Guild Wars 2

Hey folks, Neglekt here breaking down the “new player learning curve” in spvp and how we can combat it. One of the reoccurring topics that seems to come up in every discussion based on the sPvP player population crisis is the entry barrier and learning curve for new players who are trying to start spvp in gw2. This thread will analyze the frustrations of a new player, then provide efficient and realistic solutions to the learning curve problem.

Analysis:
For our analysis, i will create a hypothetical story of a new player entering gw2 spvp for the first time (a story that has been repeated to me by nearly every friend that i’ve conned into buying gw2). Here we go: [“Billy” buys gw2 because he’s bored with WoW’s pvp; he plays on a low-population server in WoW and has no one to rely play with. “Billy” loggs into gw2, plays through the starting area for his character then alt-tabs to google to figure out how to enter the spvp lobby. He gets into the heart of the mists after completing a tutorial that tells him nothing about how to build or play his class. Upon entering the mists, he quickly realizes that he’s pretty much the only person in there besdes 2 or 3 afk’ers (he didn’t choose mAnvil Rock server). He reads up on some of his skills then decides to try out a casual “battleground”, shuffleing around the UI trying to find a queue function, later realizing that he actually has to go talk to an npc to enter a match. Once he gets into hotjoin (it’s the closest npc upon entering mists), he starts using the skills he’s read up on to try and outplay other people, but constantly gets zerged and even looses 1v1 fights due to other characters being somehow stronger than his.] -at this point, new players tend to loose all interest in spvp. They spend all this time just trying to get into a match, and when they do, they get crushed because they use the default builds provided by the game engine upon entering the mists. The lack of a tutorial based around how to play or build their class leaves them vulnerable and confused.

Solutions: What can we do to fix Billy’s problems?

• Well, the first thing we could do (when i say “WE”, i do mean a certain game development team) is highlight the spvp icon and the “enter mists” button right after players complete the starting area by providing arrows pointing out the UI feature, we could even make it open up on default.

• Another thing we could do is add to the tutorials to teach new players the basics of their class and possibly have them play in match-ups against easy-level npc’s of each class (like the ones in the Heart of Mists already).

• The most effective thing we could do is run statistics on which builds for each class are being played the most in tpvp games and just set those as the “defaults” that new players start with upon entering the mists, rather than the complete random garbage traits/utilities/runes/wep sets they start with currently.

• We could also just make the Heart of Mists a cross-server lobby, so that new players who pick a server that doesn’t have an spvp playerbase (like any server but anvil rock and desolation) wont be discouraged from playing the game. -The new guesting system seems to be a relative fix to this issue. It would be cool to highlight Anvil Rock/Desolation servers as the sPVP capitals in server selection to show the new players where to go to find ppl to spvp with!

• We could also just make hotjoin 5v5 completely to counteract zergs (remove 8v8 option from current maps, or at least don’t let people “play now” into it), making larger 5 point 8v8 conquest maps could also counter this.

• A solo queue ladder. Solo queue is SO detrimental for streams to develop a larger viewerbase; nobody wants to watch or learn from the “self proclaimed top Mesmer NA”, a strong viewerbase for streams is ESSENTIAL for the casual player-base to be able to learn, and in it’s current state; there is no individual skill progression in gw2, just team-based progression, and not even much team progression even.

I’d like to end this thread on a note that i’m in no way trying to flame arenanet, i love our dev’s and how active they are in these forums and with the community in general, they do a great job at keeping the content rolling and getting us stoked for future updates. I would just like to highlight these issues to anyone who’s unaware of the problems we’re currently facing in the sPvP community, and to provide some sort of structured input onto how most players in our community believe these problems could be fixed. Because as countless says; don’t complain on the forums about something unless you have an idea of how to fix it. -Neglekt

SUPPORT THE STREAMS!

I don’t think sPvP has a learning curve… Many high profile live streamers flocked to GW2 on release and left just as quickly because it is immediately recognizable as an imbalanced PvP game. The people who stayed all populate the most OP and imbalanced class/traits possible and pretty much live on a loop playing against the same teams day in and day out because there is no sPvP community.

The first step is to not live in denial and make excuses that the game didn’t have enough popularity or people didn’t know how to play. The people played it and didn’t like it and moved on. Address that. Fix the game. Maybe people will come back.

Wreckdum.8367:

I don’t think sPvP has a learning curve… Many high profile live streamers flocked to GW2 on release and left just as quickly because it is immediately recognizable as an imbalanced PvP game. The people who stayed all populate the most OP and imbalanced class/traits possible and pretty much live on a loop playing against the same teams day in and day out because there is no sPvP community.

The first step is to not live in denial and make excuses that the game didn’t have enough popularity or people didn’t know how to play. The people played it and didn’t like it and moved on. Address that. Fix the game. Maybe people will come back.

And we have a winner!

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

Wreckdum.8367:

I don’t think sPvP has a learning curve… Many high profile live streamers flocked to GW2 on release and left just as quickly because it is immediately recognizable as an imbalanced PvP game. The people who stayed all populate the most OP and imbalanced class/traits possible and pretty much live on a loop playing against the same teams day in and day out because there is no sPvP community.

The first step is to not live in denial and make excuses that the game didn’t have enough popularity or people didn’t know how to play. The people played it and didn’t like it and moved on. Address that. Fix the game. Maybe people will come back.

Well, whether we like it or not there’s likely always going to be cookie cutter builds for most classes; or at least weapon sets, it’s like this in every game and gw2 is no exception to the rule. And spvp never rely had a big live stream viewerbase post-launch, most of the viewers were following big pve’rs like knugen and kripparian. We must take the game in it’s current state and look at why certain aspects are declining (spvp) when they should be easily growing based on our sales numbers. The barrier to get into spvp on NA is a complete nightmare right now for new players.

Wreckdum.8367:

I don’t think sPvP has a learning curve… Many high profile live streamers flocked to GW2 on release and left just as quickly because it is immediately recognizable as an imbalanced PvP game. The people who stayed all populate the most OP and imbalanced class/traits possible and pretty much live on a loop playing against the same teams day in and day out because there is no sPvP community.

The first step is to not live in denial and make excuses that the game didn’t have enough popularity or people didn’t know how to play. The people played it and didn’t like it and moved on. Address that. Fix the game. Maybe people will come back.

I agree, the player base is quite limited already. To get more people to play Spvp, you are trying to draw from the people who are currently playing Guild Wars 2 right now. There is little to no external audience to reach out to.

