Guild Wars 2

I played for 2 months back at launch, got bored, and just stopped.

I have a level 80 ranger, champion hunter title, and just realized I got upgraded from mercenary to avenger after this patch. Probably peanuts compared to people who have grinded out insane PvP ranks, but I only played seriously for 2 months.

Is PvP still dead? Last time I checked, there was nobody in mists and probably 30 players total playing across all arena servers.

(In the meantime, I moved to a competitive game with a much larger population: DotA 2 has at least 300k players on at all times)

You should check it out see for yourself, definitely worth that, I got back 3 days ago I’m pretty happy and will continue to play.

Problem is: a feature patch just got launched, and it groups people together.

I saw ~30 people in the mists when I logged in, which is the most I’ve seen since Sept 2012. (I’ve been logging in sporadically here and there)

Not sure if this will be only a few day or week-long thing…or if it just creates the illusion that PvP is/isn’t dead.

All I remember is that there was absolutely no competitive drive at all last time I played PvP…most good PvP players I knew from GW1 quit within the first 2 months of GW2.

People are still adjusting to the new changes.. does that mean #esportsnow? no probably not, Esports soon? Probably not.
It’s gonna take a while before things start happening..

But the infrastructure is almost all there for new players to get into PVP
if it becomes popular then maybe Esports.

People come back during patches, I Think I had like 100 people light up green on my friends list who haven’t been on for centuries.

Good Tofu.9376:

All I remember is that there was absolutely no competitive drive at all last time I played PvP…most good PvP players I knew from GW1 quit within the first 2 months of GW2.

If you’re shooting for competitive PvP… I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
The game just isn’t made for it and Anet doesn’t seem to be shooting for it.

The PvP is ‘competitive-casual’ at very best, after everyone left they kind of gave up on having a strong independent PvP system and just shot for it being more of a PvE’ers minigame instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I see the percs in this game and drooled over the potential for a year… I to god wished that Anet would kittening delete every conquest map and release a map-builder or allow custom arenas to tweak skills… I wished they would actually learn to not just tweak classes to be more balanced, but tweak them to be more fun… I wished they could release more than a patch every few months…

But they can’t, I don’t think they are capable of any of that so I can’t see the game’s PvP really holding on to many people for all that long.

Rant about where they kittened up
The game was just released too half finished to manage to live with the neglect it’s getting (financially, there is like no funding for GW2 PvP). They tossed the trinity which was like the fast track to a decent MMO, it was like the elmer’s glue that held players together and forced them to work as a team in combat… Anet tossing that, Anet tossing a focus on team-fights required an ingenious LoL-level replacement to make work.
I mean, team-fights lessen the impact of low skill specs. Even with a simple OP class you can kitten up really bad by screwing up positioning in a team-fight or not working with allies. Team-fights add to the skill-floor and they make each fight solidly different than the last (so the game doesn’t get stale as fast). To boot they give more room for bad specs to shine, if you position and play really well as part of a team, stay really aware of enemies, you can make sub-par specs work (creating more diversity). The reason it’s so popular is because it’s a jokingly easy way to make a relatively easy to balance game and at least decently entertaining game to play.

Anet tossed all that, for nothing, and with their level of skill/capability to balance the game… that killed the game.

garethh.3518:

Good Tofu.9376:

All I remember is that there was absolutely no competitive drive at all last time I played PvP…most good PvP players I knew from GW1 quit within the first 2 months of GW2.

If you’re shooting for competitive PvP… I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
The game just isn’t made for it and Anet isn’t shooting for it.

The PvP is ‘competitive-casual’ at very best, after everyone left they kind of gave up on having a strong independent PvP system and just shot for it being more of a PvE’ers minigame instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I see the percs in this game and drooled over the potential for a year… I to god wished that Anet would kittening delete every conquest map and release a map-builder or allow custom arenas to tweak skills… I wished they would actually learn to not just tweak classes to be more balanced, but tweak them to be more fun… I wished they could release more than a patch every few months…

But they can’t, I don’t think they are capable of any of that so I can’t see the game’s PvP really holding on to many people for all that long.
The game was just released too half finished to manage to live with the neglect it’s getting (financially, there is like no funding for GW2 PvP), they tossed the trinity getting rid of what got people to work together in combat, what got everyone (from pug to premade) to play as and feel like a team in combat… they got rid of it, and replaced it with bunkers and spike dps… they still haven’t even realized that that’s a bad thing.

Hmm, interesting analysis.

From the matches I’ve played in the past couple days, it feels like a complete free for all. There really is no teamwork or need for cohesion.

The best analogy is (for those who have played DotA or League of Legends): GW2 spvp feels like a chaotic 5v5 engagement, in which each team has 5 solo mid players and no supports.

garethh.3518:

Good Tofu.9376:

All I remember is that there was absolutely no competitive drive at all last time I played PvP…most good PvP players I knew from GW1 quit within the first 2 months of GW2.

If you’re shooting for competitive PvP… I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
The game just isn’t made for it and Anet isn’t shooting for it.

The PvP is ‘competitive-casual’ at very best, after everyone left they kind of gave up on having a strong independent PvP system and just shot for it being more of a PvE’ers minigame instead.
Don’t get me wrong, I see the percs in this game and drooled over the potential for a year… I to god wished that Anet would kittening delete every conquest map and release a map-builder or allow custom arenas to tweak skills… I wished they would actually learn to not just tweak classes to be more balanced, but tweak them to be more fun… I wished they could release more than a patch every few months…

But they can’t, I don’t think they are capable of any of that so I can’t see the game’s PvP really holding on to many people for all that long.

---

Rant about where they kittened up
The game was just released too half finished to manage to live with the neglect it’s getting (financially, there is like no funding for GW2 PvP), they tossed the trinity which was like the fast track to a decent MMO, it was like the glue that held players together and forced them to work as a team in combat… tossing that, tossing a focus on team-fights requires an ingenious replacement or extremely well made specs… team-fights lessen the impact of low skill specs, even with a simple OP class you can kitten up really bad by screwing up positioning in a team-fight, team-fights add to the skill-floor, to boot they give more room for bad specs to shine, if you position and play really well as part of a team, you can make sub-par specs work. Team-fights and the trinity make balancing in a game much more lenient.

Anet tossed all that, for nothing, and with their level of skill/capability to balance the game… that killed the game.

And good call on the teamfight issue. I feel no sense of teamfight in any of the modes I’ve played (WvW, PvP, and especially PvE).

WvW and PvE are literally just zergs in which you dont even have to use any skill moves except for autoattack to kill mobs.

PvP is also just a massive free for all, from what I can see so far. There is no real sense of teamfight, synergy, or teamwork. The objective is to just kill off others and capture points (which just comes back to killing off others faster than they can kill you).

There is some strategy involved with positioning and capturing unguarded points, but compared to other competitive games out there, this is really peanuts.