Guild Wars 2

Who I am: Relative to the hardcore spvp crowd, Im a noob with ~1600 games under my belt, mostly in what is now known as Practice.

Assumption: It is understood by most that Practice and Unranked are for the casual and ‘medium’ spvp players. That is not completely true, but as a general rule, that is the deal. Ranked is more for premade teams that are genuinely trying to compete with each other to be the best.

Now, If you ask me, the only thing worse than losing is the group of behaviors that can be classified as bad sportsmanship. I believe I have a way to alleviate not all but at least a good chunk of this behavior. Obviously there will always just be those people out there, and the adrenaline certainly doesn’t help.

But there are two things that can be done to help.

Stat Tracking: Some people really care about this. This is also why I excluded Ranked., as the point of Ranked is to be ranked. Practice and Unranked literally describe what they are, and there are people who will always care about their stats to the point that, even when literally playing the game modes called Practice and Unranked, they will exhibit sometimes extreme bad sportsmanship. Because of matchmaking pushing everyone toward a 50% win rate, a lot of people say that win rate means nothing, and this is certainly what people respond with when confronting a player enraged about this. But the fact is that no matter what, people will care about this, as long as the stat is tracked. I propose removing it as a tracked stat for the games (again) literally called Unranked and Practice. Obviously the stat has to be tracked for matchmaking, but it can be removed from the UI and hidden. Another option would be to let players themselves decide whether they want to track it, that would at least help with some of the bad sportsmanship. I see no downside to this, the community would be better off.

Rewards: If you win in Unranked, you get 1500 glory, if you lose, 500. That is a big difference. Certainly a cause for the bad sportsmanship that can be seen every day. But what to do? Im sure the devs have thought about it a lot more than I have, but I think I have a good solution. Using Unranked as the example, step 1 is lowering the rewards for winning down to ~1300. This makes Ranked a little better but not hugely more rewarding. Then step 2 is to increase the reward for losing in Unranked to ~1100. Bringing the rewards closer together will pacify a lot of the anger that players have when losing vis a vis glory. You can either leave Ranked as is or bump it up too. The majority of Ranked players do not play Ranked for the glory, they play for glory of winning (seewhatidid) so I doubt they would even care about this change. Practice can be adjusted too or it can be left as is, it is supposed to be just practice after all.

Do you agree?

I acknowledge the issue, but I disagree with the solution.

In my experience, tons of players in unranked arena are actually PvE players looking for quick and easy rewards (since PvP rewards were changed to PvE items in April 2014). This significantly deteriorates the quality of both PvP matches and players, since players are there to win rather than to have fun (don’t ask me why people force themselves to play games they don’t enjoy).

Instead of changing the flat rewards, I would highly recommend reverting back to the previous reward system (glory), where the reward is based on the player’s score. The higher your score, the more rewards you get at the end of the match.

To make this viable for everyone, I would suggest making more actions award points, such as dealing damage, removing boons from enemies, healing allies, giving boons to other players, standing on a point to prevent capture, etc.

Balancing the amount of points from each action would be a rather difficult task, but it would allow every play style to be rewarded equally, and would prevent one game type from being more rewarding than another (which were the two stated objectives when implementing the new static reward system).

It would also fix most instances where players stop trying as soon as they get 5 points, because they would be encouraged to actually be useful to their team. Obviously, nothing can fix saboteurs, but that’s another story.

In other words, I believe playing the game should be its own reward. People who don’t want play the game shouldn’t be encouraged to hinder other people’s fun just because they want the little chest at the end.

nowadays i find better sportsmanship in ranked arena though sometimes i still meet some kittens that trash talk from the start of the match until the end. but that is quite rare.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

nowadays i find better sportsmanship in ranked arena though sometimes i still meet some kittens that trash talk from the start of the match until the end. but that is quite rare.

I’ve noticed the same. There is a very loud person who spends more time complaining than playing, but they are rare after this update. Usually I got one every 1-3 games. I just experienced my first one today after 50 games.

The only problem with that Rangelost is the reason anet changed it from that in the first place. They said they flattened it like that to allow for balancing with additional gametypes to be added at a later date, which makes sense to me.

