Guild Wars 2

Why can a game like Dota 2 offer no guaranteed rewards for winning matches, still retain a higher playerbase than GW2’s pvp mode?

That’s right, you can easily play 10 games, taking 6-10 hours, and receive no material rewards for your game account.

Are rewards really the problem for GW2’s pvp? Food for thought.

I have said many times, the reward is not a problem, the important thing is :
Their game is not fun
*Dance in circle for 4 year…
*Ridiculous skill design… att and def in same time braindead spam spam spam….
*Spam everythings…
*Condi system is a failed design, new player killer, new blood killer…. if you want to join the game, pls learn from wiki for a night, may be for a week.
*Horrible matching because low population beacuse the game not fun beacuse most people feel the game is unfair and no skill….
*Horrible matching make the game not fun then kill other veteran….

Ramoth.9064:

Why can a game like Dota 2 offer no guaranteed rewards for winning matches, still retain a higher playerbase than GW2’s pvp mode?

That’s right, you can easily play 10 games, taking 6-10 hours, and receive no material rewards for your game account.

Are rewards really the problem for GW2’s pvp? Food for thought.

GW2 suffers from a wide range of problems; rewards is a small part of it.

If we purely look at rewards:

If we play a lot of pvp you get 100s of boxes filled with “crap”, stuff you whont need as a pvper. The pvp specific items you can aim/grind for are basicly reskins of stuff every can get.

If i play arenagames in wow for example i play to get gladiator and receive a gladiator mount. A cool unique pvp specific reward.

It is combination of many things that lead to low pop in pvp atm.
Ofc rewards are one of those but also
- absolute lack of attention in first years which made main pvp community actually quit and never come back -> death of pvp of this game started here
- took too long to create actual ranking system + seasons
- still extremely wonky matchmaking and ranking system punishing players for playing alone/playing more matches etc. You just play lottery and the game constantly tells you you suck by reducing as many points per match as you would gain for 3 wins (in which you need to hardcarry like crazy too) -> pvp turned into very unrewarding abusive job -> people quit or barely play anymore.
- 5 years? Still no consequences for cheating/expoiting/griefing/afking in matches.
- class balance is just ahhh…… they threw any common sense out of the window for the sake of sales.

They should stop focusing on rewards and start working on making gameplay fun and diverse.

Right now it is boring and stale and they keep adding more rewards in an attempt to draw players into the gamemode. While it is somewhat working, it is drawing the wrong type of players that are healthy for the game mode.

I remember a time when i was broke as hell but i still had 10x more fun because I enjoyed the combat.

Because Dota is a better game…
It has people actually working on it, unlike GW2 team which focuses mostly on PvE
it has better matchmaking
It has a higher skill ceiling and a lower skill floor
It carters to much bigger audience
It’s better balanced and has more build variety

Also:
It’s a moba made by valve, most people have never heard about GW2 PvP
It’s free (you can’t play GW2 PvP without HoT)
90% of hardcore PvP players don’t give a kitten about rewards
Also it does offer you a lot of rewards during the compendium times and most ppl who play more than 2-3 games a week buy these

Look at smite for example. The game doesn’t give you anything but skins for characters everyone can use. There are virtually little to no rewards in that game but people love it because improving your gameplay is rewarding enough.

Guild Wars 2 is essentially good rewards with bad gameplay atm. It should be amazing gameplay with good rewards.

Not to mention Smite has frequent, meaningful patches, new content every few weeks, and fantastic developer communication.

And everything Ncolas said is spot on.

Let’s not forget that dota 2 and smite are completely different games, designed for team vs team matches AND in different format. Gw2 pvp has problems but let’s not try compare these games. Gw2 has to balance skills and traits with pve which is so completely different that problems are bound to appear in their initial design. One could argue that the problem with gw2 pvp is its simplicity and lack of working game modes besides capture and hold.

Hey guys, what was an eles role in season 3?

Healbot you say?

What is its role now?

Healbot you say?

Do they have any other builds that compare?

Ow stop throwing stuff at me!

Repeat with all classes.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I love the fact this game is dead now, not going to lie.

