Guild Wars 2

Hey guys !

here a new video from the Lord !

I think it’s time to discuss !^^

As long as ANET keeps GLOBALLY balancing classes around PvP (messing with PvE and WvW) players will keep hating on the Esport scene.
Remember that the PvP population is by far the smallest one compared to PvE and WvW.

XxsdgxX.8109:

As long as ANET keeps GLOBALLY balancing classes around PvP (messing with PvE and WvW) players will keep hating on the Esport scene.
Remember that the PvP population is by far the smallest one compared to PvE and WvW.

+1xxxxxxxxxx

So much this, People are sick tired of seeing their efforts going to waste because of ezport, every time professions get deleted from existence because of esport…we’re tired

But Anet continue to say that PVP is the biggest population…… so i think there are right, but the population is full of casuals and pve, just for league recomps.

But Helseth speak about right facts, not just balancing or meta…. it’s a more global and depth pb

Helseth is one of the top players here and brought up some valid concerns, but missed the mark on the one core thing that makes gw2 pvp an awful experience… That is profession design, lack of profession development, lack of strong balancing between pve and pvp (wvw and spvp) modes, poor skill designs for movement based combat, lack of QUALITY playable roles and players are stuck with the role of dps with support light, useless weapons in pvp, useless traits, useless utilities, terrible CC system, terrible mid combat stealth mechanics… The list goes on and on with profession related stuff and again I don’t see any top players digging deep to discuss any of these.

but GW2 since the begining don’t want roles " lack of QUALITY playable roles and players are stuck with the role of dps with support light, "

They want to kill the dps/support/healer roles, it’s something everyone know since Beta, it’s official.

Quick Edit :
https://dd.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4y6o56/the_current_largest_problems_for_gw2_as_a/

here reddit link from Helseth with quick content overview

Syrius Gorn.5384:

but GW2 since the begining don’t want roles " lack of QUALITY playable roles and players are stuck with the role of dps with support light, "

They want to kill the dps/support/healer roles, it’s something everyone know since Beta, it’s official.

Yeah, and that’s the problem, hence the “unhealthy zerker meta” the devs were trying to counter some with some profession stuff we got with hot.

The devs wanted all professions to be viable, and they did (to a degree) with regard to the damage role, but players need to be able to build various quality and viable and playable… roles within their chosen profession. Doing so translates to a better team play experience and the variety players are looking for.

I’m not saying this with any level of disrespect, but it seems that the influential gw2 scene players lack experience with mmo gameplay and combat designs. I see a lot of young faces being highlighted for spvp and I’m hard pressed to think their experience extends beyond a couple mmos and mostly console games…

Edit- The wvw scene is also the same as the above, a very well liked player was highlighted by the devs, but when interviewed by a particular commander on elements that the devs need to improve on for wvw, the player basically said “we need more unique skins”… I’m not knocking anyone, it’s just that I hardly ever read or see a deeper level of understanding of pvp modes… Class designs and systems are what is central to the combat experience, and most miss the mark.

It was refreshing reading up and watching videos by CU developers when they discuss class designs, stealth, cc… and the players who make streams discussing those elements and going in depth… Don’t see that here from the devs, and very little from players. I see a dev team that creates all things around pve and shoves it into pvp modes then moves on and players niggling about a few traits, meanwhile, the core problems are completely ignored and remain unaddressed.

Syrius Gorn.5384:

But Anet continue to say that PVP is the biggest population…… so i think there are right, but the population is full of casuals and pve, just for league recomps.

But Helseth speak about right facts, not just balancing or meta…. it’s a more global and depth pb

Only because of the ascension that people want. Of course everyone and their dead mother was playing PvP this year, that doesn’t meant they are a PvP player. Most fo them will never come back to PvP after they either get kittened off enough or get the backpack

>ArenaNet needs to do more to prompt the community to become competitive. They lack a way to rekindle exclusivity prestige, (Gold trim/Guild Capes), Jarvan IV skin for S1 / League of Legends. ArenaNet panders a bit too heavily to the “everyone” via the pip/league system with the Ascension, which while it may not be bad, leaves little prestige/exclusivity for the dedicated competitive players to impress and inspire

>Content exclusivity ~ the community mentality, “Everyone wins!” Legend in Hearthstone 0.02% Legendary backpack isn’t really “legendary”. Shift in perspective between solo queue/motivation.
I’m so tired from reading this again. And again. And again. No, seriously, SCREW THIS. This “competitive push” killed almost all godkitten casual population. They killed hotjoin. They killed soloQ. They basically gutted casual pvp playerbase every time, trying to saturate their precious esports scene, and failing. Every. Time.
It’s like someone seriously looking at other pvp games and saying “Hey, they have l33t players on top who getting a lot of cool stuff, and large casual base below them! We need this too, so let’s start with creating the elite part and casual playerbase will grow by itself because I’m sure I understand how it works now!”. This is NOT how it works. You cannot build healthy competitive scene without heavily investing into casual popularity. Small pvp playerbase cannot sustain anything competitive, regardless of how much money you will spend on tourneys.

These giant “esports” tournaments have been huge failures. You’re paying these people who are “esports” in a game nobody cares about hilarious sums of money and call the entire event marketing. Meanwhile interest in the game hasn’t increased. Viewership is virtually nonexistent even in comparison to the lesser esports titles. There is literally an iPad game that gets more viewers on Twitch if you’re comparing tournament numbers. Where is the actual marketing? Has the PvP scene actually grown since the first tournaments began? Anet might think so given the amount of PvE players that have flooded and corrupted the scene trying to get achievement points and titles that Anet added to inflate their numbers, but those of us who have been there know better.

So when Helseth says he’d rather have a disastrous esports scene over terrible ads like the taxi ad, first the esports scene is already disastrous and when a business venture fails so extraordinarily hard, the wise decision is to just let it die. And forgive me if I don’t particularly care for his opinion on that subject with him being paid thousands of dollars and all. Meanwhile the rest of us who want the game to be good and who have invested major time over the years into this game have been shafted again and again and again by the woefully incompetent dev team. It’s clear the issues of GW2 are caused by their lack of understanding on how to manage a game, their stubbornness and refusal to admit mistakes, the balance team inadequacies, and so much more. After 4 years of nothing, the obvious solution is to slash this “marketing” budget and use it to fund the salaries of people who actually know what they’re doing because this current team…

When they fix the game, then an esports community can grow and flourish. Until then, RIP.

I agree mostly with Lord H.

We need pvp pro’s and casuals to sustain the game. I don’t mind pip progression but skill needs to awarded somehow. I miss old leaderboards and also something needs to be improved to make ESL streams more watchable – team fight’s are big mess, you can’t see how’s somebody skills influence match.

ArrDee.2573:

These giant “esports” tournaments have been huge failures. You’re paying these people who are “esports” in a game nobody cares about hilarious sums of money and call the entire event marketing. Meanwhile interest in the game hasn’t increased. Viewership is virtually nonexistent even in comparison to the lesser esports titles. There is literally an iPad game that gets more viewers on Twitch if you’re comparing tournament numbers. Where is the actual marketing? Has the PvP scene actually grown since the first tournaments began? Anet might think so given the amount of PvE players that have flooded and corrupted the scene trying to get achievement points and titles that Anet added to inflate their numbers, but those of us who have been there know better.