Another reason they did it is to stop boosting. I remember after a week or two players were already rank 80. Teams running around in circles for hours racking up glory for decaps/ caps just trading points all day. That is why they put a set amount for win / loss and you can earn a little extra for being in a “top player” category, but only a set amount. So playing hard in all aspects could net extra points vs getting 5 pts and then doing nothing.

i generally rage at people that have no place in my games, but i guess its not their fault its just bad match making.

If you find that you’re meeting a lot of people who are criticizing your play; Maybe you’re the problem.

if you find yourself raging, you are a problem

Actually more and more people are now joining unranked because having bad teammates in ranked match can seriously mess you up in leaderboards. And whether you Q in unranked or ranked, you still face premade and bad teammates, so people choose to Q into unranked to avoid the leaderboard. And since it is unranked, you kinda understand that some people do not know how to play pvp and its easily forgiven because you can assume that they are new.
In ranked matches, having a bad teammate or two is very costly and ultimately drop your ratings down, whether you Q solo or with team. Also since top players are now Qing ranked, unranked is the place that is most likely to avoid such top ESL team and play with people who just want to pvp.
And rewards as of now are fine as they are. No need to touch reward system because amount of rank gained are also related to reward track, which could potentially influence overall gw2 economy or something. But losing individuals should get more glory rather than meager 5 points+500.

Sebastian.4610:

i generally rage at people that have no place in my games, but i guess its not their fault its just bad match making.

Rangelost.4857:

Instead of changing the flat rewards, I would highly recommend reverting back to the previous reward system (glory), where the reward is based on the player’s score. The higher your score, the more rewards you get at the end of the match.

To make this viable for everyone, I would suggest making more actions award points, such as dealing damage, removing boons from enemies, healing allies, giving boons to other players, standing on a point to prevent capture, etc.

Unfortunately, this type of scoring encourages new or apathetic players to be more concerned with their personal score than the team’s performance. I remember the days where 3-4 people would cap home.

However, I agree that it would be nice to see people get more credit for active counterplay and team support.

There is no sportsmanship in this game. I played 25 practice games today and not one was nearly fair. Most of the time it ended up in 3v5 or something like that and no one from the other team wanted to switch sides.
In practice the people don’t care about pvp, they care about winning and having “stats”.

spvp is in a really bad shape at the moment.

GhOst.4019:

Another reason they did it is to stop boosting. I remember after a week or two players were already rank 80. Teams running around in circles for hours racking up glory for decaps/ caps just trading points all day. That is why they put a set amount for win / loss and you can earn a little extra for being in a “top player” category, but only a set amount. So playing hard in all aspects could net extra points vs getting 5 pts and then doing nothing.

I’m very very inexperienced in that section of the game, but in my first foray back into it after ages, the top of the list of joinable games was full of “RANK FARMING, RED WIN, NO PET, ONLY SWAP MID”. So i don’t think the behaviour has quite gone away.

cafard.8953:

GhOst.4019:

Another reason they did it is to stop boosting. I remember after a week or two players were already rank 80. Teams running around in circles for hours racking up glory for decaps/ caps just trading points all day. That is why they put a set amount for win / loss and you can earn a little extra for being in a “top player” category, but only a set amount. So playing hard in all aspects could net extra points vs getting 5 pts and then doing nothing.

I’m very very inexperienced in that section of the game, but in my first foray back into it after ages, the top of the list of joinable games was full of “RANK FARMING, RED WIN, NO PET, ONLY SWAP MID”. So i don’t think the behaviour has quite gone away.

WTF are you actually talking about? You get a set amount of points for a loss or win. There is no rank point (glory) farming. You get nothing out of swapping points….in the end it’s either win 1500 or lose and get less. If there is an arena that “farms rank” then it will still take them just as long as someone playing a normal match. Same points awarded to everyone on a win or a loss.

gebrechen.5643:

There is no sportsmanship in this game. I played 25 practice games today and not one was nearly fair. Most of the time it ended up in 3v5 or something like that and no one from the other team wanted to switch sides.
In practice the people don’t care about pvp, they care about winning and having “stats”.

spvp is in a really bad shape at the moment.

Practice mode doesn’t award “stats” that mean anything. People go in there to PRACTICE. If I got my build figured out I will leave. No need to stay for the end of match because it doesn’t matter; it is PRACTICE mode.

