About Me: I’ve been playing this game on and off since the official release. I had been looking forward to it for several months before that (I’m not the sort to try and get in to a beta). I really like PvP, but I’m unlikely to ever get really good at it. I’ve played a few FPSs over the years, but WoW battlegrounds really sucked me in, and I had hoped that this game would fix all the complaints I had about that.
Unfortunately, while GW2 is a significant improvement over the bad things in other MMOs, it is really missing some of the good things from those games. I’ve been reading the forums a bit lately, and it seems like most of the upcoming changes don’t address my complaints.
I don’t know if anyone is interested in the opinions of a casual player like myself, but I really hope sPvP improves on the things listed below. However, first I’ll start off with the good things:
- I love that there is so much variety in character play style. Most FPSs just don’t specialize this much.
- I love that I can play on a level playing ground without grinding for gear. If I get beat, I know it’s because I played poorly or went up against the rock to my scissors, not because I didn’t grind for arena points. If I’m playing a warrior, and I want to give a thief or elementalist a try, I can create a new toon and be up and running in about 5 minutes (I won’t play it well right away, but it’s only 5 minutes to start). This is huge!
- I love that there is no wait for joining a game. I switched faction in WoW just to avoid the queue times. This is also huge.
- I love that there is a world outside of the sPvP games, and I love that there is a centralized match making service where all players are can join. I would probably play TF2 a lot more, but I don’t like jumping on some random dude’s server with whatever games and mods he decided to implement. I like that I can go PvE or WvW for a change of pace.
Ok, now for the criticisms:
- The maps need desperately some variety. It’s five different skins on one game. A couple of trebuchets or bosses doesn’t make enough of a difference to me. I’ve played over a hundred matches, and I’m really bored with chasing around three bases. Where is capture the flag? Where is the map with one base or five bases? How about four plus a flag? I would like a quick deathmatch map. (Ignore the rest of this post if you want, but it’s unlikely I’ll start doing sPvP again if this doesn’t change. )
- The pickup games (not tournaments) desperately need a tiered ranking system. Score me however you want, but match me to people who play at my level.
- I would like to be able to join games with a friend on my side. I understand the aversion to premades, but there has to be a way to make this work.
- Would like my random pickup games to rotate players from the pool. If I’m joining some random game, I don’t want to continue playing with those same random people the next game.
- There should be some reward that benefits my toon outside of PvP. It’s really just a number to chase, but it gives me an incentive to win. I’m sure some people are motivated by vanity gear, but I don’t care about that. I think karma points are probably the right choice. Give the lowest tier a single karma point for winning and zero for losing – this is to discourage the botters. As you rise to higher tiers, increase the reward exponentially – bots aren’t smart enough to play against players and can’t rise through the tiers, but it’s motivating to players.
I saw the recent news announcement from Colin Johanson, and while he touched on the match making and rewards part, I didn’t see anything about new game types (something other than three bases). I know that there are people who care about the following things, but I’m not one of them:
- Custom arenas doesn’t do anything for me. On the off chance that I get invited into one, I’m just going to be annoyed that I don’t know the rules.
- I’d probably only check out the spectator thing a few times as a novelty. If I want to learn the subtleties of a given play style, there are many write-ups and videos on the web.
- Tournaments mean nothing to me. I have a hard time getting one other person to play with, and as a casual (bad) player, I’m not going to get on any teams any time soon. It seems like ArenaNet wants tPvP to be the real game, and sPvP is just for practice, but to me – sPvP is the real game.
Anyways, I’m sure some people will agree with me, and I know I’ll get some stupid comments from the PvP elitists. However, I felt the need to vent my frustration at the missing things which keep this from being a really great game.