Spontaneous Monotony

As far as PvP in Guild Wars goes, Alliance Battles are up there with the best. Two teams of twelve (the most in any PvP gametype, I might add) fight to capture control points which spawn NPCs and give victory points. The problem is that a few months back, the way victory points are counted changed. Previously, using ‘4-4-4′ tactics (which means that the team splits into three sets of four players) to capture points as quickly as possible, without bothering whether they get retaken by the opposition or not, was the accepted tactic. Unfortunately the changes to the points system means that it you now gain more victory points by holding map locations (ie defending them for a significant time) rather than constant-capping.

This means that ‘mobbing’ (the entire team of twelve fighting as one mass) is now the most effective tactic by a long way. Most Luxon players seem to have worked this out, but Kurzicks haven’t. Even questioning the 4-4-4 God gets you called a noob and worse. Put simply, unless you’re up against a similarly uninformed Luxon team, AB just isn’t fun to play as the Kurzicks any more. I’ve gone back to CM, where (because only PvP characters and advanced PvE characters can access it) most people at least have a clue about how to play the fucking game. Sorry for the profanity, but I thought I’d seen the most brainless of the Guild Wars playerbase in my pre-heroes PUG days. I was wrong.

Skill balancing (more commonly known as ‘nerfing’) is probably the second most controversial issue in Guild Wars (after farming drop rates). PvP players scream about a skill which is too powerful in a very unusual, easily-countered situation, such as having 8 Paragons in one team. PvE players scream about an insignificant change to Soul Reaping, which is still the best primary attribute in the game (especially in PvE, with its frequent monster deaths).

This situation benefits nobody. The two elements of the game are constantly in conflict, one being damaged to safeguard the other. If a nerf is made because of harm in PvP (e.g. the near-constant Paragon nerfs since the release of Guild Wars) it can have unintended, disproportionate effect in PvE (e.g. if a skill is ‘balanced’ in a team of 8 Paragons, it’s useless in a PvE pug with one Paragon). If a nerf is delayed or cancelled because of the potential effect in PvE (e.g. making shout cancellation easier, which would mess up most of the Prophecies PvE game which depends on Watch Yourself to a great extent), then PvP is less fun due to the imbalance.

There are a number of solutions, some more drastic than others. The first, and most common, is to not so much a solution to the problem as an argument that no problem exists. Since Guild Wars values both its PvP and PvE components (unlike, say, World of Warcraft which as one commenter noted is overwhelmingly PvE-focused), many argue that it is inevitable for tradeoffs to be made between the two gametypes.

Another common solution is to split the two games from each other. Either by simply not having either PvE or PvP (although this is just as commonly suggested as flamebait as it is seriously), or by preventing PvE characters from playing PvP and allowing the two sides of the game to develop - in terms of skill balances, attributes, and everything else - completely separately from one another.

My proposal is for a less drastic (and less complicated) version of that second solution I mentioned. Separate PvE and PvP skill sets. Guild Wars is currently, belatedly, developing in that direction. A week or so ago saw the introduction of new skills powered by Sunspear points (easy to farm) and Alliance Faction points (bloody nightmare to farm). These were quite powerful, and would definitely have been termed ‘overpowered’ by nerf-loving GvG players (especially Eternal Aura. If the phrase ‘keep Avatars up indefinitely’ doesn’t have you drooling, you obviously don’t play Nightfall :P), but they are great additions to a skillbar.

What I would really like to see in Guild Wars 2 is a small PvP skillset. At the moment, Guild Wars has hundreds of skills per profession, all of which can be used in (and therefore have to be balanced for) PvP. Most them don’t even get used, since the metagame generally revolves around three or four builds per class. What would be much better is to have a smaller number - fifty, say - of PvP skills per profession, all perfectly balanced against each other. This would enable a fair, perfectly-balanced PvP game. The rest of the skills would be PvE-only, and would be balanced in terms of the difficulty of missions and quests rather than what happens when you take 8 characters with identical builds into a GvG match. Both sides of the game could be balanced appropriately, instead of the mutually destructive relationship they have in Guild Wars 1.