Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: No you can’t have my stuff… I love the game and will keep playing every other area of the game besides sPvP. I just wanted to share my opinion of why it’s so frustrating and I can’t be bothered to play it. I hope Anet can resolve the issues causing my frustrations and I hope the sPvP community will explode as a result. That said, here’s my rant…

It’s just too freaking frustrating to keep at it. I don’t have the rank, and to be honest, the skill to find a good tournament team. So my best bet right now is to try and solo queue frees in order to meet people and form a team. Unfortunately the queue is still too long (plus 4 minute prep time), and too often the first round will start 4v5 (I swear my last 5 games have been 4v5). So for now I’ve given up on playing tourneys. That leaves me to play hotjoin. When I play hotjoin I end up raging after about 30 minutes of 8v8 as it always turns into a zergfest that favors heavy aoe or burst classes. If I try 5v5 instead, there are rarely enough players to play consistent games because 8v8 is the default and frankly it’s easier to farm rank/glory in 8v8.

With all that in mind, here are my own opinions on how they could improve sPvP and win me back.

Tournaments: The free tournaments should be in the same format as paids. It really should be designed to act as practice for paids and an avenue for solo queue. I feel like both free and paids would benefit as 4 team tournaments (2 rounds). There are many potential benefits to this. First, free tournaments would have a quicker queue compared to how they are now. Second, both free and paids could use two maps per week rather than just one per week. Third, high ranked teams would automatically avoid the issue of playing the same team back to back.

Hotjoin: I’d love it if the 8v8 format was simply removed. But I understand some people might actually enjoy it (though I can’t imagine how) so at least it should be moved to the bottom of the list and have the glory potential reduced a little bit to balance against the greater kill potential. The 5v5 format should then be made the default option and the glory reward potential should be increased in order to draw more people in. Additionally all hotjoin games should have a bonus glory reward at the end even for the losing team to discourage leaving early. This end bonus should be rewarded as a percentage of time in the map to discourage the inevitable map hopping.

Glory ranks: Now that there is a better method of ranking player skill, glory ranks should ONLY be considered as reward tiers. In other words, it should be a LOT easier to gain ranks as not everyone plays the game 8 hours a day, and even if they do, not everone wants to ONLY sPvP for the next few years to get armor and weapon skin rewards. In PvE right now it is about a hundred times easier to get all of the armor and weapon skins you’d like, even considering legendaries. I think the highest rank right now is 65 or so. That’s pretty crazy. Especially for those of us who can’t commit even a quarter of the time investment as those top ranked players. To be clear, I’m not suggesting it should be easy. Even if only 10 people were max glory rank right now I’d have hope to one day get there.

Balance: To be honest, there are plenty of frustrating balance issues. I watch streams where skilled players complain about d/d eles and trap rangers. Even no-skill hotjoin games are littered with them and can really make the game not very fun. Here’s the thing though… I actually like that Anet wants to be cautious and not nerf things too quickly. I just wish they’d find a middle ground and perhaps make a few VERY small tweaks once a month so that certain successful builds can remain strong, but not impossible to compete against.

just my 2c

Some good points i am also hit the wall and yes i play a ranger(not trap) there is a lot of class balancing coming on the 26th of feb just come back then . I do hot joins and its just full of thiefs/mesmers/eles/rangers thats da truth

oops forgot to mention they all run kittenie cutter builds

Vyce.2014:

Disclaimer: No you can’t have my stuff… I love the game and will keep playing every other area of the game besides sPvP. I just wanted to share my opinion of why it’s so frustrating and I can’t be bothered to play it. I hope Anet can resolve the issues causing my frustrations and I hope the sPvP community will explode as a result. That said, here’s my rant…

It’s just too freaking frustrating to keep at it. I don’t have the rank, and to be honest, the skill to find a good tournament team. So my best bet right now is to try and solo queue frees in order to meet people and form a team. Unfortunately the queue is still too long (plus 4 minute prep time), and too often the first round will start 4v5 (I swear my last 5 games have been 4v5). So for now I’ve given up on playing tourneys. That leaves me to play hotjoin. When I play hotjoin I end up raging after about 30 minutes of 8v8 as it always turns into a zergfest that favors heavy aoe or burst classes. If I try 5v5 instead, there are rarely enough players to play consistent games because 8v8 is the default and frankly it’s easier to farm rank/glory in 8v8.