If people are not interested in the first place, spvp will remain unpopulated with little people playing.

I also find the community to have some sort of collective cognitive dissonance about wanting new people playing pvp in this game. On one hand, more people would definitely increase the popularity of this area of gameplay in Guild Wars 2. on the other hand, the community repeatedly makes remarks about how 8v8 hotjoin is bad, is for noobs, you don’t learn anything from it. How only 5v5 matters.

Guess what, the first game mode that people coming into pvp play is most likely 8v8. Why would they want to continue playing if they are met with hostile and elitist attitudes as such? The hardcore players who have invested time and money into playing pvp are going to stay, but the casual players are not.

Wreckdum.8367:

I don’t think sPvP has a learning curve… Many high profile live streamers flocked to GW2 on release and left just as quickly because it is immediately recognizable as an imbalanced PvP game. The people who stayed all populate the most OP and imbalanced class/traits possible and pretty much live on a loop playing against the same teams day in and day out because there is no sPvP community.

The first step is to not live in denial and make excuses that the game didn’t have enough popularity or people didn’t know how to play. The people played it and didn’t like it and moved on. Address that. Fix the game. Maybe people will come back.

Where did they all go?

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

Zodian.6597:

• The most effective thing we could do* is run statistics on which builds for each class are being played the most in tpvp games and just set those as the “defaults” that new players start with upon entering the mists, rather than the complete random garbage traits/utilities/runes/wep sets they start with currently.

• We could also just make the Heart of Mists a cross-server lobby, so that new players who pick a server that doesn’t have an spvp playerbase (like any server but anvil rock and desolation) wont be discouraged from playing the game. This would also unite the community so new players who have questions can actually get answers via map chat from their peers.

• A solo queue ladder. Now anyone who knows me, knows that i’ve been advocating for a solo queue ladder forever, and this is because (pertaining to this thread only, i could ramble about solo queue ladders all day) it’s SO detrimental for streams to develop a larger viewerbase; nobody wants to watch or learn from the “self proclaimed top Mesmer NA”, a strong viewerbase for streams is ESSENTIAL for the casual player-base to be able to learn, and in it’s current state; there is no individual skill progression in gw2, just team-based progression, and not even much team progression even.

I don’t usually get so excited over a post, but…

Thanks for writing an awesome, well-reasoned, practical assessment of the issues keeping new players from enjoying their time trying PvP. The “Billy” story was right on—the devs should be thinking about the “first experience” a new PvPer has. Right now, it’s not a very fun experience your first time.

I quoted these three because I consider them to be the most important out of all the good suggestions. The ranked solo-queue should be listed side-by-side with hotjoin, so that new PvPers know that they can pop into a hotjoin if they want to practice or farm, but it’s not intended to work as an actual team vs team mode. Hotjoin as the “standard” PvP experience is the worst problem currently.

These suggestions are mostly not difficult to implement and without a doubt should be placed next on the PvP devs’ to-do list. The already-shrinking playerbase didn’t make the best choice when we called loudly for spectator mode and custom matches as the “most important” things—they weren’t. These are.

Khyras.8021:

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

This is the learning curve i’m talking about. These mechanics that are very easy to counter once learned, hitting 5 for instance, while Moa’d by a Mesmer will completely disengage you from a fight. Dropping a few AOE’s while a thief is in stealth, and simply evading at ~2 seconds after they vanish will usually mitigate their backstab burst. These are mechanics easily learned through playing the game for an extended period of time, GW2 simply lacks a hook to keep new players playing because there’s no way to simply “jump in” to spvp matches on equal terms. Hotjoin is a huge mess on the 8v8 spectrum because it’s almost always uneven teams just zerging points with 6+ ppl.

The spvp systems currently in place are almost designed to create as much frustration in new players as possible; you want to play with friends?- sure jump in hotjoin, have fun on opposite teams! You want to duo queue frees with friend?- sure, gl vs that premade in VOIP! You want to get better at the game as an individual?- uhh… teamgame bro… teamgame….

idk, perhaps i’m too harsh. It’s just so frustrating when spvp casual playerbase could ESILY be growing and not shrinking, the l2p frustrations are things simply learned over time in any game (i remember my first weak in league of legends lmao “MASTER YI SO OP OMG”), it just has to be an enjoyable ride, and for that you need a sense of progression and a way to simply have fun with friends in a casual environment.

Zodian.6597:

Khyras.8021:

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

This is the learning curve i’m talking about. These mechanics that are very easy to counter once learned, hitting 5 for instance, while Moa’d by a Mesmer will completely disengage you from a fight. Dropping a few AOE’s while a thief is in stealth, and simply evading at ~2 seconds after they vanish will usually mitigate their backstab burst. These are mechanics easily learned through playing the game for an extended period of time, GW2 simply lacks a hook to keep new players playing because there’s no way to simply “jump in” to spvp matches on equal terms. Hotjoin is a huge mess on the 8v8 spectrum because it’s almost always uneven teams just zerging points with 6+ ppl.

The spvp systems currently in place are almost designed to create as much frustration in new players as possible; you want to play with friends?- sure jump in hotjoin, have fun on opposite teams! You want to duo queue frees with friend?- sure, gl vs that premade in VOIP! You want to get better at the game as an individual?- uhh… teamgame bro… teamgame….

idk, perhaps i’m too harsh. It’s just so frustrating when spvp casual playerbase could ESILY be growing and not shrinking, the l2p frustrations are things simply learned over time in any game (i remember my first weak in league of legends lmao “MASTER YI SO OP OMG”), it just has to be an enjoyable ride, and for that you need a sense of progression and a way to simply have fun with friends in a casual environment.

You are mistaking l2p issues with what makes sense and is fair.You can hit 5 when MoOAd but it wont help you if you are imobilized or you get imobilized when you hit 5.You assume every fight with thief is 1vs1 when in reality people already engaged in a fight are those who will attacked by thieves first.As soon as someone points out nonsense and unfairness of thieves and mesmers people like you pull out l2p argument.Thieves and mesmers are not imba or op, their skills mechanics are cheap and unfair and annoying, that is the real problem.

Khyras.8021:

You are mistaking l2p issues with what makes sense and is fair.You can hit 5 when MoOAd but it wont help you if you are imobilized or you get imobilized when you hit 5.You assume every fight with thief is 1vs1 when in reality people already engaged in a fight are those who will attacked by thieves first.As soon as someone points out nonsense and unfairness of thieves and mesmers people like you pull out l2p argument.Thieves and mesmers are not imba or op, their skills mechanics are cheap and unfair and annoying, that is the real problem.

