Curse

Sankt Hallvard · Sep 28, 2011, 02:10 AM // 02:10

I recently noticed something that might be a bit of a problem in gvg. I have been guesting for some rather low-ranked guilds(800 rating) and the waiting times are fewking horrible. When you finally get a match it's oftentimes one of the focken resign guilds on hunters isle. You basically waste hours only to play 1-2 games, it's ridiculous. And this is how we want pveers to be introduced to gvg? I feel really sorry for them trying to have fun, not to mention its boring for me as well. I don't really want to tell them to go make a new guild just for a fresh rating, they probably have a lot of members and a full gh etc, so the only way is to farm rating back up. But when you get +0 and -whatever when they lose to a good guild it's not gonna happen this year.

Just a bit of ranting while we wait for a match..

Missing HB · Sep 28, 2011, 11:12 AM // 11:12

That's the problem i've been discussing about for months : inactivity... Obviously, whether its codex, alliance battles, heroes ascent or gvg, even on quest day, it's quite hard to find players and especially opponents during american/asian playtimes..

Big example is B AT, which is usually 5 rounds and is about people who managed to find 8 humans ready to face the same players for 2 hours( considering fights are going to last 10mn at best)... Other example is players who're forming r11+ parties in HA whilst there is noone in....

The problem is players mindset which has turned into " let's farm farm"... ( i recommend players not believing me to just log once around 9 am GMT for HA or right before B AT)... and thus it's really hard to find players, willing to PvP at those times, who don't have this mindset and especially who want to face players with such mindset...

Swingline · Sep 28, 2011, 04:21 PM // 16:21

The way I see it now is the only way to fix this problem, along with many others, is to roll back the servers to 2006.

Skyy High · Sep 28, 2011, 07:47 PM // 19:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swingline

The way I see it now is the only way to fix this problem, along with many others, is to roll back the servers to 2006.

This will bring players back, how?

Reverend Dr · Sep 28, 2011, 08:00 PM // 20:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

This will bring players back, how?

Korea?

A simple rollback is not going to solve much. Though it is very true that the constant powercreep, particularly from Nightfall onward, is one of the major causes of inactivity.

A multi-pronged approach where there is a massive rollback in powercreep, combined with making PvP-only accounts better (no reason a PvP only account shouldn't be auto UAX), combined with advertising this change as GW1.5. With so many people salivating at GW2, a $20 all-in option to try out PvP in GW1 would be able to bring in a lot more fresh players.

Of course sense it has been made abundantly clear that GW2 is not going to be near anything like GW1, it would be likely to backfire on GW2 hype and sales, which just won't happen.

floor · Sep 29, 2011, 11:09 AM // 11:09

Regarding inactivity I think a lot of people overlook the extremely obvious. Powercreep didnt really help, but i dont think its really the cause of all that many people quitting. A lot of people blame bad updates and stuff, but realistically the "original" player base just got older and moved on.

The game was released in 2005, most of the top players at that time would of been 20-22 probably, college students etc mostly i'd guess. 6 years on, those same people are 27-28?? Hardly suprising they quit.

The current crop of "top" players are now in turn mostly about 18-22 years old, so at the time gw was released they would of been like 12-14? Probably too young to take games either seriously, or understand them in depth enough to be competitive. Assuming they even played at all. Most current players get called bad, terrible, newfags etc by the old school guys, even though a lot of them didnt even start till circa 2008. Comparisons are impossible. Of course they werent good in 2005, they were like 12.....

New players dont come in because when people buy new games, they look for new titles to purchase. How many times do people honestly go into a games shop and look around the titles from 5+ years ago? not often.

Regardless, imo the biggest mistake ever made was deleting the asian server. The quality of their updates comes a distant second to this. It doesnt take a genius to notice that a lot of the top players in any games format are asian, so why exclude them? Doesnt make good sense.

