Guild Wars 2

Hey there. I have been playing GW2 now for a few weeks rejoining some guildies i used to play with. So as a recent player with alot of mmo expierence (over 2750 pvp rating in wow 3on3 arena) i though id pipe in with some suggestions because SPVP is really struggling. I rank them in what i think as most important to least important. I like GW2 so, overall this criticism isn’t meant as ‘blah blah everything sucks thread’. But honest and constructive feedback to help a great but struggling game improve.

The first and most obvious need is for a rating system thats ‘objective’ not ‘cumlative’. I understand some sort of rating system (hopefully an elo one) is being introduced soon. So thats fantastic. And some sort of arena season to go with it.

The second regards paid tournaments. In economics there is an expression known as the law of unintended consequences. When people pay for something it is supposed to have value. HOWEVER, because of the cost representing a barrier to entry , casuals are kept away from paid tournies. And because casuals are kept away you WONT GROW AN E-SPORT. Right now only a tiny TINY minority of players enter paid tournies and i am finding alot of trouble making one despite playing with players who were grand marshals back in the day in wow.
Get rid of the barriers to entry, if only for a while, when your content becomes very popular , it will then have value. Right now your keeping it from generating value by trying to put a price on it.

Thirdly. Progress. Alot of ppl feel they are not progressing if playing SPVP. I agree with the max level/equal gear philosophy of Spvp. IN fact i think its great.
HOWEVER. Alot of ppl feel since they earn more or less nothing to progress that they would rather be doing wvw or Pve. This is especially true of my friends who have limited playing time. Just because Spvp doesnt have progression doesn’t mean it cant progress your charcater out of SPVP. Perhaps a currency token for winning matchs that can be cashed in for Xp in lions arch. (I’m not sure howd youd want to go about this but, please go about it).

Fourthly. The current set up of hold the area flags is a limited type of spvp game play, maybe another format would be nice. Personally i’d like to see deathmatch or capture the flag. Wierdly enough the format you currently run of holding a point makes certain builds viable that would be far less useful in wvwvw. (ie caltrops on a thief). So we might see more playstyel variety in different formats .

NOW, the following are some suggestions that i myself am not sure about, just maybe to get a debate going because i’ve heard from people and read on forums alot of complaints:

Downed state. Its possible spvp would be better off without downed states and slightly faster respawns. This is especially true if you ever introduce a deatmatch. I understand with no healers requirement for them in wvww and pve. But since you wanted something that plays a bit more like a fps than an mmo in spvp, maybe this makes sense.

Secondly. Allow players to Q with there friends and teams. Even if in non tournament matchs. This would allow casual players to enter no consequence pratice time. And allow friends to play Spvp. The fact that its either tournament or nothing keeps alot of people away from praticing and leanring spvp.

I might duplicate this thread on the suggestion forums.
HOpefully we get some community reaction to see what people think. Thanks for your time.

Yeh i agree with all the stuff brought up here. I cant wait for the ranking system at the moment once you earn enough tokens to get your armour/weapons sets their is no incentive for a casual player to do tournaments, and that really doesnt take long.

Personally i dislike the downstate system, more so in 8v8 spvp because preforming the finisher is just like wearing a kill me sign. Some classes also are much better at finishing players than others.

for example Thiefs are great at getting people in the down state but because they lack stability they can be interrupted by any aoe CC or the guardians down state for example. But on the other hand they are insainly good at finishing warrior and any other class with a single target 2 ability because stealth has a low CD unlike some classes stability buffs.

Ele and mesmer are great at finishing anything because of their invulnerability skills.

Im also 100% behind you on removing the cost of entering paid tournaments , hopfully they will merge free and paid tournaments once they add a rating system. Then for example you get free paid tournament rewards untill 2000 rating for example then once above 2000 you start getting the paid tournament rewards for first place.

The irony is that requiring people to pay for the tournaments is that its preventing them from growing in popularity and generating the kind of value that a pay system would warrent.

OH, and additionally! You need to be able to play casual or informal non tournament games with teams or friends. The fact that you cant Q with your friends is just ridiculsous. I know this would imbalance the skill in regular matchs alot, but its rare that most matchs would have premades in them, and heck it might make people want to get 2gether a team.

I definitely agree w/ all of this

Nuh-nnnnn-nailed it!

Well, the biggest problem of spvp are the devs themselves. They’re most probably talented, intelligent people but at the same time very narrow minded. As much as I respect Mr J. “Tournament” Sharp (no offense intended) I think he’s to much focused, even obsessed with tournament game play (like when talking about macros he says “don’t use them, you wont get them during live tournaments” when probably 99% population won’t ever participate in such tournament). If we are to enjoy spvp in the future devs need to start thinking out of their e-sport/tournament boxes.
What they need to realize is that this game needs infrastructure that will create a big, living community that will attract wide range of players. Infrastructure that provides progression (ratings/matchmaking), integration (why there’s no toons leveling via spvp, no other benefits that can be used outside? And don’t say kitten like “it’s a separated gameplay”. Better say what are the pros of such separation as cons are huge and obvious), freedom of choice (does this game provides opportunity for a competitive play for each combination: solo, duo with friend, full group? why is it not so?).
You want to have a great e-sport game with big, developed community? Then why don’t you build some fundaments already?

“Thirdly. Progress. Alot of ppl feel they are not progressing if playing SPVP. I agree with the max level/equal gear philosophy of Spvp. IN fact i think its great.
HOWEVER. Alot of ppl feel since they earn more or less nothing to progress that they would rather be doing wvw or Pve.”

This exactly,i have absolutely Nothing to look forward to when doing spvp but ending up at top charts..and getting a random chest whenever ive played about a few hundred matches containing worthless kittens i dont want to feed any milk…you know ?

Its glad to see people posting agreement. i would have liked to get the spvp community feedback but they moved the thread here, sigh.
Still at least im on track that these suggestions are resonating.

Also @ End. Im on board with macro banning i have to say. That doesn’t concern me. BUT, tournaments would mean more if the spvp scene was vibrant. And maybe some of what i’m saying here would help that.