Guild Wars 2

It seems a morbid question and as healthy as it may seem to be as of late, is sPvP actually beyond its point of no return?

This is more a question aimed at the ability to Expand on both the competitive scene and the Game type scene.

Is it possible for Anet to rebuild enough of a PvP following to increase the player base to allow for more game types without fracturing players into groups so small that it will end up driving them away?

Will we ever get to see more and more high level teams if we don’t have multiple game types for different players to excel in?

Has anets lack of concern and action on both balance and updates set a precedent of “inaction” that is holding players away from the game mode, and if so, is it possible for them to turn that around this late into the games life span?

If it is possible, how long could it take and what happens if they drop the ball completely once again?

Swish.2463:

It seems a morbid question and as healthy as it may seem to be as of late, is sPvP actually beyond its point of no return?

An MMO is beyond the point of no return only if it has already gone free to play. At that point there are many factors that could determine it’s success or failure, but once an MMO has gone f2p there’s nothing it can do anymore to pull in enough players, even if momentarily (seeing as going f2p is almost equivalent to a new launch of the game in many cases).

GW2 still has several ways by which it can pull in more pvp population:
1) large monetary reward championships tend to attract competitive scene players
2) expansion containing a huge number of new pvp features could pull in inactive/retired pvp players

However as it is right now I’d say PvP scene will stagnate for a while and then start steadily declining once again, at which point there will probably be other (better) games to play PvP in.

This is more a question aimed at the ability to Expand on both the competitive scene and the Game type scene.

Is it possible for Anet to rebuild enough of a PvP following to increase the player base to allow for more game types without fracturing players into groups so small that it will end up driving them away?

That depends. If it comes all as a part of a huge update with many PvP features ect. that would be advertised in advance and sufficient amount of hype would be built up then yes, it’s possible to release new game modes and not fracture the player base into fractions so small they would no longer be able to support said game modes and collape. Otherwise I don’t think it is.

Will we ever get to see more and more high level teams if we don’t have multiple game types for different players to excel in?

There is no game type that is better for an actual competitive game mode than conquest. It plays on all aspects of Guild Wars 2 combat that are good. Strategy, tactics, teamplay, reaction speed, decision making… However, it is also the hardest game mode to play and doesn’t value individual skill as much as some other game modes do, putting more emphasis on coordination and strategy, which is exactly why many players don’t like it and would prefer a more straightforward “fighting” game type.

Although I am fairly certain that people who dominate conquest now would dominate all other game modes in exactly the same manner, and people who are horrible at conquest would fare no better in deathmatch or any other scenario. People just like to make up excuses why they suck.

Has anets lack of concern and action on both balance and updates set a precedent of “inaction” that is holding players away from the game mode, and if so, is it possible for them to turn that around this late into the games life span?

General lack of concern over game balance or content is not unique to PvP in this game, and just like in PvP has caused a lot of people to simply give up on playing given content (like dungeons). ANet has not expressed the slightest interest in changing their policy about these things, so I wouldn’t expect any improvement. Ever.

If it is possible, how long could it take and what happens if they drop the ball completely once again?

I don’t think it’s possible, but it would take something akin to an expansion at this point, which is years away at least.

Everything above is purely an opinion of mine.

The issues with the 2 points you made are:

Silferas.3841:

1) large monetary reward championships tend to attract competitive scene players

This seems to have attracted some bad apples, without proper systems in place to make fair fights a consistent thing, there will be cheating, DDoSing, and general fumbling around when trying to handle tournaments, they need to be professionally done, and currently they are the farthest from that, and in turn, will cause the “competetive scene” to actually fall backwards instead of move forwards.

Silferas.3841:

2) expansion containing a huge number of new pvp features could pull in inactive/retired pvp players

We all know Anet’s stance on expansions by now, if there were to be new things added, they would be cut, delivered and spread out over a large time frame via “Feature Patch”

All I’m going to say to this is that the PvP in this game is FUN. Other games, World of Warcraft, Wildstar, League don’t really have the fun and interactive gameplay that Guild Wars 2 offers.

I enjoy Guild Wars 2 PvP because you can always comeback without grinding new gear, if Tpvp gets boring there is Solo queue and WvW.

However, that is not to say there are some issues that the devs are hard at work trying to fix. A spectate mode is crucial to this game’s success, more than just conquest will bring more than one food group to a meal, and true GvG would bring bring meaning to the name “Guild Wars”.

Without drastic changes to the current spvp infrastrucutre, there is no hope for growing a fun and active competitive scene.

Here’s why I find it especially difficult to motivate myself to keep playing spvp: going from noob to intermediate is pretty easy. There’s plenty of viable builds including detailed info and video guides. Through consistent practice and repetition you get a solid basic understanding of how to play your class and how conquest works.