I told everyone for years that power creep made the game not fun. Guess what…now everyone accepts this as a fact.

Hilarious to see everyone quit. This game isnt fun at all, that is all there is to it. Spam wars 2 where everyone does massive damage whilst being perma invulnerable.

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

They got rid of expereinced designers who understood risk and reward and understood how to create a game fun to play with and a game where other people were fun to fight against. They replaced these people’s power with those with no design experience.

Awkward moment when i agree with Henry.

Dota 2 promotes a competitive environment. Gw2 promotes a casual one go figure.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I love the fact this game is dead now, not going to lie.

I told everyone for years that power creep made the game not fun. Guess what…now everyone accepts this as a fact.

Hilarious to see everyone quit. This game isnt fun at all, that is all there is to it. Spam wars 2 where everyone does massive damage whilst being perma invulnerable.

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

They got rid of expereinced designers who understood risk and reward and understood how to create a game fun to play with and a game where other people were fun to fight against. They replaced these people’s power with those with no design experience.

Are you sure they kicked the class designers out? I believe they just simply moved them to elite specs 2 after the rework to traits was done and the last elite soec shipped.

zealex.9410:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I love the fact this game is dead now, not going to lie.

I told everyone for years that power creep made the game not fun. Guess what…now everyone accepts this as a fact.

Hilarious to see everyone quit. This game isnt fun at all, that is all there is to it. Spam wars 2 where everyone does massive damage whilst being perma invulnerable.

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

They got rid of expereinced designers who understood risk and reward and understood how to create a game fun to play with and a game where other people were fun to fight against. They replaced these people’s power with those with no design experience.

Are you sure they kicked the class designers out? I believe they just simply moved them to elite specs 2 after the rework to traits was done and the last elite soec shipped.

Robert Gee is still at Arena Net as far as I know, I know he did a lot on Mesmer, Necro and I think Warrior for HoT and they were all very popular on release. I believe he also worked on the original classes when GW2 was being made but don’t quote me on that.

zealex.9410:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I love the fact this game is dead now, not going to lie.

I told everyone for years that power creep made the game not fun. Guess what…now everyone accepts this as a fact.

Hilarious to see everyone quit. This game isnt fun at all, that is all there is to it. Spam wars 2 where everyone does massive damage whilst being perma invulnerable.

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

They got rid of expereinced designers who understood risk and reward and understood how to create a game fun to play with and a game where other people were fun to fight against. They replaced these people’s power with those with no design experience.

Are you sure they kicked the class designers out? I believe they just simply moved them to elite specs 2 after the rework to traits was done and the last elite soec shipped.

They are all talented people i am sure but it is about filtering ideas. Jon sharp leaving was a huge blow for the game as he appeared to be the filter which stopped power creep. He wanted classes and specs to have weaknesses. When he left then the filter was gone and we got bad ideas making it into the game. Jon sharp was always talking about how they didnt want to give warrior too many cleanses or they would become unstoppable for example. Now they just give everything to everyone and the result is bad gameplay

You’re comparing apples to oranges. Dota is a purely pvp game. All of their programmers and staff can focus exclusively on that and their player base doesn’t have other game modes to fall back to.

apharma.3741:

zealex.9410:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I love the fact this game is dead now, not going to lie.

I told everyone for years that power creep made the game not fun. Guess what…now everyone accepts this as a fact.

Hilarious to see everyone quit. This game isnt fun at all, that is all there is to it. Spam wars 2 where everyone does massive damage whilst being perma invulnerable.

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

They got rid of expereinced designers who understood risk and reward and understood how to create a game fun to play with and a game where other people were fun to fight against. They replaced these people’s power with those with no design experience.

Are you sure they kicked the class designers out? I believe they just simply moved them to elite specs 2 after the rework to traits was done and the last elite soec shipped.

Robert Gee is still at Arena Net as far as I know, I know he did a lot on Mesmer, Necro and I think Warrior for HoT and they were all very popular on release. I believe he also worked on the original classes when GW2 was being made but don’t quote me on that.

