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[Ashodin]

but they're adding legendaries to sPVP.

 

[shysaursoft]

It's been out just over a year. Not two. #justsayin (And I'd argue it's only NOW out of beta, but that's me).

In other news, how awesome is this fight?

 

[Proven]

Finally, I'm done with the sPvP in GW2 for the coming months (or years, depends how much time they take to fix it). After ~2k hours spent in the mists, 3011 tourny game played and I just reached R50, was in the top 100s solo and team ladders, before the reset and mmr rework, and I just cannot be more sure of the fact that Anet gives exactly Z-E-R-O f*cks about the sPvP mode. It's just insulting.

Spent thousands of hours playing it to this point, and when I finally reached it (legitimately, only through tournaments/rated games, with little to no hotjoin/custom games, don't talk about farming them), I cannot get my f*cking reward - the light champion's(winged) armor set, because it's a ridicules mystic toilet recipe (i.e. i have to spend a fraction of my tons of useless glory for chest, from which to get tons of repeatable and useless items, that I have to salvage in the hopes of receiving the needed material - bear token, as for the other arcane powders, orbs, slivers etc - I have f*cking dedicated TWO of my bank TABS to them).

I knew about the state of the game since I reached r30, like a year ago, but I guess it took me way too long to go from r40 to r50, that and all the recent pve/wvw improvements just made me forget/blinded me about the pisspoor condition of the sPvP, which haven't changed much from the very first CLOSED media sneakpeak preview of the game back in feb 2012...

I mean, seriously? Almost two years now, and we are still looking at the very same, ridicules glory/chest/reward system we have now. I can dig out some press preview videos from back then, if someone is doubting how pathetic this looks. Ok, to be fair, back then every vendor offered the exact armors for said rank, which in the second public beta test were replaced by these f*cking chests, because players "love to open chests", remember? Well, half my inventories in all my characters are full of stacks and stacks of chests, and atm they even "reward" us with TWO reward chests, and we all know of players with milions of glory, tons and tons of arcane stuff and reward chests. We need some chests, to store our award chests in.

Unfortunate, rewarding isn't the only problem here. We are talking about essential things/systems, that have to be TOP PRIORITY, like matchmaking, spectating (a tournament/rated plays, who actually spectates a bunch of randoms farming hotjoin?), ladders, punishments just missing or not working properly/at all.

Matchmaking and ladders were released back in march, and half an year later, after all the "pointing out" from the community about the flawed systems, Anet just now realized and admitted that there is something wrong in MMRs/ladders and started to applying fixes/resets.

Also the so called dishonorable system (which worked perfectly in GW1, have no idea why they don't want to reuse it and instead they are trying to reinvent the wheel) is so messed up, it's not even funny. At the moment you need to afk for 3 minutes in a rated match to get ONE dishonorable stack for 72 hours. Leaving a match will give you one stack for 72 hours as well. So what? You need FIVE such stacks to get banned of rated play for the (wait for it...) remaining duration of your FIRST stack! Basically , if you want to be jerk, every 2 days you can ruin up to 4 matches and don't even get remotely close to being punished about it. And there is no way of reporting players/teammates for being afk, leeching, trolling the match, leaving etc, it's all up to this useless system. It's beyond me, why they just don't use the GW1 system(or something similar to it).

The other big, big issue for the past half an year is the complete lack of balance and the stupid condi meta, that noone asked about, noone wants it, yet it still in the game, almost untouched... Same goes for all the petting zoo, and passive >>> active playstyles, that may not get changed "soon", if ever. For example, I love how an ele player have to be like playing on a piano only to stay alive, while a 5-signet warrior can just spam earthshakers every few seconds and will do much, much better for his team, then the ele. Or how a ranger have to get a bunch of spirits, dumping all his utilities, because they are all lacking... Or (maybe my favorite) - that it took almost a year after release for warriors to be even playable in sPvP, and now how they are all almighty powerful.
It's just pathetic how they used to say things like "we don't want to do knee-jerk balance overhauls every couple of patches, we prefer periodically applying small changes and touches" (u can find quotes like that in almost every state of the game video), and now - out of the sudden, they are all about pushing bigass changes every 2 months or so. Even doing a balance preview thread, just shortly after the last balance patch... like, seriously?!

I can continue on and on and on about all the problems surrounding this part of the game, like the loading stuck bug that comes from time to time, or like "why the hell, do we have a loading screen in the middle of our #esport game, while the guy spectating gloryfarmers doesn't?!" and other ridiculous and really annoying things, but then I'll be wasting my (and yours) time way too much now.

Long rant again... but I just can't help it. :/

First, they're putting out bigger balance patches BECAUSE people complained about the slow and incremental changes that took too long to come out and test. They're still pacing them a decent amount of time as well.

As for everything else, yes, I know, it sucks. A lot of people spent the better part of the year implementing core features that everyone wished were there from launch, like spectator mode. A lot of other people were tied up dealing with culling across all game modes. And a number of other people were getting organized and ready to become the Living Story machine.

But it will get better. MMR and Leaderboards finally got a partial fix and they're developing the rest of the fix right now. There's also going to be a reward revamp that will do something about glory and in the mean time they're trying out things like the Toxic lockboxes. They've been developing new game modes for PvP for months now and something should be coming out of the oven soon enough.

So yeah, it sucked. They spent a lot of time dealing with other stuff. But we'll get our turn. And until then we'll have to see what else comes out of the Dec. 10th balance patch we don't know about. As it stands, there have been a lot of positive balance changes along with the bad or unpopular. Where it's bad, it's bad. But it's not all bad.

 

[Talaysen]

I really don't like this update.

You're pretty much required to group up to ascend the tower, but usually when I try, people just run past everything instead of killing it and I keep dying before getting to the top. Then I have to teleport back to the waypoint and try it again because no one's going to revive. I've managed to get up to the top once but that's it so far.

It's sad because this isn't really Anet's fault. Just people doing the event the unintended way and it ends up screwing over the people who want to do it normally.

 

[Retro]

As much as I adore Guild Wars 2, I can't even comment on your post, Swnny. I can probably count on two hands the number of serious sPVP matches I've played, so I flat out have no ground to stand on to even begin to respond. All I can say is, MMOs are a huge, tangled mess that, in their scope, try to cater to a ton of different play styles and tastes. Invariably some of those will be left cold for long periods of time, and I know it must taste bitter to want something that seems so obvious, simple and just within reach.

It's probably no consolation, but there's never been a game with the kind of post-launch support GW2 has. That's not a defensive counter, it's not hyperbole, it's not wishful thinking. It's a fact; nobody has delivered so much, so quickly, for free. If any game was going to solve the problems you outline (and I have no doubt that they are real problems), it would be this one. That, I suppose, is the long way of saying "It will happen, be patient.", which sounds condescending but really, truly isn't meant to.

The next time I talk to a developer, I'll pass the link to your post along to them personally. If you want to go in and edit it for a clarity or emphasis, that might help them zero in on things. I can't promise it will help, or that it will get to the right people, but I'll pass it along just the same and then it's all in their hands.

The good news, at least, is that you can always come back and see if things are improved. All you'll ever have to do is re-install.