GhOst.4019:

cafard.8953:

GhOst.4019:

Another reason they did it is to stop boosting. I remember after a week or two players were already rank 80. Teams running around in circles for hours racking up glory for decaps/ caps just trading points all day. That is why they put a set amount for win / loss and you can earn a little extra for being in a “top player” category, but only a set amount. So playing hard in all aspects could net extra points vs getting 5 pts and then doing nothing.

I’m very very inexperienced in that section of the game, but in my first foray back into it after ages, the top of the list of joinable games was full of “RANK FARMING, RED WIN, NO PET, ONLY SWAP MID”. So i don’t think the behaviour has quite gone away.

WTF are you actually talking about? You get a set amount of points for a loss or win. There is no rank point (glory) farming. You get nothing out of swapping points….in the end it’s either win 1500 or lose and get less. If there is an arena that “farms rank” then it will still take them just as long as someone playing a normal match. Same points awarded to everyone on a win or a loss.

As i said, i have no idea how the points work, i just play matches, come what may. If there’s nothing to farm, it’s a bit weird alright. Will take a screenshot tonight if they’re there again i guess.

insanemaniac.2456:

if you find yourself raging, you are a problem

Thats not true at all. The problem stems from “why” you are raging, not the fact that you are raging.

Sebastian.4610:

insanemaniac.2456:

if you find yourself raging, you are a problem

Thats not true at all. The problem stems from “why” you are raging, not the fact that you are raging.

it is true, when you rage you play worse
keep your head clear and youll play better

pondering why youre gittin mad will definitely help you keep your cool though

Sportsmanship is something seriously lacking in the gaming community as a whole. Personally I have always attributed it towards the rewards aspect. To me a game is measured in W/L and teamwork. Once they started giving you added rewards people got greedy and stopped caring about the team aspect. and then they made it so you still get rewarded even for losing and then the W/L stopped mattering. As long as rewards are given no matter how poorly you play sportsmanship will be a problem.

insanemaniac.2456:

Sebastian.4610:

insanemaniac.2456:

if you find yourself raging, you are a problem

Thats not true at all. The problem stems from “why” you are raging, not the fact that you are raging.

it is true, when you rage you play worse
keep your head clear and youll play better

pondering why youre gittin mad will definitely help you keep your cool though

the reasons i get angry are in anets control not mine. previously in the old solo queue i was frustrated MUCH less.

Split sPvP into two play styles to match the player base: Those who want to have fun playing the game, and everyone else. In each case, a player that is in the wrong play style can be kicked by a majority vote of the others on their team.

Sebastian.4610:

insanemaniac.2456:

Sebastian.4610:

insanemaniac.2456:

if you find yourself raging, you are a problem

Thats not true at all. The problem stems from “why” you are raging, not the fact that you are raging.

it is true, when you rage you play worse
keep your head clear and youll play better

pondering why youre gittin mad will definitely help you keep your cool though

the reasons i get angry are in anets control not mine. previously in the old solo queue i was frustrated MUCH less.

The reasons you get angry is not because Anet. I am going to go ahead and just say that the ragers in GW2 are the same people who rage in LoL or CoD or whatever game they play.

Being disgruntled and salty is OK. Calling people bads in chat when you’re most likely the baddie on the team is not OK.

Why do you assume to know what makes other people angry…. I think he would know what’s making him angry…. are you a shrink?

Stalking me thread to thread now? lol

And, no, I am not a shrink, but I have taken sociology courses to understand behavior like this is not a one time deal.

Interesting observation. Today I noticed people in the matchmaking forum talking about the bad match ups occurring with between or within teams. I noticed this too, and also noticed a lot more raging today.

Another fun observation: I usually tell all my teammates and sometimes the map that I truly suck at the game (some days I really really do) and to whisper me their rage or advice. People usually make some comments about not queuing ranked and then I hear nothing from them again and we have a nice game.

gebrechen.5643:

There is no sportsmanship in this game. I played 25 practice games today and not one was nearly fair. Most of the time it ended up in 3v5 or something like that and no one from the other team wanted to switch sides.
In practice the people don’t care about pvp, they care about winning and having “stats”.

spvp is in a really bad shape at the moment.

