I think Anet's direction has gone wrong

don't red at me and read first, I like all the gimmicks, items, quest etc update, but that are all pve, and when you put PVE things into PVP, it becomes all WRONG.

1) it doesn't add to competitiveness besides from appearance,
2) it would not increase players back into pvp
3) it may turn some pve into pvp for awhile, but it won't help pvp to get back on its feet.

Problem
I think the problem in pvp for example in HA is,
1) it is too hard
2) people are clueless
3) everything is too complicated

the maps, skills, players' skills, and human management all these things mashed together, it can make up an university course.

solution
I think a solution for a good pvp update is to have a good balance plus an additional simplification of the current pvp with respects of the objectives of PVP.

you see many successful pvp games are simple, just kill and get pts or kill the base. very simple with usually 1 or 2 objectives.

now the current HA has like killing, running, capturing, holding.. everything together.. it requires like crazy amounts of training in order to be successful in all these areas. In the end, how many casual players would really like to be good in all at once.....with the emphasis on CASUAL which more guildwars players are and the initial Anet objective on guildwars is being a causal but not too causal game.

Having said that the amount of time to train or be successful in just understanding the skills to kill is already unaccountable, without saying putting other objectives together. The incentive to train a new player and a new player want to learn tends to none, as item/quest/outlook/appearances, are not what pvp players seek, they seek the thrill of pvping, that is dominating another players/group.

thats why random arena is more populated than HA, some people may argue well, HA is hardcore stuff, but what I think is HA is too extreme that with the fact is showing the number of players in HA is usually limited, and the amount of time to form a group is just kind of wasting life, and it cannot attract new player, because of the eliteness, nothing wrong with eliteness as they has to put so much time in it to survive the whole extreme system, but new players just simply cannot survive in this extreme competitiveness, the number of players will just die away, and eventually eliteness will just leave without much new players sustaining.....then everything is like a bad distribution of wealth, little rich + a lot poor players.. poor players just can't move up in the hierarchical pyramid, and whole player's skill base will not ever increase.

so I really hope anet can tune the difficulty down a bit in pvp, because players with their own mind will/can make the game harder for other players who want to compete with them, Anet doesn't have to make pvp more difficult for a game to be played in order to increase the number of players.

Hi I see another entitlement player complaining. It is called competitive behavior and there is nothing anet can do no matter what to make it easier. The good players will stay good and the bad players will stay bad. If they dumb down the game to just a few skills it wouldn't change a thing.

My case and point is the dragon arena just a few skills yet the good players most certainly stand out. So keeping that in mind either improve or quit. The people who enjoy competition do not enjoy it becoming simpler because a bad player refuses to improve or accept that they are not equals.

So I will end my rant with no your idea should not be implemented.

I agree with most of your post. The crucks of the problem is:
The barriers to entry are too high for new players.

Disagree: Dumbing it down. Its too late in that game to make those sort of changes.

RA is popular because:
1) no groups, click to play instantly
2) you can spent as little or much time as you want

The problem with HA is that it is a microcosm in the game and that's hard to recover from after 6 years of no real change to the format(excluding the 6 party member limit). A step to help bring the format some life may be to revamp the maps and remove tedious requirements such as relics and alters. The way Anet handled the problems in RA today though makes me think they shouldnt touch anything else

you are wrong to my concept is that, no matter a pvp system is hard or not there will be all these yadda yadaa from players, but the problem is not about the jabaa jabba, there is simply just not enough players, because the system is too hard, players don't even try to learn it... like when you see you have to do 100000 push up before you can actually enter the competition, can it just be like 1000 pushes up which is already enough, that perhaps 10000 players can do that while there maybe only 50 people willing to do 100000 push up.

I think it is just a waste of the well designed game.


exactly, the instant thrill, you get from HA is disproportional to the amount of time requires to get it.

Don't mind the comment above (the new entitlement dealio some ppl are using is pretty weak)

Obviously there is an issue with pvp as the ppl that play it complain and lots of ppl avoid it. There is a reason they are changing pvp in gw2 and that's where they are going to change it....unfortunately not in gw1. Even though I believe u have good intentions it's already too late.

PvP is really simple to understand, there are two types of PvP: random entry (RA, FA, JQ and honourary mention for AB which may as well be random) and there is organised PvP (CA, HA, GvG).

Random entry will always be far more popular. Not only can anyone get in, but because anyone can get in, teams usually end up balanced with skill levels and people don't just get wiped by that one random team. In random PvP arenas everyone has the same chance to win when entering.