I really don't like this update.

You're pretty much required to group up to ascend the tower, but usually when I try, people just run past everything instead of killing it and I keep dying before getting to the top. Then I have to teleport back to the waypoint and try it again because no one's going to revive. I've managed to get up to the top once but that's it so far.

It's sad because this isn't really Anet's fault. Just people doing the event the unintended way and it ends up screwing over the people who want to do it normally.

If you've been up to the top, you can talk to one of the robots for a port to the third floor. That, at least, will spare you some of the frustration, and if you can catch a passing zerg you can probably make it right up. I'd definitely recommend going in with a group though, have you tried the LFG tool? I'll have to check when I get on tonight to see if people are using it.

The only thing I can say here is, it's a big, evil enemy lair and I guess expecting to go into it alone never really occurred to me. Even though there are mechanics in place to force the zerg to congeal, there's nothing there to really force them to stick together until the next mechanic springs. A lot can happen between those two points, and I know the frustration of being downed or dead and having people shuffle right over you without a pause. They're probably thinking the same way you are; if you stop for anything, you can get killed off pretty quickly.

We'll be going in again as a guild this Saturday at 3pm EST / noon PST. You can guest over to SBI for this one unless you're in Europe, and we'll happily wait for you to get in. Otherwise, keep an eye on guild chat and ask if anyone else is going in.

 

[Shiokazu]

I really don't like this update.

You're pretty much required to group up to ascend the tower, but usually when I try, people just run past everything instead of killing it and I keep dying before getting to the top. Then I have to teleport back to the waypoint and try it again because no one's going to revive. I've managed to get up to the top once but that's it so far.

It's sad because this isn't really Anet's fault. Just people doing the event the unintended way and it ends up screwing over the people who want to do it normally.

dont get angry at it. just call your friendly norn guardian pal Vil, and she'll escort you with everything she can.

if you preffer not, grab a group of 5 and follow cautiously through. dont try blazing, 3rd floor is the harder one, but there are less mobs. All you have to really do is to bring down the ones with AOE, Evade the knockdowns and for the rest of the controls, stability. Thats why i have no problem in escorting people, even thought its meant to be a open world dungeon, its not projected to be easily solo'ed, so if you want a hand to enjoy the game, hell, i am here.

hell thats what a guild is there for right? to be there, to stand together, right?

you know who to call.

 

[shysaursoft]

I really don't like this update.

You're pretty much required to group up to ascend the tower, but usually when I try, people just run past everything instead of killing it and I keep dying before getting to the top. Then I have to teleport back to the waypoint and try it again because no one's going to revive. I've managed to get up to the top once but that's it so far.

It's sad because this isn't really Anet's fault. Just people doing the event the unintended way and it ends up screwing over the people who want to do it normally.

You'd be surprised how many people aren't just trying to rush past, but think they must because nobody will group with them. Today, I tried an experiment. I waited at the room just past the first teleport golem, until the event started that closed the door and stopped people from progressing past it. I fought the Offshoot until it was destroyed, and noticed there was a group of about 10-15 around me.

Once the thorns retracted, I waited there to see who would rush off. About five or so dashed off, half got killed by the mine plants. A few milled around me, so I took a chance and assumed they either didn't want to go it alone, or didn't know what to do. So I progressed slowly forward, fighting each and every little creature/plant methodically. After a while, I noticed there were six or so people around me doing the same, not rushing forward, taking their time. It helped I guess that today one of the Tower dailies was killing toxic creatures. I led them to each Nightmare Chamber in turn, one went in I think but the rest didn't seem interested, so I continued on, assuming they just wanted the achievement for reaching all 9. I keep missing one somewhere though, so I'm only 8/9, but nobody complained.

This continued for the entire first floor, and by the time the second started, we were five that - in spite of not knowing each other or talking to each other - stuck together, ressed each other, and worked out way slowly, having much fun along the way. Occasionally we'd meet up with a group still fighting something up ahead, and they would rush forward once the event ended, but the five or so I started the ascent with never parted ways. We went all the way up the tower, bowed to each other, and did the final instance alone - which I think I knew would happen, since clearly we were a bunch of lone wolves. We never partied up, but we were constantly watching each other's backs.

I also noticed that all of us had the new healing skill equipped, and by the time we hit the floor with the healing zones and constant spore debuff, we were chain-casting the new heals so that we almost never had the debuff. It worked incredibly well.

That, was the most fun I had in GW2 in a long time, and pretty much the pinnacle of what I think the game is going for. Group content, where the cooperative play is seamless and ambient.

I know this is one situation, on one server, at one time, and hardly representative. But I think going in with the right attitude, and not just going with the flow, you might end up surprised to find like-minded people.

 

[Shiokazu]

You'd be surprised how many people aren't just trying to rush past, but think they must because nobody will group with them. Today, I tried an experiment. I waited at the room just past the first teleport golem, until the event started that closed the door and stopped people from progressing past it. I fought the Offshoot until it was destroyed, and noticed there was a group of about 10-15 around me.

Once the thorns retracted, I waited there to see who would rush off. About five or so dashed off, half got killed by the mine plants. A few milled around me, so I took a chance and assumed they either didn't want to go it alone, or didn't know what to do. So I progressed slowly forward, fighting each and every little creature/plant methodically. After a while, I noticed there were six or so people around me doing the same, not rushing forward, taking their time. It helped I guess that today one of the Tower dailies was killing toxic creatures. I led them to each Nightmare Chamber in turn, one went in I think but the rest didn't seem interested, so I continued on, assuming they just wanted the achievement for reaching all 9. I keep missing one somewhere though, so I'm only 8/9, but nobody complained.

This continued for the entire first floor, and by the time the second started, we were five that - in spite of not knowing each other or talking to each other - stuck together, ressed each other, and worked out way slowly, having much fun along the way. Occasionally we'd meet up with a group still fighting something up ahead, and they would rush forward once the event ended, but the five or so I started the ascent with never parted ways. We went all the way up the tower, bowed to each other, and did the final instance alone - which I think I knew would happen, since clearly we were a bunch of lone wolves. We never partied up, but we were constantly watching each other's backs.

I also noticed that all of us had the new healing skill equipped, and by the time we hit the floor with the healing zones and constant spore debuff, we were chain-casting the new heals so that we almost never had the debuff. It worked incredibly well.

That, was the most fun I had in GW2 in a long time, and pretty much the pinnacle of what I think the game is going for. Group content, where the cooperative play is seamless and ambient.

I know this is one situation, on one server, at one time, and hardly representative. But I think going in with the right attitude, and not just going with the flow, and you might be surprised to find like-minded people.

this is guild wars.

and i play it. #proud

 

[Talaysen]

You'd be surprised how many people aren't just trying to rush past, but think they must because nobody will group with them. Today, I tried an experiment. I waited at the room just past the first teleport golem, until the event started that closed the door and stopped people from progressing past it. I fought the Offshoot until it was destroyed, and noticed there was a group of about 10-15 around me.

