Guild Wars 2

This thread appeared on Reddit and I thought it discuss a foundamental problem of the current PvP status, so here it is:

So there was an article I’m sure everyone is aware of explaining the experimental process arenanet tends to release items, updates and content. When I read it I got pretty worried because I feel like we are still stuck in this endless loop where the infastructure is never actually reaching an acceptable standard.
I definitely agree with the concern that arenanet tends to take a system, implement it hap-hazardly and then forget about it, only to constantly remake it, repeating the same process.
Something that I want to clarify before I go any further is that I love this game. I have 5177 hours across all my characters and 7003 PVP games on my mesmer and I’ve been playing competitively in it since the beta with absolutely no monetary rewards for doing so half along the way. Only recently did we actually get paid for being top end players and we’ve still stuck around because we love the combat and the gameplay.
I believe the entire infastructure for PVP is the best example of the lack of a clear goal in development. If you have not been around in pvp since the get go you really wouldnt believe the amount of insane reworks that have occured.
Here is the rundown of all the changes and systems. I should add that some of the details of when and exactly how everything worked might be a bit skewed because A LOT of changes have occured and it’s been a while ago.
The beginning: In the very start of PVP there were only ‘’free tournament’’ and hotjoin. There was no other form of matchmaking other than free tournament which had absolutely no rating system, no leaderbords, no nothing. When you won a free tournament you unlocked a paid tournament token. IIRC, you could either buy these from the gemstore or save up 5 of them to enter the matchmaking of the paid tournament system which was introduced a few months later.
This system gave you better loot and gems if you placed in the top. You actually got a crapload of gems and people that farmed it consistently could basically get any item they wanted to. Additionally, you also got a ‘’Qualification point’‘. There was a leaderboard tracking the people with the top QPs. (you only got 1 for winning). This was the birth of the competitive scene in GW2, competitive teams would join the same teamspeak at a set time and all q for the tournament together, guaranteeing a competitive enviroment.
I should add that the map system was always forest, legacy, kyhlo. The paid tournaments worked in the way that 8 teams that paid got in the que and it would basically be an automated tournament in the game.
Eventually, the gems were removed because it was too lucerative and didnt really provide any goldsink. Moreover, the map system changed. Every week (or two weeks, cant remember), one map was selected which was the ONLY map for tournament play, free or paid. Needless to say, it got old, quick.
Somewhere during this time they also changed qualification points from 1 to top placers to 5 for top placers and 2 for 2nd place. The whole ticket system was also completely scrapped.
The system kind of broke down when a bounch of players would wait until ~00:00 to go into matches just to farm QPs. It did not matter if you beat the best team or a compilation of randoms, you’d still get +5 QPs. The leaderboard of QPs (which was not automatically updated but rather a forumpost) got a little ridicilous with certain players having around 2k QPs vs other players who might have been better players having somewhere in the likes of 700.
The idea behind the QPS werent fully revealed, but it seems like everyone had a tournament in mind for it. This never happened, instead of that they announced that they’d scrap the QP system, give titles to the top.. 20? placements (I’m a master of the arena which IIRC was given to top 10 placements)
This is when the first iteration of leaderboards were released. With rating and stuff. It was extremely confusing as I remember Denshee being rank 1 by only solqueing while having a 50% winratio, meanwhile his teammate at the time battosai had a 90% winratio having only played with his team. The only difference was the amount of games.
There were a couple of problems with the leaderboards. Mainly the fact that being rated at the lowest rating in the world and winning a game gave the exact same rewards as being rank 1 and doing so. No real incentive to climb. Furhermore, there was no soloque. The worst problem of all was when people realized there was absolutely no decay. Meaning that after you became rank 1 you were rank 1 for basically forever. If anyone ever overtook you all you had to do was play one game, win or lose, and you’d be back at r1.

