On the fence about GW2 PvP.

[Hanto]

:x You can't really go off judging that "this is OP" and "This doesn't seem right" after a couple of stress tests. Remember, some of the people you fought against have probably played that character for hours upon hours upon hours. They probably have way more experience than you do, and that experience can make or break a battle in GW2. Like Karizee's video suggested, you have to pay attention to your opponent, know their actions and how to react to them. It's all in the wrist, as they say. :3

[DrakeWurrum]

I never got the chance to play Beta, so my only chances to get an early play were these two testers that were on the 9th and 10th.

Worth noting: Not very good experience for judging the pvp.

[Exedore]

Hi,

I never got the chance to play Beta, so my only chances to get an early play were these two testers that were on the 9th and 10th.

PvP (in my opinion).

- It feels awfully slow killing player's.
- Warrior, Ele and Guardian are clearly OP.
- Everything feels messy and out of place.
- It's hard to identify whether you are actually doing any solid damage to a player.
- Everyone is healing up all the time.
- People go into down state at half health... what? :S
- Everything is happening so fast that you wonder how much solid damage you did in that zerg fight.
- Hard to identify certain spells doing solid damage too.

Don't get butt hurt tho, just my opinion. How do you feel about PvP?

I think your opinion is heavily influenced by not having much experience with the game and going directly into sPvP. PvE tends to ease you into the game mechanics; sPvP just throws them all at you at once. Also, the massive lag during the August 10 stress test is probably skewing your view of the game.

Downed state is new for most players, so it may seem confusing. In GW2, when a player reaches 0 HP, they go into the downed state. While standing next to a downed player, opponents can use the interact key (default 'F') to "Finish Them!" (also referred to as "stomp"), which will kill them and force them to respawn. Friendly players can use the interact key to help revive their allies and bring them back into the fight. As the gameplay matures, it will be a much bigger factor. I've never found getting a player into a downed state as slow unless they're playing defensively with a defensive build. Are you trying to finish downed players with damage? If so, that may make it seem slow.

The pace of gameplay and the power of different professions is a direct result of not having much experience and being matched against other players with little experience (hot join matching is based on glory, which is accumulated over time). As you said, it's hard to tell what's going on. After you play for a few days, it's much more obvious what players are doing and you can react better. This is particularly important for the dodge skill, which many new players are not using well or may be ignoring. That makes it much easier to kill them. It's also a reason why glass cannon builds tend to prevail against less experienced players. Warrior in particular has very obvious glass cannon builds. Guardian has some passive defenses that mask a new player's lack of skill. Once you start playing with knowledgeable opponents, you'll see a range of builds from glass cannons to very survivable players, all of which have a significant influence on the pace of combat. In addition, once you get more experience, you can tell when your skills are doing damage, what skills opponents are using to hurt you, stop your damage, etc.

It's worth noting that every profession in GW2 can heal, unlike traditional MMOs that rely on a player in a healer role. Heals are on cooldowns though, so you need to manage damage bursts appropriately. Outside that heal skill, most healing is minimal or spread over time.

As for feeling zergy, WvW does feel like that currently. That's partly because siege is expensive for low level players and partly because there's little organization. In hot join sPvP, I do feel 8v8 is too many players. Tournaments with organized teams are 5v5. The debate on sPvP size is a hot topic within the GW2 community right now, even though the devs have said they like 8v8 for hot join.

[vep]

Hi,

I never got the chance to play Beta, so my only chances to get an early play were these two testers that were on the 9th and 10th.

PvP (in my opinion).

- I can't burst anyone down.
- I never learned to dodge and/or play the game properly.
- It's completely new, I don't know what I am doing, I don't like it.
- lol.
- This guy beat me because he healed! How did he do that?!
- No they don't.
- Everything is happening so fast, I have issues understanding it doesn't matter how much damage I do, but the team as a whole.
- (Honestly, I just read this as tho you can't read the numbers that come floating on your screen).

Don't get butt hurt tho, just my opinion. How do you feel about PvP?

Fixed it for you.

This game is new. You are not used to that kind of gameplay, what the hell do you expect?

[Karizee]

Nothing a little more cowbell won't fix.

[Vsml]

Nothing a little more cowbell won't fix.

Lol.

[garraeth]

You might want to check out Buildcast:
http://www.gamebreaker.tv/video-game...t-go-my-necro/

They talk a lot about idiosyncrasies of GW 2 PVP and have really smart people like Ed Park and Matt Sorg.

[Maarius]

some experts about PvP (Arena Junkies) answer questions about GW2 PvP:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...7#post17943317

in short, they love it

[tlacoatl]

Hi,

I never got the chance to play Beta, so my only chances to get an early play were these two testers that were on the 9th and 10th.