If they were well received then this game would not have rapidly declining incomes. The only conceptually well designed hot classes are repear and dragon hunter as they are replacement effects. Guardian still has 3 virutes, they are just different to dragon hunters 3. Same for repear and necro. So theoritically those classes can be balanced and necro can be as good as repear as it is just different skills.

On the other hand, chronomancer was terrible design because it is a strict upgrade on mesmer. Why would anyone play mesmer now when you get an extra skill with chronomancer? They wouldnt and they dont. This is clear power creep that invalidates base mesmer and it is terrible design. It also leads to people quitting because there is much less build variety now as you have to take the chronomancer line and whatever synergises with that.

All other classes except dragon hunter and repear are the same. The elite specs were upgrades not alternatives. And dragon hunter and repear ended up being much stronger than the base classes anyway. However that issue can be balanced out. You can never balance mesmer with chronomancer.

unfortunately, condi killed this game.

Lordrosicky.5813:

zealex.9410:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I love the fact this game is dead now, not going to lie.

I told everyone for years that power creep made the game not fun. Guess what…now everyone accepts this as a fact.

Hilarious to see everyone quit. This game isnt fun at all, that is all there is to it. Spam wars 2 where everyone does massive damage whilst being perma invulnerable.

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

They got rid of expereinced designers who understood risk and reward and understood how to create a game fun to play with and a game where other people were fun to fight against. They replaced these people’s power with those with no design experience.

Are you sure they kicked the class designers out? I believe they just simply moved them to elite specs 2 after the rework to traits was done and the last elite soec shipped.

They are all talented people i am sure but it is about filtering ideas. Jon sharp leaving was a huge blow for the game as he appeared to be the filter which stopped power creep. He wanted classes and specs to have weaknesses. When he left then the filter was gone and we got bad ideas making it into the game. Jon sharp was always talking about how they didnt want to give warrior too many cleanses or they would become unstoppable for example. Now they just give everything to everyone and the result is bad gameplay

I dont know about that
The only think i remember from back then , is that a longhaired streamer dude (that looked like he was ‘’banging the shield’‘) was crying towards the devs that they should toned toned down all classes to the warrior lvl before they gave him the improved Healing Signet +25% movement speed trait + selfhealing traits + cleansing Ire) and something about hurting rooftops or walls or something .
Heck i remember cleearly (when i used to play my brothers account) when the community asked that Dev to increase the survibility of Necros , and instead gave it the 4 sec Drummfire , but later on cave to the demands of the community …. and now we have a monster that has 16k hp Death Shroud + a lesser copy of the Signet Warriors’ Healing , rather than the intented 8k + simple healing spell

Ehich both good of a think , because i cant immagine all classes to be like the unbuffed Warrior as a good thing
Better options , equals most fun gameplay .
(I my self i am w8ing for a combo of Sniper+evades on my Thief)

Lordrosicky.5813:

apharma.3741:

zealex.9410:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I love the fact this game is dead now, not going to lie.

I told everyone for years that power creep made the game not fun. Guess what…now everyone accepts this as a fact.

Hilarious to see everyone quit. This game isnt fun at all, that is all there is to it. Spam wars 2 where everyone does massive damage whilst being perma invulnerable.

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

They got rid of expereinced designers who understood risk and reward and understood how to create a game fun to play with and a game where other people were fun to fight against. They replaced these people’s power with those with no design experience.

Are you sure they kicked the class designers out? I believe they just simply moved them to elite specs 2 after the rework to traits was done and the last elite soec shipped.

Robert Gee is still at Arena Net as far as I know, I know he did a lot on Mesmer, Necro and I think Warrior for HoT and they were all very popular on release. I believe he also worked on the original classes when GW2 was being made but don’t quote me on that.

If they were well received then this game would not have rapidly declining incomes. The only conceptually well designed hot classes are repear and dragon hunter as they are replacement effects. Guardian still has 3 virutes, they are just different to dragon hunters 3. Same for repear and necro. So theoritically those classes can be balanced and necro can be as good as repear as it is just different skills.