With all that in mind, here are my own opinions on how they could improve sPvP and win me back.

Tournaments: The free tournaments should be in the same format as paids. It really should be designed to act as practice for paids and an avenue for solo queue. I feel like both free and paids would benefit as 4 team tournaments (2 rounds). There are many potential benefits to this. First, free tournaments would have a quicker queue compared to how they are now. Second, both free and paids could use two maps per week rather than just one per week. Third, high ranked teams would automatically avoid the issue of playing the same team back to back.

Hotjoin: I’d love it if the 8v8 format was simply removed. But I understand some people might actually enjoy it (though I can’t imagine how) so at least it should be moved to the bottom of the list and have the glory potential reduced a little bit to balance against the greater kill potential. The 5v5 format should then be made the default option and the glory reward potential should be increased in order to draw more people in. Additionally all hotjoin games should have a bonus glory reward at the end even for the losing team to discourage leaving early. This end bonus should be rewarded as a percentage of time in the map to discourage the inevitable map hopping.

Glory ranks: Now that there is a better method of ranking player skill, glory ranks should ONLY be considered as reward tiers. In other words, it should be a LOT easier to gain ranks as not everyone plays the game 8 hours a day, and even if they do, not everone wants to ONLY sPvP for the next few years to get armor and weapon skin rewards. In PvE right now it is about a hundred times easier to get all of the armor and weapon skins you’d like, even considering legendaries. I think the highest rank right now is 65 or so. That’s pretty crazy. Especially for those of us who can’t commit even a quarter of the time investment as those top ranked players. To be clear, I’m not suggesting it should be easy. Even if only 10 people were max glory rank right now I’d have hope to one day get there.

Balance: To be honest, there are plenty of frustrating balance issues. I watch streams where skilled players complain about d/d eles and trap rangers. Even no-skill hotjoin games are littered with them and can really make the game not very fun. Here’s the thing though… I actually like that Anet wants to be cautious and not nerf things too quickly. I just wish they’d find a middle ground and perhaps make a few VERY small tweaks once a month so that certain successful builds can remain strong, but not impossible to compete against.

just my 2c

so play a different game , there soooooo many f2p why keep playign this one and find one u enjoy pvp in cause this one just doesnt cut it…

I quit sPvP for the same reasons mostly and the boring conquest mode and no 2v2/3v3 death match/other modes so i can play with my friends instead of wasting hours and hours to try to find people.
To all who haven’t explored the other aspects of the game, PvE/WvWvW, i tell you, quit sPvP and join us! There’s where the game really is and it is awesome

Agree with many of the OPs points – switching to PvE/WvW is not really a good suggestion because, for me, I like spvp because it doesn’t have the endless gear grind that most mmo’s have – I joined this game because you can jump right into pvp and be on a level playing field (gear/stats wise) with everybody else. I’m starting to try out wvw more and have found that it’s a lot more fun in a group even though i’m severely gimped at level 50ish… i know as soon as I get to 80 I"m going to want to gear grind to be viable in wvw and am not too keen on that idea…

Theres no gear grind at all unless you want to look cool.

I’m talking about for wvw/pve there is a gear grind which is what turns me off to it and why I prefer spvp. So the problems mentioned in OP are of concern to me as well and I hope they do something to improve it soon.

Glory rank? Nothing to change there.
Hotjoin? Why would you remove the 8v8 ! thats even more fun since there alot more action.
Tournament. They should really add a “Random Team Tournament” (random arena). Wich was REALLY popular in gw1.
Balance. Match are not really balanced. it happen some time that you play 8v6 or all higher rank are in the same team. i also got destroyed in 8v8 when they had 6 thief 2 mesmer. That was a raging match.

