Guild Wars 2

Simple question really. Given the complaints about various builds and classes I am forced to wonder of conquest is the actual catalyst for the general dislike of S/T PvP.

I would like to keep this short so I am going to attempt to make my points concise and direct.

• PvP in the general sense is still popular as WvW (a type of PvP) still has a decent population of active players (note ques on popular WvW servers).

• Many of the complaints in SPvP seem to be centered around certain builds, classes, and mechanics.

• The complaints for S and t PvP vary as many of thee builds classes and mechanics are optimal in one place but sub par in the other.

Would further class balancing actually drive players back into S/T PvP? Would providing a new game type ie death match be more likely to bring more players into S/T PvP?

Its not that conquest is bad it is just that only conquest is bad, imo. The domination of certain builds/build types that you noted doesn’t help the situation. That being said, I hope they don’t waste development time on death match, let players disable nodes in private server’s but keep it out of tournaments. I would like something along the lines like a huttball game type, ctf or relic run. It would be awesome when (maybe if) they release custom arena’s if they could include the closed beta pvp maps that had different game modes. Never heard too much about them besides that the testers said they were not as fun as conquest.

well just went against 2 dif teams which had 4 mesmers and 1 thief. All different ppl. Think that might be a big clue to why pvp is dying. They need a class cap on tpvp so ppl cant run all the cheap bs.

Mosharn.8357:

well just went against 2 dif teams which had 4 mesmers and 1 thief. All different ppl. Think that might be a big clue to why pvp is dying. They need a class cap on tpvp so ppl cant run all the cheap bs.

Limiting players even further will surely help this game. I suggest hitting your head against a wall.

It might be the reason , but in the same time even the developers are kinda afraid if they change it .
For example , theres a huge amount of ppl that want future maps secondary mechanic to be primary and via versa , like the new map with the orb .
Theres a chance that either it will become hotjoin v2 with top teams using full team burst or aoe classes , or full bunker teams with stability to secure the kills or rez each other till eternity .
And if they normalize those 2 extreme cases , they might loose even the current playerbase .
Lets see if the 3rd developer in the SOTG , ask the rest of the compatitive players what they feel like for the curent meta

Constant balancing is a must in any MMO. As to driving player back for a new game type… Possibly?

See a lot of people who play PvP games usually play more for the player vs player aspect. What do I mean? Well score is a factor but no one really cares, like arcade games’s level of pvp was “who has better score?” But anyone coming from another MMO/Shooter/Moba(DOTA-like) it’s usually about the kills, even if kills don’t matter.(leader boards are a different story)

LoL as an example kills and deaths matter a lot even if its not the main objective, and although being balanced around a team game to reach a main goal a vast majority spend their times playing to rack up kills along with the objective. Even CTF games in shooters have a simular mindset. Meaning people want “player vs players” as a competent opponent to overcome.

GW2 cannot do this with 5v5 territories.

The main philosophy is trying to make everyone and almost all builds relevant, but how do you make bunkers relevant if they can’t kill? Make them out last DPS 4 days till the DPS dies? no! You can’t then bunker becomes OP and why run anything else? So you need something else for it. Thus we have points to hold. They have a presence on the battle field take a while to die and can hold out, thus making them relevant.

This is why we cannot have death match and duels and why the current format won’t work. It will for some, and anyone who wants a new e-sport will stick with it. But for the majority who want it to be players fighting other players, a territory game type isn’t the most appealing thing.

With all this said it’s also where the mentality of balance comes in (even if A-net currently isn’t giving us the attention we need) but continuing down this road is going to make a very niche community in the long run.

A death match though I think would draw people back because it fits with the proper mentality of what PvPers want. However the game would have to drastically change IMO for it to work.

-after thought-
A lot of people suggest 2v2s and 3v3s which as a team game with the ability to combat revive allies in not a instant up way is actually a rather valid idea, and would give tanky players with this current meta a viable role. But then instant revive skills and AoE heal fields will be the back bone of the meta still.

IMHO – I think the healthiest thing for this game is to force team fights but have a way to prolong the experience.

@Daishi

Well I will hit a few points because they stick out. The bunker situation in death match would be easy to fix its a death match if you die your out. Even if 5 bunkers sat on top of each other if you kept hitting the same bunker player in quick succession even without changing the game one iota they would die due to death penalty and there is no way around that whatsoever.