Aljasha · Sep 29, 2011, 11:35 AM // 11:35

I don't think the problem of missing Koreans is the missing server, but the missing prize money. Koreans just love to fight for real money, but the last official championship with real world prizes was held back in 2006 or something.

In order to get Koreans back into GW real tournaments have to be established and introducing a UAX & UAS pvp kit would make a lot of sense along with them. However I don't see that happening, because ANet made most of their money with selling pve expansions and addons, and know exactly how many players actually gvg regularly and when.

---

I am one of the players who started GW with 17 or 18 and am now that much older. Well, you know situations change.

floor · Sep 29, 2011, 01:38 PM // 13:38

Losing prize money might mean that you lose some of the very very top end players who are basically playing only for that i guess.

Removing the server though basically removed the entire asian playerbase not just those at the top, as playing with 500 ping whether your on a euro server, or 500 if your on an american one, and no facility for any other server, must suck something awful :s

Missing HB · Sep 29, 2011, 04:58 PM // 16:58

Players Age is a matter, obviously 20-22+ players won't have the same playtimes as 14-16+ players, and that might be an issue considering the long waiting times today and the long practice you need for some areas in addition...

It's not the same waiting an hour or playing till 1 am when you work all day from 8 to 7 and waiting an hour when you got 3 hours of school per day.... You might understand then why i was asking to get henchs back in PvP, as they were a way to fix this too important problem...

shadeblade47 · Sep 30, 2011, 04:50 PM // 16:50

My only problem with this is at this point PvE players will have a hard time making the shift to GvG.. believe me my American guild has tried allowing PvE players to join and learn and it generally doesn't go well. PvE'ers should definitely OBSERVE some matches, get the hang of RA then HA and THEN make the shift to GvG.

Vanquisher · Oct 04, 2011, 03:19 PM // 15:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by floor

Regarding inactivity I think a lot of people overlook the extremely obvious. Powercreep didnt really help, but i dont think its really the cause of all that many people quitting. A lot of people blame bad updates and stuff, but realistically the "original" player base just got older and moved on.

The game was released in 2005, most of the top players at that time would of been 20-22 probably, college students etc mostly i'd guess. 6 years on, those same people are 27-28?? Hardly suprising they quit.

The current crop of "top" players are now in turn mostly about 18-22 years old, so at the time gw was released they would of been like 12-14? Probably too young to take games either seriously, or understand them in depth enough to be competitive. Assuming they even played at all. Most current players get called bad, terrible, newfags etc by the old school guys, even though a lot of them didnt even start till circa 2008. Comparisons are impossible. Of course they werent good in 2005, they were like 12.....

New players dont come in because when people buy new games, they look for new titles to purchase. How many times do people honestly go into a games shop and look around the titles from 5+ years ago? not often.

Regardless, imo the biggest mistake ever made was deleting the asian server. The quality of their updates comes a distant second to this. It doesnt take a genius to notice that a lot of the top players in any games format are asian, so why exclude them? Doesnt make good sense.

Pretty much this, mixed in with a fair amount of there being no incentive to play anything other than a couple of AT's a month, and the monthly. Having the ladder be absolutely meangingless is the one of the poorest decisions made in terms of pushing casual play. It's not a reliable way to increase rating and confines teams to only play at a certain time. Even including a ladder season presenting a prize now would be a decent shout.

I should also probably add that the game is really, really boring to play. I don't know why it seems like it is, but having played a bit over the past 2 weeks orso, I can't help but feel bored. I hope that's because it was at a not great level, but I don't know.

Missing HB · Oct 04, 2011, 04:16 PM // 16:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vanquisher

Pretty much this, mixed in with a fair amount of there being no incentive to play anything other than a couple of AT's a month, and the monthly. Having the ladder be absolutely meangingless is the one of the poorest decisions made in terms of pushing casual play. It's not a reliable way to increase rating and confines teams to only play at a certain time. Even including a ladder season presenting a prize now would be a decent shout.