What this game really need is more PvP options than just free/paid Tournament and hotjoin. Random arena like gw1 would be sexy.

hharry.1967:

I quit sPvP for the same reasons mostly and the boring conquest mode and no 2v2/3v3 death match/other modes so i can play with my friends instead of wasting hours and hours to try to find people.
To all who haven’t explored the other aspects of the game, PvE/WvWvW, i tell you, quit sPvP and join us! There’s where the game really is and it is awesome

pve = boring gw2 has some of the most boring grind WvW is just a larger version of Spvp only now they want u to run around in a bigger circle with a bigger zerg doing the exact same thing day in day out…

Leadfoot.9071:

Agree with many of the OPs points – switching to PvE/WvW is not really a good suggestion because, for me, I like spvp because it doesn’t have the endless gear grind that most mmo’s have – I joined this game because you can jump right into pvp and be on a level playing field (gear/stats wise) with everybody else. I’m starting to try out wvw more and have found that it’s a lot more fun in a group even though i’m severely gimped at level 50ish… i know as soon as I get to 80 I"m going to want to gear grind to be viable in wvw and am not too keen on that idea…

there is NO gear grind by the time i hit 80 i could BUY end game gear with gold …. what grind are u refering to unless its just for skins?

hharry.1967:

Theres no gear grind at all unless you want to look cool.

When talking about PvE (and by extension, WvW) you are wrong sir.

For the OP: I think you made some good points. I don’t think hotjoin should go away, but they do need to do something to create a transition from solo player to tournament team.

Sky.9347:

hharry.1967:

Theres no gear grind at all unless you want to look cool.

When talking about PvE (and by extension, WvW) you are wrong sir.

For the OP: I think you made some good points. I don’t think hotjoin should go away, but they do need to do something to create a transition from solo player to tournament team.

Really? You can get a whole exotic set in a few days. Do a few dungeons, get some gold buy jewelry, done!

hharry.1967:

Sky.9347:

hharry.1967:

Theres no gear grind at all unless you want to look cool.

When talking about PvE (and by extension, WvW) you are wrong sir.

For the OP: I think you made some good points. I don’t think hotjoin should go away, but they do need to do something to create a transition from solo player to tournament team.

Really? You can get a whole exotic set in a few days. Do a few dungeons, get some gold buy jewelry, done!

That very well may be true, but Exotic gear is subpar now, and will only continue to become further subpar.

This isn’t a topic about that though. I assure you there is ample information available if you choose to avail yourself of it that will show you ANet’s plans for continuous vertical progression.

This topic is however about the last bastion of “a level playing field” and why it is not appealing to many people who would otherwise spend time and maybe even money on it.

The OP has some good points. There feels like there is no path forward. Either you know people, or you play solo. It is difficult to make the jump from one to the other.

That’s not even mentioning finding a good team.

Some of this could be solved by the playerbase, guilds that train members and develop teams internally and all… but that would require a far larger playerbase of dedicated sPvPers, which GW2 doesn’t really have right now.

Sky.9347:

hharry.1967:

Theres no gear grind at all unless you want to look cool.

When talking about PvE (and by extension, WvW) you are wrong sir.

For the OP: I think you made some good points. I don’t think hotjoin should go away, but they do need to do something to create a transition from solo player to tournament team.

there is no gear grind in gw2 i got all my exotic gear from gold/karma which i already had long before i hit 80. by the time i hit 80 i already had my gear i had done maybe 2 dungeons 2-3x and wasnt about to repeat that process just for skins…

The 5v5 format does not work in hotjoin at all. That’s because there’s always people leaving, making it 4v4 or 3v3 a lot of time. I’d say that 6v6 would work better than both 8v8 and 5v5, due to the nature of hotjoin.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The 5v5 format does not work in hotjoin at all. That’s because there’s always people leaving, making it 4v4 or 3v3 a lot of time. I’d say that 6v6 would work better than both 8v8 and 5v5, due to the nature of hotjoin.