Even if that weren’t the case 5 dps targeting one bunker even in the presence of other bunkers could still win due to the shear amount of dps coming in and the fact that rezing requires a players to cease all action to rez further this point. Since all bunker builds rely on constantly keeping up boons it is quite possible to disrupt a good bunker plan by simply killing one player and pressuring them.

Further more you could run a team with a decent amount of boon corruption or removal and cake walk through a bunker team as all that separate bunker from not being bunker is the boons.

TL;DR
Sorry you don’t need to read all that. While you concerns are legitimate they are too short sighted as there are already counters in place for such a situation from happening. Like I said before even without changing the game the capability to counter such cheap methods are already in place. Granted all the players are in a central area together.

Your scenario reminded me of 55 monk. Even if they feel bunker would be too strong in that scenario its entirely possible to try to balance the game after seeing the implication as pvp is a living environment and changes with time. That being said none of the reasons you give should halt development on another game type significantly beside the fear of failure. While niche PvP could be fun due to the reasons you stated above wouldn’t that be robbery of the stat minded PvP community? Imagine a game with a million players but such a small PvP base. Wouldn’t that mean that the majority of the community did not value PvP thus made it less worthwhile to move up the leader boards.

Mind you that WvW will see ranks introduced this month making even more likely that those who participate in both will have further incentive to move to WvW. I feel the situation is somewhat precarious. On one hand you can nerf and buff respective classes and hope for a resurgence, but on the other hand as you said new game type would likely bring new players but would be more of a trial.

Daishi.6027:

Constant balancing is a must in any MMO. As to driving player back for a new game type… Possibly?

See a lot of people who play PvP games usually play more for the player vs player aspect. What do I mean? Well score is a factor but no one really cares, like arcade games’s level of pvp was “who has better score?” But anyone coming from another MMO/Shooter/Moba(DOTA-like) it’s usually about the kills, even if kills don’t matter.(leader boards are a different story)

LoL as an example kills and deaths matter a lot even if its not the main objective, and although being balanced around a team game to reach a main goal a vast majority spend their times playing to rack up kills along with the objective. Even CTF games in shooters have a simular mindset. Meaning people want “player vs players” as a competent opponent to overcome.

GW2 cannot do this with 5v5 territories.

The main philosophy is trying to make everyone and almost all builds relevant, but how do you make bunkers relevant if they can’t kill? Make them out last DPS 4 days till the DPS dies? no! You can’t then bunker becomes OP and why run anything else? So you need something else for it. Thus we have points to hold. They have a presence on the battle field take a while to die and can hold out, thus making them relevant.

This is why we cannot have death match and duels and why the current format won’t work. It will for some, and anyone who wants a new e-sport will stick with it. But for the majority who want it to be players fighting other players, a territory game type isn’t the most appealing thing.

With all this said it’s also where the mentality of balance comes in (even if A-net currently isn’t giving us the attention we need) but continuing down this road is going to make a very niche community in the long run.

A death match though I think would draw people back because it fits with the proper mentality of what PvPers want. However the game would have to drastically change IMO for it to work.

-after thought-
A lot of people suggest 2v2s and 3v3s which as a team game with the ability to combat revive allies in not a instant up way is actually a rather valid idea, and would give tanky players with this current meta a viable role. But then instant revive skills and AoE heal fields will be the back bone of the meta still.

IMHO – I think the healthiest thing for this game is to force team fights but have a way to prolong the experience.

Simple deathmatch is ill-suited for GW2’s class design regardless of whether they want to keep bunker builds viable (I’m skeptical that guardian bunkers, at least, would disappear in a deathmatch mode; they are generally fairly CC/support focused, which would be good in TDM too). GW2 needs some sort of objective to force fights even when things are on cooldown.

I think some of the current conquest maps do a good job of forcing fights (Spirit Watch and Kyhlo are lacking here; I think they have the problem of too many objectives being achievable at the same time). Other game modes that could do so could also be nice, though it is obviously more difficult to balance for multiple modes.

imo conquest isn’t the problem at all.

Does changing conquest into tdeathmatch affect 4v5s/3v5s? no.

Does it affect solo queue vs. premades? no

Does it affect class balance? Maybe, but we don’t know.

