Guild Wars 2

Don’t forget the overall pvp picture.

When you take a step back, the real question you want to answer is:

what is the ideal pvp infrastructure for both casual and competitive players that enables them to play with 0 to 4 friends and has a smooth learning curve?

Wall of text incoming, brace yourself. It is pretty cool and super robust because it covers the overall system.(very modestly:p :p)

1/ revisit the pvp initiation.

This one is a major overhaul and the answer to the learning curve. I’ll just throw in some guidelines:

- teach players about builds: stun breaker, condition removal, gap closers and cc used both offensively and defensively, stats thresholds.

- teach players about pvp combat: duel every class with slow motion animation of each skill with explanations as to what it does and how to counter it (including downed fights).

- teach players about game mode mechanics: no need to be 2 to cap, mini map awareness, when is the best time to kill bosses…

Ideally all of the above can happen on demand:
- when you visit the mists for the first time
- whenever you are in the mists and want to train
- when you are in a real fight and want to understand what happened. ( this third part is crucial and probably the hardest the implement)

2/ casual play
The current hot join system is cool and it can only get better if you integrate the above initiation phase into the fight itself.

3/ competitive play: solo players

After players hit pvp rank 20, if they only played hot joins before, prompt them if they want to join arenas with explanation on the reward and the matchmaking.
Repeat every 5 rank gained if they still never tried arenas.

Apart from that keep the current solo arena system and keep working on what you mentioned already: more intelligent matchmaking, adjusted MMR depending on how experienced you are with a class, leavers penalty… Don’t forget to integrate the initiation phase to solo arenas as well.

4/ competitive play: groups

Groups can be 1-5 players playing together or real teams. Real teams are registered as such for each season while groups are just players grouping together.

Simple groups function as they do now in team arenas.

To register a team you need to fill in:
- team name
- team tag
- nationality (country, continent, region)
- at least 5 players accounts. One of them being the captain.

Team system:
- 1 account can only belong to one team at a time
- team hierarchy in terms of rights: sponsor>manager>captain>Member
- you can only swap teams a fixed number of time during each season (once or twice if you leave on your own, a bit more if you get kicked or disband the team)
- disbanded teams disappear from the ladder and reset the count of match participation to the season.
- only players who played a certain amount of matches during the season get rewarded.
- the reward depends on the team’s position on the ladder when the season ends.

Matchmaking system:
- real teams and simple groups are in the same pool, meaning they can face each other (in order not to split the player base even further)
- the system prefers to have teams face each other and groups face each other though.
- the matchmaking for teams is based on their ranking in the ladder
- the matchmaking for groups is based on the average personal MMR of each member of the group.
- teams gain and lose more rankings on the team ladder when facing another team.
- each participant in the team also gain and lose personal MMR
- if three players or more belong to the same team, they automatically play as this team.
- if three players or more play 15-20 matches per week under no tag team at all, then they cannot play again unless they form a team or they wait the next week.

5/ competitive play: tournaments

- every month, there is a tournament for teams only.
- Specific rewards for top 16. From top 16 onward, matches have a greater impact on the team ranking than normal season. Not too drastically though so that regular season matches are not insignificant.
- any team that is 1 week old can enter the tournament.
- if there are too many teams, split the tournaments into leagues (based on teams’ ranks in the ladder)

Josh Davis.6015:

We’d like to incorporate guilds into the ladder/season system when we come out with it next year, but nothing is very concrete yet. Personally, I think it would be awesome to look at the ladders and see guilds listed rather than individual players. That said, this could pose issues for more casual players who like to ‘team hop’ or pug about.

I’m probably opening myself up to some interesting suggestions, but imagine you’re in-charge of creating the ladder/season system.

• How would you design it?
• How would you incentivize teams to stay together?
• Would you penalize them for splitting?
• What types of rewards would you include for each ‘division’ on the ladder?

Note: I’m talking about futures seasons/ladders, not the current system.

Use WoW’s system of team charters and personal MMR. With a reset on team ranking on new creation.

If it were my choice, I would change Team Arena to be keyed off of GuildID or whatever it’s called in your database, and then a GuildMMR is used to determine ranking. If not everyone in the group is representing the same guild upon queuing, then the user gets a warning and confirmation dialog upon clicking Submit. If they accept, it will queue the group anyway and use a hidden PlayerMMR to determine the matchmaking. This game will not affect their GuildMMR.