Games have become popular despite some classes being even as annoying as thief and mesmer. I agree with the OP that the biggest problem right now is lack of learning curve. If a lot of people support these changes, we can get some real improvement with the next major patch.

I’m not disagreeing that thieves and mesmers are what turn a lot of players away from the game, but with experience they can become fun to fight. What’s not fun is jumping into your first hotjoin and getting insta-ganked. I think that’s what we should focus on changing first.

firstly, pvp is not dead. but the game has a huge problem retaining new players, so the subject of the thread is spot on.

every day in hotjoins i see rank 1s, & i see rank 1s in free tourneys as well. this goes hand in hand with continued success in gw2 sales, as these are brand new players to pvp.

90% of the pvp population is in hotjoins, where competitive players mostly do not like to play. but casuals mostly don’t enjoy it either, hence low retention. the people that stay are here mostly for the combat system itself & not because the system is welcoming in any fashion.

to make hotjoin more friendly:

1. servers only last for a single match then spit players to the mists.
2. implement a “leaver” system which will place players who leave matches early into a separate queue.
3. allow 2 people to queue together but no more, & put them on the same team.
4. let players queue for whichever map they want.

these forced rotation servers are garbage & are a big reason for afk rates & autobalancing woes, which in turn is another big reason for loss of player retention. the devs would also gain valuable information about which maps are being played the most & which professions are being played on which maps.

more than anything, players want to feel in control of their gaming experience, & atm they have no control. so they go back to pve or wvw, where they can have that type of experience.

Khyras.8021:

You can hit 5 when MoOAd but it wont help you if you are imobilized or you get imobilized when you hit 5.

i often prefer to be immobilized before i use moa 5 so i can maintain my positioning & still have that super long duration evade. similar to why some warriors don’t take mobile strikes so they can whirlwind in place when snared.

Zodian.6597:

• We could also just make the Heart of Mists a cross-server lobby, so that new players who pick a server that doesn’t have an spvp playerbase (like any server but anvil rock and desolation) wont be discouraged from playing the game. This would also unite the community so new players who have questions can actually get answers via map chat from their peers.

Totally agree!

Khyras.8021:

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

Seems like an unfortunate comparison. In the game you compare to I recall DKs deathgripping and oneshotting, thief one-shotting or stunlocking to death, paladin faceroll tanks, priests/healers that were impossible to kill- and more. Until you were able to grind away to get the top gear pvp in that game was far, far more unbalanced than gw2.

I “lol” at the amount of time most other mmos demand that you spend getting crushed by overgeared players until you have grinded enough pvp and pve to at last fight on an even footing.

If you gave gw2 the same chance as you gave those gear-grind games, you would play enough to know that there is a counter build to most things (everything?). Your comment is like someone who enters WoW BGs at level 10-20 and gets repeatedly thrashed by twinks and then writes the whole thing off as stupid (well in wow’s case it might be true).

The difference in gw2 is that you don’t grind for gear, you grind for skill.

faeral.7120:

to make hotjoin more friendly:

1. servers only last for a single match then spit players to the mists.
2. implement a “leaver” system which will place players who leave matches early into a separate queue.
3. allow 2 people to queue together but no more, & put them on the same team.
4. let players queue for whichever map they want.

these forced rotation servers are garbage & are a big reason for afk rates & autobalancing woes, which in turn is another big reason for loss of player retention. the devs would also gain valuable information about which maps are being played the most & which professions are being played on which maps.

more than anything, players want to feel in control of their gaming experience, & atm they have no control. so they go back to pve or wvw, where they can have that type of experience.

In my opinion these suggestions are crazy. I absolutely love the continued rounds of games we have at the moment. I have no idea why you would even suggest changing that, nothing in your post explains your reasoning. This is the only game I have played that has 24/7 on demand pvp, it is a fantastic innovation. People afk and leave more in the BGs of other mmos I’ve played.

Note you can queue with friends, just swap to the team you want in the team browser screen. You can also queue for the map you want, just leave and join a server running the map you desire.

You say “these forced rotation servers are garbage & are a big reason for afk rates & autobalancing woes, which in turn is another big reason for loss of player retention” but give no reasoning, just spout an unfounded opinion.

None of these things you speak of are even issues, or relevant to how to make the game more newcomer friendly.

Yasha.5963:

The difference in gw2 is that you don’t grind for gear IN PVP, you grind for skill.

Additional clarification was called for there, so I added some in caps lock.

GW2 has insane armor and weapon grind, even just to get the standard exotics, which have max stats. I won’t even bother mentioning the abomination that are legendaries. You can barely afford to change builds in pveland, because it’s so insanely costly for a normal player who isn’t ‘playing’ the AH, or grinding high-end dungeons 24/7 (or buying gems :o) ).
GW is, as far as I know, the only mmorpg-type of a game where max equip and weaps (albeit with default pvp skins) have always been attainable from npcs in exchange for random items (different kinds of loot typically dropped by certain types of monsters), not to mention you didn’t need to buy a full set of new weaps and armor in order to play a different build…nor did you need to pay to change your attributes (Anet apparently chose the troll approach in GW2).
The only part about GW that is somewhat inconvenient is the grind for balthazar factions needed to unlock skills, but in all honesty, you can unlock plenty of skills just from doing pve quests, not to mention the pvp was so much fun you’d gather enough balth faction in no time to unlock specific skills. Combined with several daily quests granting a fair amount of balth factions on completion, there is virtually no real grind anymore, minus some extra effort to get the high-end armors (which isn’t even remotely as insane as the grind in GW2 is though).

Even in GW2 pvp, you aren’t ‘grinding for skill’ because the default arena most players start off in is not even a far cry from the one aiming to be ‘Esports material’, and it resolves around one of the worst mechanics a game, especially an MMO, can possibly offer – zerging and button-mashing. GW had a mechanic called energy management, which, to a large extent, was able to keep the button-mashing in check (albeit certain builds/features were broken enough to bypass that, but that was an issue of bad balancing decisions, or a lack thereof).

faeral.7120:

firstly, pvp is not dead. but the game has a huge problem retaining new players, so the subject of the thread is spot on.

It’s quite dead on many servers with a handful of exceptions.

faeral.7120:

1. servers only last for a single match then spit players to the mists.
2. implement a “leaver” system which will place players who leave matches early into a separate queue.
3. allow 2 people to queue together but no more, & put them on the same team.
4. let players queue for whichever map they want.

