Curse

Marcus The Cube · May 04, 2007, 12:02 PM // 12:02

would be essential to keep PvP playable for normal players in my humble opionion.

I lead a guild that is now about 1.5 years old and we have players from all over the world as our intention is to play the game on a high level in a friendshiplike atmosphere.

With "the game" I mean everything GW has to offer, thats mean PvE and PvP.

This worked well when GW was young.
Nowadays if you have bad luck you can go into a GvG with experienced and very good PvE players and find yourself constantly walking against a wall of glass and you will not really have a funny evening.
The ingame message "looking for a worthy opponent" is imho a provocation if you continously fight much much more powerful opponents. This is something very annoying and causes a lot of stress in a guild that is originally seeking for fun, because the reaction was in our case to form a PvP core team which was already a problem because this does not really go together with the idea of playing everything together and also on a certain point this lead to a separation and leaving of the "PvP players".

The latest incident we had in our guild was that we lost our PvP officer - who was in a certain way a very good friend of us - because of the introduction of the tournament system in GvGs which has now brought PvP up to an almost exclusive area for professional players. In fact it leaves somebody who wants to participate at those tournaments no other choice than to join a "PvP guild". These tournaments pushed professionalizing to a point where it seems that "full working days of playing Guildwars" are not the exception but just the normal way of playing PvP (in PvP guilds that take the competitive character seriously).

I don´t want to criticise those dedicating their life to PvP although I would personally think this is not such a good idea, but well... there are people doing sports or play games like chess or maybe more comparable Magic professionaly and on a full day basis. But noone would come to the idea to match the Paolo Alto elementary football school team with the 49ers and these are already both pro-like teams (as both are playing more frequently than the average fun-football player).

The very obvious problem is, that normal GuildWars player if they want to step into a GvG or into HA are simply wiped out by the professional players and I think although the pro guilds may enjoy this earning of cheap points it´s also not fun for them on the long run.

But this is not a new problem because it´s already very clearly sensible in HA since almost a year, where you don´t have access anymore as a single player when you are not ranked 4+ and to get this rank you have to join a guild focussing on doing repetitive HA runs to bring you up - this may be seen as great fun for many people but not for the player that wants to play the game for fun and can not afford to spend more than like 2hrs per day in average.

So as I think that GuildWars should also be made for players that do not play the game on a professional basis the introduction of leagues that make a difference between guilds that enter GvGs lets say not more than xx times per week and also are not ranked above a certain level is something that is simply essential to make this part of the game again playable for "normal users".

The same also applies to HA. Here we already have leagues. They exist informally as usually only players with a similar rank play together. Just the game does not respect it. Here it would be easy to only match teams with similar rank. Maybe the battles between the not ranked (below 3) players should not count for the favor decision as soon as a new system respecting these differences in the rank when matching teams will be (hopefully soon) be introduced, but that´s already getting into details.

So, please dear software designers, make PvP in GuildWars again playable for your "normal customers"!

Thomas.knbk · May 04, 2007, 02:52 PM // 14:52

The amount of players that actually still play pvp is already decreasing. Many top players have left the game already, and I'm sure even more non-top players have done this as well, but I don't know about them because they're less famous.
Having 'leagues' only works if you have a really, really big player base. If you have, it's undoubtly a good idea, but Guild Wars atm doesn't have that luxury.

Also, a system quite like this already exists. If you ignore the rank of your guild and look at the rating, you'll notice you won't face any guilds 100 points above or below you within the first five minutes after you started waiting on an opponent, and no guilds 200 points above or below you in the time after those 5 minutes. You may think 200 points is a huge gap, and you'd be right about that. But such a large gap is also the only solution to avoid hour long waits before every GvG (like the ones non-primetime guilds such as practically all australians already have.)
The truth is, Guild Wars is dying. At least the PvP side is. The player has never been big enough to support a real 'league'-system, and it won't be any time soon. The contrary, rather.

Another problem is that these 'non professional' guilds, who play 'for fun' are generally not the most active ones. Many of them play a GvG like three times a week. Can you imagine how bug that league would have to be in order to make GvG accessible at all for them? I can guarantee you, hour long waits are NOT going to make GvG more fun for them. Matter of fact, the leage would have to be almost as big as the ladder is now.
The only possibility I see is to make te leagues really big. Like, one league with the top 500 teams, and one with all the rest. Those top 500 could deal with a smaller league, because they're way more active than the 'operating for fun, non professional' guilds.

Marcus The Cube · May 31, 2007, 10:45 AM // 10:45

Thanks for the info!

If I calculated it right, this would mean if your rating is 100 points below your opponents rating your chance to win is around 33%. As I think that you never have to wait more then 2 minutes in Europe, this should not get worse usually. That sounds not that bad in theory.

The small problem here is that this is a statistical instrument which only works if you do GvGs on a regular basis. If you do it just like once in a week you will be never dropping far enough down to the bottom - if you are a group of bad PvP players - to actually face guilds that are as newish in this field of the game as you are.

In HA however I dont have the impression that this system is used, as I have been facing an Esoteric Warrior team, being myself in a beginners PUG.

But I think you are right with your arguments that probably only a separation of the professional players from those who seek entertainment would make sense.

As I am leading such an 'operating for fun, non professional' guild for quite a long time now I am of course convinced that this is the way to profit most of this very well designed game, as for me playing means to relax and not plunge into the next stressful environment...

lilnate22 · May 31, 2007, 11:01 AM // 11:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marcus The cube

Thanks for the info!

If I calculated it right, this would mean if your rating is 100 points below your opponents rating your chance to win is around 33%. ..

actualy its 34.56656719(repeating)

but yea i do agree the wait isa hassel..taht s y i never gvg..HA ftw! (r4+)

leagues should be ike those of madden..easily joinable