Well, it's about incentives to GvG... If you remember it, there were about 30 districts abusing Hero Battles Quest on its last weeks...

What i don't get is that the same can easily be done in GvG on quest day, considering the huge amounts of afk/syncing guilds on bottom ladder..what i mean is that, even a guild of PvE'rs can "play GvG" only for having some easy rewards( like going 6/8 with 4 henchmen), but they don't...Doing Red resign with 2 humans instead of 1 isn't something hard i guess....

Considering people aren't considering this idea of " very easy rewards to get" ( because you will face people leaving at begin ), i guess the problem is about the very high lack of advertising about GvG in this game...

Overall, maybe there should have been some series of quests introducing you to GvG in the past, considering this is the main format... Maybe there should be a form of personnal ranking/rating about GvG with rewards associated, etc....

This is, in my opinion, the reason why GvG is quite inactive

ErrantVenture · Oct 04, 2011, 05:12 PM // 17:12

Introducing a 2-3 month long ladder season would be the best way to get people interested in laddering. Could tie it into the AT system as well, but there's no incentive to ladder currently and that's one of the biggest problems causing the lack of activity.

Krill · Oct 06, 2011, 09:14 PM // 21:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by floor

Regarding inactivity I think a lot of people overlook the extremely obvious. Powercreep didnt really help, but i dont think its really the cause of all that many people quitting. A lot of people blame bad updates and stuff, but realistically the "original" player base just got older and moved on.

The game was released in 2005, most of the top players at that time would of been 20-22 probably, college students etc mostly i'd guess. 6 years on, those same people are 27-28?? Hardly suprising they quit.

The current crop of "top" players are now in turn mostly about 18-22 years old, so at the time gw was released they would of been like 12-14? Probably too young to take games either seriously, or understand them in depth enough to be competitive. Assuming they even played at all. Most current players get called bad, terrible, newfags etc by the old school guys, even though a lot of them didnt even start till circa 2008. Comparisons are impossible. Of course they werent good in 2005, they were like 12.....

New players dont come in because when people buy new games, they look for new titles to purchase. How many times do people honestly go into a games shop and look around the titles from 5+ years ago? not often.

Regardless, imo the biggest mistake ever made was deleting the asian server. The quality of their updates comes a distant second to this. It doesnt take a genius to notice that a lot of the top players in any games format are asian, so why exclude them? Doesnt make good sense.

Those are all fair points, but I do think the awful updates did help quite a few players make a decision to quit rather than losing interest and playing less as time went along.

urania · Oct 07, 2011, 08:29 AM // 08:29

so did TA and HB removal.

Missing HB · Oct 07, 2011, 10:51 AM // 10:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Krill

Those are all fair points, but I do think the awful updates did help quite a few players make a decision to quit rather than losing interest and playing less as time went along.

The lack of reactivity to find a solution to inactivity did much too... Overall, changes can be good sometimes... Unfortunately, they didn't follow and nothing was done for example with codex, AB or rest of PvP...

The game isn't made for a massive inactivity and obviously that's why you can see sometimes no top GvG fight for a day or " last hall win 18 hours ago " ... Something really should be done regarding the introduction of 7 heroes party in PvE to help PvP

tummlykins · Oct 07, 2011, 11:35 AM // 11:35

I wouldn't mind seeing PvP going free to play or have a dramatic cost reduction in PvP packs. The game is already set up to handle separated PvP and PvE access. I'd rather see ArenaNet try to bring in real players rather than resort to henchmen.

Making GW PvP free to play could really bring in a nice influx of new players, especially if they are able to capitalise on the marketing cycle of GW2.

Ss Executioner · Nov 14, 2011, 08:27 PM // 20:27

As someone who played from beta till about 3-4 years ago... please - I love and miss this game. Enjoy it how I enjoyed it, if you're only playing the PvE side of things you're missing what I enjoyed most in the world for many years.

-Ss