First of all let me tell you that i’m not just fearmongering or find general pleasure by wasting everyones time with tales of woe.
I’ve spent about 500hrs doing nothing but 5v5 tournaments with my team and probably another 200hrs prerelease so you can rest assured that i not only know my way around the eu meta & teams but i am deeply compassionate about the whole concept of a pvp mmo too.
TLDR: PvP is dying because of lacking content for aspiring new players and those in between the casual/hardcore area. A ladder/matchmaking needs to come as soon as possible to create a playfield that is enjoyable no matter how good you are at the game and helps you grow as a player.
Having seen good advice on the forums being continously ignored over and over my moral has been lowering and this will definately be my last “outreach”. But enough preamble already…
The pvp part of the game is dying. It is. It’s actually nearly dead.
Over the course of the last two months more than 80% of the people who were really psyked about Gw2 or really wanted to try out the “new and shiny all is better” pvp mmo have already left. About 2 out of 3 teams that were playing daily from release have broken down or are completely inactive waiting for a miracle to happen.
Why are so many people leaving then?
First of all many came to Gw2 expecting it to be the advertised “e-sport mmo” and yet experienced pvp content that is minimalistic at best.
Secondly and of even more grave importance: there is nothing to do for the majority of the pvp community. Or better: nothing enjoyable.
I don’t want to go on a long rant about how the idea of letting people play 8v8 on maps designed specifically for 5v5 is idiotic at best when the problem really lies within in tournament system.
Assume i have a team of 5 players that play about 3hrs everyday and want a challenging and engaging experience. What do we do? Joining free tournaments will result in 95% of our games ending up steamrolling through our enemies as they are either completely random or maybe just way less dedicated than we are.
So let’s join paid tournies! But on an average day there are less than 10 teams queuing for them so unless we are at the ultimate top of the food chain we will get stomped by the same 1 or 2 teams over and over again learning basically nothing as the skill difference currently is enourmous.
So as an average team you can decide between mindnumbing free tournaments or disheartening paids.
So what if i’m a solo player or only 3 of my team are currently on? I have nothing to do. Nothing. Zero. Personally i stand around the mists 1-2hrs daily waiting for my team because non-paid content is “unenjoably” at best.
Pretending to be a relatively new player to Gw2 pvp maturing out of the 8v8 zerg fest what is the natural progression? I’d go into free tournaments but those bear no meaning for solo players at all. You’ll end up getting smashed by people insanely more experienced than you or even whole teams that want to avoid paids or just queue for frees because paids aren’t opening up.
So the problem why there are so few teams trying the challenge of paids in the first place really is that the influx of new players into the less casual pvp scene is not existent.
Pvp currently holds meaning for extremely casual hop-on for 30min and log off players and those teams that have about 1k games on their backs playing for hours nearly every day to compete with the paid tournament scene.
Players and teams trying to ascend their gameplay get completely cut off with no chance of improvement.
Guild Wars 2 needs to find a way to give players that are not super-casual or super-hardcore a platform where they can play equally leveled players to both have a pleasing and skill-augmenting experience.
So in essence GW2 needs a ladder. Not an arbitrary grind-based rank system, it needs a ladder & matchmaking system that gives players & teams the ability to grow into the game rather than get demolished.
Although i can’t say i have a perfect system in my sleeve and don’t claim that a ladder will solve all gw2’s problems i think it would put an halt to the most appalling and current problem of the pvp scene of GW2 constantly bleeding out with no influx in sight (and no people don’t magically “come back” when issues are fixed, how many mmo’s can you name that bled out after only a few months in recent history? yeah … quite a few).
In my humble opinion the best quick-fix for the whole problem would be to introduce single/duo queue free tournaments (or just single games) with a strong matchmaking mechanic. It would quickly & easily create an environment where new, solo & team players waiting for the rest of their team can hop into a game and have an experience where they feel like belonging and competing on a fair level.
Best regards Pray