So with changes to conquest, we MIGHT fix class balance. That’s a huge might, because I still don’t see wars having the same impact as a mes or ele regardless of conquest or team deathmatch or whatever mode you have. Class balance has to be fixed by nerfs/buffs.

Game mode also doesn’t change the fact for hotjoins, 4v5s, 3v5s, and solo que vs. premade is still going to happen.

The three common complaints I see on forums: ele/mes/thief qq, wars suck qq- general balance qq, 4v5s/3v5s qq, and solo q vs. premade qq. Out of those 3, 2 is completely unaffected. One MIGHT be helped.

Overall, yes having only conquest is stale. But is it the root of the problem? not really.

well I cant speak for everyone, but if they added new game types (doesn’t even have to be deathmatch) I would return to spvp

Conquest is for girls.

“IMHO – I think the healthiest thing for this game is to force team fights but have a way to prolong the experience.”

That exactly is the recipe for successful and competitive PvP, not just for GW2, but for any company that wants to launch a PvP focused game in the future.

Death match would be nice,be alot quicker :P
In the new spirit watch map,the best part of that for me was fighting over the orb so a Ctf match type would be pretty cool too.

TheGuy.3568:

@Daishi

Well I will hit a few points because they stick out. The bunker situation in death match would be easy to fix its a death match if you die your out. Even if 5 bunkers sat on top of each other if you kept hitting the same bunker player in quick succession even without changing the game one iota they would die due to death penalty and there is no way around that whatsoever.

Even if that weren’t the case 5 dps targeting one bunker even in the presence of other bunkers could still win due to the shear amount of dps coming in and the fact that rezing requires a players to cease all action to rez further this point. Since all bunker builds rely on constantly keeping up boons it is quite possible to disrupt a good bunker plan by simply killing one player and pressuring them.

Further more you could run a team with a decent amount of boon corruption or removal and cake walk through a bunker team as all that separate bunker from not being bunker is the boons.

TL;DR
Sorry you don’t need to read all that. While you concerns are legitimate they are too short sighted as there are already counters in place for such a situation from happening. Like I said before even without changing the game the capability to counter such cheap methods are already in place. Granted all the players are in a central area together.

Your scenario reminded me of 55 monk. Even if they feel bunker would be too strong in that scenario its entirely possible to try to balance the game after seeing the implication as pvp is a living environment and changes with time. That being said none of the reasons you give should halt development on another game type significantly beside the fear of failure. While niche PvP could be fun due to the reasons you stated above wouldn’t that be robbery of the stat minded PvP community? Imagine a game with a million players but such a small PvP base. Wouldn’t that mean that the majority of the community did not value PvP thus made it less worthwhile to move up the leader boards.

Mind you that WvW will see ranks introduced this month making even more likely that those who participate in both will have further incentive to move to WvW. I feel the situation is somewhat precarious. On one hand you can nerf and buff respective classes and hope for a resurgence, but on the other hand as you said new game type would likely bring new players but would be more of a trial.

(Not sure if you thought I thought bunkers were too strong in death match?)

I’m groggy and fatiuged dunno if I read it right. But my concern is that currently Burst/DPS > than bunker in most cases (since a-net wanted them to die and not outlast and kill) and in a death, scinerio would make them almost useless not super strong. (CC and specific strategy aside)

But I do see what you mean about the counters being in place, skill has a major factor a long with how you plan it out for your team but I do think the current game gives the clear advantage towards damage and is why A-net went “conquest” path. (That and you need an objective for an e-sport not just who kills who, since its boring to watch thus no e-sport)

Ofc I could be totally wrong haha

Dagins.5163:

Mosharn.8357:

well just went against 2 dif teams which had 4 mesmers and 1 thief. All different ppl. Think that might be a big clue to why pvp is dying. They need a class cap on tpvp so ppl cant run all the cheap bs.

Limiting players even further will surely help this game. I suggest hitting your head against a wall.

yeah it put it in such a great place in the first place didnt it? I mean lets roll 5 eles or 5 mesmers and kitten off everyone like theres no tomorrow.

Most likely the atrocious 1v1 balance is one reason. That’s why there is an overpopulation of thieves and mesmers in sPvP, the 2 easiest facerolling professions.