Once the thorns retracted, I waited there to see who would rush off. About five or so dashed off, half got killed by the mine plants. A few milled around me, so I took a chance and assumed they either didn't want to go it alone, or didn't know what to do. So I progressed slowly forward, fighting each and every little creature/plant methodically. After a while, I noticed there were six or so people around me doing the same, not rushing forward, taking their time. It helped I guess that today one of the Tower dailies was killing toxic creatures. I led them to each Nightmare Chamber in turn, one went in I think but the rest didn't seem interested, so I continued on, assuming they just wanted the achievement for reaching all 9. I keep missing one somewhere though, so I'm only 8/9, but nobody complained.

This continued for the entire first floor, and by the time the second started, we were five that - in spite of not knowing each other or talking to each other - stuck together, ressed each other, and worked out way slowly, having much fun along the way. Occasionally we'd meet up with a group still fighting something up ahead, and they would rush forward once the event ended, but the five or so I started the ascent with never parted ways. We went all the way up the tower, bowed to each other, and did the final instance alone - which I think I knew would happen, since clearly we were a bunch of lone wolves. We never partied up, but we were constantly watching each other's backs.

I also noticed that all of us had the new healing skill equipped, and by the time we hit the floor with the healing zones and constant spore debuff, we were chain-casting the new heals so that we almost never had the debuff. It worked incredibly well.

That, was the most fun I had in GW2 in a long time, and pretty much the pinnacle of what I think the game is going for. Group content, where the cooperative play is seamless and ambient.

I know this is one situation, on one server, at one time, and hardly representative. But I think going in with the right attitude, and not just going with the flow, you might end up surprised to find like-minded people.

I may have to try that out next time. I later realized I was in an overflow, which probably didn't help matters. Maybe the situation is better on main servers.

I also found out that the achievement to kill the boss without any ally dying actually requires you to be in a party. Oops. Guess I gotta do that again some time.

 

[Retro]

That, was the most fun I had in GW2 in a long time, and pretty much the pinnacle of what I think the game is going for. Group content, where the cooperative play is seamless and ambient.

I know this is one situation, on one server, at one time, and hardly representative. But I think going in with the right attitude, and not just going with the flow, you might end up surprised to find like-minded people.

Fuck, this story warms my warrior spirit. Thanks for sharing it, I hope it's the worst of your future.

this is guild wars.

and i play it. #proud

Hell yes.

 

[LumpOfCole]

The commander tag is probably the best investment I've ever made in an MMO.

When doing things like the tower and having a couple people near me, flipping that sucker on suddenly gets me a fast-growing posse I most certainly do not deserve.

I don't agree that just spending a bunch of gold is a good way to earn something like a Commander tag, but I'm certainly glad I spend the gold on it.

 

[Moondrop]

Guardrails on Skyhammer? Guardrails?!?

 

[jersoc]

been busy with burial at sea, but a few thoughts on patch.

THANK YOU BASED ANET FOR ACCOUNT BOUND UNLIMITED! now finally please for the love of god give me the axe. been waiting a month

tower is cool. beyond frustrating to climb because everyone just runs pass mobs. if you stop to kill some jack douche will train more to you and you die. so catch 22 i guess.

 

[AFollowerNotALeader]

Basically this LS chunk could be total shit from now on, and I'd *still* be happy about it because it made it possible to buy a version of the breather mask skin (although in an item, not a skin, which confused me) on the trading post for my Mushroom-headed Sylvari warrior, something I've been wanting for months and months.

Finally she looks right.

 

[Atrophis]

Think I finaly got my GW2 mojo back! Yeaaaah.

Had a lot of fun in the tower yesterday running with a guild group. This just might be the first LS meta I complete in months.

 

[swnny]

It's been out just over a year. Not two. #justsayin (And I'd argue it's only NOW out of beta, but that's me).

Thank you for not reading my post, but I will still reply to you.
Quick google search results in videos like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOrvV0rKGKw
That is from the closed press release event in mid of February 2012 and I sure do remember it like yesterday, because .... cough .... Anyways, as seen from the video - the glory vendors are the same. Yes, they don't over trinkets, but just amulets now, as well as you can't just buy yourself the skins you want, now you have to get chests and hope to get the set, or you have to use the mystic toilet for some of them. But the core idea of grinding ranks and ranks being "gateways" to more awesome looking skins, and glory being the currency for them is the very same idea, they had (and barely changed) for the past year and 9 months, which for me, is almost two years. That's what I meant. I know very well, exactly when the game got pushed out.

First, they're putting out bigger balance patches BECAUSE people complained about the slow and incremental changes that took too long to come out and test. They're still pacing them a decent amount of time as well.

As for everything else, yes, I know, it sucks. A lot of people spent the better part of the year implementing core features that everyone wished were there from launch, like spectator mode. A lot of other people were tied up dealing with culling across all game modes. And a number of other people were getting organized and ready to become the Living Story machine.

But it will get better. MMR and Leaderboards finally got a partial fix and they're developing the rest of the fix right now. There's also going to be a reward revamp that will do something about glory and in the mean time they're trying out things like the Toxic lockboxes. They've been developing new game modes for PvP for months now and something should be coming out of the oven soon enough.

So yeah, it sucked. They spent a lot of time dealing with other stuff. But we'll get our turn. And until then we'll have to see what else comes out of the Dec. 10th balance patch we don't know about. As it stands, there have been a lot of positive balance changes along with the bad or unpopular. Where it's bad, it's bad. But it's not all bad.

And for me, it still sucks. Honestly, I didn't know why they changed the plan and started pushing big balance overhauls, but that's mostly because of their lack of communication with us. The forums just recently (after this collaborative development idea was pushed) started to get more attention from the "reds", and on all their streams about upcoming updates, when they are talking about the PvP the streamer have no idea of what he is doing. I know the game is HUGE and no one can know everything about it, but when you are about to represent the new look of the Tournament Master dialog, it will be good if you at least knew, where the f*ck that Tournament Master dude is. I mean, seriously?! Out of a 30mins stream, they used the last 5 mins to introduce the new things to PvP, and half that time, the guy was running around in the mists, looking for that Tournament Master NPC....
And if, like Miktar above, you don't believe me, I can easily dig out that video from their twitch channel.
I have my doubts about MMR and ladders getting better, even after they fix it on their end, primary, because of the slowly bleeding out PvP playerbase.
Yes, rewards are getting the so dreamed revamp, but it takes them SO LONG, it's just discouraging, and even they won't push it out all at once before the end of the year, like promised in the "second half of the year" blog post. Now they are doing it in parts, with the first one to supposedly coming with the dec 10th update, as teased few days ago with that "get your double reward chests as much as you can", while the other parts of the revamp are yet to be even teased. And, hell, because [sarcasm on] of their incredible thorough communication with us [sarcasm off], we have no idea what that soon to come reward revamp is supposed to be. For all we know, it can be new, additional chests to stack in or chests collection...

And back up a bit, I underlined "promised" for a reason. I know, everything in that blog post was not written in stone, I know it's all subject to change. But, but, but - when they set only one, primary goal for the second half:

The major focus of the PvP team for the second half of the year will be tied to improving the sense of reward in PvP.

and they fail to deliver it, well then, in my book it's pretty big disappointment already. And we better not talk about the rest of the quoted blog post, because we will have plenty of time, to discuss it next year, as I'm sure, they will promote the same old promised features as new and upcoming.

