Guild Wars 2

Hello dear reader and welcome to,

4 points why guildwars 2 PvP will never sustain growth.

To start things off with, Guildwars 2 is a beautiful game, lovely PvE, And has a few of the most balanced PvP in any MMO out there. With that said let us delve deeper into why exacly i decided to make this post.

I am a PvP guild leader, and i am expressing my concerns here for seeing members just outright quit PvP for some of the descisions Anet has made in the PvP area of the game.

There are, like with allot of games, a few things that are generally unfair and not fun. This is not really an issue. If it was maintained and balanced correctly when something is dominant or when problems arise.

The main reason for why i made this post is to talk and discuss about why there are no frequent balance changes. And even more importantly. Why stuff that is broken will not get fixed eventho theres a huge team behind anet of developers and the likes who could potentially do just that.

Lets get into the meat of things.
The invisible bug.
If such a thing would arise in a gold making scenario, Anet would seize to stop all the ways to abuse said bug, ban people who abused it and shut it down in less then a week. By tweaking and fixing it. Even going as far as to just prevent you from entering the bugged areas (Note the Hall of Monuments bug)

Why is Anet not focussing on or even acknowledging this probem? Any decent developer would atleast notify there community. But as it stands i see massive amounts of people talk about it thinking that its a hack. Wich is simply not true. filing false reports. And even worse, toxifying games and making new people who enter PvP for there first time just outright quit. This is not the way to create a healthy PvP enviroment and it will stop PvP from being seen as a ‘good’ game.

balancing the game.
The game is balanced only on meta builds. Traits have no reall diversity. And if you want to compete with the best, you better get a Meta build because anything thats not close to meta, is not close to challenge. Ofcourse you can tweak a meta build to your liking. But in general theres only synergy between a few traits and a few options to choose from. Reall creativity is not allowed in competetive PvP.

Listening to the community
I have yet to see any competetive spirit not in for trolling, actually like skyhammer. Most games on this map are either hilarious for your team because you rolled the right classes. Or downright frustrating, making you want to destroy a keyboard or 2 because you know you cannot win, you cannot stop it. And there is nothing you can do about it when that one guy who voted skyhammer with his turret engi setup camps the skyhammer. Another problem wich kills the game at any low/medium level of skillplay. Making people leave after they see it happen to them and never look back on PvP. It also promotes disgusting flaming and raging.

Rock papper scissors balance
One thing the devs in the PvP side of things seem to disregard and think is good for balance is the Rock Papper Scissors balance. Some classes just cannot win versus other classes. At all. No matter how big the skillgap is between them. This is not a good trait of a competetive game where you can only play 1 class at a time. And also outright kills the fun for a brunt of players. I understand balancing classes is a daunting task and this might just be the only way howto slowly crawl to a balanced game. But add the entire notion of 1 balance patch every X months. And you now have a game where you will never progress or see improvements against certain classes unless you dedicate your time for a long period of time and actually witnessing the rare occasions where PvP is getting rebalanced.

personal finishing words
I have my personal biases versus Turret engineers and Shatter mesmers. Because any soloqueue or 1v1 with one of the 2 results in a disadvantage for the brunt of classes or even just a straight up unwinnable situation as others (thiefs come in mind versus turret engineers)

Thanks for reading. And i hope Arenanet will change there stance on these 4 points. I as a pretty hardcore PvPer hope my guild can thrive without people raging out or straight up leaving after there first few games losing to unwinnable situations.

And here’s why you are wrong.

Invis bug is recent and not exactly rampant. I have yet to see and invis person myself. Plus Anet tends to fix those things within weeks once they identify the bug.

Your point about them balancing the game only on meta builds is so far from the truth considering patch notes that it isn’t worth going further.

Skyhammer isn’t in Ranked. So what was your point?

SobeSoul.6910:

And here’s why you are wrong.

Invis bug is recent and not exactly rampant. I have yet to see and invis person myself. Plus Anet tends to fix those things within weeks once they identify the bug.

Your point about them balancing the game only on meta builds is so far from the truth considering patch notes that it isn’t worth going further.

Skyhammer isn’t in Ranked. So what was your point?

Invis bug has been reported over 2 weeks ago first time on reddit. I have been invisible in a custom PvP game myself a week ago, and when i was playing yesterday i saw an ele going invisible, who gladly had the decency to relog so he would become visible.

