Guild Wars 2

DISCLAIMER: I do not want to sound elitist, I apologize If I do so. I am also not defending Anet at any given time.

As an avid PvPer since launch, I hate to admit it but the forums are full complaint threads that its getting to a point that its sickening.

Now if you really think about it, Anet/PvPers are on a lose/lose situation if they ever fix the leagues:

FIRST SCENARIO

• They make the leagues a true representation of skill and will impose stricter sanctions of division advancement like pip loss from amber, no more shiny rewards, etc.

What’s gonna happen?

CONS:

• Longer ques for everyone since the pvp population will dwindle
• Insert complaint here

PROS

The leagues will become what it should be, like LoL. Take LoL as an example, the only reward you get for the reaching the top division is prestige(aside from loading screens or icons). Nothing else, and as a PvPer, I am okay with that. I PvP because I want to become more skillful and play with skillful players

SECOND SCENARIO

• They still put the shiny reward for the leagues, make it access friendly for everyone so that anyone can compete

What’s gonna happen?

CONS

• Same scenario right now, endless complaints of “I can’t get the wings, so unfair, etc”
• Complaints of “I cannot progress, etc”
• Very borked Matchmaking system since the leagues will be still grindable
• Hence not a true representation of skill

PROS

• Bigger PvP populaion
• Faster ques

FINAL THOUGHTS: As a PvPer, I would not care if I lose a lot, because I am here to improve from my mistakes, I do not care If don’t get the shinies. I PvP because I enjoy it. So yeah no matter what anet does its still gonna be kittened up for them, Let’s admit it PvP Population is so small that making changes would be difficult.

Any thoughts?

I disagree with your assessment that making leagues skill-based will reduce PvP pop, and the inverse that putting shinies will increase PvP population.

On your final thoughts. Improving from your own mistakes and bettering yourself is great, but what about the rest of the team the matchmaker put you with.
I’d love to be teamed with and matched against players of my skill level, that isn’t even close to happening now.

SolarDragon.7063:

I disagree with your assessment that making leagues skill-based will reduce PvP pop, and the inverse that putting shinies will increase PvP population.

I honestly believe all that Anet needs to do to increase the pvp population is just making the gameplay skill-based and as polished as possible. (balance would be nice too) Then players will grow the community themselves.

Look at freaking smash bros melee. Nintendo made a really enjoyable and technical fighter (although the technical part came by accident). However Nintendo never pushed melee into being competitive. They actually actively fought it because it was supposed to be a “party game”. However the playerbase was so passionate that melee ended up exploding.

Why is this? It’s enjoyable to play and it has a high skill cap. (It’s also a lot of fun to watch)

Overwatch is the same way. Literally the only content they have is online multiplayer but the game has exploded. Why? It’s clean and polished and it’s a lot of fun to play. (Blizzards huge marketing budget prolly helps too)

I honestly think guild wars has the potential to grow into a stronger more prominent pvp community. The combat is really fluid and feels unlike anything else I’ve played, but there is a bunch of stupid stupid holding it back. Skillful play is not rewarded enough due to passive crap. (Passive invulns, Passive CC, Passive heals) You can land a perfect burst on someone only for them to get away due to passive nonsense. Many meta builds lack a sense of trade off. You should never be able to get super high dmg with high sustain and mobility. I feel that a sense of risk and reward is important for any competitive game. All of this on top of the fact that there are a bugs that continue to persist despite being in the game for years. I’m looking at you stuck bug. (I swear if i have to /dance in the middle of combat one more time………)

TLDR: Polish the game. Make it enjoyable. Then the pvp community will grow by itself. Also PASSIVE PROCS DO NOT MAKE THE GAME FUN.

(Btw you don’t get “shinies” in smash bros, still people play the game for hours on end to get better. YOU DONT NEED SHINIES TO ATTRACT PLAYERS. The only players you’ll attract with shinies are ones who will be fickle and not invested in the game itself)

SolarDragon.7063:

I disagree with your assessment that making leagues skill-based will reduce PvP pop, and the inverse that putting shinies will increase PvP population.