1. I see no reason for returning the players back to the lobby. Moreover, your idea calls for a decrease in load-in/out times first.

2. And possibly add a feature ‘join teams with average rank <10/10-20/20-30/…’ It would most definitely help decrease the amount of players leaving matches because their rank is 10x the number of the average rank in the room they landed in.

3. There’s already a feature for that: ‘Join friend in PVP’.

4. Agreed.

Last but not least, I do feel somewhat sad to see players hail GW2 as the bane of grind, when it was actually more its predecessor that should have been hailed for that instead. GW2 is virtually identical to games such as WoW/Lotro/other typical grind mmos minus the gear impact on pvp.
The only really good part it retained from GW is therefore the above mentioned removal of gear threadmill in pvp, and the epic music from J. Soule.

I love PVP but I won’t touch sPVP for as long it has downed state. I’m sure there’s a good chunk of people who feel the same.

The real problem is that Hotjoin isn’t fun. Hotjoin is a low rank zergfest populated 80% by thieves and people running around with the default gear who don’t have any idea how to play. There is no incentive to win, and you aren’t awarded for trying to do so.

Free Tournaments are not friendly to casuals at all, they require a small time investment to set up a group and require you to be on VOIP to have any chance at beating other teams that are. Solo queue is probably worse than hotjoin, you need to coordinate and have your whole team doing their jobs. Toss in no matchmaking, lack of features, and longish queue times… it’s no wonder PvP is dying.

The reason why Guild Wars 2 pvp has so few players has nothing to do with “learn to play”. The real issues are:

1. The burst damage is out of control. I am talking about 7k-10k per hit, while the health of a character is only 13k to 30k. You can alone inflict so much damage on an enemy player that he gets downed in just few seconds unless he is a bunker. The fact is most players don’t like being killed faster they can react. I would imagine a new comer, who has never played spvp or tpvp, doesn’t know how to make a good bunker build, will enter the spvp with more or less weak build and gets insta gibbed during the first match. In most cases this newbie will never return the game mode again. We just lost a player… forever! The game designers live in denial and think more damage is better and that two dodges + 1 stun break with 60 second cool down counts as enough defense. The offensive skills have way too short cooldown compared to the defensive skills. The game seriously lacks reliable interrupts and shutdown e.g. compared to Guild Wars 1, which had 2 classes, ranger and mesmer, who were shining with interrupts, lots of shutdown hexes like backfire, empathy, diversion. Blind was giving 90% miss chance, now blind just makes one attack miss. Knockdown was also available often and could be used to interrupt and lock down enemies. Good teams and players in GW1 were able to reduce the enemy damage in those active ways. Now we only have short lasting blocking, some mild boons like retaliation and protection. And the most powerful ways of avoiding damage: stealth and teleporting, which are basically commonly used only by two professions. And those two professions currently enjoy a huge (unfair) advantage in the current hotjoin spvp meta.

2. The lack of skill balance. I mean skill balance also within the profession. Now certain weapons and utility skills are much better than the other. Thus you see almost every mesmer in the game wield greatsword vs other weapons. And warriors using also greatsword (= Greatsword Wars 2). Some utility skills and “elite” skills are more or less useless. I would not call a skill, which has 180-240 s recharge, unreliable operation and very short duration an elite. This has lead to a boring and static meta. Why to even give the professions several weapons if only one of them is good? There has been some great suggestions in these forums how to fix these issues. A lot of smart experienced players have made great posts. I have never seen any Arenanet developer ever comment in any of those threads. This is an example of utter disrespect towards the players, who post in these forums. The message becoming loud and clear: Arenanet doesn’t care about us.

3. Most people don’t like the conquest game mode nor the maps. I can imagine several reasons why Anet is not giving players other game modes like “deathmatch” e.g. in the style of 4 vs 4 Random and Team arenas of the Guild Wars 1. These wouldn’t work well in Guild Wars 2 due overpowered burst damage and lack of defenses. If GW2 would have compact 4 vs 4 deathmatch style arenas we would only see even more burst damage and bunkers (the only way to counter them). Imagine if a team using voice chat would 2-3 enemy team members unleashing their burst at a single enemy: wham, bam, dead in 0.5 seconds. I am NOT asking for very long fights, I don’t like 15+ minute marathon fights with small teams, but if the fight is over in just few seconds, sighs…

(continues in next message, as I reached the 5000 character limit)

(real reasons why spvp is not popular, continues from above message)

4. Both teleporting and stealth, especially when combined with very fast burst damage, and ability “loan” these abilities to your team mate (mass invisibility, shadow refuge, portal etc ) are game breaking mechanisms (also they are game breaking in WvWvW and to a lesser extend in pve, allowing players abusing them to pass significant number of game content very easily). Many players don’t mind being killed, but almost all players hate when a totally unknown invisible enemy downs them so fast they didn’t have time to counter it. Fast movement speed etc. should NOT work in stealth. Make stealth so that its user is barely visible, aka translucent, e.g. like a character who has just consumed onnomberry ghost (so the rendering code is already in the game). The person who is in stealth cannot be targeted, thus anything else than a ground targeted aoe would miss that person. Movement during stealth should be 50% normal speed. Thief already has a trait (fleet shadow) to counter it. Stealth would still be very very powerful! Any damage on the stealthed person or stealthed person using a skill should or reviving allies should immediately break the stealth. This would also fix the highly annoying invisible reviving seen in WvWvW.

Now the risk and reward with stealth, teleport (clone) etc. type of mechanisms is just too good for the hotjoin spvp. You can pretty safely make a glass cannon, able to take down anything else than a full bunker in just few seconds. And even if you fail your attempt you can always disengage e.g. flee in stealth or just keep spamming key #2 (heartseeker).

5. Downed state. Give all professions equal downed state e.g. pvp and WvWvW. E.g. only bandage. Now the downed states are totally inequal e.g. compare engineer’s grappling line (downed skill #2) with thief’s shadow escape (downed skill #2) or the elementalist’s vapor form (downed skill #2) or mesmer’s deception (downed skill #2). The poor engineer can pull an enemy next to him (duh), while the three other options offer a very handy escape and give more time to bandage up. Reviving, especially with multiple allies, happens way too easily. This is an even bigger problem in WvWvW. If you are playing alone or in a very small group against a big enemy zerg, it is very difficult to score kills. Enemy zerg in WvWvW can always revive a downed ally in just seconds.

