Guild Wars 2

The problem: PvP is generally not accessible to newcomers. As a result, population is quite low. This makes matchmaking difficult and tends to make queue times longer.

There have been a couple of attempted solutions;

Making one class noticeably stronger each patch round. I suspect this is partly meant to help newcomers.

In the stacked matches of s2 and s3, newcomers came in with an average or better mmr. If things worked well, this would mean that at least part of the matches were stacked in favor of the newcomers.

Sadly, both solutions are short circuited by the community. People bandwagon to the strong class, destroying it’s usefulness as a booster for newcomers. In s2 and s3, experienced players used the advantage of a new account to farm easy wins.

Proposed Solution;

Create a booster for new PAID accounts in pvp. This consumable booster would be strong enough to give a noticeable edge to newbies, giving them a taste of success. Since it would be for paid accounts, it would not feed into the culture of exploiting and farming by more experienced players.

-edit- Hand this booster out to all paid accounts with , say, less than 1000 games. (this would preclude both my main and alt accounts ) This would have the effect of drawing people in to pvp and giving them a couple of relatively successful matches. There ought to be a net gain in population.

The problem with PvP is that it doesn’t retain players because it’s so awful. Shiny wings brought in a ton, but most got frustrated and will never touch it again.

Exactly why I propose the booster. Give the newbies a strong edge so that they are “well blooded.” In other words so that they are successful in early matches.

The new people left because they got stomped without mercy. If they had a grace period where they were boosted and won a few..they might decide to stay.

Newbies already have a boost in the form of MMR matchmaking matching them with other newbies.
Seriously I’m not kidding, I started this game right before HoT and won the first 5 games I played.

sPvP has a high turnover rate because many of the core mechanics don’t come into play until higher levels of skill, which mean that much of the depth is completely invisible to new players.

This is one of the worst ideas ever, all they need to do is implement a Tutorial new players have to complete that goes over Roles, Main Objectives, Optional Objectives, Rotations, and Map Awareness. These are things that at the basic level the UI/AI could do. Oh and the bigger things no more above average Mmr for new accounts, make an actual League/Ladder that means something and can’t be grinded out, that means no safety nets, and to fix the Matchmaker so no more class stacking.

But making a booster that is essentially a form of limited Pay to Win and Gives them a false sense of accomplishment and worth for when they no longer have the crutch.

@Crinn

I don’t agree. The low population and the way the matchmaker is set up seem to match newbies with top players in an attempt to make “balanced” matches.

The problem is that it’s hard or impossible to quantify. Is an esl quality player worth 2 noobs? 3? What about the effects of synergy that diminish rapidly with new players?

To a certain extent, Solo/duo queue will mitigate the synergy issue.

As a sidelight, I throw out this idea: Suppose there were variable team sizes? 7 noobs vs 5 experienced as an example?

@Blaquefire

First, I completely agree that class stacking should be eliminated in ranked. It was eliminated in ESL with good effects.

A tutorial would be amazing and I have promoted that idea in past posts. Sadly, I don’t think ANET is willing to invest the development resources. There used to be a tutorial, though it did not cover rotation. There is also a practice area with class representative dummies.

When I first entered Eye of the North in GW1, I was given a quest to teach me how to position and use henchies. B&S actually calls players to training sessions and they are taught combinations by an npc friend from the introductory session.

As to safety nets. They were needed, since the progress toward the backpack was based on pip progression. Too many knockbacks would have driven away even more people than the matchmaking did.

As to making the leaderboard “mean something”; Well, I think that the only possible means of doing that would be to force all solo ranked play. In each of the past 4 seasons, people have walked to legendary on pre-made farming. Oddly, many of those were among the ones claiming that “Legendary” rank was a mark of skill.

-edit- You complain that my idea of a booster is “pay-to-win.” My counter argument is that HoT is pay-to-win. If the booster were restricted to paid accounts, it would have the effect of giving players initial success in pvp. Hopefully, this would encourage them to keep playing.

Ithilwen.1529:

@Crinn

I don’t agree. The low population and the way the matchmaker is set up seem to match newbies with top players in an attempt to make “balanced” matches.

“Low” and “top” are subjective terms that can mean anything and everything or nothing at all. You’re using meaningless rhetoric.

As a person who went through the new player phase not too long ago, it doesn’t happen. At no point during my early days did I feel like I was matched above my skill level. And in the entire year I’ve played this game I have only had a few matches where I felt like I was out of my league.

The problem is that it’s hard or impossible to quantify. Is an esl quality player worth 2 noobs? 3? What about the effects of synergy that diminish rapidly with new players?

ESL players do not play against new players. The MMR gap will never allow it.

The system is fine and needs no changes.

Crinn.7864:

ESL players do not play against new players. The MMR gap will never allow it.

The system is fine and needs no changes.

