Guild Wars 2

I know there’s tons of other threads like this and I should reply to one instead of making a new one, but I felt like venting my rage/disappointment in my own thread instead of being just another of replies, because I want this thing to be heard.

So, this is my personal opinion about what has been recently announced.

Note that I’m not a PvP focused person, and while I used to play PvE quite a lot I now limit myself to only the living world content and occasional fractal / dungeon / champion train run due to less time and other interests.
However I intended to play PvP after it evolves a little, mainly with different types of game modes (KOTH style game isn’t really my thing), looking at that Dragon rank as a final goal.
What you (ArenaNet) have announced – while looking very beneficial for PvP players that want to reach into other areas of the game, which is great – is essentially killing the desire to play PvP for me.

The biggest, and possibly even the only real problem I have with this announcement is something you have done before in PvE and are slowly realizing it’s wrong and moving away from it (or at least that’s what it seems looking at latest living world patches):

STOP REMOVING CONTENT.

Why do ranks and rewards for reaching them need to be removed? Why can’t they stay, as a lasting, permanent progression and reward system for people who don’t have enough time to actively fight for their spot on the ladder? You’re essentially telling me I’ll be able to MAYBE get halfway there and that’s it.
Why can’t the ladder system and rewards for it be built ON TOP of the ranks system, as a highly competitive element available for the best players with NEW, prestigious temporary rewards (meaning rewards that last as long as you keep your ladder spot)

I am confident you as a team are capable of coming up with new and exciting rewards for the ladder system without taking away existing content.

MAYBE the “new system you’re not ready to discuss yet” will be better what we currently have, but taking away things people have set their minds on is a REALLY bad idea.

You haven’t really disappointed me with the updates yet, but this is the first time I’m really concerned about the future of by far the best MMO I’ve played.

TL;DR Don’t remove ranks and their rewards, add new stuff to ladder rewards instead.

PS For people who want to tell me to “go grind the ranks while I can” and “go back to PvE you noob”:
Just move along. I’m sure you have something better to do.

I am a very enthusiastic pvp’er and while I understand that changes are needed, I fail to see a single reason removing rank makes any sense. This is one change that will cost the game for me if it is indeed implemented

A lot of people had complained about the rank system. It wasn’t meaningful, it took a massive amount of time to “complete” (something like 3000-6000 hours to reach rank 80), and it was achieved faster by zerging in hotjoins than by playing at high skill levels.

The new system will still have long-term aesthetic rewards, just in a different format that makes it less detached from the rest of the game, plus the “temporary” ladder-based rewards you mention.

One main problem with the old system is that it was making people unhappy with matchmaking. Since ranks had very little to do with skill, even in very close matches one side could be stacked with more experienced players. Add in the fact that the matchmaker had very real problems until recently, and you can see that people felt things were “unfair.”

All change is met with discomfort, Personally I think they could have just said they were going to implement new healing skills for all professions and I would have been satisfied. For if these heals effects are innovative they may very well change the current PvP food chain, something I’ve been craving for a long time! There are some things I disagree with-namely I feel having to leave the Mists to get anything for PvP is counter intuitive. But all in all I think some change is good and besides.. PvP feels to me like its in the spotlight for once, and PvE is sitting back and enjoying the show. This is something else that is refreshing I just hope new traits and utilities will follow closely and then new weapons for the not to distant future.

This Game may not be in “Beta” anymore but it is and will always be changing and not just it’s living world. MMORPG’s are a different breed of game as I’m sure all of you know. By all means we should express our opinions because I learn something new about an implementation that I had never considered because of someone else’s perspective on it but there is an awful lot of negativity. But I digress! I’m just glad PvP is getting attention from the Developers and as a result it’s getting a lot of attention from very intelligent Players.

All in all, a good thing has happened there’s just a lot of things happening and it’s effecting a lot of different people in a lot of different ways. Im excited by the chaos.

dont think i have posted 3 times in one day. im a casual player, log on play a few Spvp games have a laugh and log off…the reason i log back on is to see that rank bar move, and those finishers i can use. if you take this away you will loose a lot of casual players ( and yes we do spend money on the gem store to get new weapon skins for SPvp). so please for the love of…… dont mess things up