I think many of the people who keep posting “l2p” messages are probably forum trolls, afraid that their cheap & easy playing style or overpowered main profession would get nerfed in any possible way. Thus we get a skewed view of the reality here.

First fix the game, then we might have more players in pvp. Or maybe it is already too late and most pvp players left to other games?

Deniara

Hey all—the OP presented ideas that are possible for Anet to implement within the next year. There are a lot of cool suggestions popping around, but things like “core game element X should be re-designed from the ground up” or “class X needs to be re-designed” are not going to happen. There are some very good things that the community could push for right now and see in just a few months. Let’s support those ideas, yes?

On hotjoin: I can’t stand it, but I understand some people like it. As the OP said, the best solution would be to add a random vs random single match. We don’t need to get rid of practice/farm mode for those who like it. Most new PvPers do hotjoin just because it seems like the only thing they can do. Most new PvPers also only PvP to rank 5 or so, then quit.

A quick temporary change (until matchmaking is implemented) could be to create a bracket system where you could play with rank 1-10 players if you so choose, being that same rank yourself with the possibility of disabling it if you’re on a higher skill level, on either hotjoin or free tournies. This system will at least guarantee that new players will be fighting new players.

An equal system could be implemented for 10-20 and 20+. Yes, this will increase queue times for people rank 20+, but I guarantee those players wouldn’t mind waiting an extra 2 or 3 minutes to considerably reduce extreme stomping and a highly demoralized handful of players that will likely just end up giving up on spvp.

Another useful change could be to create a couple of builds for each class (combination of traits/skills/necklace/runes) which have been proved useful in spvp with a name and a general description of the playstyle it intends to create. Although, with the ability to: create, save, load and link builds, this wouldn’t be necessary…go figure.

The learning curve is harsh, i feel sorry looking at rank 8s in tounries getting stomped over and over.

Raytek.6193:

The real problem is that Hotjoin isn’t fun. Hotjoin is a low rank zergfest populated 80% by thieves and people running around with the default gear who don’t have any idea how to play. There is no incentive to win, and you aren’t awarded for trying to do so.

Free Tournaments are not friendly to casuals at all, they require a small time investment to set up a group and require you to be on VOIP to have any chance at beating other teams that are. Solo queue is probably worse than hotjoin, you need to coordinate and have your whole team doing their jobs. Toss in no matchmaking, lack of features, and longish queue times… it’s no wonder PvP is dying.

Hey Raytek, I actually plan on highlighting the issues with solo queue & the competitive scene in a future post, I actually brought up the issues we’re facing with solo queue to Jonathan Sharp directly a few weeks ago. -Neglekt

Viprek.6730:

A quick temporary change (until matchmaking is implemented) could be to create a bracket system where you could play with rank 1-10 players if you so choose, being that same rank yourself with the possibility of disabling it if you’re on a higher skill level, on either hotjoin or free tournies. This system will at least guarantee that new players will be fighting new players.

An equal system could be implemented for 10-20 and 20+. Yes, this will increase queue times for people rank 20+, but I guarantee those players wouldn’t mind waiting an extra 2 or 3 minutes to considerably reduce extreme stomping and a highly demoralized handful of players that will likely just end up giving up on spvp.

Another useful change could be to create a couple of builds for each class (combination of traits/skills/necklace/runes) which have been proved useful in spvp with a name and a general description of the playstyle it intends to create. Although, with the ability to: create, save, load and link builds, this wouldn’t be necessary…go figure.

i agree with the idea of linking builds. The problem with your suggestion of discriminating hotjoin to spvp rank is that rank doesn’t exactly correlate to skill level; one of my team’s trap rangers is rank 12 and we often go to 1st map in paids. A better solution would simply be to remove hotjoin, then implement a queue function for 8v8 that would allow for 5 players to queue together, then a queue for 5v5 where ppl could only solo/duo queue (good players could take new friends through what it will be llike in higher level play). I’ll be going over this in a later post addressing the casual player base population crisis.

Zodian.6597:

Wreckdum.8367:

I don’t think sPvP has a learning curve… Many high profile live streamers flocked to GW2 on release and left just as quickly because it is immediately recognizable as an imbalanced PvP game. The people who stayed all populate the most OP and imbalanced class/traits possible and pretty much live on a loop playing against the same teams day in and day out because there is no sPvP community.

The first step is to not live in denial and make excuses that the game didn’t have enough popularity or people didn’t know how to play. The people played it and didn’t like it and moved on. Address that. Fix the game. Maybe people will come back.

Well, whether we like it or not there’s likely always going to be cookie cutter builds for most classes; or at least weapon sets, it’s like this in every game and gw2 is no exception to the rule. And spvp never rely had a big live stream viewerbase post-launch, most of the viewers were following big pve’rs like knugen and kripparian. We must take the game in it’s current state and look at why certain aspects are declining (spvp) when they should be easily growing based on our sales numbers. The barrier to get into spvp on NA is a complete nightmare right now for new players.

if their going to be “cookie cutter builds” then lets go back to the healer dps tank we all grew to love instead of the burst without a healer insight…. we have come to hate

Genesis.3295:

Wreckdum.8367:

I don’t think sPvP has a learning curve… Many high profile live streamers flocked to GW2 on release and left just as quickly because it is immediately recognizable as an imbalanced PvP game. The people who stayed all populate the most OP and imbalanced class/traits possible and pretty much live on a loop playing against the same teams day in and day out because there is no sPvP community.

The first step is to not live in denial and make excuses that the game didn’t have enough popularity or people didn’t know how to play. The people played it and didn’t like it and moved on. Address that. Fix the game. Maybe people will come back.

Where did they all go?

back to Aion/WoW or where ever thay came form, i went to SWTOR just for the story liine and tera for the end game raids and pvp. occasionally log into spvp for a few till it gets insanely old and frustrating

Yasha.5963:

Khyras.8021:

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

Seems like an unfortunate comparison. In the game you compare to I recall DKs deathgripping and oneshotting, thief one-shotting or stunlocking to death, paladin faceroll tanks, priests/healers that were impossible to kill- and more. Until you were able to grind away to get the top gear pvp in that game was far, far more unbalanced than gw2.

I “lol” at the amount of time most other mmos demand that you spend getting crushed by overgeared players until you have grinded enough pvp and pve to at last fight on an even footing.

