The thing is, not one of us is here saying "GW2 PvP is bad" we're all saying how Anet completely fucked up and dropped the ball. Which KILLED the sPvP scene. WvW died out too a couple months back.
Alot of us loved the sPvP but the lack of features (tournaments, spectator, being able to organise your own matches etc) from release untill forever let everyone down and made them quit a game they loved.
Anet MIGHT be able to salvage something from it, but if they had it all on release who knows how big it would be right now. I could certainly see it having a popular PvP scene with money tournies.
The only people saying "Lol GW2 pvp sucks, no skill" are the circlejerks who saw this thread bumped and people discussing Anets failures who decided to jump in and talk about something they know FUCK ALL about.
Personally, the lack of features killed my sPvP team (they quit and went to MoP, i switched to WvW) as it was not fun running pub tournies everyday for 2-3 hours and going 9-1 in w/l, we rarely got a fun match because we were put with pubs and idiots all the time.
I quit WvW because of pretty much the same thing, lack of improvement and demotivation to continue with a stagnant, unfinished article, along with alot of hardcore WvW guilds (not all of em)
Now my PC's fucked and i cant wait to get back to GW2 and play its PvE, because its PvE is actually really good, except for a lack of end-game hard content, but there is PLENTY of end-game content to do, just not difficult stuff ^^
WHen I was into GW2 I thought the pvp was quite good, the only reason I lost interest was because there was no sort of ladder system or ELO to strive for. I've been thinking about getting back into this game though, are there any population issues?
I loved the actual gameplay of pvp and I think the classes were different enough in their play to keep me interested. I played a lot of condi thief, necro and ele and each of them had several clearly different builds that altered almost totally how they were played.
They just botched it so hard when you couldn't even make custom games so actual teams had no way to arrange practice. You entered queue at same time and hoped for the best, not really the makings of an esport right there >_>
There was a lot of complaining, some warranted, some not, at one point about backstab thieves, because with the right setup and the right initiation moment, they could nearly instagib people. Dodge is a universal "can't touch this" button, but they are limited. So in theory, if you had godlike gamesense, you could always avoid a massive burst, but put to practice with a CC from other enemies either landing on your or forcing you to expend dodges so the thief hiding out of los can count your dodges and use teleport moves inside his short stealth to get to you from great range and gib you down was totally possible.
Then again said thief builds were soooo squishy it's not even funny. They had to wait for a moment to strike and GTFO as soon as possible, because they literally did die to some random aoes flying around if they stuck around. Then naturally the enemy they blew their cds to gib wasn't totally dead yet, since it needed to be stomped as well, something that particular thief build was like the most unsuited thing to do in the game.
I really felt like the actual combat is very good, you have choices and you need your timings and the whole team aspect is all there, but I haven't played organized teamplay for a months now, so I can't give a statement how balanced or stale the meta is. The few times I log in and play some hotjoins, it feels like the general skill level in them is lower than what it was, possibly due to so many people giving up and quitting the game, although I did see plenty of new people entering the hot joins at least.
On April 26 2013 07:24 Shikyo wrote: So how's the PvP these days? Balance and depth-wise, as well as APM requirement-wise.
I wonder if it's be worth it to start playing the game but if the PvP just sucks and has nothing to do with skill then ...
Balance is horrible.
Depth is very shallow.
There are a few spammy classes but most have clear cut "rotations" in pvp which is so much fail.
If you are after a PvP game give this one a miss.
SPvP was never ever like this. I doubt it's become this bad. PvP is a lot about positioning (playing with ranges) and macro-scale timing and awareness.
Really?
Last time I played the meta was 3 bunkers, which was essentially turtles that sat on a point all game using rotations while the rest of the team moved from point to point trying to dislodge the other bunkers by "timing" knockbacks and dodges.
Maybe things have changed but I can't really see that being too likely with the amount of development time being spent on gear grinds and seasonal events.
Not to mention ArenaNet seemed rather clueless when it comes to balance. There was literally a two month period where elementalists could hold a point against 3+ people for several minutes at a time.
Yes awareness and timing is important in guildwars, but thats true for basically any game that even tries to be a pvp game.
On April 27 2013 04:14 AnomalySC2 wrote: WHen I was into GW2 I thought the pvp was quite good, the only reason I lost interest was because there was no sort of ladder system or ELO to strive for. I've been thinking about getting back into this game though, are there any population issues?