That’s why I actually moved from doing the usual hotjoin to nothing but Unranked. Once in a while you’ll have someone who ragequits, but not nearly as bad as practice. If you feel confident enough in your overall knowledge of the class you intend to play, I would say it’s a much better experience if you go to Unranked. Minus all the premades you sometimes run in to. -.-

SobeSoul.6910:

Sebastian.4610:

insanemaniac.2456:

Sebastian.4610:

insanemaniac.2456:

if you find yourself raging, you are a problem

Thats not true at all. The problem stems from “why” you are raging, not the fact that you are raging.

it is true, when you rage you play worse
keep your head clear and youll play better

pondering why youre gittin mad will definitely help you keep your cool though

the reasons i get angry are in anets control not mine. previously in the old solo queue i was frustrated MUCH less.

The reasons you get angry is not because Anet. I am going to go ahead and just say that the ragers in GW2 are the same people who rage in LoL or CoD or whatever game they play.

Being disgruntled and salty is OK. Calling people bads in chat when you’re most likely the baddie on the team is not OK.

This may apply to some, but in a game where you cannot carry the game by yourself i think it goes a bit deeper then “being a baddie”. And by saying “calling people bads but your most likely the baddie” just discredits your opinion, that immature mentality will get you nowhere. The problem lies in the match making and the removal of solo queue.

To be fair you can only carry the game to a certain extent depending on your class, and if you’re decent you can easily see who someone is and what they’re doing wrong. I play to have fun and to win, I do not play to coach someone else. Everyone makes mistakes and I respect that, you can’t rage at someone because they do one thing wrong. Equally if you’re bad then you’re bad. I know matchmaking could resolve this but often times it does not, and if I’m in a ranked game and I see you failing to rotate properly or going into fights/ staying in fights you won’t win then I’ll probably tell you to play unranked.

I am of the opinion that the game should cull out players that consistently act crude. They keep quite of a number of players that might otherwise play pvp away, thus harm the health of the format.

If you consistently show you don’t know how to act around people you should lose your rights to play.

I find sportsmanship in this game to be pretty terrible. Anytime someone loses, there is always an excuse. Cheese comp, terrible teammates, cheese builds, and etc. Everyone’s ego is so huge that the thought of being outplayed or just someone being better than you is inconceivable. Few people in this game can take constructive criticism, and everyone acts like their kitten don’t stink.

Very rarely do I see a gg or wp. Most of the time is omg l2p or my teammates suck!

Essence Snow.3194:

I am of the opinion that the game should cull out players that consistently act crude. They keep quite of a number of players that might otherwise play pvp away, thus harm the health of the format.

If you consistently show you don’t know how to act around people you should lose your rights to play.

Right click and block. Problem solved. People also need to be less sensitive, if you are offended just block and report the person. I don’t think people that want to play pvp are kept from playing it because others may be offensive to them when they can so easily block communications.

When you get those people on your team and you have to have them blocked b/c they don’t know how to behave it puts your team at an immediate disadvantage. So it’s not only you that this person has effected but the whole team. I wish it were so simple as block and be done with it.

Rangelost.4857:

I acknowledge the issue, but I disagree with the solution.

In my experience, tons of players in unranked arena are actually PvE players looking for quick and easy rewards (since PvP rewards were changed to PvE items in April 2014). This significantly deteriorates the quality of both PvP matches and players, since players are there to win rather than to have fun (don’t ask me why people force themselves to play games they don’t enjoy).

Instead of changing the flat rewards, I would highly recommend reverting back to the previous reward system (glory), where the reward is based on the player’s score. The higher your score, the more rewards you get at the end of the match.

To make this viable for everyone, I would suggest making more actions award points, such as dealing damage, removing boons from enemies, healing allies, giving boons to other players, standing on a point to prevent capture, etc.

Balancing the amount of points from each action would be a rather difficult task, but it would allow every play style to be rewarded equally, and would prevent one game type from being more rewarding than another (which were the two stated objectives when implementing the new static reward system).

It would also fix most instances where players stop trying as soon as they get 5 points, because they would be encouraged to actually be useful to their team. Obviously, nothing can fix saboteurs, but that’s another story.

In other words, I believe playing the game should be its own reward. People who don’t want play the game shouldn’t be encouraged to hinder other people’s fun just because they want the little chest at the end.

I highlighted the part that I agree with.