So when Helseth says he’d rather have a disastrous esports scene over terrible ads like the taxi ad, first the esports scene is already disastrous and when a business venture fails so extraordinarily hard, the wise decision is to just let it die. And forgive me if I don’t particularly care for his opinion on that subject with him being paid thousands of dollars and all. Meanwhile the rest of us who want the game to be good and who have invested major time over the years into this game have been shafted again and again and again by the woefully incompetent dev team. It’s clear the issues of GW2 are caused by their lack of understanding on how to manage a game, their stubbornness and refusal to admit mistakes, the balance team inadequacies, and so much more. After 4 years of nothing, the obvious solution is to slash this “marketing” budget and use it to fund the salaries of people who actually know what they’re doing because this current team…

When they fix the game, then an esports community can grow and flourish. Until then, RIP.

youve been wrong more often than right lately liv

XxsdgxX.8109:

As long as ANET keeps GLOBALLY balancing classes around PvP (messing with PvE and WvW) players will keep hating on the Esport scene.
Remember that the PvP population is by far the smallest one compared to PvE and WvW.

Just split the the balance rulesets. Gw2 has the best mmo pvp RN and it’s not worth attempting to compete with wow/bd pve.

This game doesn’t have potential to be a huge esport, and that’s not due to anything they are doing in particular. Wow arena isn’t huge either.

There are lots of fps games 8 times as good as csgo and overwatch and they aren’t as big. There’s no point in making gameplay sacrifices to gain even more viewers.

Use clientside (in game) promotion of the September finals you’ll get a smite size tournout, good enough.

Esports success is dependent on good class designs and good roles to play and good skills and good combat system designs and a dev team that takes profession development extremely serious… We have none of that here. We have pve designed professions and a skills and balance team that is MIA or not given the green light to actually do any serious profession improvements and reworks.

You can add whatever rewards and toss whatever money into esports, but it will fail unless the above is addressed first.

I agree with pretty much everything Helseth said and I also want nothing more than to see the esports scene succeed. The esports events are the most important thing in the entire game for me and I would sacrifice any other aspect of the game to be able to watch them. I am also very disappointed that so many people seem to openly dislike the idea of an esports scene or (even worse in my opinion) just not care about it. If people just do not care that is more harmful than people actually having an opinion of some sort, however negative.

I totally agree that to encourage a successful esports scene, there needs to be exclusive rewards for only the best players. This will encourage people to actually try to improve because right now so many people just have no interest in improving at all which is disappointing to me. The most important thing he said on this subject is that not everyone should be able to get everything. Anet really need to stop this belief that everybody deserves everything because they just don’t. If they want to get something they should have to put work in and improve to the point where they can get it. A great example of this is legendary division. I was absolute trash in season one. Absolute trash. But I still got legendary division which I knew I didn’t deserve. It is the same with games in ranked I play now when I know I played badly, In these games I am actually happy when I lose and disappointed when I win because I know I didn’t deserve it. This is the sort of mentality players need to have if this game is going to become more competitive.

I also agree with his ideas of how casting could be improved such as focusing on one or two players in the fights but there is one thing that I didn’t agree with and I really don’t understand why so many people are asking for it: naming the individual skills and how they were used all the time. The reason I don’t want this while games are going on is because it would just take away from the hype- I don’t want to hear casters saying something like ‘X took down Y with a combo of precision strike, surge of the mists and legend swap which will allow team Z to win the fight’; I want to hear ‘wow that was a massive burst from X! It absolutely destroys Y! Team Z could be able to get control of the map if they can finish off this fight quickly!’. There is a time and place for analysis like this and they have already found it- after the game has done and they are looking back on key moments.

Overall though, I think it was a fantastic video and I hope it encourages Anet to improve the esports scene and not listen to the people saying they don’t care about it becaus many people, including me, really do.

I agree about the part on casting where camera jumps too much. I think this has been a complaint from viewers/players for quite some time now. It’s really hard to get into tournaments when you can’t enjoy fights, because you can’t see more than a few seconds of it before the casters jump to another point or another fight elsewhere. As a result, viewers can’t see the actual skills at work; the baits, dekes, good counter plays, etc.. They should focus on one player, one profession during a fight. Then rotate to another player/profession for another fight, making sure they cover a wide variety of players & classes.

The casting quality also needs to improve. The lag we saw during the Euro cast was terrible, that shouldn’t happen. The amount of delays & disconnects are still a big problem.

As for the other points, do note that it’s a bit hypocritical to be asking people to come together, hold hands, and bridge the divide…while telling Anet they should create an “elite” tier that only the select few could reach, with special rewards only the select few could obtain. You can’t have it both ways. If you create an environment for the elite few, you’ll always have a larger majority of your playerbase unhappy about not being able to reach that same point, or able to obtain the rewards from that tier. If you think players are segregated right now, wait until that happens, it’d be worse.

This is already happening on the PvE side of things ever since Anet launched raids. Now I come from long lines of games that do cater to the elite few, or the top 2%. I’m used to these types of games. But I don’t think GW2 was meant to be that kind of game. You see how things developed since HoT launched on the PvE side of things. People are not happy about raiders having access to things that the rest can’t access. PvP isn’t the only game mode dealing with player divide & losing players, it’s also happening in PvE (and WvW if you want to feel really bad about something).

The part I agree about is that the game needs more carrots, carrots for people to shoot for, both long term carrots and short term carrots. And the game mode as a whole needs to be more fun for everybody. If people are having fun, they’ll talk about it. Often in PvP the general mood is that people are just grinding for the wings, they aren’t really having fun, and they really hate the matching system or hate being blownout by pre-mades. The devs need to find a way to make PvP more fun for everybody.

I don’t quite understand how a guy who has repeatedly stated ’you’d have to literally pay me to play GW’s’ is trying to now encourage a healthy PvP scene? For me personally it kind of feels like an attempt to keep the dev money pouring into the pockets of what is really only a handful of people in the pro scene. But, I’m a cynic no offense or shots intended.

That aside, it’s a good discussion but as someone mentioned earlier, a lot of the playerbase get annoyed due to PvP being the area that gets balanced around. Having builds gutted or dealing with broken stuff when PvE stats are applied to PvP builds is a great way to build resentment towards PvP. It’s no wonder Reddit just downvotes stuff on PvP when you look from that perspective.

Which kind of ties into: Casual Wars 2 is in full-effect at the moment throughout the game, how can a game aimed almost directly at a casual/part-time audience ever hope to gain traction with ‘elite’ gamers? The PvP pro games are so far over the ‘regular’ players heads that they cannot even begin to care (just personal opinion ofc). Is there even a way to shift that perspective with the current overarching direction the game continues to take? I get it that the casting discussion would help a great deal but without a player base that cares about high-end PvP does it even matter?

So basically Anet has dropped the ball again?

Yes this is true, he brings up alot of things that we do on this forum. One of the biggest threads from this game came in during season 1 when OE got kicked from a team and Caed left his. Imo alot of that was because of the balance of the game not being very good.