On the other hand, chronomancer was terrible design because it is a strict upgrade on mesmer. Why would anyone play mesmer now when you get an extra skill with chronomancer? They wouldnt and they dont. This is clear power creep that invalidates base mesmer and it is terrible design. It also leads to people quitting because there is much less build variety now as you have to take the chronomancer line and whatever synergises with that.

All other classes except dragon hunter and repear are the same. The elite specs were upgrades not alternatives. And dragon hunter and repear ended up being much stronger than the base classes anyway. However that issue can be balanced out. You can never balance mesmer with chronomancer.

Someone whould not pick chrono if the next elite soec revolved around a mechanic that current mesmer/ chrono lacks.

dota 2 has all free content, has rewards for playing (you clearly havnt played dota), and spends millions of dollars on events and tournies.

Not only do they give rewards, but they can sell the rewards for real world cash. What are you smoking?

duster.7013:

dota 2 has all free content, has rewards for playing (you clearly havnt played dota), and spends millions of dollars on events and tournies.

Not only do they give rewards, but they can sell the rewards for real world cash. What are you smoking?

Have you seen the drop rate after the community market patch? its dismal. You can easily go 10 games without getting a common item drop.

i might not be a great player (not that the rewards are based on performance) but you can hardly say i don’t play.

https://www.dotabuff.com/players/11022733

What they do get is tradeable for real world items, can be gambled, can be sold via lootmarket, and every inch of the game is free.

duster.7013:

What they do get is tradeable for real world items, can be gambled, can be sold via lootmarket, and every inch of the game is free.

Yes, but if you read my original post, I’m saying the drop rate is completely terrible, yet they have no issue retaining players. All the while GW2 is increasing the AT rewards. The rewards are not the problem.

It’s hilarious seeing people blame “casuals” for pvp being ruined. “Casuals” are just here for the loot. Can you blame them? That’s all we ever offered them. They’re here because of rewards and dailies, that’s it. They’re not ruining pvp.

If anything killed pvp, it’s the “hardcores” and tryhards in these forums that tried to push this “competitive” scene down everyones’ throats. They’re still doing it. Even as esports has kicked the bucket. Instead of “How can we make this game more fun to play?” it’s “How can we make this game more competitive?”

I have not played Dota 2. ANETS pvp community is small and shrinking because:

Matchmaking and the general attitude have pushed too many people out.

I don’t queue ranked anymore this season. There’s no point in joining when I know that I will most likely be fed to a high ranking team. The rewards are too low to make it worth being a punching bag.

Bottom line: the “competitive” focus has done a great deal of damage to the credibility of pvp ( particularly in the seasons of deliberately uneven matches.) ANET continues to use a bracket in automated tournaments that virtually guarantees lower ranking teams will be curb stomped in the early rounds by top ranked teams.

The main inducement for playing at this point is rewards because the match quality isn’t up to scratch.

zealex.9410:

Someone whould not pick chrono if the next elite soec revolved around a mechanic that current mesmer/ chrono lacks.

Yeah, that. Anet realized, probably almost immediately, that trying to balance elite specs with core specs was futile and balancing them against each other was the way to go. If HoT had included two elites per profession, a lot of people would probably not have complained so much.

JTGuevara.9018:

It’s hilarious seeing people blame “casuals” for pvp being ruined. “Casuals” are just here for the loot. Can you blame them? That’s all we ever offered them. They’re here because of rewards and dailies, that’s it. They’re not ruining pvp.

If anything killed pvp, it’s the “hardcores” and tryhards in these forums that tried to push this “competitive” scene down everyones’ throats. They’re still doing it. Even as esports has kicked the bucket. Instead of “How can we make this game more fun to play?” it’s “How can we make this game more competitive?”

No where have I said this game needed to be more competitive to retain players. It needs to be more fun. I’ve addressed the issue of the high barrier of entry many times before. There simply isn’t enough of the necessary tools available to make a new player feel welcome, that preceeds any sort of toxic behavior.

Any experienced player will have a limit of tolerance to being matched up with a total beginner over and over again and losing. Its not the newbie’s fault but it doesn’t help arenanet doesnt do anything about it.

