GW:EN Sneak Peak: The Sad State of PvP
I'm still struck by how little has changed in my absence. Lots of tweaks and improvements on the PvE side of things, but I'm talking about the PvP scene at the moment. There were the usual score of new teams and tags that I'd never seen before when I pulled up obs mode. But no new builds. Nothing truly amazing or interesting that I saw in my admittedly brief voyeurism. A change here, an improvement there – CripSlash Warriors now carry Conjures by default instead of merely trending that way – but there's nothing I saw being run today that would surprise me if I had encountered in April. And I don't think any of the new GW:EN skills are really going to change that. It's just...sad, really. Makes me wonder what happened to all the vibrancy, all the energy we were hoped would come from the tournaments and the rebalances and more. And looking around the community, scoping out the forums and the wikis and the chats and more, makes me wonder just where all the players have gone.
But, when I thought about it, it's really not so hard to understand. Imagine, if you will, that someone's just picked up the game. Just plucked a copy off the shelf, at a discount, with no knowledge, no understanding of all the history she held in her hands. That player runs through the game, completes the campaign and is standing around wondering what to do next. If she wants to continue to PvE there's plenty of options. A new campaign, rerunning the old campaign to complete all the bonuses, hard mode, the endgames of the Fissure or the Domain, titles to grind, fancy armor to buy. A wealth of possibilities stretching out before her to explore, depending on her tastes. But for PvP?
Well, she could go to the Arena. And if she can put up with everyone leaving because they won't get to 10 wins and people moping the floor with her because she's using strats optimized for the completed campaign, lacking the skills and special abilities to put together something competitive, she might just persevere and find out she likes to PvP. Might develop enough to play in other game types. But who's going to play with her? A random, unadorned player? One who hardly understands what she's doing? Who needs her hand held the entire way? Who's going to pick her for their Halls team? Who's going to look past the fact that she doesn't have a rank, needs to unlock a skill or three, and is going to ask the annoying, basic questions to see that she has potential?
Who's going to pick her for her AB team, for that matter? Even for TA? I don't even want to talk about what she'll go through trying to find a guild to play with in GvG. All the struggle and hardship she'll endure just to land a spot on a mediocre team. What, exactly, is supposed to lead her into the wider world of competitive play? There aren't fun, consequence free formats that aren't bogged down by problems with leechers and leavers. There aren't even pre-mades anymore (Which would be so easy to implement with the template system, streaming, and the new, official wiki.) giving her a starting point, a place to build from, a glimpse, an explanation of what works and what doesn't in PvP. There's nothing for her. Except to slam her head against the wall in the Random Arenas or spamming for a group, a guild, someone to play with in one lobby or another.
That, right there, is why the PvP scene is dead. Why the game feels hollow. And why I'm not going to be playing again for a while.
Labels:
Electric Avenue,
Games,
Guild Wars,
GW:EN,
Projects
2 comments:
I completely agree. After my initial "hardcore" guild folded before even reaching our ideal builds at launch, I had no where to go.
Even back then, people were cementing their teams and random play was just that: random.
Guild Wars has always lacked "steps" that get players more involved in the end-game of PvP. I truly regret never getting to play a GvG match. I would go back and play in a heartbeat if a guild could promise me some fun and casual GvG play.
I'm with you there. If I could find a guild that promised me a few hours of GvG a few days a week, I'd be up for it. Especially one that didn't require me to start it or act as a cheerleader to get everyone motivated or, you know, otherwise put in any work. But I'd have very little idea where to even start at this point (The best bet would probably to hang out in some GW chat channels on IRC. I haven't in months and the exodus of PvP talent seems to be at epidemic levels but if they were anything like they were there'd be someone putting together a PUG or sealed deck team pretty regular. That's generally pretty lowkey and they'll give you stuff to run and help you out if you seem to have a few braincells to rub together.).
Casual play is hard to find. It's hard enough to get eight people rangled together that you can be damn well sure at least one of them wants their games to be worth something. Who's going to feel that the night's wasted if they haven't upped their ranking.
Because, generally speaking, what casual play means is that you're likely going to be losing. A lot. Especially today when the ladder's so thin and you'll be crushed by highly rated teams on a regular basis. It's not like back in the day when you could run eight Healing Hands W/Mos and have a blast doing it. The game's too mature now, people are too good at it, basic strategies and templates are too widely distributed for you to have much success while dicking around and, for some people, it's winning that's fun. But that accumulated wealth of experience that makes it so difficult to win also makes it hard for people to get into the game in the first place.
That's why the lack of stepping stones in the PvP formats is a tragic flaw. Why I think mini-formats like Snowball Fighting and Dodgeball or even the GW:EN mini-games (If they weren't single player only.) could be so important. The original plan, from when I was in the alpha test, was that players would go from RA, to Team Arena, then to Tombs where they'd earn the sigils they needed to participate in GvG. That never really panned out. Partly because the learning curve to play PvP ramped up so fiercely, partly because HA is its own, warped little world that only barely touches on the skills you need in GvG, but mostly because players just rejected it and the game moved on.
Just as bad, though, I think, are the lack of social connection - the ways to find that group to play with - and the lack of incentives to play PvP formats. It seems that the only reason to PvP is because you enjoy PvP. That's fine for people like me, maybe, but other people need carrots to hold their attention. When they can profit more by playing other parts of the game, well, they're going to.
Post a Comment