He brings up skill levels and competitive tournaments. This game was so much more active when we had better balance. You go back and watch AG 26-36 your having 10 full teams with 2 FA teams.(this is basically the minor leagues) Then the winner would go to ESL, people in the game knew of AG teams just as much as radioactive, Apex and the Abjured. That scene is dead because of the Pro League and because the balance in the game just isnt fun.

Lord Helseth brings up the carrot such as meaningful rewards/ titles as well as the leader board for PvP. Anet has a split in the raid community, i myself feel like you have made HOT about raids. You have killed diversity to bring super OP HOT spec lines for these raids. It has caused frustration in the PvP and WvW servers. Yet PvP and WvW dont get these legendary armors offered in raids. I find it a bad joke that if you do PvE, you can get gold, unique gear, more AP, etc etc etc and PvP gets a old armor(tribunal) and WvW gets its own armor set.

The reason the game is in the situation it is in is because of class balance. If you get 2 new players coming into the game and we have all offensive amulets. One plays DH and the other thief and the one playing thief gets stomped in 2 sec why would he continue to play?

Ok lets say he pushes threw and picks a new class and plays ele. And he hot joins and finds a build he likes and once again he runs into a play who has done the same thing but gone to meta battle and picked the warrior condi build. This is a huge problem when 1 class is so much better then, easier to play , changed meta or the pace of the game as Anet likes to say. HOT made the game super spammy and cluttered which goes into the shout casters not doing a good job. Its not there fault they go to a fight that looks like a good one on paper and then boom its a stalemate because of the insane amount of healing a ranger has vs thief.

Anet is just simply dropping the ball because HOT PvP isnt as much fun as core PvP. Core PvP was much slower but you understood why you lost, you saw the skill from the other player and could see what you could do differently. Now its i get hard countered by a class(not a build) or the class im using is under powered with limited build options. No matter what the community does or ESl players do or say Anet needs to fix the actual game play for all levels and quit saying " change the pace of game play" which is a horrible way of saying we dont want to balance PvP.

RlyOsim.2497:

I don’t quite understand how a guy who has repeatedly stated ’you’d have to literally pay me to play GW’s’ is trying to now encourage a healthy PvP scene? For me personally it kind of feels like an attempt to keep the dev money pouring into the pockets of what is really only a handful of people in the pro scene. But, I’m a cynic no offense or shots intended.

That aside, it’s a good discussion but as someone mentioned earlier, a lot of the playerbase get annoyed due to PvP being the area that gets balanced around. Having builds gutted or dealing with broken stuff when PvE stats are applied to PvP builds is a great way to build resentment towards PvP. It’s no wonder Reddit just downvotes stuff on PvP when you look from that perspective.

Which kind of ties into: Casual Wars 2 is in full-effect at the moment throughout the game, how can a game aimed almost directly at a casual/part-time audience ever hope to gain traction with ‘elite’ gamers? The PvP pro games are so far over the ‘regular’ players heads that they cannot even begin to care (just personal opinion ofc). Is there even a way to shift that perspective with the current overarching direction the game continues to take? I get it that the casting discussion would help a great deal but without a player base that cares about high-end PvP does it even matter?

I agree with you on the split between PvE and PvP scene. Both blame each other for builds being destroyed so i agree 100%.

The Helseth thing is off to me because hes kind of been the fanatic streamer. He says he loves GW2 then he hates it. I mean he was that guy streaming him winning a 4 vs 5 game and then he lost 2 pips. So of course he is gonna have a love hate relationship with this game when Anet just throws stuff out hoping something sticks.

Also im not sure how you would answer the last part. I mean you are right this is a casual games game. Yet HOT isnt meant for the casual, HOT areas can kill you pretty easily if you are alone and raids being the other 80% of the game implemented, its changing from not being casual friendly. Then once again you brought up something wasnt even thinking about. I personally think you should balance PvP around high end play. I also believe the game should balance around PvP and PvE bosses healths/dps should change based on it.

But what if no one cares about high end PvP, that is a crazy good point i hadnt thought of. Literally what if only 100-200 players only cared about ESL level game play? Maybe this game would be better off being like GW1 in the sense its only for fun so imbalances wouldnt be as important? Idk its a great question.

Gw2 is a casuals game and so is the PvP, can’t turn water to wine unless your Kanye.

I’ve watched Helseth’s video. Honestly, I’m not surprised.

We all need to remember he’s a paid professional. Pros will always support the scene. They’re not going to stop supporting it, it hurts their pocket. It’s a conflict of interest. I get it.

Still, Helseth fails to realize that the community doesn’t want a competitive scene AT THEIR EXPENSE. There is resentment and hostility to the scene because the rest of the playerbase and PvP itself has been neglected in favor of it.

Also, Helseth’s “Let’s just hold hands as a community” just ain’t going to cut it. Not while there are obvious and glaring problems to address with game balance and priorities.

Watched that video and laughed my pants off.
Competitive scene in gw2? Its not gonna happen. You know why?
Competitive games are not based on “pro” players. They are always based on casual players that give a game the needed playerbase, “elitism” of leaderboards and FUNDS, yes casual players pay more for a game then so called hardcore pro players. No casual players – you get 1000 people watching championships on twitch!
Take a look at LoL, blizzard games etc. Do you see anything in common? Yes, an average casual gamer CAN be involved in competitive scene and he is willing to do so, not to get somekind of “elite only” item, but surprise BECAUSE ITS FUN.
Atm in gw2 spvp for an average player is NOT FUN, cause:
1) balance issues, not evertyone is willing to play “the most op prof atm”, and for a some strange reasons there are simply op professions and up professions. Average player doesnt want to get involved in deep “build” system, deep mechanics of spvp, he wants to play and have fun. For example i dont play any other classes than ele, i JUST DONT LIKE THEM, and i dont find it being fun to play them. BUT the current system is based on making me play other classes such as warriors,mesmers, necros etc that can dish out more dps/vitality/utility than an ele without even knowing how to play that class.
2) matchmaking is horrible. You can easily get 5 man premade vs 2 man premade and 3 randoms. No anet – this is not a good work.
3) class stacking – why should i even bother to play a game vs mesmer, 2 necros, 2 guards comp?
4) condi spam – the worst there can be, no skill is needed to apply a condi on you enemy, condies do a lot of dmg and are op without a good condi clear to which a lot of classes have no access. Mesmer can spamm staff 1 all day long to get a lot of condies. And a defending class needs to push 5-10 buttons to save his butt.
5) build diversity is not present. You just cant go for “oh i think this will work just fine” against a p.3 comp.
6) conquest map type. It is just bad, holding points to win will limit the number of builds that can work in that game type (bunkers). We need deathmatch arenas 1v1/2v2/3v3/ 5v5/ 10/10. Capture the flag can work. OR make stronghold a thing, all it needs is some little love.

And you can “hold hands together” all you want with pro player Helseth, but without us casual players the scene is blank and if anet wants to make this esport thing work, they need to make OUR gaming experience worth it and not those 1-2% of pros.