JTGuevara.9018:

It’s hilarious seeing people blame “casuals” for pvp being ruined. “Casuals” are just here for the loot. Can you blame them? That’s all we ever offered them. They’re here because of rewards and dailies, that’s it. They’re not ruining pvp.

If anything killed pvp, it’s the “hardcores” and tryhards in these forums that tried to push this “competitive” scene down everyones’ throats. They’re still doing it. Even as esports has kicked the bucket. Instead of “How can we make this game more fun to play?” it’s “How can we make this game more competitive?”

Pretty sure none of so called “hardcore” players and “tryhards” asked for powercreep that alienated a lot of players from pvp nor for the wonky system that creates extremely imbalanced matches and absolutely frustrating experience. It is not fun for anyone to watch same thing over and over again: your team getting spawn farmed because they are divisions below enemy or you spawn camping enemy because…. they are divisions below you. On top of it at the end of the match all you see is +0 points or -60 – who would even want to pvp anymore with such system? Let’s assume you juys say whatever, idc about about ranks, i just want some fights! Jk, due to wonky MM you rarely ever get good matchups.

There is no elo hell. If you can’t get into Platinum you are simply bad.

JTGuevara.9018:

It’s hilarious seeing people blame “casuals” for pvp being ruined. “Casuals” are just here for the loot. Can you blame them? That’s all we ever offered them. They’re here because of rewards and dailies, that’s it. They’re not ruining pvp.

If anything killed pvp, it’s the “hardcores” and tryhards in these forums that tried to push this “competitive” scene down everyones’ throats. They’re still doing it. Even as esports has kicked the bucket. Instead of “How can we make this game more fun to play?” it’s “How can we make this game more competitive?”

I agree. If anything more people playing is always a good thing. The problem isn’t that there are beginners, it’s matchmaking. These players should be going up against similarly skilled people, not being placed on teams with more seasoned players.

Ithilwen.1529:

I have not played Dota 2. ANETS pvp community is small and shrinking because:

Matchmaking and the general attitude have pushed too many people out.

I don’t queue ranked anymore this season. There’s no point in joining when I know that I will most likely be fed to a high ranking team. The rewards are too low to make it worth being a punching bag.

Bottom line: the “competitive” focus has done a great deal of damage to the credibility of pvp ( particularly in the seasons of deliberately uneven matches.) ANET continues to use a bracket in automated tournaments that virtually guarantees lower ranking teams will be curb stomped in the early rounds by top ranked teams.

The main inducement for playing at this point is rewards because the match quality isn’t up to scratch.

I’m not sure what you expect. A low/mid silver team entering an open tournament isn’t going to do well.

The rating system is much more credible than the original system.

Ramoth.9064:

Why can a game like Dota 2 offer no guaranteed rewards for winning matches, still retain a higher playerbase than GW2’s pvp mode?

That’s right, you can easily play 10 games, taking 6-10 hours, and receive no material rewards for your game account.

Are rewards really the problem for GW2’s pvp? Food for thought.

the problem is the game is anti fun
the game is locked to one build for all classes

Condi meta

JTGuevara.9018:

It’s hilarious seeing people blame “casuals” for pvp being ruined. “Casuals” are just here for the loot. Can you blame them? That’s all we ever offered them. They’re here because of rewards and dailies, that’s it. They’re not ruining pvp.

If anything killed pvp, it’s the “hardcores” and tryhards in these forums that tried to push this “competitive” scene down everyones’ throats. They’re still doing it. Even as esports has kicked the bucket. Instead of “How can we make this game more fun to play?” it’s “How can we make this game more competitive?”

How has that ruined anything? I got bored babbys first mmo pvp years ago, I play this game because it has the best mmo pvp.

zealex.9410:

Someone whould not pick chrono if the next elite soec revolved around a mechanic that current mesmer/ chrono lacks.

Which is quite likely why we can expect a repeat of what they did with HoT: intentionally crank up the power creep to secure sales.