If you gave gw2 the same chance as you gave those gear-grind games, you would play enough to know that there is a counter build to most things (everything?). Your comment is like someone who enters WoW BGs at level 10-20 and gets repeatedly thrashed by twinks and then writes the whole thing off as stupid (well in wow’s case it might be true).

The difference in gw2 is that you don’t grind for gear, you grind for skill.

this is just so untrue when in 8v8 at some point or another ur gonna get ganked by 2 thiefs doing HS 8x in a row at u and there is only so many times a person can dodge b4 their taking 5k Hs’s from behind. you can have all the skill u want but when ur playing in random pug groups cant communicate well with ur team and being perma rooted/KD/stunned there is no “learning curve” u can evade that one thief ur fighting just to get BS by the one who krept on u from behind invis rooted/basilik u and inn.3 sec ur dead in wut was a “decent” fight…

you can have all the skills u want but when CORE Mechiancs are broken there is nothign u can do but live with… move on or roll the same classes and take advantage of the broken mechanics urself.. which all = no fun

ya idk whats up with 8vs8 , its just so annoying.

urinfamousr.7631:

Yasha.5963:

Khyras.8021:

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

Seems like an unfortunate comparison. In the game you compare to I recall DKs deathgripping and oneshotting, thief one-shotting or stunlocking to death, paladin faceroll tanks, priests/healers that were impossible to kill- and more. Until you were able to grind away to get the top gear pvp in that game was far, far more unbalanced than gw2.

I “lol” at the amount of time most other mmos demand that you spend getting crushed by overgeared players until you have grinded enough pvp and pve to at last fight on an even footing.

If you gave gw2 the same chance as you gave those gear-grind games, you would play enough to know that there is a counter build to most things (everything?). Your comment is like someone who enters WoW BGs at level 10-20 and gets repeatedly thrashed by twinks and then writes the whole thing off as stupid (well in wow’s case it might be true).

The difference in gw2 is that you don’t grind for gear, you grind for skill.

this is just so untrue when in 8v8 at some point or another ur gonna get ganked by 2 thiefs doing HS 8x in a row at u and there is only so many times a person can dodge b4 their taking 5k Hs’s from behind. you can have all the skill u want but when ur playing in random pug groups cant communicate well with ur team and being perma rooted/KD/stunned there is no “learning curve” u can evade that one thief ur fighting just to get BS by the one who krept on u from behind invis rooted/basilik u and inn.3 sec ur dead in wut was a “decent” fight…

you can have all the skills u want but when CORE Mechiancs are broken there is nothign u can do but live with… move on or roll the same classes and take advantage of the broken mechanics urself.. which all = no fun

I’m not sure which part of my post you are saying is so untrue. I will guess you mean the part where I say "The difference in gw2 is that you don’t grind for gear, you grind for skill. "

So here is my thoughts on your post. First, two of anyone focusing on you should kill you, if not then something is wrong. The situation you described, apart from the skill names, can happen in any mmo with a stealth class. They are meant to sneak up behind you and finish you when you are low on health.

I am not saying the balance is perfect in this game, but compared to ANY other mmo I have played the pvp is far, far more balanced. If you think this is bad, try getting spawn camped regularly in WoW BGs by twinks. I could do the equivilant of steal-stun-backstab on my rogue in WoW and kill any non-twink in one shot.

To avoid that happening in WoW you have to grind for gear-in fact you need to get one toon to 80, buy heirlooms, very expensive enchants etc, and then you are ready to compete on an (un)even keel.

In gw2 if you want to avoid the one-shot wonders, you just need to have the right build. And yes, with experience you can even see/aniticipate the thief/warrior/mesmer/engineer etc burst. Every game you play, every time you get owned you learn something, you build skill. You don’t need to gear up, you need to skill up. Its completely different and thats why I love it.

Also I got to tell ya- I mainly play ranger, oft seen as the worst and lowliest class in gw2, veritable thief fodder right? Well guess what, if I want to build to counter thieves I can. Two simple heartseeker spamming thieves are unlikely to beat me if I want to go that route with my build. However, if they use skill and coordination, they should be able to take down any one player.

GW2= skill not gear ftw

Zodian.6597:

Khyras.8021:

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

This is the learning curve i’m talking about. These mechanics that are very easy to counter once learned, hitting 5 for instance, while Moa’d by a Mesmer will completely disengage you from a fight. Dropping a few AOE’s while a thief is in stealth, and simply evading at ~2 seconds after they vanish will usually mitigate their backstab burst. These are mechanics easily learned through playing the game for an extended period of time, GW2 simply lacks a hook to keep new players playing because there’s no way to simply “jump in” to spvp matches on equal terms. Hotjoin is a huge mess on the 8v8 spectrum because it’s almost always uneven teams just zerging points with 6+ ppl.

The spvp systems currently in place are almost designed to create as much frustration in new players as possible; you want to play with friends?- sure jump in hotjoin, have fun on opposite teams! You want to duo queue frees with friend?- sure, gl vs that premade in VOIP! You want to get better at the game as an individual?- uhh… teamgame bro… teamgame….

idk, perhaps i’m too harsh. It’s just so frustrating when spvp casual playerbase could ESILY be growing and not shrinking, the l2p frustrations are things simply learned over time in any game (i remember my first weak in league of legends lmao “MASTER YI SO OP OMG”), it just has to be an enjoyable ride, and for that you need a sense of progression and a way to simply have fun with friends in a casual environment.

Notice he completely ignored the original scenario? 5 warriors vs 5 mesmers who wins? You don’t have to answer because every single person on these forums already knows. The game has way too many factors of a fight that are not controlled by the player. Too many pets. Too many AOE circles. Too many things other than player vs player.

urinfamousr.7631:

Yasha.5963:

Khyras.8021:

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

Seems like an unfortunate comparison. In the game you compare to I recall DKs deathgripping and oneshotting, thief one-shotting or stunlocking to death, paladin faceroll tanks, priests/healers that were impossible to kill- and more. Until you were able to grind away to get the top gear pvp in that game was far, far more unbalanced than gw2.

I “lol” at the amount of time most other mmos demand that you spend getting crushed by overgeared players until you have grinded enough pvp and pve to at last fight on an even footing.

If you gave gw2 the same chance as you gave those gear-grind games, you would play enough to know that there is a counter build to most things (everything?). Your comment is like someone who enters WoW BGs at level 10-20 and gets repeatedly thrashed by twinks and then writes the whole thing off as stupid (well in wow’s case it might be true).