About money put into marketing. Didnt you actually think that besides those “taxy adds” they can actually put that money into promotions, lottery, some usefull marketing ads? Or cut the marketing expenses and invest into hiring some experienced balance team? Marketing is 0 without a good working game to actually attract players.
A good game will always get new customers via other gamers who already play the game. Thats how i got into gw2, ive been told that this game is skill based, balanced, FUN and not a p2w. That got ME into gw2, and i got a lot more players into gw2 because if not for spvp, gw2 IS the best mmo there is at the moment (pve is godlike, wvw is decent).

So to conclude. No we dont need to “hold hands together to make a better future” we need the core issues adressed and fixed.

soulknight.9620:

Watched that video and laughed my pants off.
Competitive scene in gw2? Its not gonna happen. You know why?
Competitive games are not based on “pro” players. They are always based on casual players that give a game the needed playerbase, “elitism” of leaderboards and FUNDS, yes casual players pay more for a game then so called hardcore pro players. No casual players – you get 1000 people watching championships on twitch!
Take a look at LoL, blizzard games etc. Do you see anything in common? Yes, an average casual gamer CAN be involved in competitive scene and he is willing to do so, not to get somekind of “elite only” item, but surprise BECAUSE ITS FUN.
Atm in gw2 spvp for an average player is NOT FUN, cause:
1) balance issues, not evertyone is willing to play “the most op prof atm”, and for a some strange reasons there are simply op professions and up professions. Average player doesnt want to get involved in deep “build” system, deep mechanics of spvp, he wants to play and have fun. For example i dont play any other classes than ele, i JUST DONT LIKE THEM, and i dont find it being fun to play them. BUT the current system is based on making me play other classes such as warriors,mesmers, necros etc that can dish out more dps/vitality/utility than an ele without even knowing how to play that class.
2) matchmaking is horrible. You can easily get 5 man premade vs 2 man premade and 3 randoms. No anet – this is not a good work.
3) class stacking – why should i even bother to play a game vs mesmer, 2 necros, 2 guards comp?
4) condi spam – the worst there can be, no skill is needed to apply a condi on you enemy, condies do a lot of dmg and are op without a good condi clear to which a lot of classes have no access. Mesmer can spamm staff 1 all day long to get a lot of condies. And a defending class needs to push 5-10 buttons to save his butt.
5) build diversity is not present. You just cant go for “oh i think this will work just fine” against a p.3 comp.
6) conquest map type. It is just bad, holding points to win will limit the number of builds that can work in that game type (bunkers). We need deathmatch arenas 1v1/2v2/3v3/ 5v5/ 10/10. Capture the flag can work. OR make stronghold a thing, all it needs is some little love.

And you can “hold hands together” all you want with pro player Helseth, but without us casual players the scene is blank and if anet wants to make this esport thing work, they need to make OUR gaming experience worth it and not those 1-2% of pros.

About money put into marketing. Didnt you actually think that besides those “taxy adds” they can actually put that money into promotions, lottery, some usefull marketing ads? Or cut the marketing expenses and invest into hiring some experienced balance team? Marketing is 0 without a good working game to actually attract players.
A good game will always get new customers via other gamers who already play the game. Thats how i got into gw2, ive been told that this game is skill based, balanced, FUN and not a p2w. That got ME into gw2, and i got a lot more players into gw2 because if not for spvp, gw2 IS the best mmo there is at the moment (pve is godlike, wvw is decent).

So to conclude. No we dont need to “hold hands together to make a better future” we need the core issues adressed and fixed.

Haha I give you a round of applause good sir!

I watched the whole video.

I don’t mind that pro players are getting paid to play, especially if its coming out of the marketing budget. But I think the main reason there isn’t more interest in GW2 is just because of the design of the game is just too weird.

I enjoy playing it, but I’m not the greatest, and to me it just seems like a CC/condi spam fest. I don’t even know what is going on half the time while PLAYING the game. I don’t know how to explain the design to a viewer who doesn’t follow PvP. It gets even worse when I imagine trying to explain some of the game’s design: For example: Moa? Yeah I know it seems awful but its not OP, really. Yes, thieves can stealth and perma-CC and burst. Yeah, the last team that gets the hit on the forest creature gets all the points, not the team with the most damage. The list goes on and on…

Helseth mentions subtle plays like fake out skull crack, but it is really, really hard I think for a non Pro player to catch those, let alone a person who doesn’t PvP.

I don’t even have much interest in watching Pro matches…sure I might learn some tricks and get better, but because of the above issues and (especially this season) the forced 50/50 matchmaking, I feel like it isn’t really worth the effort.

You know why pvp don’t even care about gw2 pvp anymore? Just look at the kittenty matchmaking and how dumb anet are when it comes to using MMR+pip range. Seriously who thought it would be good to create 50/50 matchmaking no matter what type of mmr you have? That means either people have to use full premade, tank mmr and ride the winstreak or give up pvping at all.

I am pretty sure I fall in to the category of Gw2 pvp demographic where anet wants people to play competitively but not at pro level, in other words I know how to play pvp just not at top tier level. However with kittenty matchmaking that is forcing me to lose until my MMR drops to ground despite all of my attempts to try my best I am quitting pvp this season because its hopeless. The system is messed up beyond the point where you know you lost the moment when one of your teammates go down. Or it requires you to play the perfect game of your life and if you die or get downed once, the entire team gets snowballed.

Tell me how is it fair to force my 60~62% winloss ratio down to 57% and onwards because I played pvp long before HoT and got better than average pvpers/pvers? And I literally played 1 game in season 3 just to see what meta was like and I quit. Does that suddenly make me a player with 100% win loss ratio and able to carry 3~4 people in a match?

Because of their kittenty matchmaking, marketing and half of an expansion people are leaving. It is not because the game is terrible or community is toxic. Anet itself is a terrible company to manage gw2 and the only thing they didn’t do is put pay 2 win component which they will when they release next expansion and introduce more power creep.

INB4 Every single specialization in HoT becomes useless and/or outpowered by the next expansion

soulknight.9620:

Watched that video and laughed my pants off.
Competitive scene in gw2? Its not gonna happen. You know why?
Competitive games are not based on “pro” players. They are always based on casual players that give a game the needed playerbase, “elitism” of leaderboards and FUNDS, yes casual players pay more for a game then so called hardcore pro players. No casual players – you get 1000 people watching championships on twitch!
Take a look at LoL, blizzard games etc. Do you see anything in common? Yes, an average casual gamer CAN be involved in competitive scene and he is willing to do so, not to get somekind of “elite only” item, but surprise BECAUSE ITS FUN.
Atm in gw2 spvp for an average player is NOT FUN, cause:
1) balance issues, not evertyone is willing to play “the most op prof atm”, and for a some strange reasons there are simply op professions and up professions. Average player doesnt want to get involved in deep “build” system, deep mechanics of spvp, he wants to play and have fun. For example i dont play any other classes than ele, i JUST DONT LIKE THEM, and i dont find it being fun to play them. BUT the current system is based on making me play other classes such as warriors,mesmers, necros etc that can dish out more dps/vitality/utility than an ele without even knowing how to play that class.
2) matchmaking is horrible. You can easily get 5 man premade vs 2 man premade and 3 randoms. No anet – this is not a good work.
3) class stacking – why should i even bother to play a game vs mesmer, 2 necros, 2 guards comp?
4) condi spam – the worst there can be, no skill is needed to apply a condi on you enemy, condies do a lot of dmg and are op without a good condi clear to which a lot of classes have no access. Mesmer can spamm staff 1 all day long to get a lot of condies. And a defending class needs to push 5-10 buttons to save his butt.
5) build diversity is not present. You just cant go for “oh i think this will work just fine” against a p.3 comp.
6) conquest map type. It is just bad, holding points to win will limit the number of builds that can work in that game type (bunkers). We need deathmatch arenas 1v1/2v2/3v3/ 5v5/ 10/10. Capture the flag can work. OR make stronghold a thing, all it needs is some little love.