The idea of poor communication of them recognising or working on said problem is at fault. The first case shouldve been the last case and Anet shouldve put up stickies everywhere showing they are working on it.

The comment on them not focussing on meta builds has no comments at all except you saying ‘no’. Thats not how you discuss. Thats not how you should try to convince me. I am still forced to go d/d ele if i want to role an ele at all competetively.

Just because skyhammer isnt ranked, should not make you be forced to play it in unranked. its a horrible map, and horrible map design. and should be removed alltogether from the entire game. Untill they fix classes that are clearly favoured.

I play unranked to start my day up, warming up sortof. If i get skyhammer in my first game (wich happened today actually) It stops the entire competetive spirit, and need to even play more. There is no point in it being forced in unranked at all.

Go read patch notes from balance patches from last year’s April 15th patch to now. They didn’t balance around meta builds. If they did rangers wouldn’t have been buffed.

Do you think two weeks of an invis bug with a smaller development team trying to identify the source of the coding error is unreasonable? I played AA for a few months, and I’m not sure if they even fixed straight up hacking issues yet let alone bugs in their game and it has been out since August or September. Anet cares about these things whether or not you think they do.

You played Unranked. I rarely play Unranked because I specifically don’t like CY, Skyhammer, or Spiritwatch much. It’s your choice if you play the map or not when you have the option of playing Ranked.

SobeSoul.6910:

Go read patch notes from balance patches from last year’s April 15th patch to now. They didn’t balance around meta builds. If they did rangers wouldn’t have been buffed.

Do you think two weeks of an invis bug with a smaller development team trying to identify the source of the coding error is unreasonable? I played AA for a few months, and I’m not sure if they even fixed straight up hacking issues yet let alone bugs in their game and it has been out since August or September. Anet cares about these things whether or not you think they do.

You played Unranked. I rarely play Unranked because I specifically don’t like CY, Skyhammer, or Spiritwatch much. It’s your choice if you play the map or not when you have the option of playing Ranked.

Yes, they made other classes available for play, but they did not fix traits so classes like the elementalist could actually play other stuff except d/d in competetive play. Like i also noted, im not calling out for them for not trying to balance it, its the frequency thats almost non existant. Of said balance. All classes by this time should have allot more creativity and availability in there traitsets.

Second, The entire ordeal with them not communicating is where im comming from, not the entire notion they will never fix it. I am not going to compare it to a mediocre game like AA because i know Anet is better then that. I just showcase how PvP gets the short end of the stick, while any update like SW chestfarming, the devs where noting every day on amber chestfarming and keeping us up to date with it.

There is no option if i dont feel at my 100% competiveness and i want to maintain a solid ranking. Unranked isnt hotjoin, it should be exacly the same as ranked but without messing with scores. Or atleast give us the option to veto certain maps to remove them for good in our unranked matches.

There are a few s/f eles who play competitively. The problem with diversity in builds is mostly the playerbase using metabuilds, not that Anet itself is buffing them. Look at DD ele. It was actually nerfed a bit.

If they fix the invis bug faster than the queue bugs then I’m happy.

Ranked isn’t really any difference than Unranked except a leaderboard that is being tested. If you choose Unranked, you know you have the chance to get a map you don’t like. I don’t feel any pressure to warm up before queuing Ranked. The competition isn’t that much better than Unranked.

SobeSoul.6910:

There are a few s/f eles who play competitively. The problem with diversity in builds is mostly the playerbase using metabuilds, not that Anet itself is buffing them. Look at DD ele. It was actually nerfed a bit.

If they fix the invis bug faster than the queue bugs then I’m happy.

Ranked isn’t really any difference than Unranked except a leaderboard that is being tested. If you choose Unranked, you know you have the chance to get a map you don’t like. I don’t feel any pressure to warm up before queuing Ranked. The competition isn’t that much better than Unranked.

The player base plays meta builds simply because they are considered the best builds. thats why they are used mostly in the competetive scene. If your trying to make a new build, you will always be at a disadvantage.

All pro teams who actually preform play d/d ele. nothing else. s/f doenst get top ranked.

Invis bug literally kills matchmaking and pvp in generally its the worst kind of bug you could wish for in a competetive enviroment. Anet shoudl at least aknolwedge it.

