Guild Wars 2

With the other topic, I wouldn’t mind having a topic for discussing one of the most obvious and sometimes but not often enough mentioned problems with new game modes. That Development topic will have any specific discussion drowned out by people just posting more game mode ideas, people posting the same game mode ideas we’ve seen, and 4-5 different discussions trying to gain attention.

How do we handle new game modes potentially splitting the player base

In GW1 we had hero battles, team battles, random battles, HA/TOPK, GvG, fort aspenwood and jade quarry, alliance battles, etc.

There were several reasons, and while it is certainly not the biggest contributor, one of the obvious ones that we can try and solve more easily than others is simply how to deal with players being split across so many game modes. GW1 helped reduce this problem most with the double reward weekends.

How can GW2 avoid this problem?

• Are the alternative game modes simply something rolled into the same map rotation as the current maps? This would either limit build variety as people have to bring a build that is broad enough, and can’t attempt to specialize for a map too much. It would limit map variety as well, as each map would have to support the same amount of people as other maps
• Do we simply have certain game modes out of rotation and cycle them in? What happens for the people who only enjoy 1-2 of the game modes but nothing else?
• Design some kind of weekend special to get more players into certain game modes at times? This doesn’t really solve the problem the rest of the time, and has a habit of drawing in “weekend warriors” from other game modes who simply want easy bonuses, and others having a problem with a huge influx of newer players. This may not be a problem for all, but I can already see people complaining about such things. Similarly I can see players of WvW or PvE complaining and wanting their own weekend bonuses, creating even more work.

What other options are there? is this just a necessary evil that will come alongside new game modes? Any other thoughts on similar problems?

new game types would bring more player thus not fragmenting anything.

ahuba.6430:

new game types would bring more player thus not fragmenting anything.

This. Which is probably a lot better for the PVP community as a whole rather than see that player base you worry about being segmented, dwindle down into nothingness because of a very stale meta dictated by what comes out of the latest patch.

It isn’t as simple as “new modes = more people, problem solved”. If you have 10,000 players right now, and implement one more game mode, it would need to bring in another 10,000 players alone to not screw up our already desolate PvP scene.

Each additional game mode also has a harder and harder job to pull its own weight, as it has diminishing returns. The next game mode after that is pulling from a reduced number of players to add to PvP. The game mode after that is even more reduced, and on and on.

Seriously, just look at GW1. Adding new game modes simply did not solve any issues of not enough people, it created a lot of the problems, especially with things like JQ/FA/AB all essentially drawing from the same groups of people.

if you keep this game mode you will at best maintain these 10,000 players. Spvp needs something new, they need to take a risk and if they come up with something really good, like they are supposed to, then there is nothing to worry about, people will keep playing.

So I’m not sure where I implied more game types is a bad thing, just that it brings new problems that we’ve seen in the past. I just wanted to start a discussion about how to handle this, hopefully before it becomes a problem. I didn’t say even once that more game modes will make things worse than they are now, so please do not put such words in my mouth.

With new modes we’ll inevitably see an initial surge of more players. Great. Over time more modes will be introduced, and surges will happen with each.

I just mean that when things have settled to a standard amount of players, they will be split across a handful of different modes, and each new standalone game mode that is released will draw some players from other modes potentially if they don’t draw from the same pool of players. How can we solve or mitigate this?

Admiral Zombie.8624:

How do we handle new game modes potentially splitting the player base

My dream solution is that a new game mode could replace hotjoin. Not sure if that’s possible though.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Admiral Zombie.8624:

How do we handle new game modes potentially splitting the player base

My dream solution is that a new game mode could replace hotjoin. Not sure if that’s possible though.

1) Select Hot Join Servers
2) Press [Delete]

Game improved.

New maps and game types in the existing tourney would be awesome too, but getting rid of hot join is absolutely addition by subtraction.

Well, Anet said they were already working on new game modes, so they should at least be happy that most people selected this as a “collaborative development” topic – it means they and their player base are on the same page.
This also means that the ball is already rolling too and that some of these questions already have some answers (at Anet, at least).

Now, I think they should give more freedom to the players and see what trends emerge.
I really want to see custom arenas being more accessible so that people can start creating their own servers, their own map rotations, etc.
Then you can start the number crunching and see the trends emerge, and which maps are liked and disliked, if the new game mode is popular or not, etc.

With this kind of freedom to customise your experience (offered by improved custom arenas), I believe you will see clusters of players interested in the same stuff.

Still, I think if they introduce more game modes, then they should seriously think about implementing “skill & stuff templates”.

Otherwise, for the “competitive crowd”, only reward a specific map on a specific week maybe.

Uhm.
Making a game appeal to multiple playstyles is only a plus.
GW2 is suffering over the fact that next to no one thinks conquest is a good choice for a core map… changing that… can only help.

I think it’s kind of sad that Anet took a year of floundering around kittening up every other part of PvP before even starting to take a new map style into consideration.

Strategical solutions to mitigate player segmentation

1. PvP Dailies – add an additional daily or two supporting one or two modes of choice per day;

2. PvP Acchievements – add new rows in the pvp’s acchievement section dedicated to each game mode available, to incentivate players to diversify;

3. Remove the official servers from Hotjoin, or alternatively, make them randomly choose the game mode for each match;

4. In addition to the option above, or alternatively, add a rated queue option, or modify the current Solo Queue option, to randomly choose a game mode;

5. Add a weekly solo and team queue tournament option with fat rewards that works similar to GW1’s Hall of Heroes pvp, where several different maos and game modes are placed together in a fixed succession.

NOTE: Point 3, 4 and maybe or maybe not point 5 would require Build Templates between matches to diversify the build selection instead of restricting it.

And of course, better MM, better ranking, and a much expanded reward system to keep or attract players.

There is not enough of an spvp population right now….we NEED new game modes that have NOTHING to do with capture points. We want to FIGHT.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Strategical solutions to mitigate player segmentation

3. Remove the official servers from Hotjoin, or alternatively, make them randomly choose the game mode for each match;

4. In addition to the option above, or alternatively, add a rated queue option, or modify the current Solo Queue option, to randomly choose a game mode;

I hinted on this in the original post, but I think this is one of the biggest problems to be faced.

If we roll different game modes into the same random map pool as every other game mode, then wouldn’t they all be restricted to the same amount of players? If I have a team prepared for conquest with 5 people, and suddenly we’re thrown into a capture the flag which may require 8 people, then what? Bite the bullet and deal with it and play with those 3 randoms on your team?

A bigger problem is the reverse, you have a team of 8 you want for CTF, and suddenly the game wants to put you into a death match or king of the hill meant for 5 people. Does the game simply exclude you from such map rotations?

I don’t see how they could reasonably just lump the map rotation and mode rotation into the same pool to be randomly drawn upon. This is easily solved by just having different queues for each system like GW1, but then you get the segmented player base. Is it just an inevitable evil?

It’s hard to split zero, so I wouldn’t worry too much.