And you can “hold hands together” all you want with pro player Helseth, but without us casual players the scene is blank and if anet wants to make this esport thing work, they need to make OUR gaming experience worth it and not those 1-2% of pros.

About money put into marketing. Didnt you actually think that besides those “taxy adds” they can actually put that money into promotions, lottery, some usefull marketing ads? Or cut the marketing expenses and invest into hiring some experienced balance team? Marketing is 0 without a good working game to actually attract players.
A good game will always get new customers via other gamers who already play the game. Thats how i got into gw2, ive been told that this game is skill based, balanced, FUN and not a p2w. That got ME into gw2, and i got a lot more players into gw2 because if not for spvp, gw2 IS the best mmo there is at the moment (pve is godlike, wvw is decent).

So to conclude. No we dont need to “hold hands together to make a better future” we need the core issues adressed and fixed.

Yup

Swagger.1459:

We have pve designed professions

Do we, really? Most of profession skills and mechanics in this game are 4 years old, made at a time where the combat system was still new to the playerbase and Anet. Professions were designed around cool ideas and concepts, but not truly polished towards any specialized mode. That’s why some weapons offer everything any pve player would possibly want (AoE, DPS, mobility, some CC) while others are as useless and pointless there as they can be.

This game’s balance is very generalized. Nowadays, Anet basically takes some of the mechanics that work well in pve, some that work well in pvp, and put them together for new elite specs. And that’s probably the best they can do.

It’s clear that they not have the time or budget to balance even a single game mode, as they are probably devoting half of their time creating new elite specs and using all their art budget into them, so much less can they balance 3 game modes at once.

The most balanced pvp games are those that are entirely dedicated to pvp. League of Legends’ Riot, for example, has several teams working on new champions, 2 teams working on remaking existing champions from the ground up, 1 team working on polishing existing champions’ mechanics and 1 team balancing the meta with number tweaks. Anet has a single “skill & balance team”.

I am inclined to agree with Helseth especially when he speaks about there being what seems to be a massive divide between the ‘casual’ playerbase and the tournament level players. Legendary division does not mean much, Legendary backpiece means nothing.

I don’t know how I would go about fixing this but I think a major redesign for how you obtain the Legendary backpiece so they can make divisions matter is something that’s definitely on the cards. There’s talk of the Starcraft system on this thread and Helseth spoke about the Hearthstone system and I think they’re definitely worth comparing to the standing Division model.

Sarrs.4831:

I am inclined to agree with Helseth especially when he speaks about there being what seems to be a massive divide between the ‘casual’ playerbase and the tournament level players. Legendary division does not mean much, Legendary backpiece means nothing.

I don’t know how I would go about fixing this but I think a major redesign for how you obtain the Legendary backpiece so they can make divisions matter is something that’s definitely on the cards. There’s talk of the Starcraft system on this thread and Helseth spoke about the Hearthstone system and I think they’re definitely worth comparing to the standing Division model.

Anet would need to successfuly fix mmr so that each match would be static instead of these set of extremes matchmaking set-up. Four of the same class on 1 team is not going to cut it. At matchmaking’s current itteration, it’s impossible to implement a system that would successfuly measure individual skill.

Why is there so much discussion on the e-sports scene, but so little discussion on things like:

- Spectate-ability
- Ability to recognize skill in good players
- Simple to play/difficult to master design philosophy
- Ability to follow the ebb and flow of team fights
- Match pacing
- Impact of game mode/lack of interesting pre-game (like a draft)

Anyone who thinks DotA 2 and LoL are balanced hasn’t defined what balance means for them. In GW2, they seem to think it would only be balanced if every class was able to compete, but in MOBAs, you don’t need every hero to be able to compete. Just some subset. Apparently TI witnessed a large number of unique Heroes chosen for various games, but I’ve heard that LoL is generally plagued with a pretty small subset of their total Hero pool showing up in competitive tournaments. Is that balanced, just because you see 20 unique Heroes out of 40, as opposed to maybe only seeing 5 unique GW2 classes out of 9? Plus, competitive balance and casual balance in games like DOTA 2 and LoL are often wildly different, where you have “pub stomp” heroes that don’t see the light of day on competitive matches.

Smoke and mirrors.

You need a game that is watchable, easy to understand, and simple to identify when a player is really blowing it out of the water. Popular MOBAs give you metrics on GPM, K/D/A, and have down-time between fights that give you a breather before you see a big play happen over the span of a few seconds. Or drama develops over the course of 30+ seconds, you watch it develop, then it concludes. There are ways to compare what a pro is doing with what you are doing when you play, and you realize “Wow, that pro is just blasting kitten”.

Contrarily, what constitutes a play in GW2? How do I know that a pro is playing his Necromancer better than I feasibly could? You need to have an understanding of builds to understand nuances in how it might be better. You need to understand inherently what each ability does, analyze when they are used, and understand basically all of the game mechanics to identify an especially good ability use. Most often it’s going to be subtle, the graphic might be obscured by the rest of everything on-screen, and if you’re a new player, you very likely won’t pick up on it.

GW2, from the ground up, just unfortunately isn’t really designed to be a widely popular e-sport. It’s a competitive game, and with tournaments you could qualify it as an e-sport, but it misses a lot of the conventions of the widely popular e-sports by a wide margin. There’s no profession re-balancing you can do to suddenly make a new player understand what he’s seeing in a Conquest style game, as health bars, conditions, and boons are constantly in flux. Learning all of the Heroes in a MOBA might be difficult and a significant barrier of entry, but you often can generally see what abilities do by context clues. You’d need a cheat sheet to look at to try to keep tabs on what’s happening in a GW2 fight.

EDIT – And if they want to avoid comp issues, then they most likely need to just implement a drafting system, even if it’s solely for the team. Talk to your team, decide who plays what class, then you choose which character you have available in that class and play it. None of this “queue as a character” MMO nonsense that creates a layer of matchmaking complexity that can be very difficult to get over, especially with ambiguous at best roles.

I hear only a lot of whining… esports so neglected… esports so toxic… esports so hated… esports not enough goodies…

And then how to make PvP better for esports.

As pretty much always, I cant agree with a lot of things stated in that video.

What needs to be done has been stated a lot on these forums… starting with a REAL soloqueue and support for 1v1 scene.

And balancing… dont get me started… tbh… the way anet keeps on “economizing” in that area… the only thing that would save pvp balance is removing all build creation tools… let the pvp team create hero builds everybody can pick from to queue with.

Not gonna keep on going on about it… there are enough posts about why pvp is kittened up, and its NOT because esports doesnt get enough love.