Mirage > Chrono >> Mesmer

JTGuevara.9018:

If anything killed pvp, it’s the “hardcores” and tryhards in these forums that tried to push this “competitive” scene down everyones’ throats. They’re still doing it. Even as esports has kicked the bucket. Instead of “How can we make this game more fun to play?” it’s “How can we make this game more competitive?”

Don’t you feel that ‘how can we make this game more fun to play’ resides primarily with the devs? After all they have control of everything mechanical in game as well as oversite of the player base for cases of griefers/troll/cheaters, etc.

I’m curious what you believe is on the player side that people are missing that ‘would make this game more fun to play’?

Rewards are not the issue with pvp. However the rewards (most of them) are quite kitten tbh

PVP needs a rework imo, and one that puts every class on the same level and also destroys meta’s. What I mean by that is, you can put together a build you like and it works, no more needing to follow trends to be able to keep up with the rest of your team because of builds.

CC needs to be fixed as nothings more annoying than dodging 2 cc abilities to be caught by the third in which only a thief can dodge and you can not since youre out of endurance which follows into a cc chain and by the time that chain ends your dead due to the ridiculous amount of burst damage everyone is capable of. Hell my necros’ lich form can down 3 ppl who aren’t paying attention before it ends……..im sorry but that’s too much damage too fast

Back to the rewards

I like the transmutation charges we get (ik at somepoint they’ll be useless to) and the tomes which helps with leveling alts, I get to pvp which is what I mainly play for anyway and get a free level boost, what more can I ask for?

Yet again as much as I despise looking back at it, WoW did aa good job in terms of pvp

You cant cc spam someone due to diminishing returns and it doesn’t cost an ability to break cc meaning you have more freedom on what abilities you want to use and hotkey

WoW’s reward system is also better, not only is there a constant grind and fair reason to get that seasosns pvp gear, but pvp offers more than just reskins as rewards.

Anet did something innovative and I applaud them for that because in this day and age finding a developer with creativity and originality is extremely rare, however just as they got some things right, they also got somethings wrong

I’ve learned that on the course of last few weeks that mid/top plat and legendary are quite a stagnation with a few exceptions of people getting into 250.
Yesterday I had a guy in my team who came to help me on point as I fell and I was downed along with my enemy (we were dang equally skilled, on the same builds). He came with a member of opposing team who started to rub his downed teammate while my dude was cleaving him with auto attack. Didn’t try to res me nor stomp. In that situation it was a common bronze/silver mistake and the best of it? He had Ruthless Legend title, I think I don’t have to explain more.
Anyway, as I mentioned earlier “stagnation” is what is happening right now. In the evening when there are more legendary players I’ve started to lose more and more matches to the point I had to stop to not get myself out of T2 of plat. I tried solo, duo, a break to wait a few queues, nothing helped as my team was curb stomped to bits.
I couldn’t blame my team, I knew some of these lads and they were good. But it was the stack of legendaries against mid platinum. No for real… one time my team was 4 plats and one legend against 5 full legends. Why is it happening? Why did the system stacked it like that?
Now another story from pvp that took place recently. We had a neat team, a legend on 41 rank and two other dudes in 250 including me (though I fell past the 250 border now :<). It was Forest of Niflhel and we were in blue. Just as we came out of the entrance to mid, we got 4v3 (or 4, can’t remember) ambushed and our necro got torn to shreds within 2 seconds (yes, two seconds). Overall it was a bloodbath. Nevertheless we tried to fight and it was heading in the right direction until one of our revenants decided not to fight, jumping around for no purpose. We thought that he was a troll and didn’t know how to fight properly as he died a couple of times very easily (he was that 41 rank tho). So we lost it and moved on to another match (I was duo back then). Next game we saw that reve on the opposing team. I thought that we will have it easy but nah, it turned out he is a very good fighter and it appeared that we fought against 3 high ranked players. Aaaaand so we lost again. The point is, I checked this guy along with the other who was boasting on /map and all the evidence showed that the reve on 41 rank might have been a smurf (1.800 AP) while the other one boasting was on the much more higher rank with more AP. So that reve throwed our game on purpose so his dude could win, and once he got on his team, he fought mercilessly against us.