As much as I adore Guild Wars 2, I can't even comment on your post, Swnny. I can probably count on two hands the number of serious sPVP matches I've played, so I flat out have no ground to stand on to even begin to respond. All I can say is, MMOs are a huge, tangled mess that, in their scope, try to cater to a ton of different play styles and tastes. Invariably some of those will be left cold for long periods of time, and I know it must taste bitter to want something that seems so obvious, simple and just within reach.

It's probably no consolation, but there's never been a game with the kind of post-launch support GW2 has. That's not a defensive counter, it's not hyperbole, it's not wishful thinking. It's a fact; nobody has delivered so much, so quickly, for free. If any game was going to solve the problems you outline (and I have no doubt that they are real problems), it would be this one. That, I suppose, is the long way of saying "It will happen, be patient.", which sounds condescending but really, truly isn't meant to.

Most the points here, I covered above, but there are few more things I want to comment on.
Yes, the game is huge, even the sPvP is mix of some complex systems and difficult to solve problems. But that's just part of the problem. The whole disregard and careless attitude from ArenaNet towards the game mode, looks really bad since DAY ONE after release. Retro, you may not even know about some of the problems I'm about to mention, but some guys like KniveSmith will most likely have being affected by them.
I'm talking about things like the missing tournament rewards from the old 3match tourny.
I'm talking about the loading screen stuck in the middle of the match problem, which was ridiculous and took them more than a month to temporally fix it!
I'm talking about, roster stucking where you cannot join/leave the roster, because the game thinks you are in a match. It still happens when the game updates while you are in the middle of a match.
I'm talking about unexplainable massive lag spikes on the Legacy of the Foefire map.
These things are off top of my head, if I take the time, I can list a lot more. Yes, I know, problems do occur, some take time to fix, but all above are problems since the launch of the game and THEY ALL are still in the game! Even the tournament rewards are still bugged - if you transfer from EU world to US world (or vice versa) you will not get rewards for the count of your already won rewards. In other words (it's difficult for me to explain it, because the problem itself is so ridiculous), if I, with my 3011 games and ~1800 wins, am to transfer from EU Desolation to US Stormbluff Isle, I will not get tournament rewards for my next ~1800 wins!
As for the loading bug, imagine how you are playing an #esport match and the game stucks because someone tought it's good idea to reload the map every time you have to respawn, in a gamemode, where you are expected to die. And by the time you come back, because you first have to load the mists, and then the match map itself (another awesome idea), the game is almost finished, because it was 4v5. And that was going on and on, match after match for a fucking month!
And on other hand, why do they let such problems to appear in the first place? Loading screens every time you die in a pvp game, seriously? And it's defensively not because of loading assets - try spectating a custom game - you can jump around the map without loading screens at all!
At that point, we are not talking about this or that problem. We are talking about no attention what so ever from the dev team. We are talking about their careless altitude to a good chunk of their own game and it's playerbase. We are even talking about their lack of manpower and competence of fixing problems in a timely manner. With all their teams, working on the game, I can bet the PvP one is the smallest, if they even have one! And that's broken on a fundamental level.

The next time I talk to a developer, I'll pass the link to your post along to them personally. If you want to go in and edit it for a clarity or emphasis, that might help them zero in on things. I can't promise it will help, or that it will get to the right people, but I'll pass it along just the same and then it's all in their hands.

Please, do so, and for this one as well. I know it will have exactly zero effect, tho.
I have numerous cases where, in their forums, where devs have clearly replied to my previous posts, and when I bring most of these points, the devs just disappear from the thread and start ignoring it.
I'm starting to think, it's because all I've written is the absolute truth, and they can't to anything but ignore it.

Edit: Rereading this post, I have a feel, I'm walking a thin line here, closely dangerous to being an ahole to you guys. That's clearly not my intention at all! Please, do not take it personally, if at times I'm a bit too harsh.

 

[Hawkian]

I don't think you're being a jerk about it. You're frustrated and it's understandable to vent your frustration all at once because you've invested a lot of your time in something. Considering the scope of the issues bothering you I think you'd honestly be doing yourself a disservice not to take a break for a few months at this point. Just get some distance from the game and make a more objective personal decision about whether or not it's worth trying out again sometime in the future.

I may have to try that out next time. I later realized I was in an overflow, which probably didn't help matters. Maybe the situation is better on main servers.

I also found out that the achievement to kill the boss without any ally dying actually requires you to be in a party. Oops. Guess I gotta do that again some time.

Funny, Miktar and Vil's comments/suggestions are almost exactly what I replied to a reddit post with a similar issue to yours. It is saddening that so many people are sort of running through like bats out of hell, that-which-i-leave-in-my-wake-is-your-problem style, but man. Just forming a small party at the very least can make a huge impact on your experience in there. Even on an overflow, just speaking up real quick and seeing if anyone around will join up so that you have people to watch your back is huge.

Thanks to SBI for the truly pro 6+ min Teq kill last night, and for my intrepid Aetherpath crew after. Way to stick with it Clockheart ain't so scary when you get up in his face. For fun I tried speccing a bit into init regen and interrupt-spiking his charge-up... worked gloriously.

edit:

Huh. Scarlet has a bunch of unique lines depending on personal story choices made on your character in the tower instances. Mind blown a little, will have to solo and pay attention.

 

[lazorexplosion]

I picked up a commander tag for lazorette the guardian and got a lil 4-6 man zerg going during the offpeak when nothing was happening and we flipped everything in borlis pass borderlands from blue to green. Not a bad start!

 

[shysaursoft]

Thank you for not reading my post, but I will still reply to you.

My bad. It was late, I had just finished deadlines, and my mind was very lazy. I apologize.

 

[Kos Luftar]

I picked up a commander tag for lazorette the guardian and got a lil 4-6 man zerg going during the offpeak when nothing was happening and we flipped everything in borlis pass borderlands from blue to green. Not a bad start!

Nice nice nice.

Slowly but surely we are getting commanders who do not mind reping GAF in WvW.

 

[Vigilant Walrus]

I understand sPvPers cry for help, but I'm more inclined to cry for the world. The small clusters over population strips the rest of the world (or many zones) from people. Something has to be done. I'm playing a near full server.

The living world and holiday events kill of much of the flow of people progressing through the zones. the game is desperate after more stuff and more people to do.

Their pattern is always to buff certain few things. world bosses, champions, orr, southsun, or some other thing, and then everybody go to that place while a very few people are to be found in the lvl 30+ zones. half of the game world is literally deserted and I haven't heard Colin or anyone else even tackle the issue.

frostgorge, southsun, orr. Thats your options at lvl 80. once you got your 100% completion its like there is no incentive to keep doing events. there aint even an achievement to track or do every single event in the game.

I'm becoming more pessimistic about the whole thing about dynamic events because as time passes I am beginning to see these things more as quests with a down timer. I love the player scaling, but I really dislike how little the world changes. I'm begging these guys to do something drastic.

 

[Hawkian]

Yeah I don't know man. Focusing this on Kessex Hills with minor aspects that take you through a variety of other zones (like the three witches and the obelisk shards) seems to me like an obvious instance of what you are asking for, not working against it. Is the main problem that Kessex is a 15-25 zone?