The game is not balanced around 1v1, there is no point in supporting a 1v1 scene. Solo queue helps motivating solo players to play pvp but something that is actually missing is a something that encourages competitive team play, because solo queue doesn’t necessarily build a competitive scene.
We had daily automated tournaments in gw1 that were very cheap (basically free tbh) to enter, where every guild that had a minimum of 4 (later on it was decreased to two) players who had been in guild for 1 or 2 weeks (I don’t remember) who could sign up, play the tournament and get ingame rewards. No external registration crap or high entree fees (like paid tournaments that required gemstore items to register). Just sign up, play and get rewards.
So why can’t we have a number of daily tournaments in gw2, where guild teams of 5 players can sign up and play. At the end of the tournament every team who finished (=played all matches) gets rewards based on the final standings. Handing out rewards from first to last place according to the placement, should encourage more casual players to compete, as it means that they don’t play for nothing.
Or you know, just copy the whole gw1 gvg system, with daily ats and mats. It was great. Just replace the gold, silver and bronze trims with the name badges or come up with something cool (read: Not ugly flags that you can put on your back).

Currently there is just 0 reason for new teams to form and play, as there is no environment that supports you. You cannot participate in any tournaments without qualifying, there are no teams to practice against and there are no rewards unless you are one of the top teams. Even when there had been weekly esl tournaments, people were not motivated because they could not get much unless the were part of a top team. I have played a few esl weeklies and won some gems but as a new team, your hope was basically to beat other bad/mediocre teams and sneak your way into the finals to get obliterated by the current top guild (at my time that was cheese mode) and go home with some gems. If you leave empty handed in most cases, while you cannot even register ingame, have to use an external website to play (read: effort) and don’t even necessarily get to play more than 2 games, you will stop playing rather quickly.

RlyOsim.2497:

I don’t quite understand how a guy who has repeatedly stated ’you’d have to literally pay me to play GW’s’ is trying to now encourage a healthy PvP scene? For me personally it kind of feels like an attempt to keep the dev money pouring into the pockets of what is really only a handful of people in the pro scene. But, I’m a cynic no offense or shots intended.

That aside, it’s a good discussion but as someone mentioned earlier, a lot of the playerbase get annoyed due to PvP being the area that gets balanced around. Having builds gutted or dealing with broken stuff when PvE stats are applied to PvP builds is a great way to build resentment towards PvP. It’s no wonder Reddit just downvotes stuff on PvP when you look from that perspective.

Which kind of ties into: Casual Wars 2 is in full-effect at the moment throughout the game, how can a game aimed almost directly at a casual/part-time audience ever hope to gain traction with ‘elite’ gamers? The PvP pro games are so far over the ‘regular’ players heads that they cannot even begin to care (just personal opinion ofc). Is there even a way to shift that perspective with the current overarching direction the game continues to take? I get it that the casting discussion would help a great deal but without a player base that cares about high-end PvP does it even matter?

Amen, there are people who still really understand.
There is no real competition.
Even really good players are not interested in those tournaments. Always the same people, the same faces over and over. Pro of 50 people?

Anet should stop this E-sport wannabe, there are only going deeper and deeper right to hell. This is the wrong way.

Seyiwaji.4082:

RlyOsim.2497:

I don’t quite understand how a guy who has repeatedly stated ’you’d have to literally pay me to play GW’s’ is trying to now encourage a healthy PvP scene? For me personally it kind of feels like an attempt to keep the dev money pouring into the pockets of what is really only a handful of people in the pro scene. But, I’m a cynic no offense or shots intended.

That aside, it’s a good discussion but as someone mentioned earlier, a lot of the playerbase get annoyed due to PvP being the area that gets balanced around. Having builds gutted or dealing with broken stuff when PvE stats are applied to PvP builds is a great way to build resentment towards PvP. It’s no wonder Reddit just downvotes stuff on PvP when you look from that perspective.

Which kind of ties into: Casual Wars 2 is in full-effect at the moment throughout the game, how can a game aimed almost directly at a casual/part-time audience ever hope to gain traction with ‘elite’ gamers? The PvP pro games are so far over the ‘regular’ players heads that they cannot even begin to care (just personal opinion ofc). Is there even a way to shift that perspective with the current overarching direction the game continues to take? I get it that the casting discussion would help a great deal but without a player base that cares about high-end PvP does it even matter?

Amen, there are people who still really understand.
There is no real competition.
Even really good players are not interested in those tournaments. Always the same people, the same faces over and over. Pro of 50 people?

Anet should stop this E-sport wannabe, there are only going deeper and deeper right to hell. This is the wrong way.

Remember 2/5 of NL (going to worlds) never played a ESL tourny til the qualifiers and 4/5 have 0 PL wins l0l
Same people idkm

kitten.5862:

Seyiwaji.4082:

RlyOsim.2497:

I don’t quite understand how a guy who has repeatedly stated ’you’d have to literally pay me to play GW’s’ is trying to now encourage a healthy PvP scene? For me personally it kind of feels like an attempt to keep the dev money pouring into the pockets of what is really only a handful of people in the pro scene. But, I’m a cynic no offense or shots intended.

That aside, it’s a good discussion but as someone mentioned earlier, a lot of the playerbase get annoyed due to PvP being the area that gets balanced around. Having builds gutted or dealing with broken stuff when PvE stats are applied to PvP builds is a great way to build resentment towards PvP. It’s no wonder Reddit just downvotes stuff on PvP when you look from that perspective.

Which kind of ties into: Casual Wars 2 is in full-effect at the moment throughout the game, how can a game aimed almost directly at a casual/part-time audience ever hope to gain traction with ‘elite’ gamers? The PvP pro games are so far over the ‘regular’ players heads that they cannot even begin to care (just personal opinion ofc). Is there even a way to shift that perspective with the current overarching direction the game continues to take? I get it that the casting discussion would help a great deal but without a player base that cares about high-end PvP does it even matter?

Amen, there are people who still really understand.
There is no real competition.
Even really good players are not interested in those tournaments. Always the same people, the same faces over and over. Pro of 50 people?

Anet should stop this E-sport wannabe, there are only going deeper and deeper right to hell. This is the wrong way.

Remember 2/5 of NL (going to worlds) never played a ESL tourny til the qualifiers and 4/5 have 0 PL wins l0l
Same people idkm

A scene growth of not one, but TWO people?! I wasn’t conviced thus far, but kitten , 200k$ well spent Anet!

NotASmurf.1725:

kitten.5862:

Seyiwaji.4082:

RlyOsim.2497:

I don’t quite understand how a guy who has repeatedly stated ’you’d have to literally pay me to play GW’s’ is trying to now encourage a healthy PvP scene? For me personally it kind of feels like an attempt to keep the dev money pouring into the pockets of what is really only a handful of people in the pro scene. But, I’m a cynic no offense or shots intended.

That aside, it’s a good discussion but as someone mentioned earlier, a lot of the playerbase get annoyed due to PvP being the area that gets balanced around. Having builds gutted or dealing with broken stuff when PvE stats are applied to PvP builds is a great way to build resentment towards PvP. It’s no wonder Reddit just downvotes stuff on PvP when you look from that perspective.

