gameplay, but they will ultimately still fail without a change to the core mechanics, such as I’ve proposed. However, once again I doubt that any of this will be considered by ANet as their priorities have been screwed from the beginning, and I personally don’t believe that will change.

On a side note, I’ve been very shocked and slightly appalled that a system similar to HA hasn’t been implemented in tPvP or even sPvP. For those unfamiliar, HA was a form of tournament where your team progresses through a series of maps playing teams that have made it as far as you have, until you reach the final map which you hold indefinitely until you’ve lost. It’s single-elimination, and the reward for winning on each map progressively increases. Hell, I could see this working a lot better than the tournament or hotjoin we have now, even with the current maps and single game mode we have now. How oh how was this not considered? And don’t even get me started with the lack of GvG or a guild ladder. /angry rant

tl;dr – Good luck OP, I don’t think it’ll work because the game’s mechanics are flawed more so than it’s lack of organized tournament play, but it doesn’t matter because it’s working as the devs intended.

To stay on topic with the OP: if you want to organize something like this, good on ya. Attention to the PvP scene would hopefully draw some much needed dev attention, which is ultimately what this dismal aspect of the game desperately needs.

However, I don’t think you’ll succeed at reviving the game in this way. People aren’t playing because the game is difficult to spectate, or even because organized tournaments aren’t happening. Focusing on these aspects now is a waste of time.

The game suffers from much deeper flaws that others in this thread have been pointing out – flaws that the devs have quite intentionally been ignoring. If your proposed ideas are to do any good at all, it would be to spark an interest within the developers to actually address and correct these flaws, which I don’t believe will happen. The flaws are too ingrained within the game itself; too much correcting would need to be done.

Since launch, the gameplay of GW2 has been moving farther and farther from that of its predecessor. The hordes of excited GW1 fans under the impression that a second coming of god-tier PvP was upon them were immensely let down, and are no longer playing (myself included). They’ve already essentially lost they’re greatest playerbase. The worst part of all? GW1 holds many fixes that, if properly implemented, could have not only retained this playerbase, but also fostered the fresh new designs that GW2 did actually bring to the table.

Examples?

Team play:
Anyone from GW1 will tell you that comparatively, GW2 has some very weak teamplay – I personally think that this game becomes more and more like an FPS with each update. Any coordination in GW2 revolve around allocating players to capture/hold the most points (and other minor objectives). In GW1, while such coordinations were also extremely necessary, the teamplay that the vets ceaselessly harp on lie within the combat itself. Each player in the group consciously worked to sustain their fellow members, crack their opponents defense, all while analyzing the offences and strategies of the opposing group. The extreme inter-connectivity of the groups coupled with the many dynamic builds and strategies are what made the game truly unique. The combat in GW2 has taken very broad steps away from this notion. Battles in this game are basically between two groups of self-sufficient players doing there own thing in unison. Players therefore choose their builds with little consideration towards a team unit, and play with little consideration towards a team unit. The diversity of roles one can take in this game is greatly diminished as a result. This is mostly due to a good new mechanic improperly implemented:

Removal of the holy trinity:
A lot of serious PvPers now cite this as a bad idea, but I think it could work – just not the way that GW2 has done it so far. Removing dedicated class roles is a fresh idea that could have been a very positive addition to the Guild Wars formula (no more spamming for X amount of monks.) However, as garethh has already said, they failed to replace it with anything (lol @ downstate as a replacement; I’m surprised it’s been considered as one). What SHOULD have happened is that each class would be given access to all the different mechanics with their own unique variations, and therefore could potentially fill any role in their own way (as in, anyone could be the group’s healer, DPS, tank, etc.) Instead, GW2 scrapped major healing in of party members in favor for a self-sufficient system of self healing, all while keeping different classes pigeon-holed to certain roles. The holy trinity has become a holy duality between spike builds and bunker builds, with only minor variation and very little potential for teamplay.