You can either have a solid PvP game with good balance and fun skill-based PvP, or you can have a good PvE game with regular updates to keep people interested in their PvE characters. You cannot have both.
GW2 PvP popularity has had an inverse relationship with the popularity of SMITE as a competitive e-sport game, because the two games are somewhat similar in design on the grand scale, 3rd person PvP.
Unlike GW2, Moba games can expend all of their resources on creating new characters. They also have a great emphasis on balance and have a systematic and large balance team.
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Now let’s look at the specific gameplay subjects that hinder GW2 competitive PvP.
Most importantly there is too much unrestricted variability in the characters in the game. Mobas have many different characters but each character has a restricted kit, a skillful player knows each character’s kit and can predict/counterplay. The only other sources of variability in mobas are itemization and usually two skills that all characters can choose. The itemization differences are fairly limited, they just change the numbers, but the kits for each character remains intact and predictable. The two optional skills that all characters can choose come from a very limited pool and have very large cooldowns, furthermore each player in the game is made aware of what optional skills each other player has chosen. I have the emphasize that a certain amount of predictability is required for a skill based game.
In GW2 you can think of the weapon a character is holding as their kit as each weapon has a limited set of skills to choose from. This would be fine, but you diminish predictability by adding weapon swap.
Traits are 50/50 in my opinion. There are certain traits that just change the numbers, similar to itemization in mobas, this is fine. But, then you have crazy unpredictable traits that auto-remove CC etc.
Now, on to the greatest source of volatility and randomness in gameplay, utility skills. You can choose not 1, not 2, but 3 customizable utility skills, there is a large pool of highly varied utility skills to choose from and each have a fairly low cooldown. Basically this extends a characters kit, without actually being part of their kit. Remember, kits are supposed to be homogenized and predictable to encourage skillful awareness of your opponents cooldowns and to encourage counterplay.
Utility skills are very different from the optional 2 skills in mobas because those two skills are very limited due to their incredibly long cooldowns and limited usage criteria. Ignoring the two opitional skills, a typical moba character has four low CD skills at their disposal and a high CD ultimate. A typical GW2 character has 5 low CD skills in their actual kit (these are predictable by class and what weapon they are holding). Ofcourse there are variations, eles for instance have 20 low CD skills in their kit because they cannot weapon swap and their weapon predicts the skills available in all their attuments. I repeat the key to a kit is predictability. Now, a typical GW2 has a total of 5 + 3 = 8 unpredictable, non-kit skills at their disposal from their alternative weapon set and utility skills. I’m ignoring heals and elites for the moment because elites have a long cooldown situational use, and heals have limited variability in their options. The optional heals and elites certainly increase the randomness, but not as much as utility skills.
All these unpredictable skills and the plethora of low cooldown skills available to any character at any given moment introduces an element of randomness to the gameplay. Your success in a fight is certainly dependent to a certain extent on your skill level, but there are too many random factors involved as well. Because of so many low CD skills the game becomes incredibly skill spammy and there is no such thing as punishing a wasted CD or taking advantage of an opportunity where a player is vulnerable due to losing his CDs.
Low CD temporary invulnerabilities through dodges and the high access to heals and regen effects in the the game creates an artificial necessity for the skill spammy nature of this game.
I’m not saying any of this cannot be changed to make the game more competitive and skillful. But, I believe there is a great reluctance on the part of the devs to make big overhauling changes. Part of the reason is the lack of resources and the lack of emphasis on PvP.
(edited by Geff.1930)