When you say "that's your options at lvl 80" with the 3 zones you named, what is it you're referring to?

I don't like this idea that the living world is somehow uniquely draining people from filling up every zone in the game in the perfect distribution they'd be in otherwise. Especially the idea that it's done that more than it has gotten people back out into parts of the world they wouldn't have been otherwise. Right now it might be Kessex but it's been Diessa, Wayfarer, Southsun, Caledon at various times. Divinity's Reach and Rata Sum have had turns as well. People show up (yes, at lvl 80) in Sparkfly for Teq, Maelstorm for Golem, Metrica for FE, Queensdale for SB not to mention the champ train there. People are also doing dungeons.

I think it's just a fallacy to suggest that there was ever a time when every zone in the game was simply packed with people at every turn. I remember within literally days of launch being able to find stretches of Brisban Wildlands, Iron Marches- even Fireheart Rise without a single player anywhere to be found, then sometimes coming upon an event and seeing a group or a couple players doing it.

You're not wrong about Dynamic Events in general. I think a lot of us would like huge changes to zones that lasted for days as a result of completing one event chain. Of course by nature that would be a more unforgiving game, and they've tried to balance the experience to be accessible.

 

[NobleXenon]

They just need underflow servers which was suggested since launch. They could have a drop down menu near the top next to the other icons that would list your Main Server, Guest Server 1, Guest Server 2, Overflow 1, 2, 3 etc. / Underflow 1, 2, 3 etc. that you could select.

 

[Hawkian]

I wouldn't even mind seamless underflow or crossflow servers out in the world. In open world zones I couldn't really care less about what server I'm on. The important things to me are being able to stay in the same iteration of a map with my party/guild, being able to know I'm in the right place for something that is on a timed pop, and being able to move freely between zone instances in the way guesting and the "join in" option allow now.

 

[Proven]

@swnny I even saw your post in the forums yesterday.

I'll be honest, the only reason why I'm still patient with them is because I've been playing other games and doing other things, especially in the second half of this year. While things have gotten better and they're finally showing a bit of progress on the PvP front, I've had my heart go out to every person and team that's left. I completely forgot about their blog post for their 2013 plan and going by that they've completely missed their target time frame.

I've also had my frustration metered out through the year. When Flame and Frost came off at a glacial start, I essentially quit the game. I checked in on GAF and some other forums, logged in here and there for a little WvW, and that was it. I started playing more again in April but got ticked off at certain trait balances and WvW issues up until I dropped the game for most of Dragon's Bash and the following Aetherblade stuff. As summer ended and certain teams and players left along with the problems surrounding the PAX Prime tournament, I just went and got a Wii U on the cheap so I could play Wonderful 101. While I did play around in September to try out the Scarlet Invasions, for whatever reason it was the balance patch in October finally got me playing regularly again in PvP and the WvW season, even with all the foreseen problems, had me interested in giving it a shot as well. I'd include Halloween too, but they took out Reaper's Rumble.

Almost all of my wellspring of hope has now come the last couple of PvP updates, certain rebalances, and Grouch along with other developers talking more. It's like something convinced me "finally, we're starting to move here, I can give this more of my time." Your post reminded me of all the stuff they've managed to do like taking finishers off timers (not to mention they added maps faster than Valve did for the first year or two of TF2). But it also reminded me to not be too optimistic, because after the improvements from this patch, next patch, and Dec. 10th, there's a good chance there will be a drought of stuff until February/March as they could just be grabbing low hanging fruit before they have to go quiet for the final stretch. The collaboration post about future game modes makes me think they're leery of the stuff they were testing earlier, or are still unsure of adding anything beyond Conquest whether it's because they don't feel it fits GW2 enough or they're afraid of trusting their own taste since there's still vitriol out there about Conquest (and Skyhammer, oh Skyhammer...). The balance patch preview thread closing 6 weeks before the patch should have reminded everyone just how painful their testing schedule is for skills and traits. And they still haven't found a good fix for the 4v5 solo queue problem.

My faith is up too, and it only lasted this long because I stuck to streams for my PvP fix for a while. But improvements are finally coming out at a quicker pace so I'm willing to give it a chance for now.

If you quit for a while, February/March is my guess for either the reward revamp or a new map and/or mode. Also, I think the condi meta, if it still exists, will be a lot more manageable thanks to more and more control and burst specs arriving (seriously, I can't believe Bountiful Interruption is getting used even if only out of desperation) and shifting the meta a bit. It depends on how good people get with them and what nerfs come to the condi classes. My next worry is that more and more people are running passive skill/trait builds on more classes.

@Hawkian For whatever reason I still pray they'll change their server system to be WvW primary rather than PvE primary, and then add districts to the major cities or something.

 

[Kos Luftar]

I wouldn't even mind seamless underflow or crossflow servers out in the world. In open world zones I couldn't really care less about what server I'm on. The important things to me are being able to stay in the same iteration of a map with my party/guild, being able to know I'm in the right place for something that is on a timed pop, and being able to move freely between zone instances in the way guesting and the "join in" option allow now.

I wish there was a drop down menu ingame to chose between Main, Guest 1, Guest 2 and Overflow (if it exists), without having to log out of the game.

 

[Arkanius]

I wish there was a drop down menu ingame to chose between Main, Guest 1, Guest 2 and Overflow (if it exists), without having to log out of the game.

Like Guild Wars 1 ?

 

[NobleXenon]

Any other word on helping servers that get roflstomped in WvW by combining the two losing ones? Like right now with SBI vs BP vs CD? Would they combine the blue team with the red team to make a shared purple team that SBI would have to battle?

 

[Hawkian]

Proven what do you mean by "WvW primary rather than PvE primary?"

I think what Kos meant was a UI equivalent to the World Selection window without having to go back to character select, rather than a districting system.

Either would be good. Though really the current situation isn't all that bad with that stuff; that kind of solution wouldn't do anything to fix underpopulated zones like underflow servers.

When thinking about handling world-hopping improvments, "Like Guild Wars 1" is a dangerous way to look at it, because while I would enjoy a similar end-user functionality, the scope of the project to make it work that way for every zone would be quite a bit different. GW1 didn't have home servers at all, of course, nor was the possibility of an overflow in the "open world" ever a thing; most importantly, it wasn't actually an MMO at all.

 

[Kos Luftar]

Like Guild Wars 1 ?

Not Exactly.

I think what Kos meant was a UI equivalent to the World Selection window without having to go back to character select, rather than a districting system.

Exactly.

Any other word on helping servers that get roflstomped in WvW by combining the two losing ones? Like right now with SBI vs BP vs CD? Would they combine the blue team with the red team to make a shared purple team that SBI would have to battle?

That is probably way to hard to implement. How do you even decide when they are being roflstomped? Does it even change anything if SBI has 150000 points over them?

 

[NobleXenon]

That is probably way to hard to implement. How do you even decide when they are being roflstomped? Does it even change anything if SBI has 150000 points over them?

