Guild Wars 2

Benefits:

1) Can make progress on glory and ranking while doing 1v1

2) More competitive

3) Easy for Dev to balance the game by watching the win rate and popular class build

Devs shouldn’t be balancing around a 1v1 gametype.

1v1 is not competitive either, it’s build wars, aka rock paper scissors

nerovergil.5408:

glory

When was the last time you played in SPVP?

Shockwave.1230:

Devs shouldn’t be balancing around a 1v1 gametype.

A pity most MMO forums seem to think this way. 1v1 could have so much potential, especially in games where players are typically expected to gain mastery and attachment to their class/character. No giant explosions of particle effects, easier to see what moves each person is doing and how it influences the match and ironically it is probably easier to balance than team fights because they are less variables at play (2 players and their abilities/builds vs 4-10 ppl in a fustercluck).

The more time passes the more convinced I’ve become that many lower quality games don’t bother trying to encourage 1v1 simply because it would highlight how badly the game’s balance actually is and not because of some grand team based vision, like they try to sell it. Much easier to hide imbalance when underperformers can be argued to “suck at 1v1 but be good in teamfights I swear”, when clearly OP idiocy can be hidden behind “but the game isn’t about 1v1 its about teamfights and i swear i can’t contribute”, or any other excuse that can be conjured from thin air that’s really hard to prove right or wrong in any direction simply because of how chaotic team battles and dynamics can be.

Course, it’s probably too late to do anything about it now, and it’d be too much work and testing to change how the game plays. The only real problem I have with 1v1s in this game are circumstances when not only one class is stronger than another but it is also fast enough to literally just sit on top of that player and shut him down completely. That’s pretty stupid. I don’t know if this is still the case, since I rarely play now, but I can remember a time when I’d play and watch people use Ele or Mesmer and Thieves were not just stronger, but also so fast that you could do absolutely nothing to defend yourself except pray that your friends babysat you. Circumstances like those are pretty unacceptable in a game like this one.

GW2 is PvP is designed around having a team. That is what the balance should revolve around. 1v1 balance is secondary, but not unimportant.