There's a Ladder now and an ELO-System, it's not very good though. -.-°
In Terms of Population, I can only talk for the EU Servers:
1) If you Solo-q, you'll find games rather quickly on "normal" times (maybe not at 4 A.M. though). IMHO, population would only be a huge Problem if you couldn't find any games, which for example was the case in SWtOR when they didn't have server-transfers or server-mergers for months and many ppl were stuck on empty servers and couldn't play PvP because there was no cross-server PvP either. compared to that, GW2 is fine. 2) In Terms of really good teams that still play, its not too good. I've heard that if you q as a team during prime-times, it'll be fine and the Matchmaking actually puts you up against other decent teams, so it's not like playing free tournaments as a good team and just steamrolling one scrub-team after another. In US, I've heard there are almost no good Teams, but they have a better PuG-Scene, which isn't too bad as well (kinda like US is playing HoH and EU is playing GvG in terms of how you form groups. ^^') 3) The new patch looks so good though (even the balance-changes they talked about on the last SotG), that I think that many many Players and Teams will come back.
On December 31 2012 16:49 Deadlyhazard wrote: I think one problem I've determined is that I just feel like I'm not progressing my character that much beyond like...level 20. All the armor and weapons look incredibly samey until you hit 80. Then you gear up really, really fast. I just don't see the point of running dungeons or killing things around the map, or repeating jumping puzzles. None of the drops you get are useful. It's always greens and blues.......I just don't see the point in doing dungeons or the motivation to kill things. There's no awesome super rare exotics that are going to drop that have unique stats on them or anything. I just wish killing things was more satisfying and looting for a rare chance at something that would improve my character over everybody else's.
Also, no new skills past like level 20 (or was it 30?). It feels like there aren't many abilities in the game and lacks variety compared to games like World of Warcraft or even Guild Wars 1.
PvP content is abysmal and there is no way this was meant to be in any way a serious pvp game like they marketed. There are very few maps and such little content. There's only one game mode.........and not even death match. There is no elo system. There is NOTHING to encourage players to get better at the game. The game went from top 10 on Twitch TV on the first month of release, to the top streamers on it getting ~100 views at most. It's amazing how much enthusiasm has dropped for the game because there's such little motivation to play it. It's like Arena Net doesn't know how to motivate players.
You could say, grinding isn't fun though! But the whole game feels grindy regardless -- except less rewarding. The content is tedious largely compared to a game like WoW. The dungeons don't have unique mechanics on their bosses and are generally tank and spank trash clearing fests. The game needs a serious overhaul perhaps for an expansion, but I doubt it. Maybe it's just not my type of game -- but my friendslist is dead and nobody logs on. It's like Diablo 3 in that regard.
That was the hugest problem with the game, progression. Anet thought players where sick of progression, they thought this is exactly what the community was screaming for. In reality though an mmo without proper progression (especially in pve) makes no sense. They added it sort of later on down the line with fractals but it was too little and too late. after level 30 or so, you have unlocked all the skills you actually want because you can see all your skills from the begining, and their really isnt a point to even unlock anymore. Alot of the skills are junky and boring as well, or they look the same.
I dunno not having gear progression (that actually improved your character) is kind of silly in an mmo. The reason people play rpg's to begin with is to roleplay and improve their character its been like that since pen and paper, better gear better stats. What use is it to change the formula to give people no incentive beyond the cosmetics of the character. Thats just silly no one cares that much to grind hours and hours just to make their character look better, they will certainly do it to make their character more powerful though.
It totally wrecks the backbone structure and formulas that made rpg's such popular games to begin with. Do you think anyone cared about what their gear looked like in pen and paper RPG's? No it was in their imagination they cared that the gear was actually better not just that it had some feathers on it or something stupid.
I understand the no gear progression from the SPVP side of things, it makes sense especially if ANET was serious about developing it into an esport. PVP has its own progression in the form of ELO , rankings etc. (which none was available at launch anyways) So really guild wars 2 was a game that came with zero progression and zero reasons for people to continue playing at launch from a PVP and PVE perspective. They took the essence of what makes an mmo right out of the genre and people applauded them for it thinking it was an mmo revolution, and now all those players have quit. Anet was silly to listen to mmo players, they really have no idea what they want.
Look at wow, in my opinion it got so much worse after WOTLK when they decided to kitty up the progression system based on what players thought they wanted.. and in the end they lost subs for it.
