It’s not fun to play. Plain and simple. I don’t think many players here can honestly say that they could play hotjoins or tpvp all day because it’s fun. I mean I could play battlefield or counterstrike all day even without leaderboards and hold LAN parties with friends just simply because those games are fun to play. I can’t say the same for GW2 spvp/tpvp.
There’s a reason why many have left the game disappointed with pvp and why there aren’t more casuals playing spvp. Casuals play the game for fun, and there aren’t many casual players playing spvp, go figure.
Here’s a list of reasons why I thnk Spv kitten ucking at the moment:
1.) Point/Glory system promotes selfish gameplay – There is no sense of belonging to a team in spvp at the moment. The goal is to grind as many glory as possible and not to beat the other team. Kitten my whole team as long as I get my glory points.
2.) Killing is fun, running around capping points isn’t – PvP based around running around and stealing bases is for a super mario game and not for a sequel to one of the best mmo pvp ever. I mean, why even build an action oriented combat system only to implement a game mode where combat and killing is but an afterthought.
Solution to 1 & 2: Add a new game mode. Take Legacy of the Foefire, remove the nodes and make the main objective to be about killing the guild lord. Give each player 3 or 5 lives for respawning and if every player on a team can no longer respawn then the other team wins. Put a secondary objective on the graveyard like a trebuchet or a node that gives 1 life to the team that holds it every 2 minutes then add a few monk npcs and we’re set. I’ll play that game on that one map all day even without glory or rating.
3.) Spammable boons/conditions isn’t fun – Spammable conditions and snares that every class have access to allow perma snaring effectively removes melee in the game and further reduces the variation of builds – not fun.
It also reduces the value of the timing of using those skills since most skills that cause cripple or blinds are mostly on low CDS. It’s like giving everyone on an FPS game unlimited flashbangs. No one would care when to throw em around, button mashing(as soon as skill is available for use ) wins and timing is irrelevant.
It’s the same case with boons. Low duration boons on low CD’s mean they’re intended to be spammed rather than be used at the right time(i.e before a spike).
Solution: Give us limited but stronger versions(or with longer duration) of boons/conditions on longer CD’s. The more limited access we have to these stronger damage mitigation boons and snares, the more important timing of usage of these skills will be. Games will in turn become more skill oriented(less boring button mashing) and a lot more intense, resulting to more fun gameplay.
Reducing the access to snares would also help solve the melee problem as well. Melee based builds will become more viable increasing build diversity and add a new dimension in pvp.
4.) Dying too easily isn’t fun – TTK in GW2, a game without dedicated healers, is too low IMHO. I think the reason why they made boons and conditions too spammable in the first place was because of this. They somehow needed to increase TTK through damage mitigation in the absence of dedicated healers.
But dying too easily is indeed a problem that needs to be addressed. Dying before being able to contribute to your team isn’t fun at all. Reducing burst potential in the last patch is a step in the right direction but if ANET were to address my earlier point about boons and conditions, then some other solution must be done to increase TTK.
Suggestion: Obvious one would be to tweak the base damage value of skills(especially ranged auto attacks) apart from PVE and WvW.