For ladders and seasons, just use a tiered system like in other games. It will only ever match you into games against players/guilds that are in your tier, the tier above you, or the tier below you. Here’s some suggested thresholds for the ladder tiers:

Solo Arena
Grandmaster: Top 100
Master: Top 500
Diamond: 85% – 501
Gold: 70%-84%
Silver: 40%-69%
Bronze: 0%-39%

Team Arena (remember, these are whole Guilds, so each placing consists of 5 or more players)
Grandmaster: Top 20
Master: Top 100
Diamond: 85% – 101
Gold: 70%-84%
Silver: 40%-69%
Bronze: 0%-39%

New Player/Guild MMR starts at 20%. Ladder reset every quarter, with end-of-season rewards.

One cool thing about doing it this way is that queuing up with a few of your friends into Team Arena won’t affect your GuildMMR rating — in fact, whenever you play without a full Guild, those games have no visible effect on your rating at all! Used this way, Team Arena can also double as a “Casual Queue”, which some people have been asking for.

Why not just use the GW1 system? Why try to reinvent the wheel.

Dahkeus.8243:

Honestly, I think an almost direct port of the GvG from GW1 would work well…

They would just need to rework the mapping so that the Z axis isn’t as abusable…

And unfortunately one of the things that people overlook, but was an integral part of GvG was the physics in body-blocking, which do not exist in GW2 (but they should)

Dahkeus.8243:

Honestly, I think an almost direct port of the GvG from GW1 would work well…

Absolutely.

Just make the team cap closer to 5 or 6 people, nothing more.

Maybe make DC in soloQ not count for penalty after 50% of the match is played or after the afk timer runs out.

Any chance of bringing something like the Xunlai Tournament House back along with GvG? A chance for a fresh start from the ground up might get rid of all of the built in bugs and it was a wonderful mechanic for keeping PvE’ers interested in what was happening in the PvP world.

So much ingame reward and kittens, man we will never attain what we are aiming for on those mentality. come on bring the world stage on us.

Aye.8392:

get rid of all of the built in bugs

This!

Add another leader board for PvP & Another Tournament Que
“Guild Arena”
Auto matches you against other parties that consist of members from the same guild.

Three Tiers on the Guild Leader Board
1-5 = Gold
6-15=Silver
16-25= Bronze
Everyone Else

Gold Would get a special Emblem unlocks and a unique Gold color unlock as well as an influence discount on upgrades.

Silver Would get a special Emblem unlocks and a unique Silver color unlock as well as a smaller influence discount on upgrades.

Bronze Would get a special Emblem unlocks and a unique Bronze color unlock as well as a tiny discount on upgrades.

Would suggest guild cape trims like in GW1 buttt we don’t have guild capes ;(

End-of-season Grandmaster tier reward should be a Rytlock finisher, whose sound effect is him saying “E-Sports!”… make it happen

One thing I would certainly like to see is more guild involvement in WvW. One of the best features in DAoC for those of you who remember that game was that when a guild had a keep or a tower claimed they would be given notice if the tower guards were killed or if the structure was under siege.

Currently many keeps, towers, and camps go unclaimed throughout WvW because there is little benefit other than guild buffs which don’t really last that long.

If there was more reward and benefit for guild to claim a keep or tower I think you would see more defensive play happen in WvW instead of the Karma train flip everything fests that typically happen.

Concept
Improving Guild participation and value in WvW.

Guilds who claim keeps receive advanced notice of guards being killed or if the keep is under siege to allow for quicker response time to defend instead of relying on the grey or orange sword icons to appear. Only guild members would receive this notification so they would have to communicate this to the Borderlands and EBG if they were not in WvW. Orange and Grey swords would still work as they do now, this new feature just gives added incentive for guilds to claim keeps.

Other ways to incentive guilds to claim. Incorporate upgrades or buffs into the guild progression system, or even things like merchants and repair stations that guilds have to unlock and that can only be used when they claim a keep or a tower.

I’ll work on this idea more and make it it’s own thread but my lunch break is rapidly coming to a close, so that is all for now.

@DemonNinja.1602

You are in the wrong forum – here is the STRUCTURED PVP Forum and you should go to wvw forum with this