This is an example of stagnation. If we had twice or thrice the playerbase we have now, those situations would happen still, but rarely. So rarely that those people would just stop doing that. But how do we get people back into pvp? There are so many things that we can point out that are bad, but what should we really do to make it better?

Rewards like pvp skins and cloaks with ranks showing. Will get Poeple involved. You need to show Poeple the reward for starting pvp a nd what you could gain after allot of investment. At moment its only respect and to be known is only gain for effort. And that’s only enough to please a select few.
We need things like class persific chest trees and you only progress in them with a win in ranked and only unlock with a rank such as 10 20 etc and each class has his own rank and rank gain can only be gained I winning ranked. This make sit so you aim for full gear set and to get to take ranked 100 and have the last maybe a cloak or body it shows you got rank 100 on thf and it could even be a silly number like u must of won 1000 games in ranked on thf to get that. And once done you then try on a different class. Titles apart from God of pvp are un noticed as such a miner un cared about thing I am shocked Poeple still read them like they mean anything. And Llamas are lmao hahaha was they trolling us.

I would be very happy if it was like s1 pip gain loose u loose pip win u gain and at end instead of leg there is a chest with class gear.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

If the power-creep was mostly pre-HoT, why do we see so few core builds?

They got rid of expereinced designers who understood risk and reward and understood how to create a game fun to play with and a game where other people were fun to fight against. They replaced these people’s power with those with no design experience.

Totally agree. There is no concept of power level for any abilities (“Jedi curve” for Magic: the Gathering fans).

Exedore.6320:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Exedore.6320:

Pretty much. HoT power creep killed any chance GW2 PvP had. What’s more dismaying is that the power creep is still at ridiculous levels nearly 2 years after HoT’s release.

Hot wasnt the main power creep. That was the trait merge patch where they randomly merged all traits.

If the power-creep was mostly pre-HoT, why do we see so few core builds?

We see so few core builds because HoT specs gave upgrades that, when paired with the easily selectable optimal traits in each line, gave everyone their “Ideal build”. Just to define what I mean so there’s no miscommunication:

Ideal build refers to the build on a class that gives a kittenload of everything needed to be successful without having to make sacrifices. Lots of healing, support, damage reduc, mobility, damage, cc, aoe, blocks, invulns, etc. In well designed and balanced games, you could always wish for one but it’s never achievable. Anet through their trait merging made this possible once HoT was introduced because people already had 2 lines that gave them either ridiculous utility and sustain or utility and damage and then HoT depending on spec finished the job by offering ridiculous sustain or ridiculous damage.

So if you only play core then you will have most of your ideal build but not the last bit. Because of that, core will not be playable on equally skilled playing fields.

Adrenalin.5719:

There is no elo hell. If you can’t get into Platinum you are simply bad.

And here we go. Random quote of the day. Aside from that, cant you tell me what is the problem with being “bad”. Game should be equally enjoyable for poeople playing in all divisions.

If you are in top 100 or so, you may as well call everyone in platinum as trash or bad or whatever. The point is, diamond players should not play vs. silver players. It doesnt matter what skill level the bronze player posses. He should play vs. other players of skill similar to his and be completly irrelevant to people in platinum (and vice-versa).

I see prevalence among some elitist players, that people with lower skill level (where lower skill level is mostly defined as “lower from mine”) should not have anything to say about this (or any other) game and they may as well uninstall or whatever. Which is an absolute hogwash. A good PvP game should incorporate players of all skill levels. Have fun in a world of GW2 where everyone below plat are being told to GTFO.

Awe.1096:

Adrenalin.5719:

There is no elo hell. If you can’t get into Platinum you are simply bad.

And here we go. Random quote of the day. Aside from that, cant you tell me what is the problem with being “bad”. Game should be equally enjoyable for poeople playing in all divisions.

If you are in top 100 or so, you may as well call everyone in platinum as trash or bad or whatever. The point is, diamond players should not play vs. silver players. It doesnt matter what skill level the bronze player posses. He should play vs. other players of skill similar to his and be completly irrelevant to people in platinum (and vice-versa).

