I was originally responding to this quote in a different thread and realized this needed it’s own thread. Dev team, please read this!
If you are so awesome and hate being dragged down by terrible players, then form a team or join a pvp guild. Then you can be guaranteed to have players on the team that at least deserve to be allowed in your presence. You’ll have no problem winning and jumping up ranks.
100% agree with you but truth be told, it is not as easy as it seems to maintain a guild and/or team that is based around spvp in Guild Wars 2. Mainly for these reasons:
- #1 – First you need a leader with a large amount of charisma and skill/experience to back up that charisma or players will not believe in the team and they will begin leaving, even if this leader falters on a single given day. The leader needs to have a sincere desire to teach/organize community and the patience to do it. He also must be a regular player that signs in every day for a significant amount of time or everything falls apart and it happens fast! Finding all of this in a single person or maintaining these virtues yourself, is ridiculously demanding in all aspects.
- #2 – Finger Pointing & Guild/Team jumping – Even with a good leader who can well tend to the salt mines, sometimes players form these negativities towards one another and there isn’t anything you can do to stop it from happening. This renders many different types of situations where players begin guild/team jumping. Maybe they were the least experienced player in your team and they were tired of feeling like the weak link so they go to a less experienced guild, where they can play the hero. Maybe your team had a bad night, fingers were pointed at a particular player but in the morning you see that he has chosen to leave the guild rather than accept the flaw in his game and work on it. This is in fact, a huge problem in GW2. I know people to this day, after fours years in, who still guild hop every 2-4 weeks because they are looking for that perfect team where everything falls in to place with no effort invested. It’s a noble dream, I’ll give them that much.
- #3 – Finally building a core team – Yes, with much effort invested through vigorous community organization, you will eventually be able to build a solid core team and not just with guild members, no. These are people whom get along well. These are people whom you call your “gamer buddies”. These relationships have transcended Guild Leader status, Member status or any icon in-game. Yes, with a ridiculous effort invested, you have a good solid team to finally start playing conquest the way it was meant to be played! But sometimes… people log off and never log back in and other times… new games are released and people start disappearing. Every once in awhile… people just need to find something else to do… and almost always, you find yourself dumping more time in to community organization to maintain a team, than you do actually playing the game.
I think that this right here, is why the entire scene has nerfed growth: Let’s say a player wants to play a ranked season and have realistic/practical progression. Eventually he realizes that he needs to play in a team. The problem is that conquest mode, which was designed to be played as a team, demands just as much social dynamic from a player as it does player experience/skill. The large majority of players discover that taking on social stigma directly is something they’d rather not do or simply don’t have the time for. This is why we have so many solo ques floating around and why they eventually get tired of beating their heads against that wall which divides them from organized team play and leave the scene.
I agree with you ArenaNet, that separating solo que from team que in conquest is probably not the answer at this point and it’s not that we need to leave behind conquest or anything, it’s a great game mode! but we do need something else to do.
Guild Wars 2 needs a more arcade style competitive mode. Something that doesn’t require players to take on social stigma, something that isn’t so demanding on time invested and something that doesn’t segregate the community based on voice chat usage and meta levels of community organization. But most importantly, a place where their success is not compared to the success of users who do have the time to invest in meta levels of community organization and very organized team play.
The suggestion for a beta ranked season of solo/duo only is a great start but in my opinion, you ought to try something like this, that still encourages the development of conquest game skills but also delivers the type of alternative activity that the community has been asking for:
1v1 Ranked Arena – Conquest Styled
- 3 rounds occur during this match style.
- Players begin each round on a node, which changes color and size, depending on the given round.
- During round 1, Red Node Defense Phase, the red player is given 2 minutes to devise a bunkery spec or to log in to a different character for his chance to defend his small red node as if he were doing so in conquest on a node the size of waterfall in legacy, “of course ready up button will be available”. The objective of Red Player is to survive the attack from Blue Player and defend his red node. Scoring for Red would go like this -> If Red Player holds the node red throughout the time limit but does not kill the Blue Player, he gets +2 points at the end of the round. If Red Player’s node is neutral by the end of the time limit and he has not killed the Blue Player, he gets +0 points at the end of the round. If Red Player losses the node and it is blue by the end of the time limit and he has not killed Blue Player, he gains -1 point. If Red Player dies to Blue Player during his defense phase, he receives -2 points. If Red Player can kill Blue Player during his defense phase and before the timer runs out, the round instantly ends and he is granted +3 points. Scoring for Blue would go like this -> If Blue Player accomplishes nothing at the end of the timer, no decap, no kill on Red, he receives +0 points. If Blue Player has the node neutralized at the end of the timer but has not killed the Red Player , Blue Player gains +1 point. If Blue Player has the node capped and blue at the end of the timer, without killing Red Player, Blue Player gains +2 points. If Blue Player kills Red Player, the round instantly ends and Blue Player is rewarded +3 points. If Blue Player dies to the Red Player, the round instantly ends and Blue Player receives -2 points. Each player whether on node defense or node offense, has a possible worst outcome of -2 points and a best outcome of +3 points by the end of the round. These score splits are to encourage the offense player to run DPS and the defensive player to run point holder or bunker. This should work, most of the time.
- During round 2, the positions swap and it becomes Blue Node Defense Phase. Scoring remains the same for defensive and offensive objectives. This phase begins on a small node which is blue colored and Blue Player gets his chance to defend his node.
- During round 3 Neutral Node Attack Phase, players begin play on a large neutral colored node like mid in legacy. This phase is to encourage DPS vs. DPS. There is little reward in round 3 for simply bunkering a node. Players again have some time frame to respec or log in on a different character. Scoring goes as this -> Neither player gains any points for neutral colored node by the end of the round or upon a kill. If one player manages to have the node capped in his color at the end of the time limit or at the time of a player kill, he gains +1 point in addition to the kill points but only if he is the player that wins the duel. If he holds the node his color and still dies, he receives no additional points. The other player gains no negative points for losing the node. If a player kills his opponent, he receives +2 points for the kill for a possible +3 total if he also held the node. The opponent receives -2 points for the death and the round instantly ends. If neither player dies by the end of the time limit, no points are awarded aside from the potential +1 from holding the node red or blue. It is possible during this round that neither player is awarded any points. It would need to work this way to encourage a DPS oriented round. At first I wanted to say: “If neither player dies during round 3, +1 point is awarded to whoever dealt the most DPS” but this would lead to people mostly playing safe with bunkers and trying to peck each other for a bit more DPS than the other. Again, this is a potential +3 points and a worst case scenario of -2.
- The winner of the conquest styled 1v1 is the player with the most points at the end of match.
I feel that this is an exceedingly good idea. It is a 1v1 arena style match up that doesn’t need to be broken. Because it is based on conquest style balancing, we won’t need to ban any amulets from play or ban any particular skills/builds. This can run “as is” with the rest of the game balance. The entire dynamic here would be giving people the casual 1v1 arcade style experience they’ve been asking for, with no demand to take on social stigma, no segregation between voice chat/non voice chat organization and no comparison of one’s silent solo success vs. those who have the time to get deep in to the community’s activities. All the while, hinting and silently pointing it’s finger to conquest as the big game to play if one was ready and wanted to be involved. This would also plainly be a great way to provide players combat practice for conquest in general. Let me tell ya, the community could use it.
But seriously guys, and please don’t take this as an insult:
“Theme parks with many rides attract more people than ones with fewer rides”
I don’t see how this couldn’t apply in the same way when it comes to gaming.
Give spvp more to do.
~ Feel free to give all feedback/criticism