Guild Wars 2

Tl;dr at the bottom.
sPvP/tPvP has been the “short straw” of this game since the first day. ANet has claimed that they want this game to be a serious esport, but with how they have handled it so far, its VERY hard to believe a word they say in regards to sPvP. How can the devs really say that sPvP is a core gameplay element in GW2?

Let’s go back and see the trend.
Launch day for GW2; honestly it was one of the smoothest game launches ever for a game of this magnitude, but how about sPvP? Well, for those of you that remember, sPvP servers of any kind (tourny and hotjoin) did not work for hours and hours. There were issues as well with PvE but those got fixed relatively quickly.
Then after that, for DAYS (if not a week+, I forget) tourny rewards were not functioning properly at all. I’d say those are pretty good examples of how the sPvP aspect is the most neglected… and I did not even bring up the fact that major aspects that were promised and spoken of were NOT EVEN IN THE GAME ON RELEASE. Fast forward to today, as of this post, paid tournies have STILL not been released.

The devs speak to us on occasion, but sometimes it is just insulting to us (ex. EXTREMELY delayed PvP blog post, announcing upcoming changes that we already knew were supposed to come/have been in the game). I really do believe that the devs take pride in this game, and want it to become very big, but I think that their sPvP department is just completely incompetent when it comes to following through – they have lost all credibility in my eyes. It is a real shame too because I truly believe that the PvP in GW2 is on a whole other level compared to every other MMO.

A dev explanation of why they have allowed sPvP to fail from release to now would be nice, but I don’t expect it. Player numbers dwindle everyday and more and more potential long-term players disappear – yes there is no subscription to play this game, but people do not return if they have no faith in the developer to follow through with promises.

TL;DR sPvP has been lacking more than any other aspect of this game since release, and continues to be. Devs potentially too incompetent to follow through on all the BIG promises made since before release, throwing away esport potential.

What are your thoughts?

Spvp sincerely lacks more needed roles, thats why burst dominates there. However Tpvp is pretty balanced and well maintained. If not lack of maps i would dare to call it perfect.

Question 1: How long has GW2 been live?

Question 2: How long was WoW live before it went eSport?

Question 3: Do you genuinely believe an MMO goes eSport in less than a years time?

Stin.9781:

Spvp sincerely lacks more needed roles, thats why burst dominates there. However Tpvp is pretty balanced and well maintained. If not lack of maps i would dare to call it perfect.

I feel like for you to say that, means you do not play sPvP/tPvP all that much. My opinion/rant is based on the fact that I play sPvP and tPvP exclusively, mainly tPvP – and it is VERY far from perfect. Speaking in terms of competitive play, it is next to impossible to have REAL competition in the game as it is. Reason: No rankings/ladders/matchmaking/custom tournies. <- some things that should have been implemented in the game on release, but had to skip on in order to release the rest of the game.

rickshaw.5279:

Question 1: How long has GW2 been live?

Question 2: How long was WoW live before it went eSport?

Question 3: Do you genuinely believe an MMO goes eSport in less than a years time?

1. 2 months now?

2. It never became an esport, it ‘attempted’ to become an esport around TBC. But here’s the difference, WoW was released as a PvE game, with PvP (arena) added as an afterthought. GW2 was (or claimed to be) released from the ground up as a esport contender. Many people miss this point.

3. No it takes some time to become an esport obviously as it needs to gain acceptance within the community and with sponsors. However, taking a step back and following the trend (as in my original post) you can see that sPvP/tPvP has been screwed in comparison to the rest of the game since the very beginning, which makes you wonder if it will always be doomed.

2 months and the game is still chock-full of bugs and balance issues, feature-incomplete, lacking a large number of basic features, and is otherwise a not-great experience for… well, just about anyone?

I think the complaints are well-justified, myself.

rickshaw.5279:

ninnnnnja.2345:

…it takes some time to become an esport obviously…

That’s all you needed to say.

You should have stopped posting this thread the moment this thought crossed your mind. You’ve just invalidated all of your complaints… I’m sorry… whines. Re-****ing-lax dude. Coming to the forums 2 months from release spreading butthurt around about how GW2 is an eSports failure doesn’t exactly scream, “I’m an intelligent and reasonable person and here are my well thought out concerns that are, coincidentally, completely irrelevant since I know absolutely NOTHING about the development cycle or plans the publisher has in mind for this product.”

Feel free to flag this post.

The truth hurts.

I know.

Sigh… I’m not even sure what I need to address here because you seem really butthurt about my comments and have just went on making assumptions about what I said when really you did not read my entire post.

I guess I’ll say this; sPvP/tPvP has got the short end of the stick since the beginning because it is the most neglected (content-wise) aspect of the game, yet it was advertised as a “core pillar” gameplay element. It was released incomplete, and I don’t know who can argue/refute that.

The fact that you took what I said and just jumped straight to the conclusion that I’m complaining because it isn’t an esport yet made me facepalm irl.

Edit: notice how I have formatted my posts accordingly for people who have a hard time reading like yourself

I played SWTOR PvP hardcore and that game had good (but not perfect) Warzone system. If only ranked Warzones came out sooner and were cross realm than I would still be playing there. It was very well balanced.

sPvP in this game is not balanced at all. Thief’s can hit you for half your HP in one hit, CC spam is absurd and there’s no diminishing returns, and there’s really no point to it.