Though I agree with everything else, high mmr players have to play with somebody. I’ve played with and against every single person who goes soloQ and has competed in the esl. That doesn’t mean i’m anywhere near their level, i’m just saying no one else is and the system can be very flawed when calculating mmr.

I don’t know why I try. Everyone intelligent quit GW2 PvP a while ago.

To re-iterate, the gameplay in PvP sucks. You’re not going to retain players until it stops sucking. Everything else is secondary. What new players can’t learn quickly is when to re-group and how to coordinate. You can’t make that into a tutorial.

The two main reasons for suck are:
1. Extreme power creep which makes face-rolling a handful of builds overly successful for most skill levels.
2. Bad matchmaking and rating system which can’t match similarly skilled players quickly.

Its easy:

Give Pvp a privat Trainingsareal! like on gw1
So we can get a dps-tests, Heal-test, movement-test buff-uptime more Npc on different difficulties and so on.

Why a Trainingsareal? Cause it doesnt matter how balanced the game will be, as long the comunity is unbalanced!

we have different level of knowledge about the game, we have different klickrate (that means sometimes 1-6 skills more in a sec then the other guy), not all players got an optimum keyboard layout and more. We need to get the differenses smaller. So we can say the gamers that train together for 3-hours a day, have a good chance to be a pro-league team.

Thats the reason why unbalanced games like Pokemon works and Guildwars 2 atm dont do

The problem with PvP is, 50% of the players lose – that’s always the case, no matter what.

And let’s say the new accounts would get a 50% stat boost, nah let’s make it 100%

That won’t help against a good rotation

In this block block block inv inv evade evade move out heal heal move in block block block inv inv game?

The new player all just a toy of veteran in this brainless system.
Do you want to play a game that you do not make any damage to enemy !?
I can say: New player NO any chance

PVP before HoT is fine. But after HoT, this just a suck game like WoW.

@Tiefsee

I think the solo/duo thing will mitigate the rotation advantage somewhat. It will be more difficult to get entire teams on TS.

Also, with fewer players locked up in teams, the matchmaker will have more to work with. Hopefully the net result will be better matches.

If that’s the case, ( and that’s a big “if”, ) then a stat bonus to new accounts would be effective.

@ Crinn.

I was making an observation. Based on what I’ve seen playing PvP. I think that the system uses players well above the average level of a team some of the time. This looks to me like an attempt to balance the teams by adding one very strong or weak player to a team.

xeonage.1253:

I can say: New player NO any chance

PVP before HoT is fine. But after HoT, this just a suck game like WoW.

PvP before HoT = HoT with 0 core builds… i mean, that’s the equivalent. Anet promised false prophets.

Ithilwen.1529:

The problem: PvP is generally not accessible to newcomers. As a result, population is quite low. This makes matchmaking difficult and tends to make queue times longer.

There have been a couple of attempted solutions;

Making one class noticeably stronger each patch round. I suspect this is partly meant to help newcomers.

In the stacked matches of s2 and s3, newcomers came in with an average or better mmr. If things worked well, this would mean that at least part of the matches were stacked in favor of the newcomers.

Sadly, both solutions are short circuited by the community. People bandwagon to the strong class, destroying it’s usefulness as a booster for newcomers. In s2 and s3, experienced players used the advantage of a new account to farm easy wins.

Proposed Solution;

Create a booster for new PAID accounts in pvp. This consumable booster would be strong enough to give a noticeable edge to newbies, giving them a taste of success. Since it would be for paid accounts, it would not feed into the culture of exploiting and farming by more experienced players.

-edit- Hand this booster out to all paid accounts with , say, less than 1000 games. (this would preclude both my main and alt accounts ) This would have the effect of drawing people in to pvp and giving them a couple of relatively successful matches. There ought to be a net gain in population.

WOW so much /facepalm in this post.

first of all season 1 and season 2 has seen increase of people playing pvp. because of the influx of PVE players wanting to get the new shiny wing. (you should know youre 1 of them).
2nd the problem with longer Q times is not entirely on lower population. (yes ,spvp is the lowest population amongst gw2 game modes) but Q times are affected by so many factor. Matchmaking, time of day you play, and yes a small population. but can you blame them when most of us already achieved what league system has to offer after 2 seasons?
let me tell you about alt accounts i have one and they are consider paid accounts because like many players, who bought gw2 core account when it was just $10, and i used them to pvp and reach legendary. you just suggested that my account who btw has less than 1k games get a booster that will give me such an advantage? also making the spvp a pay to win?
good players regarding what accounts they use will always win against bad/new players, thats just how it works. youre main complain is w/ the MM. which is impossible to solve because there is NO code or algorithm that can compute how skilled the player really is.

Maybe I’m just really cynical, but I feel that GW2 is too far gone, in regards to PvP anyway. Anet were trying to get in on the MOBA scene with the PvP, but even with the fun mechanics of the game, it just didn’t come close to being as good as what other PvP focused games out there offer.