The thing is, pugs in ranked are terrible. just terrible. they ruin your ranked score. and in general its a stupid call from anet to make unranked 3 out of 7 maps bad maps where there is no reall competition. Skyhammer topping them all.
Ranked is very different, people are ussually fully premade and if you arent you will lose all games.

You can’t talk about “competitive PvP” and then use Skyhammer as your example…

1-4 because it’s a meme and anet use a ouija board to balance

Czerny.6530:

You can’t talk about “competitive PvP” and then use Skyhammer as your example…

Please elaborate? The idea is to remove skyhammer from unranked. So it gets more competetive. Because as it stands there is literally no point in it being there at all.

I can see the bugs, but I was expecting the bugs where you can’t stomp. Otherwise I was expecting game modes, balance updates, and matchmaking. Oh or the leaderboard.

If you want a competitive queue, there you have Ranked Queue. There is no point in removing a map from Unranked, which is a Queue more serious than hot-join (custom arenas), but not competitive because that is the purpose Ranked Arena was created.

Balance is a trickier thing than you let on. It isn’t like they haven’t taken steps to reduce the need to play all Eles the same. They specifically reduced the cooldown on attunements and reduced the potency of arcana’s passive reduction to try to lessen the need for arcana, it just simply wasn’t enough. Not being enough isnt the same as not trying. They have limited resources and unfortunately, knowledge has grown a lot but the issues of classes are often deeply rooted into the initial designs of the classes and arent easy to fix. Any major fixes to actually correct issues (like perma stealth, arcana reliance, necro defenses and death shroud) would be really hard for players to handle. In a way, their hands are tied to making HUGE changes, but they do what they can.

Balance isn’t ‘that’ bad… They could leave everything the same on one class, and change something seemingly unrelated and poor builds suddenly become useful. Sort of like Cele engi, if I’m not mistaken. People run the meta, other people try to beat the meta, things shift around in usefulness.

5.) Game modes like conquest does not favor casuals. Conquest requires rotation knowledge, gut feeling, and point/map awareness.

If all casuals had to do was kill people, then it wouldn’t make people rage so much. One way to fix this is if Courtyard was a separate que and not “point-based” but more so like when someone is downed, they don’t spawn anymore and it continues until one side is dead.

BlackTruth.6813:

5.) Game modes like conquest does not favor casuals. Conquest requires rotation knowledge, gut feeling, and point/map awareness.

If all casuals had to do was kill people, then it wouldn’t make people rage so much. One way to fix this is if Courtyard was a separate que and not “point-based” but more so like when someone is downed, they don’t spawn anymore and it continues until one side is dead.

Lol We’ve been asking for 2v2/3v3 annihilation Arenas for ages. :P

6.) Turret engineers

BlackTruth.6813:

5.) Game modes like conquest does not favor casuals. Conquest requires rotation knowledge, gut feeling, and point/map awareness.

Conquest can be fine for casual players, it is just GW2’s implementation which is “e-sports” which makes it difficult for casual players.

For example I used to play Rift, and at least when I played, most PvPers favourite map was a conquest map (The Codex), but it was much more casual friendly for a few reasons.

Firstly 3 of the 4 capture points were very close to each other, so you could see all three of them at once, which was obviously easier for casual players, not on TS together, it lessened the amount of the communication, didn’t require rotations in the way GW2 does, etc.

Secondly the centre point ticked for more than the others, so it gave a very obvious, simple strategy for casual players, keep your home point + the centre point = win.

Thirdly the capture points themselves made things more casual friendly, there was none of this having to switch in and out of a point to prevent decaps, the points were just simply flags like the buffs you get on Temple of the Storm.

So overall it was more balanced towards fights, but still with some level of objectives / map awareness, etc, and it was more popular than other maps / modes which were more fight centred that got pretty dull / tedious / one dimensional because of that.

There is no doubt that the GW2 type conquest is more complex, introduces a higher skill cap, etc than the Rift version, but it is not casual friendly, which is part of the problem with GW2 PvP, you can have fun if you enjoy absolutely mindless crap like hotjoin or if you can queue as a team, but for anything in between those it is the least enjoyable PvP I have ever played in an MMO, which is why I haven’t played it for a very long time.