Not in terms of winning, but being able to just play in WvW at all. When I was on TC and we were fighting a T1, we were pretty much spawn-camp farmed; thus I wouldn't even bother playing in there. A forced 2 vs 1 would definitely make things interesting. It could be based on the mathematical impossibility of catching up. SBI's current score is 316,332, and the other two's combined score would be 245,003. I don't think the other server's combined efforts of taking over everything would beat SBI's score before next reset at this point.

 

[Proven]

Proven what do you mean by "WvW primary rather than PvE primary?"

Part of the problem with server transfers and WvW is the fact that server prices are based on PvE population. My pipe dream would have been WvW as the main mode of the game that everyone's funneled through and server population based off that.

A more realistic version: just base server prices off of WvW rank. You can go further and base the population amounts (Very High, High, etc.) off of the server's amount of queue time for the previous week. Then for PvE you can use districts for the cities and maybe even some zones.

Well, for now we're getting Edge of the Mists, which feels like a more PvE-centric method of dealing with the problem than a WvW-centric method (since there's a good chance bigger WvW servers will have overflows without any opponents on it), but it's something.

 

[Hawkian]

It's definitely likely that I'm missing something, but I don't think any of those methods of reworking population category would impact the issue of empty mid-range zones, right? What would adding districts to cities accomplish under this scenario?

 

[Moondrop]

Hawkian, I don't think Proven is trying to solve the problem of empty mid-level zones. I think he's talking about reclassifying the populations of servers based on WvW parameters rather than PvE parameters.

Solving PvE problems, doesn't Anet have most of their staff doing that?

 

[lazorexplosion]

There was basically no teamwork at all in the tower of nightmares overflow I was in and it was certainly making it unnecessarily hard to get through. Not just not res'ing or rallying each other grouping up and and killing some of the easier mobs to make more breathing room, but like even if you believed you should just run through not fight and leave the fallen there was no teamwork for that either, with people not stacking up to share boons and healing and condi removal as they ran.

Like at one point about 10 people gathered up while doing the portal event, in the same area but spread out a little as we went around to find the minions to kill. And literally as soon as the event finished everyone started running without pausing even for a second at the gate to get everyone stacked up to run through together. So everyone ended up trying to run as this horrible spread out dribble of people instead of spending literally several seconds to group up with the people right there. And judging from the number of downed icons on the minimap I don't know if even a third of them made it.

 

[swnny]

I'll be honest, the only reason why I'm still patient with them is because I've been playing other games and doing other things, especially in the second half of this year. While things have gotten better and they're finally showing a bit of progress on the PvP front, I've had my heart go out to every person and team that's left. I completely forgot about their blog post for their 2013 plan and going by that they've completely missed their target time frame.

I've also had my frustration metered out through the year. When Flame and Frost came off at a glacial start, I essentially quit the game. I checked in on GAF and some other forums, logged in here and there for a little WvW, and that was it. I started playing more again in April but got ticked off at certain trait balances and WvW issues up until I dropped the game for most of Dragon's Bash and the following Aetherblade stuff. As summer ended and certain teams and players left along with the problems surrounding the PAX Prime tournament, I just went and got a Wii U on the cheap so I could play Wonderful 101. While I did play around in September to try out the Scarlet Invasions, for whatever reason it was the balance patch in October finally got me playing regularly again in PvP and the WvW season, even with all the foreseen problems, had me interested in giving it a shot as well. I'd include Halloween too, but they took out Reaper's Rumble.

Almost all of my wellspring of hope has now come the last couple of PvP updates, certain rebalances, and Grouch along with other developers talking more. It's like something convinced me "finally, we're starting to move here, I can give this more of my time." Your post reminded me of all the stuff they've managed to do like taking finishers off timers (not to mention they added maps faster than Valve did for the first year or two of TF2). But it also reminded me to not be too optimistic, because after the improvements from this patch, next patch, and Dec. 10th, there's a good chance there will be a drought of stuff until February/March as they could just be grabbing low hanging fruit before they have to go quiet for the final stretch. The collaboration post about future game modes makes me think they're leery of the stuff they were testing earlier, or are still unsure of adding anything beyond Conquest whether it's because they don't feel it fits GW2 enough or they're afraid of trusting their own taste since there's still vitriol out there about Conquest (and Skyhammer, oh Skyhammer...). The balance patch preview thread closing 6 weeks before the patch should have reminded everyone just how painful their testing schedule is for skills and traits. And they still haven't found a good fix for the 4v5 solo queue problem.

My faith is up too, and it only lasted this long because I stuck to streams for my PvP fix for a while. But improvements are finally coming out at a quicker pace so I'm willing to give it a chance for now.

If you quit for a while, February/March is my guess for either the reward revamp or a new map and/or mode. Also, I think the condi meta, if it still exists, will be a lot more manageable thanks to more and more control and burst specs arriving (seriously, I can't believe Bountiful Interruption is getting used even if only out of desperation) and shifting the meta a bit. It depends on how good people get with them and what nerfs come to the condi classes. My next worry is that more and more people are running passive skill/trait builds on more classes.

Whoa! Wait there, mate! You better not get your hopes up in anyway, because you will be disappointed.
By now it's pretty clear, that almost everything Anet says about the PvP is only dirt in our eyes. These, so called "improvements from this patch" are just bones, thrown to us only so we don't starve to death.
A new map or two will not improve the condition of the PvP... even, the opposite, as the case of Skyhammer. Same thing goes with a new gamemode (which, let's not lie to ourselfs, it won't happen any time soon). They cannot get the PvP to work properly with only Conquest and a handful of maps for it, what about a whole new gamemode and maps for it.
And yes, since they released the soloQ, back in end of june, up to this point, the only PvP change, was the finishers... which applies to WvW and now (with the toxic enemies) to PvE. And I'm no where near close to getting excited because for 5 months all they change was finisher being permanent now.
If you go to the wiki release pages for GW2 and check the PvP specific changes, additions from May till now, you end up with 5-6 such changes, and really small at that(excluding the introduction of soloQ). And these changes, one cannot call "features", because they are all just little improvements like the absolute minimal and worthless decay and the mentioned finishers and MMR/ladder fixes... oh, and that's it. That's way too much progress and improvements for a half an year.
And talking about the recently MMR/ladder fixes, the first results of them are coming out in forms of threads like this: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/pvp/pvp/Trolol-Leaderboards
And even the "red" respond from Justin ODell, have absolutely nothing to do with the stated problem. Like he have no idea what the thread is about, and just answering some random thing. You know the system is broken, when someone loses 2 games and jumping 12 328 ranks to rank 1! I will go a bit technical here and explain why this is happening. It's because rank positions (RP) are calculated on the base in the differences between every player's matchmaking ranking(MMR), which is hidden for us. Due to the ladderboard decay system, the player's RP is slowing bleeding out, while the player is not actively playing, but his MMR stays the same. So the next match, no matter win/lose, removes the decay, and it recalculates the player's RP on the base of his MMR. And becayse his MMR is unchanged, it stays relative high above the other player's MMRs and it just "skyrockets" him to rank 1. This means two things: the decay system is completely useless at it's current state (which has been that way since it was introduced) and that the person behind it's algorithm should be fired, for wasting the already little time they put into PvP.