PvP (in my opinion).

- It feels awfully slow killing player's.
- Warrior, Ele and Guardian are clearly OP.
- Everything feels messy and out of place.
- It's hard to identify whether you are actually doing any solid damage to a player.
- Everyone is healing up all the time.
- People go into down state at half health... what? :S
- Everything is happening so fast that you wonder how much solid damage you did in that zerg fight.
- Hard to identify certain spells doing solid damage too.

Don't get butt hurt tho, just my opinion. How do you feel about PvP?

I like it.

I like that its not a gear fest, I like that skill matters.
I like that reactions are extremely important and that player decisions really can turn a match around.
I like that teamwork is elevated to a prime position by the downed state and the finish him/revive system, it adds a great deal of tactical play.

As for taking a while to kill people...not really, depends on your build and their build. If you time things right, interrupt their heals, and so on you can burst peope down really quickly, or if you use abilities to separate one from the group so you can gang up.
But yes, fights can take a while depending on how they go, thats good. Too many MMOs are just nukefests and thats not really good PvP in my opinion.

It does however take some getting used to. its quite different from most MMO pvp, and if you try to play it like wow or rift or swtor, you wont get on very well. The fact that anyone can dodge your moves if they time it right really opens up some interesting battles. Give it a real go, and see if you like it, it wont be everyone's cup of tea, but for me, its the PvP I've been waiting for.

Thats for sPvP btw. In WvWvW, run with the zerg....as the battles increase in time as they get ranking system up, I'd expect it to settle down, and seiges to be less zergfests and more tactical as keeps are fortified, and the playerbase spreads out instead of all piling on at once!

as for classes beign OP....rifle warriors are just evil, thief can put out lots of dmg and be really anoying, and killing a well played mesmer is just plain frustrating.
Blanance was pretty good I thought. Some tweeks needed, but generally its pretty good.

[Zilong]

Hi,

I never got the chance to play Beta, so my only chances to get an early play were these two testers that were on the 9th and 10th.

PvP (in my opinion).

- It feels awfully slow killing player's.
- Warrior, Ele and Guardian are clearly OP.
- Everything feels messy and out of place.
- It's hard to identify whether you are actually doing any solid damage to a player.
- Everyone is healing up all the time.
- People go into down state at half health... what? :S
- Everything is happening so fast that you wonder how much solid damage you did in that zerg fight.
- Hard to identify certain spells doing solid damage too.

Don't get butt hurt tho, just my opinion. How do you feel about PvP?

I have only a few issues with Pvp so far. Ill comment my opinion on your points, then Ill just finish with my opinion overall.

- I think mainly this game is about balancing your build around what you wanna do. You can go all out on power/conditions and crit or something and kill players faster but you will pretty much be a paper origami to everyone. You can also go all defensive but then you will have hard time killing someone, and then everything in between. I think alot of people will value the balance of the survival in this game more than in others games, which will make a lil "harder" to kill everyone, because they are valuing the power of surviving AND the strength to kill when needed.
- They sure do have the most "obvious" builds I would say, so if you wanna do it "right and without thinking" you pick them. But I do find one little problem in PvP regarding mainly the guardian, more on that later.
- Well, the browser for random games are supposed to be there so you can test your build, so people often don't communicate much and everything feels like "solo". Later on when you can rent the server for yourself you can start having guilds versus guilds altogheter if im not mistaken, which will step up a notch in organization. Not to mention the tournaments which clearly need organization as well.
- That will come with time really, and specially I think people need more time with PvE situations to get better understanding on PvP, even more so regarding the weapon skills and uses.
- Well, I don't think that, everyone can heal once every like 15 seconds? By then you should be able to almost kill someone and then he uses his heal, and then you kill him. Even better you can try to corner him, "gank" him, interrupt him. And more, I think its fair play since you can also heal yourself.
- I think others explained it for you the down state thing, right?
- Well, the game is about coordination of a team. It shouldn't matter how much solid damage you did as long as you helped your team to win the fight, because someone in your team is giving a fairly lower damage output to try to buff you a little bit too.
- I can agree to identification of spells doing damage, but when I use my combo I just look at the foe's health and if he's hurt, it worked. If not, I try to figure it out what happened, maybe he dodged...

This was all just comments on your comments, hope it helps a lil. Happy to discuss them further.

---

Now as for personal intake of the Pvp.

I think its marvellous how it works. Really balanced, you can work towards looking cooler, nice tournaments (I also get excited for those ). I think that they are really on the right track for it (already spot on, Im much curious to upcoming updates on it.)