LoL works just fine and is very popular with just 1 map ! u cant afk/leave/talk kitten without the community of gammers enforcing rules..

there is a report for “afk” which i have seen ALOt lately in hotjoin and when i see someone is afk i hit the leave button making the 8v8 now 6 (1 afk) v8, cuz its such a pet peeve of mine i cant stand it and the fact that anet didnt bother to think of it is stupid.

I’m with you OP – haven’t logged in in over a week and don’t plan on it again. There’s just no middle ground. If you like to solo or play with a friend or 2 there is no place for you in this game. Hot join is horrid and the only people who like it are people who lack skill and enjoy the comfort of the zerg. Then, as you said, free tournaments take longer and longer to pop and more often than not are 5v4 since Anet still has not implemented any type of deserter debuff or way to keep matches from starting without a full 5. It is quite a joke. Really the only people who have fun in this game are bads who enjoy zerging 8v8 and people with lots of time to dedicate to having a 5-man team. Add to the fact there is still no ladder, nothing to strive for, no match making, etc. And it’s just a big why bother.

For all the suckiness of WoW at least they had 3v3 and 2v2 that only required you to play 10 games a week minimum to stay relevant. And Rift, while not an uber competitive pvp game, still offers multiple maps and game modes and balanced pug v pug games, i.e. it’s FUN.

Add to this the slowest development team in the history of mmo pvp and well you have a dying pvp population. They have been talking about AoE, bunkers and eles for how long now yet we have seen nothing, they have been talking about balancing down states, still nothing. New maps/game modes? Not even on their radar. But as I have said in another thread I got my moneys worth with leveling my necro to 80 and enjoying WvW for a bit before it got stale as well.

urinfamousr.7631:

Sky.9347:

hharry.1967:

Theres no gear grind at all unless you want to look cool.

When talking about PvE (and by extension, WvW) you are wrong sir.

For the OP: I think you made some good points. I don’t think hotjoin should go away, but they do need to do something to create a transition from solo player to tournament team.

there is no gear grind in gw2 i got all my exotic gear from gold/karma which i already had long before i hit 80. by the time i hit 80 i already had my gear i had done maybe 2 dungeons 2-3x and wasnt about to repeat that process just for skins…

Having to accumulate currency to buy gear in order to get the best stats is by definition gear grinding – whether you found it to be “grindy feeling” or not is purely subjective and is besides the point. As the game progresses, more levels will be introduced, newer gear with better stats will be introduced, and players, in order to be at the highlest levels of competition will have to “grind” to get the best gear.

My point is that you don’t have to do any kind of questing or dungeon running or anything like that in order to get the same stats as everyone else in spvp – which is exactly what attracted me to this game because, coming from wow, I am sick of questing and grinding for gear… it has no appeal to me.

Sprawl.3891:

For all the suckiness of WoW at least they had 3v3 and 2v2 that only required you to play 10 games a week minimum to stay relevant.

This is not exactly true, people who grinded out higher rating via arenas had access to superior gear. I guess it depends on what you mean by “relevant”…

I appreciate all the feedback.

To those that got a little off-topic in regards to a gear grind, both sides have valid points. But if you’re talking about WvW, your group composition and strat play into your success FAR more than your gear. Of course, a lot of the better guilds request that you at least have one lvl 80 in all exotics. But once you get a full set of exotics, I really believe you’ll be set for whatever else you want to do in this game. You will also feel twice as powerful in full PvE exotics as you do compared to the nerfed sPvP amulets. It’s actually quite fun. Plus you get to play around with different builds that would never work in sPvP such as leeching + knight’s gear (toughness/power/precision in pve).

DiogoSilva.7089:

The 5v5 format does not work in hotjoin at all. That’s because there’s always people leaving, making it 4v4 or 3v3 a lot of time. I’d say that 6v6 would work better than both 8v8 and 5v5, due to the nature of hotjoin.