On December 31 2012 16:49 Deadlyhazard wrote: I think one problem I've determined is that I just feel like I'm not progressing my character that much beyond like...level 20. All the armor and weapons look incredibly samey until you hit 80. Then you gear up really, really fast. I just don't see the point of running dungeons or killing things around the map, or repeating jumping puzzles. None of the drops you get are useful. It's always greens and blues.......I just don't see the point in doing dungeons or the motivation to kill things. There's no awesome super rare exotics that are going to drop that have unique stats on them or anything. I just wish killing things was more satisfying and looting for a rare chance at something that would improve my character over everybody else's.
Also, no new skills past like level 20 (or was it 30?). It feels like there aren't many abilities in the game and lacks variety compared to games like World of Warcraft or even Guild Wars 1.
PvP content is abysmal and there is no way this was meant to be in any way a serious pvp game like they marketed. There are very few maps and such little content. There's only one game mode.........and not even death match. There is no elo system. There is NOTHING to encourage players to get better at the game. The game went from top 10 on Twitch TV on the first month of release, to the top streamers on it getting ~100 views at most. It's amazing how much enthusiasm has dropped for the game because there's such little motivation to play it. It's like Arena Net doesn't know how to motivate players.
You could say, grinding isn't fun though! But the whole game feels grindy regardless -- except less rewarding. The content is tedious largely compared to a game like WoW. The dungeons don't have unique mechanics on their bosses and are generally tank and spank trash clearing fests. The game needs a serious overhaul perhaps for an expansion, but I doubt it. Maybe it's just not my type of game -- but my friendslist is dead and nobody logs on. It's like Diablo 3 in that regard.
That was the hugest problem with the game, progression. Anet thought players where sick of progression, they thought this is exactly what the community was screaming for. In reality though an mmo without proper progression (especially in pve) makes no sense. They added it sort of later on down the line with fractals but it was too little and too late. after level 30 or so, you have unlocked all the skills you actually want because you can see all your skills from the begining, and their really isnt a point to even unlock anymore. Alot of the skills are junky and boring as well, or they look the same.
I dunno not having gear progression (that actually improved your character) is kind of silly in an mmo. The reason people play rpg's to begin with is to roleplay and improve their character its been like that since pen and paper, better gear better stats. What use is it to change the formula to give people no incentive beyond the cosmetics of the character. Thats just silly no one cares that much to grind hours and hours just to make their character look better, they will certainly do it to make their character more powerful though.
It totally wrecks the backbone structure and formulas that made rpg's such popular games to begin with. Do you think anyone cared about what their gear looked like in pen and paper RPG's? No it was in their imagination they cared that the gear was actually better not just that it had some feathers on it or something stupid.
I understand the no gear progression from the SPVP side of things, it makes sense especially if ANET was serious about developing it into an esport. PVP has its own progression in the form of ELO , rankings etc. (which none was available at launch anyways) So really guild wars 2 was a game that came with zero progression and zero reasons for people to continue playing at launch from a PVP and PVE perspective. They took the essence of what makes an mmo right out of the genre and people applauded them for it thinking it was an mmo revolution, and now all those players have quit. Anet was silly to listen to mmo players, they really have no idea what they want.
Look at wow, in my opinion it got so much worse after WOTLK when they decided to kitty up the progression system based on what players thought they wanted.. and in the end they lost subs for it.
What they made is a half ass thing. A bid of gear and level progression but so few it wouldn't satisfy people that strife for that sort of things. On the other side all people who wanted a horizontal progression (titles, skins, companions, skill gathering etc.) are fucked as well because all these are not designed well. Also they have to gear/level grind which is not fun for them. I'm on the second group of players. For me gear progression and level progression are things that suck in a mmo. You can have nice progression without the game forcing you to do certain progression. I really like if you can choose what you want to do. If I want to grind because it is fun and I can have a certain skin because of it, yeah I would do it. If it's not fun I do something different. But if it's not a skin but better stats that force me to do it because my character would suck otherwise, I completly lose the fun in playing.
The thing is: Some players like horizontal progression, a lot like vertical progression. You can't combine the two. Anet tried and failed of course. There are a lot of games which have vertical progression but non with horizontal progression while their is definately a player base for it and that is sad. Players and devs have to admit that there should be games for both groups, that you can't combine them and that a game for the one group is definately not for the other group.
I dunno not having gear progression (that actually improved your character) is kind of silly in an mmo. The reason people play rpg's to begin with is to roleplay and improve their character its been like that since pen and paper, better gear better stats. What use is it to change the formula to give people no incentive beyond the cosmetics of the character. Thats just silly no one cares that much to grind hours and hours just to make their character look better, they will certainly do it to make their character more powerful though.