But a few things concern me:

- Players with little knowledge of the game (mechanics) going straight to the PvP lobby often even ignoring the little tutorial there. Not only they are put to the highest level with everything unlocked, but they also lack the..."smarts" to battle. I really wouldn't mind if the first character or so of an account had to be level 5 or 10 to pvp, simply because it doesn't take much to go that far and you it's really important to learn how much of action this rpg is about. Dodge is gods gifts to players, yet most people used it as just a "Speed" up (Idk some ppl seem to do it thinking you will rush faster) or just to dodge 1 bullet, and that''s the opening for a straight combo to your face. But to be honest, it's not really a concern, eventually they will understand, I just say this because I've seen people getting discouraged by "failing" at the pvp.

- I hear they had 10 style of PvPs ideas and they just went with Conquest one. For release 3 maps of Conquest I find to be good, but I really wanna see how often they can provide a new map. And say even if they provide some new maps I really think they should work (hard) on more game styles.

- I would like to see a few tweaks on balancing in the random sPvP matches. Feels like it's not really done too often, usually a team has 1 more than the other. Not really sure how to do this, but It could use a few tweaks.

- Class balance is my last issue. So far I'm pleased with it, but I always wondered why Anet picked guardians as a class when they are really going against the holy trinity mindset. And believe me I know there is absolutely no holy trinity in the game, a elementalist cannot purely support 100% of the time unless if kept doing nothing waiting. But I think guardians need to be toned down a bit as I feel they provide alot for the team play in terms of support (even if hes not focused on it) and area denial (specially with only conquest games) which will be a clear choice for most team comps.

[Karizee]

some experts about PvP (Arena Junkies) answer questions about GW2 PvP:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...7#post17943317

in short, they love it

So nice to see them onboard - I guess when they heard the news about eSports, they couldn't resist

[terrahero]

Downed state isnt exactly balanced. Some professions have flat out strong or more usefull downed state abilities. Also, profession balance in general seems a bit off.

-Warriors insane-burst. Not a huge deal to counter in higher pvp brackets, but at newbie levels this combo wrecks face. Considering its litterally as easy as pressing 2 buttons, imo, it should be changed. Its frustrating and very unfriendly for new players to wander into sPvP and get greeted with a Hundred Blades to the face.
This setup fails in higher-end PvP, because the Warrior is a one-trick pony and once his single trick gets countered he is left with little damage and little survivability. Why allow this? It ruins low level PvP because its so easy to totally own beginning pvp players, and once people figure it out, its easy to counter and useless. Nothing good comes from this.

-Guardians are a tad, well.. overpowered is maybe not the right word. So ill go with important. They are so amazing at area-control its a must to bring a Guardian. Even when specced for (scary) damage, they still maintain high control and support. Perhaps its a bit much letting them do 3 things quite well? And i dont like it that a single profession is so important to a team.

-More variety. So far sPvP is just Capture the Point. With a little twist here and there "oh noes, a trebuchet. Oh noes, kill the chiefs for easy points. Oh noes a Lord that is worth a lot of points, but so hard to reach that in any decent pvp match everyone will ignore him". I understand wanting to go objective based matches, but 3x Conquest is a little boring. I hope we'll see new maps, and especially gamemodes not to long after release.
Show us some Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Assassinate, Search and Destroy, to name a few.

And i agree with Zilongs point now that he mentioned it. Letting new players get into sPvP at lv2 can be very overwhelming. I feel Gw2 could do a better job forcing the basics into players heads. I cant believe they went for tiered-utility skills because it was to overwhelming and then basicy let new players wander right into sPvP before they even unlocked all their weaponskills.

[Maarius]

More variety. So far sPvP is just Capture the Point. With a little twist here and there "oh noes, a trebuchet. Oh noes, kill the chiefs for easy points. Oh noes a Lord that is worth a lot of points, but so hard to reach that in any decent pvp match everyone will ignore him". I understand wanting to go objective based matches, but 3x Conquest is a little boring. I hope we'll see new maps, and especially gamemodes not to long after release.
Show us some Capture the Flag, King of the Hill, Assassinate, Search and Destroy, to name a few.

I agree with Rottens (Team Legacy) standpoint on that matter:

Right now, Conquest is the best mode for the game.
As there are no dedicated roles (e.g. healers), the usual deathmatch and other common gamemodes don’t fit in. The game would have no depth other than smashing all your damage skills.
I believe the reason they chose conquest over other modes is simple: It forces you to split into several scrimmages, creating 1v1,2v2, etc. situations where you have to use your abilities really carefully (like fearing someone of a capture point to cap it, snare someone on the way to a point, etc.)