That’s why I suggested greater rewards for staying until the end. Also, the current 5v5 hotjoin format only suffers because the 8v8 is the default and provides better glory gains. If that was changed, I feel like you’d see a lot more consistent 5v5 games.

Leadfoot.9071:

Sprawl.3891:

For all the suckiness of WoW at least they had 3v3 and 2v2 that only required you to play 10 games a week minimum to stay relevant.

This is not exactly true, people who grinded out higher rating via arenas had access to superior gear. I guess it depends on what you mean by “relevant”…

you can’t “grind” rating. It is skill based. Yes good players could achieve better gear faster by receving more points each week, but that was due to their skill and rating not how many games they played. An average skill player who was stuck around 1500 rating could play 10 games a week or 1,000 games a week and would still receive the same amount of points. And whether they had full arena gear or not their rating would not fluctuate much. By the time the season was a month or so in most higher rated teams had all the gear and were on equal footing.

QP on the other hand is a grind stat that has no bearing on skill.

Sprawl.3891:

QP on the other hand is a grind stat that has no bearing on skill.

Well, there are now 3 different stats sPvPers are effectively ranked by. Glory ranks were first, and we all know that is nothing more than a grind. QP are similar, but again there is a grind associated to it. At least with QP your skill determines how much effort you have to put in to achieve it (aka more wins = fewer games you have to play). And at the same time, if you are a terrible player, you won’t be getting a lot of QP. We can only hope the invisible MMR that’s in place is working well.

Sadly if you’re like me, Glory is too much of a grind and both QP and MMR are virtually unobtainable.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The 5v5 format does not work in hotjoin at all. That’s because there’s always people leaving, making it 4v4 or 3v3 a lot of time.

That’s why i like 5v5. 3v3 is better than 4v4. 4v4 is better than 5v5. 5v5 is better than nvn, 8>=n>5

Fjandi.2516:

DiogoSilva.7089:

The 5v5 format does not work in hotjoin at all. That’s because there’s always people leaving, making it 4v4 or 3v3 a lot of time.

That’s why i like 5v5. 3v3 is better than 4v4. 4v4 is better than 5v5. 5v5 is better than nvn, 8>=n>5

Well, regardless of people leaving, even in a full 5v5 you get plenty of opportunities to 1v1, 2v2, etc. because of the map size. 8v8 on the other hand always seems to end up 5v1, 6v2, etc… that is NOT fun.

Vyce.2014:

Disclaimer: No you can’t have my stuff… I love the game and will keep playing every other area of the game besides sPvP. I just wanted to share my opinion of why it’s so frustrating and I can’t be bothered to play it. I hope Anet can resolve the issues causing my frustrations and I hope the sPvP community will explode as a result. That said, here’s my rant…

It’s just too freaking frustrating to keep at it. I don’t have the rank, and to be honest, the skill to find a good tournament team. So my best bet right now is to try and solo queue frees in order to meet people and form a team. Unfortunately the queue is still too long (plus 4 minute prep time), and too often the first round will start 4v5 (I swear my last 5 games have been 4v5). So for now I’ve given up on playing tourneys. That leaves me to play hotjoin. When I play hotjoin I end up raging after about 30 minutes of 8v8 as it always turns into a zergfest that favors heavy aoe or burst classes. If I try 5v5 instead, there are rarely enough players to play consistent games because 8v8 is the default and frankly it’s easier to farm rank/glory in 8v8.

With all that in mind, here are my own opinions on how they could improve sPvP and win me back.

Tournaments: The free tournaments should be in the same format as paids. It really should be designed to act as practice for paids and an avenue for solo queue. I feel like both free and paids would benefit as 4 team tournaments (2 rounds). There are many potential benefits to this. First, free tournaments would have a quicker queue compared to how they are now. Second, both free and paids could use two maps per week rather than just one per week. Third, high ranked teams would automatically avoid the issue of playing the same team back to back.