I think you're assuming too much about people being the same and wanting the same thing. Guild Wars (the original) is a game that is an example of the polar opposite of what you are saying. People did (do) grind for cosmetic stuff. No one felt the need for a system where everyone could play catchup with the best-geared characters. You got to level 20, you bought your maxed gear from vendors, you got your skills, you were effectively done with "collecting" stuff. The unique thing about your character was your setup (or your set of setups). The game was still interesting even if you didn't have some special +1 damage uber-rare item because the class interactions (skills between 2 classes of the same character and between multiple characters in the party) played out in a very interesting way. Everything was (in subtle ways) more about the importance of your party and not your character (even "basic" PvE was not something designed to be done with a single character).
Your vision of what MMOs "should" be like works fine for people that are happy with a slowed-down Diablo-like. I remember when Guild Wars came out, though, it wasn't a "WoW-killer" so much as an anti-WoW. That's what drew lots of people to it initially, and that's one of the concepts that kept me playing the game for ~6 (?) years.
Better late than never. The pricing for the Custom Arena kits and tickets might worry me since it looks like they're planning on selling it in the gem store. Too much and it might be out of reach for all but the richest players and guilds.
If having access to these tools is even going to cost anything nontrivial for even the newest guild, it's retarded and completely against the ideals Anet once had.
On April 30 2013 18:54 Divine-Sneaker wrote: If having access to these tools is even going to cost anything nontrivial for even the newest guild, it's retarded and completely against the ideals Anet once had.
The price for the kit and time tokens were leaked to be 200 gems each, but a later official post said that the final price will be different, with starter kits being far more expensive and time tokens being cheaper.
On April 30 2013 18:54 Divine-Sneaker wrote: If having access to these tools is even going to cost anything nontrivial for even the newest guild, it's retarded and completely against the ideals Anet once had.
Pretty sure people realise by now that the ideals Anet once had and the manifesto is a thing of the past.
On May 01 2013 10:46 DefMatrixUltra wrote: This is the kind of thing I would expect ANet to do on April 1st.
No really, charging a real-money currency to make private games for PvP is a joke.
Well, other games have monthly costs...
I just really love where GW2 is atm: Lots of Tournaments with record-amounts of Viewers (for GW2, this would be 4k top on twitch), the balance is decent, lots of Players are coming back, ESL and even MLG have shown interest etc
Any realm recommendations for a new player? Realms you recommend to avoid?
I don't plan to be playing much in the way of WvWvW in the near future, so I suppose those queue times don't matter so much, but I would definitely like to see people out about about in the world on a regular basis for the fun factor and getting to meet people.
On May 29 2013 03:36 ObviousOne wrote: Any realm recommendations for a new player? Realms you recommend to avoid?
I don't plan to be playing much in the way of WvWvW in the near future, so I suppose those queue times don't matter so much, but I would definitely like to see people out about about in the world on a regular basis for the fun factor and getting to meet people.
First of all be sure that's the game you want to play. It's probably the most polished MMO of 2012 and certainly the most successful of said year but it's not really for everyone.
PvE : ANet aimed to make content accessible for everyone with low gear-requirement and low skill-requirement. If you want high end PvE raid, don't pick it up or you might end up bitter like most of the posters here. There is eng-game content (as in content designed with the highest achievable level in mind) but they don't require anything in particular. Being at the highest level is just a stepping stone and don't expect to be challenged by the game itself. You'll have to challenge yourself one way or another.
PvP : Things are still in the infant stage, you can play, you can queue, the game is more or less balanced in solo queue and there is a defined metagame in tPvP. The features aren't there yet which is a shame but personal initiatives are pushed with the current system and these guys do OK. Don't expect anything comparable to LoL. Overall the gameplay is much better for spectators than WoW arena which was pathetically hard to watch.
WvW : I haven't played it for a long time as my laptop can't handle the number of toons on the screen. Quality may vary by servers. But it doesn't matter that much since they are adding a random seed into the match-up determination algorithm. As a rule of thumb the last 6 ranked servers are that organized which makes things more difficult. But you can still roam as 5 man groups.
My advice : find a enjoyable guild and play with them.
On May 29 2013 03:36 ObviousOne wrote: Any realm recommendations for a new player? Realms you recommend to avoid?
I don't plan to be playing much in the way of WvWvW in the near future, so I suppose those queue times don't matter so much, but I would definitely like to see people out about about in the world on a regular basis for the fun factor and getting to meet people.
