Guild Wars 2

If you have a gamemode where literally all new players make the same mistakes, something is lacking. There are two possible reasons for this:

1] The game doesnt explain itself well enough (in the form of a tutorial for example).
2] It’s too difficult for the average MMO player to understand.

An obvious example is capping homepoints with almost the entire team. An example like this doesnt happen occasionally sadly enough. Its literally every single new player that does it. Enter a hotjoin and youll see what i mean … and it doesnt limit itself to hotjoins either these days.

If you had to design a tutorial (preferably with limited resources), how would you do it?

- What do you want as hot topics for the tutorial?
- How would you make sure that everyone that does it or watches it w/e knows wtf is going on afterwards?

Well, most of the people don’t go into hotjoin to win, but to screw around/test builds/go kitten.

redslion.9675:

Well, most of the people don’t go into hotjoin to win, but to screw around/test builds/go kitten.

Sitting on empty points with 3 doesnt sound like screwing around or testing builds imo.

Are you explaining in /team that more people =/= faster cap? or /team who goes where for strategy?

Locuz.2651:

An obvious example is capping homepoints with almost the entire team.

I don’t think that this is caused by players that don’t know how to play conquest. They just want to get as many points as possible and capping close is an efficient way to get easy points. The problem is that the game rewards this unstrategic behaviour. Killing people in the middle of nowhere grants you the same amount of points as decapping a point – but is way more interesting than standing around on a circle on the ground waiting for it to be captured.

If things like rezzing allies or defending points would grant more points then more people would do these things.

However, I think that this is a problem mainly seen in hotjoin, so I wouldn’t care too much about it. Hotjoin, as already mentioned, is a place for farming rank (lulz), PvErs farming achievements/doing dailys or testing builds and stuff.
If you want to avoid these problems you have to play s/tPvP. People there usually have at least a bit of strategic understanding and also read the chat and watch/ping the map.

I cannot count the number of times this has happened to me:

The game is just about to start. I’m in hot join testing some build or another, and there is only 1 other player on our team so far. I move towards the gate leading to our home node. The other player follows me, so I turn and move towards the other gate instead. The other player turns and begins following me again. By the time I finish telling the other player not to follow me to an empty node, the other team is already capping both far and mid (or home).

I use hotjoin for build testing, not to teach players basic splits or how conquest works. ANet, please give us an unranked queue.

/rant

This absolutely has to do with there being no tutorial or adequate explanation of the game. So many times, I see people double-capping, running into outnumbered fights, not rezzing, or ignoring the minimap. It’s because the only tutorial the player is given is, “There are some points you need to hold to win. Go get ’em!”

Compare this to every other PvP game, where you’re given a basic-but-thorough overview of common mechanics and strategies. This is because the devs for those games actually know how their game is being played. There isn’t this disconnect between what the devs patch for and what the community is playing.

In their defense, this isn’t a PvP-only or even PvP-focused game. But if PvP is going to get better, there has to be more explanation for new players. They should be able to come in fresh and, after the tutorial, know that “home” is the point closest to spawn, “mid” is in the middle and generally where most of the fighting happens, and “far” is the enemy’s home that shouldn’t be pushed unless you’re confident. They should know that more than one person on a point doesn’t speed up capping, but also that neutralizing a point (referred to as “decapping”) is almost as important as capping a point, as it prevents the enemy team from scoring. They should know, if they just got 3/4v1’d at a point, they shouldn’t run back into that point after spawn; they should go somewhere else until everyone there leaves.

after playing countless matches, it is a safe assertion, that conquest mode is too complex for the average participant