Which kind of ties into: Casual Wars 2 is in full-effect at the moment throughout the game, how can a game aimed almost directly at a casual/part-time audience ever hope to gain traction with ‘elite’ gamers? The PvP pro games are so far over the ‘regular’ players heads that they cannot even begin to care (just personal opinion ofc). Is there even a way to shift that perspective with the current overarching direction the game continues to take? I get it that the casting discussion would help a great deal but without a player base that cares about high-end PvP does it even matter?

Amen, there are people who still really understand.
There is no real competition.
Even really good players are not interested in those tournaments. Always the same people, the same faces over and over. Pro of 50 people?

Anet should stop this E-sport wannabe, there are only going deeper and deeper right to hell. This is the wrong way.

Remember 2/5 of NL (going to worlds) never played a ESL tourny til the qualifiers and 4/5 have 0 PL wins l0l
Same people idkm

A scene growth of not one, but TWO people?! I wasn’t conviced thus far, but kitten , 200k$ well spent Anet!

Do you think they keep funding the wrong crowd? Not that i’m all for their programming league nor care about their growth scene, two or one person it really does not matter given the passion and dedication they will fail no matter what, unless ofcourse the population percentile increase and get done with their World marketing championship.
The thing is, its hierarchy but the current monarch is amateurish i’d say give them another year.

I watched Helseth’s video with interest. First let me say that if I can be said to admire any Pro League player it is Helseth. I tune into his stream now and then. Twitch Pro league usually bores me within 10 minutes and I wander off.

He tried to make a case for Pro League’s value and wondered why it is not well received, especially on Reddit.

After thinking about it, here’s my response. I dislike Pro League for two major reasons and several secondary ones.

First, Pro League and the players themselves drive the game to be harder to play. Longer and longer combinations, weird situational powers and traits, coordinated team tactics and the like. These trickle into regular play.

A harder game and steeper learning curve make my life harder. I don’t want to have to spend hours a day practicing to be successful. If I wanted ultra complex combinations and powers interactions, I’d play WoW. It comes with a built in macro editor as I understand it.

In addition, a harder game is less casual friendly. PvP already has a low population. Making it harder will only increase that trend.

Second, my perception is that ANET has a number of areas that need attention. Pro League is a distraction from that. It also seems that ANET makes balance decisions based on the whim of pro league players.

Yes, Helseth, there is a “blind hatred” between what you call “competitive” players and the rest.

Part is the skill divide. No one enjoys coming to a game and being pounded into the soil of Tyria. That’s particularly true when your enemy laughs and calls you a “noob” while they do it.

Related is the ultra conservative, Social Darwinist attitudes displayed by some players. The notion that casual players don’t “deserve” to have a good time ( ie win ,) that all problems can be solved if the player would simply “git gud.” This kind of talk works in an Ayn Rand novel, but it chases players away in the real world.

Ithilwen.1529:

I watched Helseth’s video with interest. First let me say that if I can be said to admire any Pro League player it is Helseth. I tune into his stream now and then. Twitch Pro league usually bores me within 10 minutes and I wander off.

He tried to make a case for Pro League’s value and wondered why it is not well received, especially on Reddit.

After thinking about it, here’s my response. I dislike Pro League for two major reasons and several secondary ones.

First, Pro League and the players themselves drive the game to be harder to play. Longer and longer combinations, weird situational powers and traits, coordinated team tactics and the like. These trickle into regular play.

A harder game and steeper learning curve make my life harder. I don’t want to have to spend hours a day practicing to be successful. If I wanted ultra complex combinations and powers interactions, I’d play WoW. It comes with a built in macro editor as I understand it.

In addition, a harder game is less casual friendly. PvP already has a low population. Making it harder will only increase that trend.

Second, my perception is that ANET has a number of areas that need attention. Pro League is a distraction from that. It also seems that ANET makes balance decisions based on the whim of pro league players.

Yes, Helseth, there is a “blind hatred” between what you call “competitive” players and the rest.

Part is the skill divide. No one enjoys coming to a game and being pounded into the soil of Tyria. That’s particularly true when your enemy laughs and calls you a “noob” while they do it.

Related is the ultra conservative, Social Darwinist attitudes displayed by some players. The notion that casual players don’t “deserve” to have a good time ( ie win ,) that all problems can be solved if the player would simply “git gud.” This kind of talk works in an Ayn Rand novel, but it chases players away in the real world.

that’s such a bad argument. you don’t like pro league because you dont think it should be possible for people to be better than others? you don’t have to be the best; you aren’t right now. so why does it matter if you know the super duper combos now or in the future?

I said no such thing. Of course people should be able to excel and be better than others. There should not, however, be such a gulf between mid and high skill.

Pro League drives a trend to increasingly complex moves and tactics. In my opinion that has gone too far.

If the learning curve is too steep, you make the game inaccessible. Like many others, I want to log in and have fun. I don’t want to have to practice for hours daily to be able to do that.

Ithilwen.1529:

If the learning curve is too steep, you make the game inaccessible. Like many others, I want to log in and have fun. I don’t want to have to practice for hours daily to be able to do that.

I dunno about you but I’m perfectly capable of logging in and having fun while doing zero practice.

This doesn’t sound like a problem with the game. It sounds like a problem with your mindset.

Ithilwen.1529:

I said no such thing. Of course people should be able to excel and be better than others. There should not, however, be such a gulf between mid and high skill.

Pro League drives a trend to increasingly complex moves and tactics. In my opinion that has gone too far.

If the learning curve is too steep, you make the game inaccessible. Like many others, I want to log in and have fun. I don’t want to have to practice for hours daily to be able to do that.

So you feel that players are getting better from watching pro league and that’s personally a problem for you..

Edit:. How exactly is Pro League broadcasts and the learning curve of casual play connected

No, that’s a misinterpretation. I feel that Pro league is developing niche moves, long combinations and coordinated plays that are being used to stomp more casual players easily.

In short, the game skillcap is too high. The difference between mid level players and high level players is too great as a result.

Ithilwen.1529:

No, that’s a misinterpretation. I feel that Pro league is developing niche moves, long combinations and coordinated plays that are being used to stomp more casual players easily.

In short, the game skillcap is too high. The difference between mid level players and high level players is too great as a result.

Contrary to what Ithilwen suggests, high complexity does not necessarily lead to inaccessibility, because having a high skill ceiling is different from having a steep learning curve or a deterringly high skill floor. The key is to have systems in place to educate the playerbase as new players progress from noobdom to star athletes.

As Chaith implied, the increasing skill ceiling of Pro League has nothing to do with the skill floor of casual play. Those two player populations are not even playing the same game. A Sunday jogger has no reason to be upset that somebody set a new world record for marathon. On the contrary, Ithilwen should be pleased that the Pro League is pushing the skill cap, because doing so will increase the game’s longevity. Skill-based PvP with a high skill ceiling will keep the game up and running long after Anet has killed all development and shifted resources to mobile games. Anyone who enjoys PvP in GW2 should wish for the same.

Ithilwen.1529:

Second, my perception is that ANET has a number of areas that need attention. Pro League is a distraction from that. It also seems that ANET makes balance decisions based on the whim of pro league players.

Yes, Helseth, there is a “blind hatred” between what you call “competitive” players and the rest.

I don’t agree with your post..except this part…
This company always balance the game globally based on PvP ….