Hotjoin: I’d love it if the 8v8 format was simply removed. But I understand some people might actually enjoy it (though I can’t imagine how) so at least it should be moved to the bottom of the list and have the glory potential reduced a little bit to balance against the greater kill potential. The 5v5 format should then be made the default option and the glory reward potential should be increased in order to draw more people in. Additionally all hotjoin games should have a bonus glory reward at the end even for the losing team to discourage leaving early. This end bonus should be rewarded as a percentage of time in the map to discourage the inevitable map hopping.

Glory ranks: Now that there is a better method of ranking player skill, glory ranks should ONLY be considered as reward tiers. In other words, it should be a LOT easier to gain ranks as not everyone plays the game 8 hours a day, and even if they do, not everone wants to ONLY sPvP for the next few years to get armor and weapon skin rewards. In PvE right now it is about a hundred times easier to get all of the armor and weapon skins you’d like, even considering legendaries. I think the highest rank right now is 65 or so. That’s pretty crazy. Especially for those of us who can’t commit even a quarter of the time investment as those top ranked players. To be clear, I’m not suggesting it should be easy. Even if only 10 people were max glory rank right now I’d have hope to one day get there.

Balance: To be honest, there are plenty of frustrating balance issues. I watch streams where skilled players complain about d/d eles and trap rangers. Even no-skill hotjoin games are littered with them and can really make the game not very fun. Here’s the thing though… I actually like that Anet wants to be cautious and not nerf things too quickly. I just wish they’d find a middle ground and perhaps make a few VERY small tweaks once a month so that certain successful builds can remain strong, but not impossible to compete against.

just my 2c

How about the very lack of care put into spvp at all?

We have one single game-type and none others, no capture the flag, no deathmatches, nothing…

The mechanics and the gameplay are not the same in spvp as they are in pvE – which astounds me.

But you see, the nature of hotjoin is that people are free to make a quick, random match and leave whenever they want or need. Although I agree there should be a way to enforce rules for afk, and maybe there will for the custom arenas, who knows, those rules do not make much sense in hotjoin or else it would stop being hotjoin. So, I do think that the best attempt at doing 5v5 in hotjoin, is making it 6v6 there, to take into account the few users that are always coming and going. And, of course, making it first in the listed servers.

I quit GW2 SPvP about 2 months ago now but i pop in here every now and then to see if stuff’s changed. Looks like still OP eles, no new modes. Sigh. I’ll check back after the 26th.

Interesting to see trap ranger now OP – they went from crap to OP then? Huh.

DiogoSilva.7089:

But you see, the nature of hotjoin is that people are free to make a quick, random match and leave whenever they want or need. Although I agree there should be a way to enforce rules for afk, and maybe there will for the custom arenas, who knows, those rules do not make much sense in hotjoin or else it would stop being hotjoin. So, I do think that the best attempt at doing 5v5 in hotjoin, is making it 6v6 there, to take into account the few users that are always coming and going. And, of course, making it first in the listed servers.

I’m actually opposed to any mechanic that penalizes people for leaving hot-join games. I have a 2 year old kid that needs my attention at random times. I think the best solution is to offer a greater reward for playing a match from start to finish.

i agree with OP. basically, if 8v8 remains, and current 3-round free tourneys remain, i wont be playing spvp much, maybe just to try out the new map. i dont have a team, never will have one. i dont wanna play frees for 3 rounds, and 8v8 is a bloody mess considering even 5v5 isnt balanced properly.

basically, it’s gonna go down like this. if devs dont drastically improve rewards, abolish 8v8, and make free tourneys like paids, i simply dont see spvp growing in any way. all 3 are deemed necessary by the entire community. i just dont see anyone disagreeing on this.

if 8v8 and free tourneys remain, non-paids players will be stuck in a cesspool of bad balance, leavers, long queues and pointless rewards. so maybe 80% of the spvp pop will come in and be like “oh cool, new map” and MOVE ON in a few weeks. how do you plan on dealing with this i wonder. i certainly hope youre taking the community’s suggestions into account regarding this move.