Organised PvP arenas (specifically HA and GvG) are heavily stacked in favour of the people who have been playing them for a while. Not only do they know the objectives and maps a lot better, but they have more developed friends list. Organised PvP is more about networking than it is about player skill, it was the fundamental flaw this PvP format had from the beginning and it's why so many players never made that transition from RA/FA/AB/JQ to HA/GvG. It didn't matter if you were any good, what mattered was if you could get into a group with other people who were good. The best warrior in the game would still lose in HA if he had to deal with terrible PUGs as his team mates when playing against experienced, organised teams of people who know what they are doing.

Codex Arena is just terrible.

The answer is not to dumb down HA objectives and gameplay. The answer is to accept that organised PvP caters to a small niche part of the gaming community, and the vast majority of people are better suited to casual PvP, not because they are worse players, but because they are worse at/couldn't be bothered to network.

Leave HA and GvG as they are and develop GW2 to have a niche minor focus on organised PvP and a strong catering to WvWvW for the rest of the community.

I hate to sound like a mean old man but GW is way passed its prime. The amount of new players is quite low so doing major modifications which may or may not piss off the current veteran base is shaky ground to tread.

The people who want to PvP in X format will learn the rules and etiquette thus slowly becoming part of it. The same can be seen in High end PvE. A example is UWSC in which people are asked to show stones.

The vision of RA vs HA can be compared to a lot of other games. A lot of people play counterstrike for example. The majority just play in public servers against lower random competition aka like RA. The minority of players who want to spend the time to practice and learn play in the leagues aka HA/GvG. It is this reason why RA will always be more popular.

in a commercial sense, do you want more players to play the game, or do you want a game that is cater for the 1 or 2 elite, while these elites can be regroup back in another system and forming more 10 or 20 elites, instead of just 1 or 2 elites.

a system that create elites, or the elites create the system?

I agree that shaking the veteran is risky, but they already had their time. GW is a good testing ground for the development of gw2 for balancing the difficulties of the game, in order to be succesful in gw2 for maintaining the number of players, many people will look back at gw1, and gain knowledge from it, if gw1 has a bad history of development in sustaining players, I think it may be a detriment to gw2.

How do you propose to make HA/GvG more casual? I'm curious to see if you have any concrete ideas as to how to do this.

remove relics, capture points and make it to HA2 or something.

HA1 objectives is to hold altar, and kills then players only have to create bars for holding altar

HA2 is relics running and killing only

HA3 is capture points

perhaps a hard HA4 that is with 2+ objectives

but to avoid the problem of differentiation that the number of players is spread across all different HA, perhaps only 1 simple HA and 1 hard HA is to be implemented...

players will have more focus on 1 objective of the map than focus on so many objectives of the map, that limited players can do it..

conclusion
sometimes players want the game harder, sometimes want it easier, I think focusing on 1 or 2 objective is easier to see what players tend to like and become less confused, and is easier for the developer to cater for the trend of players, if the number of players keep decreasing or does not increase then, I suggest a change to another objective, maybe an objective to form a human pvp group.

Sooo, you don't really have any ideas?

well if you don't buy it then it is not an idea....and keep on doing pve stuff in pvp, hoping a pve update of pvp and claiming it as a pvp update.

I hate to break it to you but splitting it up into even more formats is just going to cause more segregation. The issue is the players not the design. If something is obtainable by all it has no value thus doesn't drive competition thus isn't really the spirit of PvP.

the problem of players is they think pvp is too hard... and why is that? all of the above I said.....

not because eliteness, or noob calling, because all pvp games have these, is just the mechanisms in gw are too complicated for players to enter or understand the game..

it is not like cs or dota, which the objective is to kill only.

Remove the title. Plain and simple. Nobody can then tell if you are or are not an elite HAer. HA is the ONLY place these days where it is nigh impossible to get in unless you've already been playing it. UW to some extent but there are still practice runs for that.

Solution for HA is simple: you know in prophercies the level based arenas. do the same thing but then for ranks. 1-3 against 1-3, you get the point.

everybody will just play ha easy and leave ha 'hard' dead.

What effects do you believe that simplifying the formats will have on making the game easier to get into?

RA isn't more popular because it's deathmatch, it's more popular because it requires no setup time and no connections. And no, it's not because the objective is simpler that it requires no setup time - see TA.

I wish I could say this is the solution and while it is a pretty good one there is one issue smurf guilds/accounts. It would bring that GvG issue into HA I am sure of it.