This past weekend, I spent a solid amount of time battling in Guild Wars 2’s PvP, surprising even myself since it’s been a couple of years since I played GW2 at all. But my return to the battlegrounds wasn’t some sudden, nostalgic return to the past; rather, it was a result of the most shocking MMO news of the year: GW2’s getting a new PvP mode! OK, not the most shocking news of the year, but still it’s up there, especially for PvP players.
I’ve written several times about how incredible the original Guild Wars PvP was. It was hands down the best MMO PvP I’ve ever played – from design to execution to just how dang fun it was. Guild Wars 2, despite having several years to iterate and improve upon PvP since release, simply hasn’t lived up to its predecessor.
Then, lo and behold, the clouds part and a beautiful ray of sunlight passes through my window blinding me momentarily. Someone at ArenaNet remembered that PvP exists – and wants to make it better! The new mode, currently dubbed Push, intends to make PvP more accessible as a fun alternative to conquest. Well, let me spoil it a bit: It is absolutely one of the PvP modes of all time!
The current state of GW2 PvP from a former fan’s perspective
It’s kind of sad for me to say it, but at this point I’m definitely an outsider when it comes to GW2’s PvP scene. There was a time, long ago before raptors roamed the Plains of Ashford, when I knew every build inside out. If I joined an arena and saw a team comp, I knew precisely what to expect from the other players.
Of course, that’s no longer the case. Even a regular player would probably struggle with it in Guild Wars 2 thanks to the vast number of elite specs and possibility of build combos. There’s no doubt a meta that rises to the top giving regular PvPers ample knowledge of what to expect from their enemies, but it’s still got to be a lot of possibilities.
Even so, from what I could tell logging back in, the Mists are fairly busy with players running about and chatting. Some of them even taking part in the little free-for-all arena Anet added some time ago to appease players like me who were just looking for some way to kill time between queues. The queues themselves still pop in about two and half to three minutes. That’s about how long I remember them being too.
In other words, if you’re thinking of coming back to play a bit but are wary of long queues and a lack of opponents, then don’t be. This is more than can be said about some other game’s arena PvP. There’s fights to be had in these here Mists.
So what’s the new game mode, Push, all about?
Push, as it’s being called, works like this: Players will run up to a node and battle over it, which isn’t much different than conquest fights, to be honest. However, if you claim the point in Push, it’ll begin to slowly move – ahem, slowly be pushed – toward the other team’s base, or spawn point.
It’s not a new PvP concept, of course. I recall playing a mode similar to this in a couple of other games. But that makes it a proven PvP mode that can certainly add depth to a game.
Now, in GW2’s variety of Push, the map itself is rather small – a boon for players who want constant action and less downtime. You can still imagine it as having three lanes since the pushed node begins in the center, but as it’s captured, it’ll begin to move around to the left or right depending on which team is in control. If your team is in control, it’ll be running to the right then counter-clockwise. As soon as the enemy takes control, it’ll begin to go clockwise, back to the center and then to the left and down toward your base. It’s a bit confusing to describe via text – also a bit in practice! Thinking back on it, I might even be describing it backwards. It doesn’t help that the map is rotated, either.
To understand which team is winning, you’ll see tiny little flags on the map to indicate how far that team has pushed the node in total. If the time runs out, the team whose node has gone the farthest toward its opponent’s base is the winner. The exception to this is if your team is losing (which means the opponents have pushed the node farther than you have in total) but you currently control the node when time runs out; then you’ll get kind of an overtime to keep pushing to see if you can exceed their distance and claim victory.
The last thing to mention is the bonus objectives. From what I can tell, these function similar to the ones in the Temple of the Silent Storm. You run over and interact with them to gain some temporary bonuses for your team. In Temple, they provide bonus points for captured nodes, and in Push they give bonus damage. Just as in Temple, they also spawn at set times throughout the match.
In summary, just go towards the node and fight. There’s always only a single node to fight over in Push.
So what’s the actual experience like? Is it worth returning to play?
The actual experience of fighting in Push is a bit messy, but that’s nothing new for GW2 players. While graphics and animations look amazing and fluid, visually it becomes an absolute nightmare when multiple players are fighting in the same spot. So of course that’s over-emphasized in Push. Not only do you have just as many combatants as in a typical conquest match (5v5), you’re basically always fighting over the same spot. In conquest, you’ll often be spread out over the whole map, but here you’re fighting over a single node.
The only real way to correct this for GW2 is to reduce the number of players in Push. That’s how I’d fix it. Five players on each team is going to be too much. It really needs to be only two or three. I think two is too few since that would make most encounters lopsided too quickly, so I don’t like that. Three means that you’ll be able to spread out a little. One person capping objectives while two compete over the node. Plus you’d be reducing the overall visual noise nearly in half, encouraging, hopefully a bit more strategic use of skills.
The node is also really hard to follow in a fight too. Part of that is because of all the skills and circles on the ground, but also it’s just kind of dumb. This generic circle that floats around the map is a point of contention. Dumb.
Instead, ArenaNet should do what I remember from other games and stick a dolyak or battering ram in there. Not as an NPC to kill directly, but as a visual clue of where we’re going. It’d be much more obvious at a glance to see where the point to fight is versus trying to glean it out of the visual clutter.
Also, since we are battling over this node’s progress toward the enemy spawn, we need to lose the points at the top of the screen. It’s irrelevant currently and doesn’t let anyone know immediately who’s winning and who’s losing. Currently, we have to estimate by looking at the skycam map to see which flag is further along. Either remove it or change them from points to a percent of total progress. Or perhaps ANet could assign points to the progress of the flag. Just give players some way to look at the scoreboard and know how well they’re doing.
So overall, it’s a bit of a mixed bag currently. I really think with even those three modest changes I’ve mentioned, we’d have a much better game mode. And that’s OK because ANet has listed this bad boy as being a beta test. And with a beta that means they can still change it for the better, right? Right?
Every other week, Massively OP’s Sam Kash delivers Fight or Kite, our trip through the state of PvP across the MMORPG industry. Whether he’s sitting in a queue or rolling with the zerg, Sam’s all about the adrenaline rush of a good battle. Because when you boil it down, the whole reason we PvP (other than to pwn noobs) is to have fun fighting a new and unpredictable enemy!