The difference in gw2 is that you don’t grind for gear, you grind for skill.

this is just so untrue when in 8v8 at some point or another ur gonna get ganked by 2 thiefs doing HS 8x in a row at u and there is only so many times a person can dodge b4 their taking 5k Hs’s from behind. you can have all the skill u want but when ur playing in random pug groups cant communicate well with ur team and being perma rooted/KD/stunned there is no “learning curve” u can evade that one thief ur fighting just to get BS by the one who krept on u from behind invis rooted/basilik u and inn.3 sec ur dead in wut was a “decent” fight…

you can have all the skills u want but when CORE Mechiancs are broken there is nothign u can do but live with… move on or roll the same classes and take advantage of the broken mechanics urself.. which all = no fun

There is more bursting in GW2 than there ever was in WoW. SInce GW2 everyone has the same gear you can’t compare a WoW full resilience gladiator to a full greens casual. We’re putting both WoW opponents in full PvP epics. The fights last much longer. This game is wayyyyy too bursty.

Many of you have polarized two ends of the same problem. But rather than try to combine both into a cogent whole you’ve all taken to squabbling over which part of the problem feels more important. So stop it. Lets look at how all of these pieces fit into the whole, and work forward from there.

Long post incoming. Preemptive tl;dr: The game is terribly hard to learn, and certain builds greatly contribute to this problem, but class balance is overall great, and builds are only part of the overall problem.

New players have a crap time learning the game, and certain builds are offensively problematic to this situation. Both of these statements are true. Think on the amount of information a new player must encounter to jump directly into sPvP: stats and stat balance, conditions, boons, the entire package of skills (both used by you, and used against you), trait and rune specialty mechanics, map layout and game goals, not to mention just getting the feel of movement and skill usage. I wrote and posted a guide for new players in sPvP and it took 15 pages to explain just a few of these basics, even while cutting corners.

You could call this learning curve absurd, but realistically it doesn’t stray all that far from similar games. WoW, Dota, LoL, and other rpg PvP games have similar encyclopedic learning curves. The major difference is that GW2 does not, in any way, ease the player into this situation. In traditional MMOs, like WoW, you’ll learn most mechanics in PvE before you jump full force into PvP. In MOBAs, like LoL, you have the option to fight bots until you’re ready for real PvP. And in both genres, the customization unlocks slowly over time, rather than crash onto the player all at once. GW2’s sPvP lacks either access gate, unless the player is willing to grind PvE in order to catch up (which, I’d argue, shouldn’t be necessary).

So players have two options: dive headfirst into sPvP, or read guides and then dive headfirst into sPvP. Neither way properly primes the player for actually playing PvP, and while the newbies are attempting to learn all of the requisite systems, certain builds do a lot of damage to the incentive for coming back. Glass cannon burst builds in particular create this effect. Dying to burst sucks, in any situation, and it can feel especially brutal for new players. If someone can’t involve themselves in battle, then you can’t learn to get better at it. And if the devs want to keep new players around, then they need to fix the issue of burst.

Granted, I dislike the idea of “class balance problems”, because I don’t believe we have a problem with class or build balance. Rather we have problems of balance given a certain situation. You walk into your first Hot-Join game with no idea how to play and go up against three backstab thieves, that’s a problem of situation, not a problem with thieves. You enter PvP with a low tough/vit build and go up against three backstab thieves, that’s a problem of situation, not thieves. You join a game and run out the gate, but three thieves are waiting just out the door, that’s a problem of situation. So here’s the conundrum: if you got rid of backstab thieves then you’d remove the situation problem altogether, so it sounds very appealing to erase backstab thieves.

But while scrubbing out backstab builds could work, it’s a crude and short-term solution. If backstab builds go away, players would merely shift the blame to another build: shatter combo mesmers, or HB warriors. That doesn’t help the game at all. Not only will there always be a build with burst issues (as there should be), but it’s good for players to learn how to act when put up against a burst build. Unfortunately, written guides and playable tutorial can only do so much to teach players how to act in these situations, and it’s difficult to learn when those builds aren’t concerned with giving you the time to learn.

So if it’s not effective to remove builds, and it’s difficult to learn counter measures when playing against them, then you need to change the situation and make it difficult for those builds to run rampant. Realistically, 8v8 Hot Join creates the largest problem, because it allows for zergs to succeed. Glass cannon builds do best when they can run around freely in the chaos. Where zergs succeed, burst builds thrive. I haven’t met a burst build that doesn’t have a simple counter 1v1, but like mentioned in a prior post, you can’t always counter glass cannons in the middle of a group fight, and it’s impossible to escape group fights in an 8v8 server.

Most new players I’ve spoken to feel that 8v8 Hot-Join is the place for newbies. Solo Join tPvP feels inaccessible because of premade teams. 5v5 hot-join just doesn’t have a sufficient population for them to enjoy consistent games. Realistically, both of these areas would be a much better place for new players. Not that a newbie would never meet a burst opponent there, but I guarantee burst would get a lot more thinly spread out. In the meantime, the game play is less chaotic, players have more time to focus on what’s going on in the map, cheeze builds can’t get the same foothold that they do in large scale battles, and putting points into defense is more effective since you’re much less likely to get steamrolled by a player zerg.

Don’t get rid of 8v8. Just reduce its priority. Remove 8v8 from the “Play Now” button. Pressure players to join 5v5 instead. Segregate premades and solo/small group tourneys. This will do a whole lot more for the game than killing burst builds altogether.

TL:DR 2: if devs want to retain new players, then new players need tutorials, and they need to play under more accommodating situations.

Wreckdum.8367:

Zodian.6597:

Khyras.8021:

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

This is the learning curve i’m talking about. These mechanics that are very easy to counter once learned, hitting 5 for instance, while Moa’d by a Mesmer will completely disengage you from a fight. Dropping a few AOE’s while a thief is in stealth, and simply evading at ~2 seconds after they vanish will usually mitigate their backstab burst. These are mechanics easily learned through playing the game for an extended period of time, GW2 simply lacks a hook to keep new players playing because there’s no way to simply “jump in” to spvp matches on equal terms. Hotjoin is a huge mess on the 8v8 spectrum because it’s almost always uneven teams just zerging points with 6+ ppl.