I see prevalence among some elitist players, that people with lower skill level (where lower skill level is mostly defined as “lower from mine”) should not have anything to say about this (or any other) game and they may as well uninstall or whatever. Which is an absolute hogwash. A good PvP game should incorporate players of all skill levels. Have fun in a world of GW2 where everyone below plat are being told to GTFO.

Finally someone gets it. Fun=/= skill. Yes, competitive balance and such should be discussed by high elo players as they generally have the best concept of it but the gameplay itself being fun or not is something every player should talk about. Take league for example (Yes I get it’s a different type of game but that has nothing to do with this comparison) players from all skill levels are encouraged by riot to give feedback regarding the fun aspect of the game. Changes are made so everyone is able to have fun but competitive balance still remains intact. Your ability to have fun in a game you bought isn’t about how good you are at it or your inability to climb a division, it’s about making enjoyable mechanics and worthwhile gameplay which is stuff everyone has a very valuable opinion on.

The problem for me is simple: I left before the end of last season, I come back for the new season and what do I see? Exact same meta as past two seasons. Nothing’s changed except they redid the PvP hub which now looks disgusting and annoying.

PvP feels stale, dead, and uncared for. Nothing ever changes.

Damian.6978:

The problem for me is simple: I left before the end of last season, I come back for the new season and what do I see? Exact same meta as past two seasons. Nothing’s changed except they redid the PvP hub which now looks disgusting and annoying.

PvP feels stale, dead, and uncared for. Nothing ever changes.

This is important feedback to making the game fun. People are tired of the same builds all the time. Anet just needs to acknowledge that we aren’t looking for more god kitten llamas and start making changes to the classes. It doesn’t have to be perfectly balanced at first cause numbers can be tweaked but there need to be changes to the classes so different builds can emerge and new metas can form.

Lets not knock the new pvp lobby, its kinda nice. I like it!

Arenanet needs to sort out their priorities (within pvp) they just don’t seem to understand player motivations.

The problem isn’t that they don’t understand player motivations. This forum is full of opinions on what drives player motivations. What anet is charged with is playing a balancing act with all these opinions and sorting out which opinions don’t work.

Well there is one consensus I’ve gotten from the forums: The game is a mess and people want to see it changed. Whether it’s complaints about matchmaking to complaints about balance or rewards people do want to see change. Now that anet has seen prioritizing rewards and matchmaking don’t work I’m hoping they’ll do something with balance.

I wouldn’t really pay much attention to official forums on the state or quality of a game. I have never seen an official forum that wasn’t full of complaining. Ever.

Also regarding elite specs, they are only a full upgrade in some cases. Such as mesmer. The reason why they are almost always used has more to dl with the fact that the elite trait line also gives access to utilities and weapons. This is something that isn’t true with core traits.

I hate mobas with no dodge mechanics in this diablo-style aerial view. I’ll stick to this, thank you. But i’m sure they’re very fun games.

Kuya.6495:

I wouldn’t really pay much attention to official forums on the state or quality of a game. I have never seen an official forum that wasn’t full of complaining. Ever.

Also regarding elite specs, they are only a full upgrade in some cases. Such as mesmer. The reason why they are almost always used has more to dl with the fact that the elite trait line also gives access to utilities and weapons. This is something that isn’t true with core traits.

Every espec is an upgrade outside of reaper really. Guardian to dh just buffs the virtues to an absurdly powerful level and still offers all the same passives and such. Now you just have extra active play options with them. They are also always taken because they cover natural weaknesses in a class. Mesmer had mobility problems and chrono gave them free move speed. Thief lacked a reliable dodge spec and daredevil gave them that plus condi clear outside of stealth and extra mobility. Ranger got a free healing form. I could go on but I don’t need to.

Also of course there will always be complaints. Nobody is ever happy with a game but looking into what is being complained about can sometimes yield answers with what needs to be done and since anet appears clueless in what they should do then maybe there should be some attention paid to the forums.