Obviously no game is perfect and they all have their own issues but man, GW2 just seems to be getting worse and it’s become so messy.

Ithilwen.1529:

Exactly why I propose the booster. Give the newbies a strong edge so that they are “well blooded.” In other words so that they are successful in early matches.

The new people left because they got stomped without mercy. If they had a grace period where they were boosted and won a few..they might decide to stay.

Yea, they might stay for a few days until the booster runs out and they realize they actually don’t know how to play PvP well, and end up getting destroyed anyway. All the booster would do is delay that, which isn’t a good solution to increase the PvP population.

Is this a joke? Why not just keep new players in a separate queue

The problem isn’t newcomers but bad balancing. This is what you get when you try to force specific roles down peoples mouth’s.

The Ultimate Rule Should be: EVERY CLASS SHOULD BE ABLE TO BEAT EVERY OTHER CLASS IN A 1v1 in a reasonable amount of time. And an added perk would be that it doesn’t require a specific build.

For instance if I get Rid of Ryu’s Fireball In street fighter I can still win against another opponent. But GW2 is different it has dependencies and these dependencies overshadow real time skill which is absolutely toxic to a competitive game.Can you imagine how terrible it would be in Street fighter if you did a sweep kick or upercut and it didnt knock them to the ground or if it didn’t do any damage because they had an invulnerable popped. Street Fighter would of gone bankrupt if they had implemented such things.

Every game that is competitive and attracts all types of competitive people has a few similar characteristics.

1. You can kill any of the enemy players if you are good enough and do it in a reasonable amount of time

2. If your team isn’t that good you can carry your whole team

3. Team Work isn’t always stronger than the power of the individual. You want to talk about balance causing new comers to leave then lets talk about how Team Synergy is abusive in gw2.

@Cobrakon

You’re going a bit too extreme:

1. Yes, 1v1 needs to matter, but you’ll never be able to balance every decent build in GW2 in 1v1. One build will always have an advantage over another given equal skill. What you need to ensure is that one build doesn’t have an advantage without a disadvantage, the balance isn’t disproportionate, and that higher skill always beats lower skill regardless of the balance at even skill levels.
2. Individual skill can’t be the sole driver; group play has to matter. The team which works well together and are good mechanically should be able to beat a team of the best 1v1 players who have bad coordination.
3. Being able to carry is important, but it can only go so far. If it causes either of the first two to be violated, those should take precedence.

@Exedore: he is extrem, but on the wrong way:
The game is good enouth balanced, but the players aren´t.

So a big part comunity (yea even that part that plays the game over 5 years…) don´t know basics like:
- theyr class
- the speciality of theyr class
- the speciality of the other 8 classes
- keyboard bind
- maprotation
- move/skill rotation
- how to get a good klick-rate

But a new player don´t need that much and later he woud have the choise what/how much he wants to know. An other problem is, that most players don´t know how to get bether/ they can´t get bether (e.g. cause rl).

On the opposite we got pokémon with over millions variations, so one of the unbalanced game. but why does it works compeditiv? EASY! cause the compeditiv scene know how to get better and what combinations are good.
If guildwars woud be a pokémon game, it woud be like noone nows that you can catch other pokemons by using balls, so you cant win the game cause you cant use all hm.
and we still didnt start to speak about compeditiv…

thats why i think privat Trainingsareal woud be a bether solution.

@Cobrakon:
its easy to say something is bad balanced..
On your point:

This is what you get when you try to force specific roles down peoples mouth’s.

you have the choise to use splash or hyper beam, what you want to use?
splash? ok you did nothing…
hyper beam? you destroy the enermie

see the problem about much diferent skills? if you want to be compeditiv, or a good player you have to think about the game and choose your way to play it. Thats why so much players are scrimms… they now what line is usefull and bad, but they choose the bad one. Even if you get all traitlines balanced, you still have the scrimm that just use aouto-attack and nothing else.
You cant balance players, by cutting/growing theyr posibilites.

Btw. im still not talking about the perf. Build for a class, i mean more small thinks like:" i like my Kittie more then that reptiles."
or: “HoT is kitten, thats why i dont use the new elite lines.”

For knowing whats the perfect build, the players need to use class/ role index and dokument all datas (or a team that do it). All players that don´t do it, aren´t compeditiv also pro-league gamers.

@xeonage: you play the wrong game, or the reaction time is too low. Cause you can attack the enermies, not all the time but atm its 30%(rev, if he does 0 dmg or thief) to 50%(others) to 90%(ele) time of the battle, if your reactions are good enouth.
So the only one that can evade/block so long is a rev or a thief without mobillity and yea the thief dies by one cc…. oh and if its a condi thief: get retaliation and he kills himself before you go down
where is the problemm again?