With that said, I really do not understand, why you are thinking that changes and improvements are coming fast, when, in truth, they just can't come slow enough. The next level will be no changes/improvements at all.

One thing I can agree about, is that by the end of March, they will most likely release, what was promised for this year. The rewards revamp and have a somehow better balance (although, with the current meta being stalled for months before PAX, any change made will be for the better), and of course, they will bring them out as a "new and exciting new features" with the January's blog post about the upcoming changes.
They will most likely leave the "The addition of new skills and traits on a regular basis will of course mean expanded variety of abilities, builds, and tactics in PvP as well." for the second half of next year as well. Pathetic...

Edit: After posting this, and while waiting for WvW queue (which is not a queue !!!) to pop up, I went through most of Justin ODell's posts on the PvP discussion forums, only to find out, that with this weeks patch, all they did to matchmaking was to "shuffle" the teams(which, of course applies only to solo arena... it will be strange to shuffle a team match, but I won't be surprised at all) ... and they made decay more punishing. Seriously?! All this talk about matchmaking fixes, improvements and reworks are all for the "long(er) run" (real quote). Turns out, he (Justin ODell) just started writing a blog about this, and that blog post will be posted when changes are finalized and they are "ready to talk about them". And last time we waited 2(two) months for their PvP blog post to get ready (and another 6 months for them to apply the announced in the blog changes, only to scrap most of them, but I already covered that they are just cannot "support" more slow then this). Yes, I'm talking about Chap's "Structured Player vs. Player: The Iceberg. A year later, it's more like "Structured Player vs. Player: The Titanic"
And I thought I ended this post in a dramatic way... but that here, is even more pathetic and distributing...

 

[Moondrop]

swnny, I sympathize with your frustrations. I've PvPed my dailies for the last six months; it's obvious how little attention sPvP receives.

But if we accept that the sPvP is Anet's weakest team, then you need to acknowledge that marketing is Anet's strongest team. It's not even necessarily that past promises were lies, but more likely that individuals not directly responsible for design and programming made plans that couldn't be executed with the meager resources devoted to sPvP.

Which ultimately leads us to the bottom line: money. If it were simple or profitable to enhance sPvP, they would've done so by now. That Anet hasn't suggests the time and cost required aren't worth it to them. Someday they will roll out other game modes, halfheartedly hoping that some of the lost sPvP population will return given the lack of subscription fee.

I won't offer any silver linings; it does hurt when you feel like you care more about the game than the developers themselves. My only recommendation is to get involved in WvW, which at least receives some developer attention.

 

[swnny]

swnny, I sympathize with your frustrations. I've PvPed my dailies for the last six months; it's obvious how little attention sPvP receives.

But if we accept that the sPvP is Anet's weakest team, then you need to acknowledge that marketing is Anet's strongest team. It's not even necessarily that past promises were lies, but more likely that individuals not directly responsible for design and programming made plans that couldn't be executed with the meager resources devoted to sPvP.

Which ultimately leads us to the bottom line: money. If it were simple or profitable to enhance sPvP, they would've done so by now. That Anet hasn't suggests the time and cost required aren't worth it to them. Someday they will roll out other game modes, halfheartedly hoping that some of the lost sPvP population will return given the lack of subscription fee.

I won't offer any silver linings; it does hurt when you feel like you care more about the game than the developers themselves. My only recommendation is to get involved in WvW, which at least receives some developer attention.

I do agree with you. And that's one of the reasons why I take the way they are treating the sPvP mode and us (it's players) so personally. I've invested TONS of time into the first Guild Wars and it's addons since one of the very first playable betas. I remember things from it, which most of the current devs in Anet do not even know about. (like capping a skill with a ring for few days use, or capping it with an amulet, to have it permanently unlocked, later changed with signets). In short, GW1 is a really well thought and done PvP only game and using the PvP mechanics, and some really good lore, they made a decent campaign. They had their profit from few places, PvP being one of the them. They hosted numerous tournaments for almost every PvP game mode they had, all with reasonable price pools, sponsors, ect.
For GW2 we have the exact opposite, they took the lore from GW1 and created PvE game, that will shake the foundations of modern MMORPGs(and we can already see this in the upcoming EverQuest and Elder Scrolls). And using their PvE mechanics and systems they are STILL trying to make an "average" sPvP mode. And it's obvious that they have neither the tools, nor the means, not even the will(mostly, because what you pointed out - the money), to make a good sPvP mode. For an old timer, like myself, that's really disgusting. And seeing how that once little studio, whom I supported without hesitation, is just lying to us about so basic features... well, that I can't really describe even in my native language.....


I still do enjoy the game. Even now, as I'm writing this posts (plus, I edited my previous one), I'm just taking a break from commanding in WvW Desolation borderland. Almost finished with the Season 1 achievements. And that WvW season is a great way to make people play WvW, but unlike PvP's, WvW's fundamentals were good to go from the start, so we are a long, looong way off from the first PvP season, or something similar.
The coming weekend I will go through the Krait's Tower with few friends, as well. And with the inability to play with GAFguild, comes another huge let down with that stupid region splitting bullshit. After years and years of seamlessly playing with everybody around the globe in GW1, why the bloody hell, EU and US cannot play together in GW2?!

 

[Hawkian]

I'm not indifferent to your concerns in any sense and while abandoning hope may indeed be the best course for you, it is extremely regrettable that sPvP has not been given enough attention to even allow for cautious ambivalence about the future. It is also a net positive that you've got this thread as an avenue to vent your frustrations, especially if it makes you feel better to any degree.

I will proffer only that it is unwise, not just with regard to this situation but life in general, to take any aspect of the experience while playing a game or decision by its dev team personally. Unless someone tagged you on Twitter and said "hey @swnny, I don't give a shit about you or what you think is important" then you're ultimately raising your blood pressure over colored bubbles; corporate and ultimately financial decisions that aren't made by the people who would fix the problems you have with the game in the first place.

It's beyond remarkable to me that you can still even bring yourself to play the game, even in a different mode, after that much aggravation. All the power in the world to you for continuing to enjoy it, absolutely, but don't rule out taking a hard break if you feel that frustration creeping in again.

 

[Vyrance]

The devs have stated on their forums that theyve thought about having two servers work together to take on a more powerful one. If anything will come from that, who knows, but they have replied about it.

And I think I may buy a commander tag tonight. I've wanted to in the past, but I'm usually pretty poor when it comes to money =p

 

[Principate]

swnny, I sympathize with your frustrations. I've PvPed my dailies for the last six months; it's obvious how little attention sPvP receives.

But if we accept that the sPvP is Anet's weakest team, then you need to acknowledge that marketing is Anet's strongest team. It's not even necessarily that past promises were lies, but more likely that individuals not directly responsible for design and programming made plans that couldn't be executed with the meager resources devoted to sPvP.

Which ultimately leads us to the bottom line: money. If it were simple or profitable to enhance sPvP, they would've done so by now. That Anet hasn't suggests the time and cost required aren't worth it to them. Someday they will roll out other game modes, halfheartedly hoping that some of the lost sPvP population will return given the lack of subscription fee.