But moving from intermediate to above-average skill level is where it really gets frustrating. This is normal for every skill in life, but besides intrinsic motivation, there is zero incentive to try and get better. Leaderboards are utterly meaningless, because of vague and arbitrary evaluation parameters. Why not just adopt the system of WoW arenas? I personally think WoW is inferior to GW2 in every single aspect, except the arena system. There are ladder seasons, a rating value which (roughly) indicates the skill level of a player and is used for fair matchmaking, and special rewards so people can distinguish themselves based on their achievements. Whereas in GW2, noone gives a kitten whether you are ranked 700 or 94% in soloq, really.

What also inhibits improvement is the lack of online content in general. The number of twitch streams is laughable and it’s incredibly hard to find advice which goes beyond composing a build. I REALLY want to learn the more advanced stuff, like how to rotate effectively and how to make right judgement calls depending on the situation. But when I play spvp, I can’t help but feel like everything is happening randomly most of the time. I win games when I play totally brainafk, and lose games despite being sharp and playing “on fire”. It’s like it doesn’t even matter what I do. Team comps are random, builds are random, outnumbering people happens randomly. I believe 95% of the player base experience this (at least to a certain extent), except maybe the top teams that play on a professional level.

This can be overcome through more advanced players producing content. If there’s more guides, streams and video tutorials out there, then people can figure out what they are doing wrong, adapt accordingly and then feel that they are making progress. Right now, however, the only thing I can do is learn through trial and error and talk to more experienced players, who are facing more or less the same dilemma anyways. And don’t even tell me to watch tournament streams. I’ve been watching streams a lot lately, and games were either reset 10times, or streams cancelled altogether. Also, most commentators seem to miss half of what’s going on. It’s a terrible way to learn spvp.

The skills an attributes you are asking for always come in time. Realistically, the top tier players of this game did not sit around and ask for tutorials and guides, they played.

A list of things to improve yourself rapidly: (use this advice at you own caution)
Fake how good you are and get into a good group and learn from them.
TAKE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM.
ADMIT YOU WERE WRONG.
Play the conquest game like you would play chess, be one step ahead of the opponent by simply putting yourself in their shoes in there current situation and understanding what they will be doing next so then you can prepare for it.

A couple of nice tips, but not nearly as important as good rotations:
Work extremely hard at being good at 1-2 classes, and try and work on classes and specs that are future proof and will most likely stay in the meta.
“Multi Classers” are cool, but I really only invite them to tvp if truly no one else is on.

Also, ASK, go on the leaderboards, take down the names of the people in the top 25, walk through Hotm and wisp them, “Hey, you’re that REALLY GOOD Engineer, I play engineer too, do you have any tips for me? What’s your teamspeak info so I can ask in person?” Elitists LOVE this kind of attention and will simultaneously help you and brag to his friends that someone asked for his help.

Lastly, the reason why there is not a huge amount of content is because the top tier players are those who “play”, the people who sit around all day making content for the game should reach out to them and ask for interviews or videos that they can capture and nurture into something the community can truly appreciate.

I see this as two topics. There is the success of sPVP as a game and the eSport side of Guild Wars2.

For sPvP to be healthy in GW2 then it needs more game modes, more builds, and rewards balanced to be the same as PvE. All those will increase the players in that mode.

For eSports to be successful, well I think we saw over the weekend both the highs and the lows of this as an eSport. Over the last year we have had issues on age due to legal issues and rule issues between organized events. However what really shows things off are the amount of teams or lack there of. Perhaps the core problem with GW2 is that it is advertised as a casual MMO. LoL and Dota are just competitive games. Warcraft/Starcraft graduated into eSports. So it is, I think, up to the shoutcasters and the players to hype up the game. The best players need to record their matches and the teams need to self promote. However if this is a casual game, no one is going to do that. What you end up with is eSport burn out where the top few are trying to carry the load of the majority (sounds like WvW commanders).

I don’t really worry too much about the changes in sPvP for eSports because, and I’m sure the forum will correct me where I’m wrong, but Dota and LoL are the same game mode over and over again. If you are a FPS kind of person then yes, the game modes are lacking but ultimately, eSports doesn’t need MORE to be better. It pretty much comes down to team diversity and balance. It is the eSport burn out that I worry about. How long can one person shoutcast, twitch, play in this league without burn out? Especially when it’s the same people? That is a question that I think Anet doesn’t have an answer for.

(edited to clear up some thoughts)

Something pretty big is coming to SPVP im sure of it , check back in 6 months

is pvp beyond help?
i dunno, first we’d have to actually see Anet try helping it.