First of all be sure that's the game you want to play. It's probably the most polished MMO of 2012 and certainly the most successful of said year but it's not really for everyone.
PvE : ANet aimed to make content accessible for everyone with low gear-requirement and low skill-requirement. If you want high end PvE raid, don't pick it up or you might end up bitter like most of the posters here. There is eng-game content (as in content designed with the highest achievable level in mind) but they don't require anything in particular. Being at the highest level is just a stepping stone and don't expect to be challenged by the game itself. You'll have to challenge yourself one way or another.
PvP : Things are still in the infant stage, you can play, you can queue, the game is more or less balanced in solo queue and there is a defined metagame in tPvP. The features aren't there yet which is a shame but personal initiatives are pushed with the current system and these guys do OK. Don't expect anything comparable to LoL. Overall the gameplay is much better for spectators than WoW arena which was pathetically hard to watch.
WvW : I haven't played it for a long time as my laptop can't handle the number of toons on the screen. Quality may vary by servers. But it doesn't matter that much since they are adding a random seed into the match-up determination algorithm. As a rule of thumb the last 6 ranked servers are that organized which makes things more difficult. But you can still roam as 5 man groups.
My advice : find a enjoyable guild and play with them.
Yeah I definitely know about the lack of diverse end-game stuff, mostly I just want to have a blast taking in the lore / environment as a change of pace from my WoW du jour on a fresher game. My laptop will probably die too >.< so yeah, I guess I could interpret this advice as pick a decent sized realm from what is offered and find a niche wherever I land? Sounds simple enough! Just want to be sure it doesn't end up like WoW did, where you used to rarely see people out in the world and when you did run into that person it was a race to gather a node or that last of 9 kills you needed credit for to move on with the zone. Looks like the updater is almost complete so I'll give it a spin and let you know how it goes!
Edit: Haha I didn't end up reading all the way down this thread, but I was worried I couldn't change realms at no cost by deleting my characters should I find out my friends play somewhere different (if they're still playing). Source: https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/support/account/Account-transfer/1427223
Hey guys, just decided to come back to this game after about a 6~ months hiatus, gonna play a new character that's not an elementalist. I've picked up the Mesmer but they seem to do very little damage and also quite squishy, although I am only lvl9, so I have yet to really figure out the class. I'm playing mostly solo, what do you guys recommend for weapon sets?
On May 29 2013 07:48 ObviousOne wrote: Yeah I definitely know about the lack of diverse end-game stuff, mostly I just want to have a blast taking in the lore / environment as a change of pace from my WoW du jour on a fresher game. My laptop will probably die too >.< so yeah, I guess I could interpret this advice as pick a decent sized realm from what is offered and find a niche wherever I land? Sounds simple enough! Just want to be sure it doesn't end up like WoW did, where you used to rarely see people out in the world and when you did run into that person it was a race to gather a node or that last of 9 kills you needed credit for to move on with the zone. Looks like the updater is almost complete so I'll give it a spin and let you know how it goes!3
Well some zone are really deserted on low pop servers. Usually there is ~10 people during the day and more during the peak. But there is no resource node competition or anything and most quest (heart thingy) are done solo as well as any interactive event not named [Group Event] though I've solo'ed some with my mesmer.
On May 29 2013 08:52 Nos- wrote: Hey guys, just decided to come back to this game after about a 6~ months hiatus, gonna play a new character that's not an elementalist. I've picked up the Mesmer but they seem to do very little damage and also quite squishy, although I am only lvl9, so I have yet to really figure out the class. I'm playing mostly solo, what do you guys recommend for weapon sets?
For leveling, I suggest a shatter build with greatsword/staff. Level 20 doesn't really matter. Just try the path or put points in Illusions/Domination. Level 40. Level 60.
That's just guidelines. You'll have a hard time at first with mesmer because you can only shine through your side skills. When you are 80, you can do whatever most choose some kind of shatter build because it's painful enough to tag mobs otherwise but since Plinx days are over it might not be that critical nowadays.
On May 29 2013 08:52 Nos- wrote: Hey guys, just decided to come back to this game after about a 6~ months hiatus, gonna play a new character that's not an elementalist. I've picked up the Mesmer but they seem to do very little damage and also quite squishy, although I am only lvl9, so I have yet to really figure out the class. I'm playing mostly solo, what do you guys recommend for weapon sets?
For general solo PvE GS shatter build is nice, not really hard, decent damage etc.
EPT