I won't offer any silver linings; it does hurt when you feel like you care more about the game than the developers themselves. My only recommendation is to get involved in WvW, which at least receives some developer attention.

Eh coming from gw1 that's a bit hard to swallow (you know the game that was built entirely around pvp with pve as an afterthought, that basically served as a tutorial for pvp) I think the fact of the matter is spvp is their lowest priority this was obvious since they gave us an idea of the overall direction of the game.

This wouldn't be so bad had they refused to take or build on anything gw1 had done right (and it did a lot right) and decided to reinvent the wheel.

This is the outcome, we're stuck with a game mode a large proportion of the player base doesn't like with a lot of unpopular mechanics and very little hint of this stuff changing over a year from release.

The reason for this is simply aggrogance, they believed they ideas for pvp would be super popular and ignored what the regular pvp players actually wanted. Now with the lowest priority between the 3 modes it's going to ages for the stuff to get sorted assuming it even does get sorted, which I'm not all that hopeful of.

(If you hadn't noticed I'm a bit butt hurt A-net decided to ditch almost everything that made gw1 pvp good., at least to me anyway)

 

[shysaursoft]

(you know the game that was built entirely around pvp with pve as an afterthought, that basically served as a tutorial for pvp)

I don't buy that one yet. Do you have a quote or dev interview where they explicitly state as much, or is that just conjecture based on your personal preference, which colours how to see GW1?

To me, GW1 always seemed like it was developed for PvE first, with massive emphasis on the campaigns - they're the most work to do, take the most time, require the most investment and manpower to produce - while PvP was initially a check-box feature, which was developed into something more substantiation as the years progressed for GW1.

The majority of the player population in GW1 was in PvE. The advertisements and previews focused on the PvE. The early betas only had PvE.

But perhaps I'm missing something.

 

[Proven]

Faster than zero is still faster, and I was considering the frequency of changes like the ToT bags and Toxic lockboxes coming close together along with looking at the MMR and Leaderboard problems (which they said they wanted to reset with the next November patch). It's more in the fact that more active attention is being given that I'm building up some hope again. I'm too damn optimistic I guess.

Edit: The way I always saw GW1 was a game that was built with combat mechanics specifically suited for playing against other people, and then doing the work to make enemies actually interesting and using many of those mechanics instead of the usual asymmetrical enemy mechanic design seen in other RPGs. The largest nod to PvE was the inclusion of skills that were weaker versions of later skills so there was an amount of progression, but there were still many decent or better skills in the game.

I don't remember what it was exactly that brought me that, but it came from their marketing I think. That and touting the easy creation of max level PvP characters. They even took elements from TCGs in their design. Their focus on pumping out campaigns was just because people run the quickest to MMOs when you put out something similar to an expansion.

 

[Principate]

I don't buy that one yet. Do you have a quote or dev interview where they explicitly state as much, or is that just conjecture based on your personal preference, which colours how to see GW1?

To me, GW1 always seemed like it was developed for PvE first, with massive emphasis on the campaigns - they're the most work to do, take the most time, require the most investment and manpower to produce - while PvP was initially a check-box feature, which was developed into something more substantiation as the years progressed for GW1.

The majority of the player population in GW1 was in PvE. The advertisements and previews focused on the PvE. The early betas only had PvE.

But perhaps I'm missing something.

GW1 was shown off as a pvp game the pve was literally added for release as there's virtually no previews for it before released (you can check). Even prophecies campaign made this obvious by how it taught all the basic pvp mechanics and the hall of heroes etc being it's end game. A-Net marketed the game heavily as a pvp game hence the several thousand dollar championships, before e sports were quite a thing.

The fact you thought otherwise makes me believe you didn't play gw1 at it's launch.

 

[shysaursoft]

GW1 was shown off as a pvp game the pve was literally added for release as there's virtually no previews for it before released (you can check). Even prophecies campaign made this obvious by how it taught all the basic pvp mechanics and the hall of heroes etc being it's end game.

The fact you thought otherwise makes me believe you didn''t play gw1 at it's launch.

I was in the GW1 beta. It had no PvP (not the one I participated in anyway - I didn't participate in every alpha/beta event). I didn't even know it would have PvP until launch, everything about it was PvE from the instant I first came across it, got into the beta, etc. So I dunno what to tell you.

I bought it when it came out, finished Prophecies, bought Factions when it came out, repeat, etc. My HoM is reasonably full, except for the really grindy stuff because I don't grind.

I get that PvP is your thing, to the exclusion of everything else. But GW1 and GW2 primarily focus on PvE. That's the majority, both in playerbase and in content. I do agree Anet should fix up sPvP more. I'm not trying to claim one paradigm is better than the other.

 

[Principate]

I was in the GW1 beta. It had no PvP. I didn't even know it would have PvP until launch, everything about it was PvE from the instant I first came across it, got into the beta, etc. So I dunno what to tell you.

I bought it when it came out, finished Prophecies, bought Factions when it came out, repeat, etc. My HoM is reasonably full, except for the really grindy stuff because I don't grind.

I get that PvP is your thing, to the exclusion of everything else. But GW1 and GW2 primarily focus on PvE. That's the majority, both in playerbase and in content. I do agree Anet should fix up sPvP more. I'm not trying to claim one paradigm is better than the other.

Which beta was this, because almost all gw1 beta weekends were pvp.

 

[Kos Luftar]

I never liked GW1 pvp but loved the PvE. I find it highly unlikely that PvE was something they added just before release, especially because how massive prophecies actually is.

Gw1 prophecies end game was the god realms I thought.

 

[Principate]

I never liked GW1 pvp but loved the PvE. I find it highly unlikely that PvE was something they added just before release, especially because how massive prophecies actually is.

Gw1 prophecies end game was the god realms I thought.

gw1 end game was the hall of heroes, literally they moved it to the battle islands. I remember hearing it in a interview and it makes sense since virtually no one properly previewed it before release.

 

[shysaursoft]

Which beta was this, because almost all gw1 beta weekends were pvp.

The betas I was in, had quests, explorable areas, etc. There might have been PvP systems at the time, and I just didn't look into them because I wanted to check out the PvE. We're talking almost a decade ago. I don't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.

Either way, saying GW1 was "shown off as a pvp game the pve was literally added for release", is either hyperbole or an outright lie, depending on how you want to take it. I know you only care about PvP, but let's not muddy the waters here, or try to pretend that GW1 only existed for PvP.

In the fantasy world of Guild Wars, players can engage in cooperative group combat, in single player adventures, or in large head-to-head guild battles.

- ArenaNet, 2003

So it's clear they were thinking about both PvE and PvP from the start, no argument there.

EDIT: Looking online, it's quite easy to find lots of previews of GW1 that talk at length about the PvE content. IGN even had this gem of a quote, talking about how the combat is worse than WoW, and "There really isn't a lot of room for strategy and tactics". lol

 

[nataku]

Which beta was this, because almost all gw1 beta weekends were pvp.

E3 for everyone was PvE. It may have had PvP as well, who knows, I didn't do it. I'm sure there were others as well, because I remember doing multiple weekends and looking forward to them with another guild member of mine in the MMO I was playing back then. We never did PvP outside of one or two times.