People need to stop crying about meta builds. There either IS a synergy between traits/runes/utilities/sigils or no synergy at all and then builds make no sense. As far as I’m concerned, they’ve done the balance just right. Only thing they need to tweak (nerf) are people capable of dealing 1k+ condi damage per second while they run from you and reapply as soon as they’re cleansed and turrets. The thing is, whatever way they move balance around, the best players will always find a way to pump out the most efficiency and BAM, the meta is back and in full swing.

The rock, paper, scissors argument is just dumb. Some classes are meant to lord it over some other classes and vice versa, but then you’d only be talking about 1v1s. The only time you run into 1v1s is when you’re roaming or when you decide to rush far alone while they enemy team is fighting your team on mid. In that case, you need to understand that your setup and live with your decision. If you run a staff ele and complain that you get destroyed by a thief or ranger, or you’re a thief who complains about guardians when you can easily run away and choose other fights, then you need to L2P. You have to understand that alot of PvP is done in groups and that 1v1 scenarios shouldn’t matter if every player is covering their ally. A great piece of advice a friend gave me was to play as if you’re carrying the team. If everyone plays like they’re trying to carry, they’ll be playing with their 100 and you should be rolling through the other team.

Skyhammer and other trolly kitten makes me cry, but oh well. Just stay outta unranked or rush the hammer as soon as the match starts and keep the kittenes off it. Also, what is this invisible bug of which you speak of?

Think you should go about learning rock, paper and scissors if you don’t have friends that can play them…

or even just rock and paper.

You’ll pretty much win everything then by that logic.

Phaeton.9582:

or even just rock and paper.

You’ll pretty much win everything then by that logic.

or even just turrets

rock paper TURRET.

ErazorZ.5209:

SobeSoul.6910:

Go read patch notes from balance patches from last year’s April 15th patch to now. They didn’t balance around meta builds. If they did rangers wouldn’t have been buffed.

Do you think two weeks of an invis bug with a smaller development team trying to identify the source of the coding error is unreasonable? I played AA for a few months, and I’m not sure if they even fixed straight up hacking issues yet let alone bugs in their game and it has been out since August or September. Anet cares about these things whether or not you think they do.

You played Unranked. I rarely play Unranked because I specifically don’t like CY, Skyhammer, or Spiritwatch much. It’s your choice if you play the map or not when you have the option of playing Ranked.

Yes, they made other classes available for play, but they did not fix traits so classes like the elementalist could actually play other stuff except d/d in competetive play. Like i also noted, im not calling out for them for not trying to balance it, its the frequency thats almost non existant. Of said balance. All classes by this time should have allot more creativity and availability in there traitsets.

Second, The entire ordeal with them not communicating is where im comming from, not the entire notion they will never fix it. I am not going to compare it to a mediocre game like AA because i know Anet is better then that. I just showcase how PvP gets the short end of the stick, while any update like SW chestfarming, the devs where noting every day on amber chestfarming and keeping us up to date with it.

There is no option if i dont feel at my 100% competiveness and i want to maintain a solid ranking. Unranked isnt hotjoin, it should be exacly the same as ranked but without messing with scores. Or atleast give us the option to veto certain maps to remove them for good in our unranked matches.

Your completly wrong about the eles. There are a ton of EU players using staff which is why the eu commentators find it wierd they never see any NA players using anything but d/d

You want the truth? NA players overall dont engage in new builds within a team concept. Its why the abjured got rocked but EU who has tons of teams play unique and different builds but still stay within the team concept.

You also have a ton of people who just arent any good coming on here constantly complaining about turret engies and other half decent builds they cant beat. News flash, if you running 5 vs 5 alot in ranked your gonna run into at least 3 engys and you better L2P if you want to win.

@OP:

You are correct around some things and wrong about others. Things like the invisible bug are temporary and aren’t going to kill things for people.

What DOES kill things for new people.
1. Lack of a balance team. They update stuff so infrequently and when they do, they don’t fix the main issues.
2. Horrible solo experience. Yes, it is about a team conquest, but new players don’t start with team. They soon learn it isn’t fun to get wrecked by premades.
3. Poor matchmaking. Very closely tied to the previous post, but the matchmaking is not very good. It is definitely worse than it before the new system.

Those 3 items are what will prevent the growth of the game.