@ Lord Hammer Hand

In point of fact I didn’t come to PvP for the wings. PvP was an alternative to WvW. Since I tend to play at “off” hours for my server, I was constantly facing blobs that outnumbered my side by as much as 20-1.

You assert that no system can measure player skill by algorithm and you might be partially correct in that. One of the major factors that screws up matchmaking is pre-made teams. Using off-world VOIP and organized play is an overwhelming advantage.
It makes bad players into “Legendary” players.

There are potential alternatives. For example, the MatchMaker could pick up people with similar win rates. Another viable alternative would be pure random matchmaking with only solos. In the long run this would be fair for the same reason that games like poker are fair in the long run. Everyone will eventually see the same cards.

Whatever system is chosen, it must be attractive to newcomers. To do that, there are a couple of prerequisites.

There need to be rewards large enough to attract PvE players. Those rewards need to actually be accessible to PvE players. The attempt to attract PvE players with a reward, then deny them the reward was … well it was kittened.

Incoming players need to be taught how to play. This was my reason for suggesting a booster. It would give newbies time to learn.

A series of tutorials ala’ B & S might work. A beginner’s league might work. The trouble with that is new accounts with old players taking advantage. One of the posters on this page mentioned taking advantage in this way.

New players must not be exposed to murderous odds. A friend of mine, ( a pre HoT Altruistic Heal Guardian ) came to PvP at my invitation. In the first match he was stomped repeatedly into the ground trying to camp home. The second match happened to be Courtyard and we lost 500-0. He vowed never to return to PvP and he hasn’t.

I agree that Anet didn’t do a good job of teaching new players how to play PvP, and they really should think about addressing that. However I don’t know if adding a PvP booster item is really a good solution.

I can see what you’re trying to suggest, being that it might help new players be able to survive when they first start, but I can’t see it really helping that much. They’ll get comfortable with the effects of the booster and not fully realise how to combat each class properly, then when it gets taken away and the “reality” of PvP hits them, it could very well just drive them away from PvP anyway.

Plus it could very easily get abused. What if a really good PvPer gets bored, creates a new account, gets the booster and decides to just pub stomp people all day.

I think a big part of the issue is the Conquest game mode itself. It’s not an easy mode to understand, even if you’ve been playing for a good few months, there’s still plenty you learn about about the game mode, in regards to rotations etc.

This game needs bot mode like LoL or OW has. Bots games are stupidly easy but they teach you base mechanics better than some written text. If Riot and Blizz manage to create bots that understand objectives (cap point, push payload etc.) then i think Anet can do it too. Bot games are also great for testing out builds or practice certain combos (e.g. i am extremely bad on Genji so i am spamming hard mode bot games atm to get better at it since hard mode bots have better aim than human players).

Boosting new accounts is bad. It is just like same issue we see with revs right now: the class was so overtuned for so long that when it finally saw some nerfs a lot of revs went on QQ rampage and don’t know how to pvp anymore.

Boosts won’t teach new players pvp, in fact it will spoil them and when boost runs out they suddenly get destroyed all over again. This is not how you learn pvp – you learn pvp by being detroyed by better players and learning from them and your mistakes. When i was new to game i spammed HJs until i finally started to feel somehow confident about my pvp knowledge, then i started to do ranked. I have done it in literary every single game i pvp’d in. I don’t see how boosts would have taught me anything there.

Why GW2 pvp community is small is entirely because how bad it was at launch. PvP had great community but got neglected for so long (no leagues, no rewards etc.) that a lot of people simply lost interest. The wave of population we had in s1-s2 is mainly because of pve’ers wanting to farm backpack, they will never stick to this game mode for long time no matter what you give them. Add to it how poorly leagues were implemented because Anet wanted to make it noob friendly….

I like the idea of a “bot” mode.

But this “booster” for new players really is a horrible idea.

I think maybe a separate queue for beginners would achieve your objective. There would be a list of achievements that would be met before you could queue in general population matches. Things like capture 6 points in a match or something like that. Basically replacing the rank 20 requirement for ranked arenas.

PvP needs a tutorial. The amount of players that do not know the basics is crazy, people don’t known how to, or the importance of calling a target, how to focus on a called target, even though the game tells them to! How important. It is to stomp, and not try to dps someone down when someone on your team is down also. The amount of times I’ve seen people down someone and not stomp so there down team mate gets stomped is just sad. Reading the mini map and rotation. And finally, understanding that conquest is not TDM. People chasing others around the map to get a kill over playing the game mode correctly is also just sad, and people wonder why there is so much salt in PvP.

I think the Bot Game mode is the best idea for a tutorial I’ve heard yet.

That and matchmaking needs to be improved significantly. To whit; putting one “good” player with 4 randoms in an attempt to make a “balanced” match simply is not going to work.