Later down the line they implemented soloque. Random maps were in too, not sure when it was put in. Soloque was in my opinion the best thing to ever happen to GW2 pvp. I went from playing 2-3 hours every day to 5-6. And while it shared the same issues as the previous que people actually cared about it. I remember looking up my stats on gw2stats and going ultra tryhard mode if I was ever close to losing my top 100 placement or 60% winratio.
I also remember feeling happy about getting r1 the time I did it as a mesmer since I was the first one to do it. This was the only time I ever cared about achieveing anything within the system of GW2.
Then a new problem appeared in soloque. It was skyhammer. This killed the game for a lot of players, silly as it might sound. This map simply was not GW2. Sometimes I’d shut down the game after I had cleared up an entire day just to play gw2 just because I had a horrible 500-0 skyhammer game.
People protested daily about skyhammer… everywhere. Top players, forums, everywhere. everyone hated on skyhammer for what I belive was almost half a year. To fix it arenanet completely revamped the map system to its current vote system. When they did that they also removed soloq (:<<<<<) and merged the leaderboards of teamq and soloq (kinda butchered my stats lol)
Right now the leaderboards have not even been on my mind since I started writing this thread, nor do I know anyone that cares about them. They were remade once again not too long ago and apparently people placing in the top ratings get a llama and the top is reached by spamming games, win or loss. This is fairly easy to see if you just look at the leaderboards and see people such as ‘’face of angel’’ being rank 13 wih a winratio of 46.95% above my teammate ’’zan’’ who is ranked 22 with 71.61% winratio (700 games)
Nothing has really been done with the leaderboards for a really long time. The general pattern suggests that we’ll have a rework once again. It might lead to someting good and it might not but the problem is that I’m now 7k games into this game and there is still no proper system at all for PVP.
The following problems that were an issue kitten near a year ago are still an issue now
There is no room for the casual competitive/soloque player. They simply have no space where they can compete. Theoretically if you want to get competitive as a soloq player the best you’ll get is getting trounced by premades at the high end of MMR while getting the exact same rewards you got when you started. You either enter pvp for your daily, play the game strictly for its combat or play at the top end for money.
I actually happened to speak with an old teammate of mine, Lowell, who left GW2 after we broke off and went to heroes of the storm. Random fun fact, he is playing for fnatic and doing quite well for himself. He said that he tried to return to gw2 multiple times just to play it casually when he has nothing to do but despite WANTING to get back into the game he simply has no space to be in. I’ll bet a bifrost that he isnt the only one.
The reason this irks me is that they could have literally taken their first system (or in my preference, the last one) and just done a couple of improvements to it and they’d literally be there. Instead we keep reworking, testing for months and reaching nowhere only to constantly rework again. Something as basic as the PVP infrastructure should not take this long to fix and the game could have had so much more people if it wasnt so shafted in this department.
Now with the release of hots we’ll have a chance of getting a large new influx of players, especially since you dont need to lvl for pvp. But these people are going to either be achievement farmers or lost players if they wont have any space to play in. Not everyone shares our passion enough to compete in what basically is a unfinished system for years.
This vent went on for like.. FIVE TIMES longer than I expected. Sorry, I’ll hire an editor.
I want to clarify again that I respect the PVP team in gw2 and I know how hard they work and how they feel for the game. I just wanted to air out my concerns.
Your thoughts, people?

The article was written by Lord Helseth

Wow…. The feelings…

EDIT: ANet really needs to read this

I comepletly agree with this spvp needs soloQ, leaderboards to be active once agian, the abilty to queue outside of hotm as 10 minute queues are boring af. I really want some sort of information on what anet is doing with pvp and any improvements that will come with HoT and before it

Well I hate to agree with this guy but I do. Its exactly what I posted on here before I gave up completely because nobody cared.

“There is no room for the casual competitive/soloque player. " – why I quit. Why a lot of us quit or gave up trying.

Interesting read. Coming from Helseth (if it really is him) gives it a bit more weight. I think I fall under the “combat” category.

Zoso.8279:

I think I fall under the “combat” category.

Same, I think if someone’s still around in 2015 that’s only for the combat. Not the balance, not the rewards, not the gamemode and definitely not the direction of developement, but the combat.

witcher.3197:

Zoso.8279:

I think I fall under the “combat” category.

Same, I think if someone’s still around in 2015 that’s only for the combat. Not the balance, not the rewards, not the gamemode and definitely not the direction of developement, but the combat.

IDK about that… Lol. Think you read more into what I said then was intended. I think balance is in a good spot right now. Few tweaks here and there I guess but generally I think balance is good.

It’s good that a guy like Helseth wrote this because his word has more weight within the scene than other ppl words because he is playing at the highest end and has a lot of ppl that care about his thoughts.

Maybe we can get an offical statement from Anet, that would be really awesome.
But I don’t think that’s likely to happen.

I think the people who demanded the removal of soloq should apologize to the community. They frequently posted on the forums saying things like “soloq rank is meaningless” and wanted it to be removed. The sad thing is ANet listened to them.

Sunshine.5014:

I think the people who demanded the removal of soloq should apologize to the community. They frequently posted on the forums saying things like “soloq rank is meaningless” and wanted it to be removed. The sad thing is ANet listened to them.

All they said the soloq leaderboards are meaningless, not soloq itself.