Mosharn.8357:

yeah it put it in such a great place in the first place didnt it? I mean lets roll 5 eles or 5 mesmers and kitten off everyone like theres no tomorrow.

Feel free to do so. But there will be always a few people who will get bored, and switch to another classes, just for the sake of diversity.

shaolin.9716:

Most likely the atrocious 1v1 balance is one reason. That’s why there is an overpopulation of thieves and mesmers in sPvP, the 2 easiest facerolling professions.

I will admit i play DD ele semi tank and faceroll some but often in spvp I get disgusted with it and play ranger BM but not a tank, D/P thief tanky not burst, or hammer warrior.

I think one of the main issues is options and preference. Imho conquest has a tendency to make the game less exciting. Capture the flag for instance requires both Defense and offense to to achieve the goal of winning. the Best tank could guard the flag but if he cant stop the runner its point less in that same regard the person chasing the runner usually must be fast enough to keep up, have enough cc to stop them or enough dps to burst them down.

Death match is straight forward and simple. Kill or survive.

I think a few things need to happen before that some bunkers namely my own class and a few others need to be brought down a smidgen (mostly healing not healing power).

Burst in general from thief to engineer needs to be brought t to the point that a one shot is nigh impossible but pressure ie eating 70% of a hp bar quickly is still possible.

I think steady dps need to be brought inline taking the emphasis off crit a smidgen.

Thief and mesmer need nerfs but not class killers (shatter damage brought inline 10-15% reduction at most, and probably 1 sec added to revealed debuff nothing insane).

However I don’t expect anything like what i said before (just my ideas don’t flame me for it) to be enough to attract players to spvp. Due to the fact its separate besides some titles there is very little incentive to Spvp for a pve players. Until they find a way to attract them to this niche area I don’t see much happening.

I posed a question so i don’t know the answers but I do think there is a solution.

Off topic: Also I wonder if the nerfs some classes received in PvE are attributed to people complaining about them in PvP? Often I see many players state that their classes are getting nerfed due to pvp complaints more than anything else. I believe this may further drive some players away from Spvp due to this mindset. Discuss if you like.

I’ve written other responces on this. but i’ll say it here too.

WvW is doing well because it cators to what its fanbase want. People who bought this game wanting large seige combat over a large continent…get to do exactly what they wanted when they bought the game.

Spvp hurts because it isnt delivering. No visable rank, no tournaments, gear is mostly obtained through grind instead of rewarded for skill (recent changes are starting to help here). etc.

Also balance, people complain about balance and not enough viable options….its not really that. I can prove it, go play Tf2….even old tf2 before you could buy/earn other weapon options for your player. You only have 3 weapons…primary often has a secondary ability and that is ALL. But you have a good time. Heres why.

Tf2 has very clearly defined class roles. You can look at it and say “i bet this is good at sniping…i bet this lets me build turrets and bunker, i bet this lets me sneak around and assassinate stuff”. You look at it, you think its what you want…it is what you want.

Gw2 has great play style, but most of the professions do not function well enough at what people want them to do. Most people saw necromancer and said (omg, i love making minion armys while fearing stuff and lifestealing). Well..up untill recently minion master sucked, and the minions dont function the way you would expect or want them to..hell they dont even attack what you want or scale.

I could do this for every profession…when the game came out you shoulda visited the engineer forum, nothing but people complaining that the flamethrower wasnt this large damage kit like what the pyro can do in TF2, that they couldnt build and maintain turrets or use lots of gadgets…..the gadgets sucked actually…know what was good? Chugging pots that give you temporary buffs and hurling hand grenades. This is not what people wanted…or considered fun.

So its not just balancing really, its just what you wanna do when you play…doesnt work well, and things you DONT wanna do (like make a bunch of PBAO wells at your feet every 40 seconds) works really well. Some people wanted to be a tanky warrior smashing through stuff….but greatsword is their only option, makes some people happy. but not everyone.

So end point, popular pay styles were not made to function well, or are under powered. That is all. Cause a game is about having fun. It doesnt matter how many kinds of play styles you have in a game, what matters is that there are enough FUN ones to do….and right now, you see a fun play style you’d like to do, and you cant do it.

Its a problem with game design….it was not designed with this thought in mind (is it fun?) ya, quoting them….they didnt do it.