The spvp systems currently in place are almost designed to create as much frustration in new players as possible; you want to play with friends?- sure jump in hotjoin, have fun on opposite teams! You want to duo queue frees with friend?- sure, gl vs that premade in VOIP! You want to get better at the game as an individual?- uhh… teamgame bro… teamgame….

idk, perhaps i’m too harsh. It’s just so frustrating when spvp casual playerbase could ESILY be growing and not shrinking, the l2p frustrations are things simply learned over time in any game (i remember my first weak in league of legends lmao “MASTER YI SO OP OMG”), it just has to be an enjoyable ride, and for that you need a sense of progression and a way to simply have fun with friends in a casual environment.

Notice he completely ignored the original scenario? 5 warriors vs 5 mesmers who wins? You don’t have to answer because every single person on these forums already knows. The game has way too many factors of a fight that are not controlled by the player. Too many pets. Too many AOE circles. Too many things other than player vs player.

I ignored the question because it’s irrelevant, anyone who stacks 5 classes on one team is going to loose, complaining about pvp mechanics is a l2p issue.

Wreckdum.8367:

urinfamousr.7631:

Yasha.5963:

Khyras.8021:

Xfusion.2931:

this games balance in amazing for how short it has been up… epsc considering there is so many builds. We need a ladder and stuff will be better and a reason to pvp.

5 mesmers ( and 15 clones) vs 5 warriors who wins? Balance is not amazing in any way, except maybe amazingly bad.Imagine a person who PvPs in wow for example and decides to try PvP in GW2 what is his experience? He sees mage who can turn him to sheep (moa) for 10 sec and he cant trinket it nor does it break on dmg and has mirror images up at all times with no “target nearest player” option, rogue who can vanish as many times as he wants during combat and can spam his high dmg abilities etc. Allowing those unfair and annoying mechanics in pvp is utterly nonsensical, most people that left probably just LOLed then uninstalled the game.One game mode ( boring one) no deserter debuff etc ofc people are going to leave.

Seems like an unfortunate comparison. In the game you compare to I recall DKs deathgripping and oneshotting, thief one-shotting or stunlocking to death, paladin faceroll tanks, priests/healers that were impossible to kill- and more. Until you were able to grind away to get the top gear pvp in that game was far, far more unbalanced than gw2.

I “lol” at the amount of time most other mmos demand that you spend getting crushed by overgeared players until you have grinded enough pvp and pve to at last fight on an even footing.

If you gave gw2 the same chance as you gave those gear-grind games, you would play enough to know that there is a counter build to most things (everything?). Your comment is like someone who enters WoW BGs at level 10-20 and gets repeatedly thrashed by twinks and then writes the whole thing off as stupid (well in wow’s case it might be true).

The difference in gw2 is that you don’t grind for gear, you grind for skill.

this is just so untrue when in 8v8 at some point or another ur gonna get ganked by 2 thiefs doing HS 8x in a row at u and there is only so many times a person can dodge b4 their taking 5k Hs’s from behind. you can have all the skill u want but when ur playing in random pug groups cant communicate well with ur team and being perma rooted/KD/stunned there is no “learning curve” u can evade that one thief ur fighting just to get BS by the one who krept on u from behind invis rooted/basilik u and inn.3 sec ur dead in wut was a “decent” fight…

you can have all the skills u want but when CORE Mechiancs are broken there is nothign u can do but live with… move on or roll the same classes and take advantage of the broken mechanics urself.. which all = no fun

There is more bursting in GW2 than there ever was in WoW. SInce GW2 everyone has the same gear you can’t compare a WoW full resilience gladiator to a full greens casual. We’re putting both WoW opponents in full PvP epics. The fights last much longer. This game is wayyyyy too bursty.

Have you ever played WoW? Just curious lol. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q5pb-fEQhs -tbc enhance shammy > backstab thief. lol, there’s no point in comparing gw2 mechanics to WoW; gw2 is a newer game and WoW’s combat is dated. The only reason gw2 pvp hasn’t taken off is the lack of ability the game has to retain new players. Balance/combat mechanics are the last thing we need to complain about right now because they are generally fine where they are at, you just have to take the time to learn how they are played correctly and since most people end up quitting spvp in the first day of trying it, they aren’t able to learn. Hence; learning curve.
On a side note, we should be looking for ways to improve upon the innovation and differences of the combat in gw2, not trying to conform it to WoW’s; doing so is counter productive to the success of the game.

The PvP system sucks in this game IMO……

I want to grind for my gear not be given everything

Pinder.5261:

Most new players I’ve spoken to feel that 8v8 Hot-Join is the place for newbies. Solo Join tPvP feels inaccessible because of premade teams. 5v5 hot-join just doesn’t have a sufficient population for them to enjoy consistent games. Realistically, both of these areas would be a much better place for new players. Not that a newbie would never meet a burst opponent there, but I guarantee burst would get a lot more thinly spread out. In the meantime, the game play is less chaotic, players have more time to focus on what’s going on in the map, cheeze builds can’t get the same foothold that they do in large scale battles, and putting points into defense is more effective since you’re much less likely to get steamrolled by a player zerg.

Don’t get rid of 8v8. Just reduce its priority. Remove 8v8 from the “Play Now” button. Pressure players to join 5v5 instead. Segregate premades and solo/small group tourneys. This will do a whole lot more for the game than killing burst builds altogether.

TL:DR 2: if devs want to retain new players, then new players need tutorials, and they need to play under more accommodating situations.

Very nice post Pinder-. I agree, in the short term making hotjoin 5vs5 the default mode would help. At the moment tourneys are no place for puggers/newbies, and 8vs8 is very zergy.

The learning curve is always going to be steep because it is level-cap pvp. It is actually a shorter curve than in other mmos however, because if you spend as much time in spvp as you would leveling a toon, you would be a master of spvp for sure.

Neverthless, there is room to make the clearning curve easier. A couple of ideas:

1) Have several default builds for each class. So when a new player starts he can choose from the burst build, bunker build, utlity build etc. Getting stomped quickly with a burst build? Try a bunker build. No need to spend hours researching it, just click on the bunker build template build. Then players can branch out from there.

2) Have more of an ingame tutorial/information about the battlegrounds/maps. Highlight key points like in gw2 you don’t need to have the whole team on the point to cap it, the importance of the treb, etc.

3) Being able to store a few personalized builds would also help everyone. Part of the reason the learning curve is steep is because you cannot quickly change builds and runes etc to test and compare things without totally respeccing and going to the vendors.

Having said all that, I never found the game to be all that difficult, and I enjoy not having to do the pve or gear grind. Maybe it’s mainly the lack of game modes and somewhat extreme burst that is the main thing keeping players away ?