There are some modes that could fit into the game, as you mentioned, CTF is one of them. The issue would be that the game is balanced around conquest. I think they are definitely doing the right choice in sticking to one map type.

I also need to add that the secondary objectives offer more possibilities to Conquest than other modes. I could imagine CTF being integrated in an actual conquest map for example.

also this (Lyr, atrox):

While it would be fun to have different game modes, imagine the balancing nightmares that would ensue. If this game seriously wants to take itself as an eSport and take a stab at success, I think they are taking the right direction on balancing the game for one game type.

On top of that; this game has amazing positional based PvP. What better game mode to go along with that than conquest with cool secondary objectives for each map?

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...7#post17943317

[Tury123]

I feel like the PvP isn't interactive enough.

[DrakeWurrum]

I feel like the PvP isn't interactive enough.

O_o

Not sure what this means.

@everything Maarius said - I think they're spot on, in saying that it's smart to balance for exactly one map type. LoL professional circuit sticks to Summoner's Rift, and SC2 professional circuit has exactly one map type (several different maps, yes, but your goal is the same on all maps) - look at how well that worked out.

[wdh1974]

Karizee video says it all 1000% in the old days of Ultima Online PVP we had to know the meaning of the spells that were being cast, that was our warning on how to counter or react and fights could last for a VERY long time, i was even able to take down 5 bads vs my dexxer. Gw2 PVP is going to hurt alot of Epeen from some wow players.

I will say tho, rifle warrior sure does feel strong.

[Zilong]

I agree with Rottens (Team Legacy) standpoint on that matter:

also this (Lyr, atrox):

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...7#post17943317

I agree and disagree with them. I feel like the choice to launch the game with only conquest types is right. But in the long run having NO other PvP in a structured scene is pretty dull. Rottens guess about the reason is accurate but really if you think about it, any other types of game can be made (with the right tools) to "split into several scrimmages, creating 1v1, 2v2..etc.) You have to at least consider that the random sPvP doesn't split it so much as it should, making the real deal be the "tournaments". And say 5v5 that is the tournament even with the CTF case, you still must apply the "split condition". Whos defending the flag? Who's going to strike their Flag carrier? And possibly secondary mechanics within the maps. His point is not wrong, but it doesn't just apply to Conquest, I could easily say that (like fearing someone before he capture the flag, snaring someone away from the capture point, etc), the strategy is still there, very present. And about deathmatches, it could be just because it's fun and quick, even if it's "less tactical" Which inst entirely true.

The sPvP has alot of potential, the nightmares of balancing are already out there but that comes with every game. As of now I still think the guardians are much more relevant (much more than others supportive builds) for the Conquest kinda of game. While say in Capture the flag, other supportive builds would def shine more imho.

But all in all I really think that Anet in gw1 came up with so much nice choices for pvp over the years, always tweaking for the best balance (which is only right). And I do think it is expected of them to do a simillar job this time too, I would certainly play sPvP quite a bit as it is, but I do feel the interest would go down if it would become the -only- type of PvP.

[Bovinity Divinity]

I'm actually on the fence (Hah!) about the current PvP maps, though. Right now with 8v8, really small maps, +5 points just for killing someone, capping a point taking a decent amount of time and instant warning that someone is on a cap point even if no one on your team is there, it often seems like the team that just runs around in a circle together taking nodes and killing everyone is the team that wins in the end.

[Maarius]

I'm actually on the fence (Hah!) about the current PvP maps, though. Right now with 8v8, really small maps, +5 points just for killing someone, capping a point taking a decent amount of time and instant warning that someone is on a cap point even if no one on your team is there, it often seems like the team that just runs around in a circle together taking nodes and killing everyone is the team that wins in the end.

a whole team on one point only needs 1 enemy player on each of the 2 other points to cap those and win over you.

[Zilong]

I'm actually on the fence (Hah!) about the current PvP maps, though. Right now with 8v8, really small maps, +5 points just for killing someone, capping a point taking a decent amount of time and instant warning that someone is on a cap point even if no one on your team is there, it often seems like the team that just runs around in a circle together taking nodes and killing everyone is the team that wins in the end.

You actually bring a good point that I didn't think about before. The maps seems fine for 8v8 of 5v5 matches. The 5 points for killing someone is okay I think, you would be surprised how much you can play smart and not kill everyone and still win. But I do think the instant message of "you are losing your node" could be reverted, I always loved to think about the battlefield and head to the least protected area, and when I do that it seems everyone in the team is aware of me by the instant I step in, while I don't think they will change that and it doesn't bring the ultimate difference, I have never thought about it, and I for one would like to be announced when you already lost it, instead of the "in contest".