I’ve been pvping since launch and I saw people come and go, both pro and unskilled players.

I have no idea why you say the population will not decrease, you only get near acceptable que times now in ranked because its accessible to anyone. Remove that and the only ones who will stick is the true pvpers which are sadly a minority now

I wish that people will accept the game for what it is and learn the game. There will never be a perfect scenario for everyone. STOP the complaints!! If it doesn’t sit well with you, then it is likely a reflection your crappy skills. There are so many whiners in this forum………..please move on, maybe, just maybe PVP isn’t for you. There is plenty of room for players in the PVE world.

My opinion might be rather unpopular, but I’m someone who has only recently joined the Ranked Season and would like to give the view of a “scrub/noob”. Firstly, allow me to start by saying that I am enjoying the competitive play for a change, and have discovered I prefer PvP a lot more than PvE. That being said, I never would have tried Ranked matches without the initial incentive of the backpiece or if there were no safety nets for pips.

I reached Ruby league with 101 matches played – 68 won, but stopped there. Without the safety net for pips, I see little point in trying to climb further. I struggled to climb the lower leagues because I would gain one pip, then lose it the next game. I had to await winning sprees to further myself into the divisions. Without these safety nets, I would still be on zero pips because of my near 50/50 win one lose one ratio. Now while a lot of PvPers believe I should be in Sapphire still, I definitely (and I am sure many others) would never have tried PvP in the first place or stuck with it if I couldn’t move off of one pip.

I know the safety nets are disliked by many players by allowing the mode to be ground out, but at the same time, what is wrong with that? I thought PvP was about finding a match and enjoying the battle? Forcing us “PvE noobs” to grind game after game can only improve our skill level and advance our play for the next season. We can only get better after all. If GW2 ever did remove all safety nets, I am certain the queue times would increase drastically because I know I would stop. I enjoy PvP, but I could just enjoy Unranked if I had nothing pushing me to queue for Ranked with no reward.

I feel like I should mention I used to only play Unranked because I didn’t believe I was good enough for Ranked (I have 300 games played prior trying Ranked). I apologize if players like myself are ruining your experience, but we’re trying to enjoy our experience too. I have been downright disgusted with some of the mail/whispers to me after game (regardless of my performance). The PvP community will never grow if no one can test the waters. Everyone has to start from somewhere. There are some fantastic ideas on how to fix balancing and matchmaking issues on this forum that I can only hope the developers have considered, but I think players have to do their part also in being patient with us members newer to PvP. I cannot speak for everyone, but since my introduction to PvP, I have been enjoying this game a lot more. I have even been looking for a Guild/Team to push my skill level further.

Tatori.7938:

Snip

Thank you for writing this Tatori. A few of my friends who refused to do pvp before they saw people wearing the back piece have started to give it a shot now. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the current league system except for the current lack of a player base and the need to break up losing teams (keeping groups that are winning together is fine). With the way the current league system is designed, it is biased to allowing people to progress. The main issue is that it doesn’t stabilize to provide fair matches after it has initially separated out those who have the ability to progress faster.

StickerHappy.8052:

DISCLAIMER: I do not want to sound elitist, I apologize If I do so. I am also not defending Anet at any given time.

As an avid PvPer since launch, I hate to admit it but the forums are full complaint threads that its getting to a point that its sickening.

Now if you really think about it, Anet/PvPers are on a lose/lose situation if they ever fix the leagues:

FIRST SCENARIO

• They make the leagues a true representation of skill and will impose stricter sanctions of division advancement like pip loss from amber, no more shiny rewards, etc.

What’s gonna happen?

CONS:

• Longer ques for everyone since the pvp population will dwindle
• Insert complaint here

PROS

The leagues will become what it should be, like LoL. Take LoL as an example, the only reward you get for the reaching the top division is prestige(aside from loading screens or icons). Nothing else, and as a PvPer, I am okay with that. I PvP because I want to become more skillful and play with skillful players

SECOND SCENARIO

• They still put the shiny reward for the leagues, make it access friendly for everyone so that anyone can compete

What’s gonna happen?