Ithilwen.1529:

I watched Helseth’s video with interest. First let me say that if I can be said to admire any Pro League player it is Helseth. I tune into his stream now and then. Twitch Pro league usually bores me within 10 minutes and I wander off.

He tried to make a case for Pro League’s value and wondered why it is not well received, especially on Reddit.

After thinking about it, here’s my response. I dislike Pro League for two major reasons and several secondary ones.

First, Pro League and the players themselves drive the game to be harder to play. Longer and longer combinations, weird situational powers and traits, coordinated team tactics and the like. These trickle into regular play.

A harder game and steeper learning curve make my life harder. I don’t want to have to spend hours a day practicing to be successful. If I wanted ultra complex combinations and powers interactions, I’d play WoW. It comes with a built in macro editor as I understand it.

In addition, a harder game is less casual friendly. PvP already has a low population. Making it harder will only increase that trend.

Second, my perception is that ANET has a number of areas that need attention. Pro League is a distraction from that. It also seems that ANET makes balance decisions based on the whim of pro league players.

Yes, Helseth, there is a “blind hatred” between what you call “competitive” players and the rest.

Part is the skill divide. No one enjoys coming to a game and being pounded into the soil of Tyria. That’s particularly true when your enemy laughs and calls you a “noob” while they do it.

Related is the ultra conservative, Social Darwinist attitudes displayed by some players. The notion that casual players don’t “deserve” to have a good time ( ie win ,) that all problems can be solved if the player would simply “git gud.” This kind of talk works in an Ayn Rand novel, but it chases players away in the real world.

I have to disagree simply because alot of what you are saying doesnt have to do with the Pro League scene.

Alot of Pro players have come out with threads suggesting things for better balance, i believe chaith out out one for engy and gave nerfs to some things and bumps to others for more build options. So even the pro league players see the problem with build diversity.

Having high skill caps isnt a bad thing, its only a bad thing when Anet makes it so there is no counters to a certain build. Its also a bad thing when the ESL league has a 1 class max simply because of class balance issues.

I saw Anet people playing the game season 1 & 2. Not so much in 3 and 4. I dont think you can blame the Pro scene or players for that but im ok with it if you are.

FWIW I believe a lack of visible progression within pvp leads to alot of misconceptions regarding pro league and negativity. We have a messed up ranked system that doesn’t rank players on performance and we have nothing to aim for beyond a backpiece. Perhaps if there was a system where regular players could see that they can aspire to pro league we would have less negativity.

Aereniel.7356:

Ithilwen.1529:

No, that’s a misinterpretation. I feel that Pro league is developing niche moves, long combinations and coordinated plays that are being used to stomp more casual players easily.

In short, the game skillcap is too high. The difference between mid level players and high level players is too great as a result.

Contrary to what Ithilwen suggests, high complexity does not necessarily lead to inaccessibility, because having a high skill ceiling is different from having a steep learning curve or a deterringly high skill floor. The key is to have systems in place to educate the playerbase as new players progress from noobdom to star athletes.

As Chaith implied, the increasing skill ceiling of Pro League has nothing to do with the skill floor of casual play. Those two player populations are not even playing the same game. A Sunday jogger has no reason to be upset that somebody set a new world record for marathon. On the contrary, Ithilwen should be pleased that the Pro League is pushing the skill cap, because doing so will increase the game’s longevity. Skill-based PvP with a high skill ceiling will keep the game up and running long after Anet has killed all development and shifted resources to mobile games. Anyone who enjoys PvP in GW2 should wish for the same.

It is true that a high skill cap is “different from having a steep learning curve or a deterringly high skill floor.” However they are interrelated. As skill cap rises in has a very strong tendency to raise the skill floor. This naturally results in a steep learning curve.

Sure it would be great if there were easily accessible learning steps. They don’t exist in GW2 PvP.

If, as you say, Pro League is “not even playing the same game,” then; I contend that balance decisions should not be made based on Pro League. Further, I’d wonder what the relevance of the League is to the rest of the game.

To return to the point of my post; It is true that there is a gulf between what Helseth called “competitive” players and the larger casual group.

I believe that gulf is created by the difficulty of having initial success in PvP. When I got my pilot’s license, even the FAA literature encouraged new pilots to take new passengers out in the morning (for calm air) and make the flight short and pleasant.

First impressions are crucial. I brought a friend and guildmate to PvP. In his first game, he was stomped 4v1 by a roaming zerg. The next match happened to be Courtyard, with the other team camping our spawn. He vowed never to come back.

Matchmaking is much better at the moment, but a new incoming player can expect to take a lot of stompings and name calling before they see much success.

It wasn’t until Osicat made a great video on shatters that I really understood several important details. This was what? 2+ years into pvp? I actively asked, even pleaded with some players to reveal why my shatters hit like a day old kitten. No dice.

This kind of situation is why PvP is running on thin population. It’s simply too hard to learn.

the game skillcap is too high

This kind of situation is why PvP is running on thin population. It’s simply too hard to learn.

- Ithwilen 2016

That’s such an unconsidered and wrong statement, it does hurt.
Gw2 is by far one of the easiest games with a super low skill cap.You don’t have to be ‘good’ to be successfull. Every single fps-game has a much higher skill cap and you ushally have to spend twice as much time to reach competitive top tier. Gw2 is a joke in comparison to that.

All I read from you is that you know you are bad in comparison to ESL players and you don’t like to be bad. And since you aren’t interested to spend some effort to improve you’d rather extinguish the whole competitive scene so that the playerbase is playing on your casual lvl.

Fun-Fact: considering your season complain threads where you posted your amounts of games played during the season, you play more than most ESL-players do.

Ithilwen.1529:

It is true that a high skill cap is “different from having a steep learning curve or a deterringly high skill floor.” However they are interrelated. As skill cap rises in has a very strong tendency to raise the skill floor. This naturally results in a steep learning curve.

I agree that the tendency exists, however, I disagree about the strength of the causality. As for whether a steep learning curve or a high minimum skill floor is an impediment for fun, I see no reason to debate that. It’s subjective and there are as many viable answers as there are players. To each their own. I will say, however, that having a steep learning curve is not and has never been an impediment for commercial success or longevity in gaming. Examples range from Roguelikes to EVE Online to Demon’s Souls to Smash Melee. It’s a bit of a hollow argument to claim that PvP is running thin on population because the skill barrier of entry or learning curve is too high. That might represent how you as a point estimate feel, but it’s not necessarily indicative of anything population-wide.

Actually, I would argue that GW2 PvP has never been easier to get into and more inclusive at the low tiers than at this very moment, when anyone can pick any profession they choose and get legend with it. That’s a low-tier time-gated accomplishment everyone can aspire to. No skill required, just time.

Ithilwen.1529:

If, as you say, Pro League is “not even playing the same game,” then; I contend that balance decisions should not be made based on Pro League.

Don’t be a silly goose, why would any sane system developer balance for players who don’t even know how the game works, e.g. the mid-to-low tiers? This is the Master Yi pub stomp argument all over again, and it gets debunked every time. Best practice is to balance for the top 1% while at the same time correcting outliers that erode the low-to-mid-tier customer experience, which is what Anet has consistently done.