What kills sPvP for me is the lack of accomplishment. Your PvE and PvP gear are completely separate entities and you don’t even get XP for doing it. Also, the lack of different game modes gets repetitive and it takes a redonculus amount of time to get ranks.

I wouldn’t say its the most “neglected” because they did put a lot of effort into the tournament + map selection system. It just really doesn’t fit in with this game. I don’t find it as fun as WvW and it’s not where as good as SWTOR was.

It’s like the part of the game that is hidden.

didnt cross your mind that maybe they are having more trouble, thus taking more time to fix the bugs?

We dont even know why exactly is paid tournaments offline. Bugs happen, things get broken, and you have to fix them. That’s life, specially in MMORPGs, where everything interacts with everything. One little pixel wall you didnt put, and a monster can be exploited.

You can only have patience, there’s not much to do. It’s true that they have some things that still to work on. You don’t have to go too far to see the game is green yet. So you could come back in a few months or stay and play. Not too much choices. I prefer to let them take their time, that’s the way things get done correctly.

rickshaw.5279:

Question 1: How long has GW2 been live?

thats not the question that had to be asked

GW2 has been on development for 6 years. ANet´s intention for GW2 was to make an ESports game from the ground up.

in that regard, GW2 has been “done” for 5 years, at least its concepts. and still its horrible, with no trace of getting better in the foreseeable future.

games like LoL, SC2, or Counter Strike were an ESport even during beta. Because they were a well made ESports games.

Sirevanac.3178:

didnt cross your mind that maybe they are having more trouble, thus taking more time to fix the bugs?

This is the problem, they have troubles but they don’t work hard enough to fix it. This game is doomed to fail as an esport because only a small circlejerk of hardcore pvpers will wait for the patches we get 2013, there will be no casuals left. I believe the same thing happened to GW(1).

As it is now casuals get to play 8 thief teams on hotjoin or get stomped in tpvp by hardcore pvpers (who rarely gets to play other hardcore pvpers because they too are a dying breed).

They spend more time on adding minigames than fixing pvp.

ninnnnnja

I feel like for you to say that, means you do not play sPvP/tPvP all that much. My opinion/rant is based on the fact that I play sPvP and tPvP exclusively, mainly tPvP – and it is VERY far from perfect. Speaking in terms of competitive play, it is next to impossible to have REAL competition in the game as it is. Reason: No rankings/ladders/matchmaking/custom tournies. <- some things that should have been implemented in the game on release, but had to skip on in order to release the rest of the game.

^ this!

Two months old? A lot of content at this point. A lot more will appear in time.
E-Sport? They said they wanted it to be one, not that it would begin as one! Very differently. MMoRPG’s are very hard to be E-Sports due to some reasons!
Class balance? Always a work in progress!

My oppionion about tPvP – ESports:
- It lacks some more playing styles (capture the flag, etc, etc…)
- It lacks a true ranking system (players just don’t play for peanuts)
- Classes need some minor balancing!
- Custom tournaments? They are needed!
- Private matches? Needed for training, etc etc
- Spectator mode? Good feature for training and learning

And if you by chance think this mode is failing you probably aren’t looking carefully. A lot of teams are very regular on training and tournaments!

Overall : This game needs more TIME for the E-SPORTS picture! It’s only has been 2 months since the start of the game, and yet people are ranting about it. Developing is not an easy task, specially at this level! If anyone don’t like the way it is done, no1 is forcing you to stay!

The biggest glaring issue is this:

If nothing else, sPvP and tPvP should use the same number of players in games. Since they don’t, the approach to each changes a bit, and therefore any semblance of ‘balance’ strived for in one mode generally will impact the other, often in a negative fashion.

The even larger issue is that folks are chasing ‘balance’ in a genre of game that simply will never be accommodating in this regard. Not ever. You’re dealing with various classes that can potentially do different amounts of protection or damage, at close or long distances, have differing levels of control available to them, and (often overlooked) the capacity to bring different amounts of these classes to a match, which skews balance even further.

To put it another way, nearly any game in a classical sense that is truly balanced, be it board game, sport, or video game, offers the exact same potential benefits to each team or opponent.

Team sports: matching numbers of forwards, guards, etc.
Board games: mirrored abilities and numbers of pieces (chess, for example)
Video games: most FPS, identical weapons, health, player speed.

Once you start toying with these ground rules, balance is thrown out the window, and becomes a see-saw chase month after month as corrections are made. Nothing against Anet, but that is just the nature of things.

Sadly the game has been built with mostly pve in mind and it might be way too late when pvp improves. It is a matter of time until a good pvp focused game comes out and everyone jumps on the train.
I have just seen that a topic i opened about how basic the combat log is (crucial for hardcore pvp) in the “Suggestions” forum received 0 replies and was buried in 6th page. Most people are pveing and briefly wvwing at the moment and Anet knows it very well. I’ve already started checking Planetside 2 out and please do not tell me it is too early and all that, as others mentioned Anet had stated that the game had been 5 years in developement and i bought it simply because i fell for that, expecting that pvp would be well polished after all those years. But nah.

The sad part is that this game really was WELL MADE in terms of the pvp mechanics, the concept and execution was done very well, and balance is very very good (in the current meta almost everything is viable – profession wise, at high end play). What it is severely lacking since the beginning is the FEATURES that MUST be implemented for it to succeed. ANet knows this, and they want to let us know that as well, but so far they have been doing very very poorly at this.

If PvE was released in the same incomplete state as sPvP/tPvP this game would be dead by now.