CONS

• Same scenario right now, endless complaints of “I can’t get the wings, so unfair, etc”
• Complaints of “I cannot progress, etc”
• Very borked Matchmaking system since the leagues will be still grindable
• Hence not a true representation of skill

PROS

• Bigger PvP populaion
• Faster ques

FINAL THOUGHTS: As a PvPer, I would not care if I lose a lot, because I am here to improve from my mistakes, I do not care If don’t get the shinies. I PvP because I enjoy it. So yeah no matter what anet does its still gonna be kittened up for them, Let’s admit it PvP Population is so small that making changes would be difficult.

Any thoughts?

STOP blaming the players. They are not the problem! Lay the blame on the league system. The leagues were meant for progression and to bring in a new audience to PvP, basically for PvE players. The thing is…they failed.

PvE players are unhappy they can’t progress and PvP players are unhappy they’re game mode is ruined. It’s not PvE or “casual” players’ fault that PvP is crumbling.

Skill-based ranking aka 2013-2014 was sustaining mid tier pvp players for more than 1 season.

This is not the case since season 1, 2 and 3… Those players I had the honor to play with and against in 2014 are not playing anymore… but they did for Season 1.

Why?

Skill-based is always a progressions. When you have better player, your skill based rank will lower… more things to work on.

Grind-based is always finished, when the objectives is done. No more incentives to play it.

So, season 1, 2 and 3 got peak usages for the first 3 weeks than become stale and dead at the end.

Creating this “divisions” of the player bases is bringing death to it.
Creating “motiviations” to “grind” for a “something” bring end to it.

Ranked queue, should be able to “dynamically” give incentives to all players to play the queue for “all time” without “death” and “end” into it.

I really appreciate the dev trying to bring pveer into pvp, we have a strong pver base that play really good pvp… but Test Season 1 and 2 should had been enough to let them understand they were loosing their “mid tier harcore pvper” that passed more than 2 years into it… to players that play this mode for not more than 1 month before doing something else.

Resume short:
1- Skill-based ranked progression > Grind based ranked progression to keep your hardcore players in the game.
2- Rewards should be grindable to give a carrot to none-hardcore (aka casual) players.
3- Make sure they (casuals) have a lot of rewards to constantly want to come back to it.

Please, never again, give a carrot to a player in giving him something he can “finish” and be “done” with it. PVP is not an item you can put into a garbage can. It’s a lifestyle.

A Fracking Lifestyle.

joshmossas.6542:

*TLDR: Polish the game. Make it enjoyable. Then the pvp community will grow by itself. *

i think u got this part rite and i would agree there

they need to focus on making pvp fun, someone said it like this

make it fun
>more players pvp since its… fun
>better population means better Q times
> better Q (and more people) means more people will try to organize as teams
>more teams means more competition in the top tourneys
>more competition + more people can increase the drive for people to actually watch the matches
>more people watching matches means we can start to think of esports again

Just delete the entire stupid league system and stick a normal ladder in there. Every time anet tries to “fix” it they just make it worse. You can’t polish a kitten .

You get a static kitten if you polish them.

Ubik.8315:

Just delete the entire stupid league system and stick a normal ladder in there. Every time anet tries to “fix” it they just make it worse. You can’t polish a kitten .

The only reason people care about the divisions – they want the glider!

I won’t care less if i would be diamond or saphire – if it won’t be for the glider!

Skill based ranking system for long term viability.

Ive said it before and will say it again. The biggest mistake ANET made was putting a Legendary PVE item as a grindable reward in a PVP League.

If they had made it a Skin and made leagues skill based we would be in a much better place.

Spartacus.3192:

Ive said it before and will say it again. The biggest mistake ANET made was putting a Legendary PVE item as a grindable reward in a PVP League.

If they had made it a Skin and made leagues skill based we would be in a much better place.

Exactly.

The leagues and the legendary back item were meant for PvE players. By being inclusive to PvE players at PvP players’ expense, the leagues alienated BOTH.

Just abolish leagues and bring back the leaderboards!