Guild Wars 2

Let’s be real. Many players dipped out as soon as they got Legend rank this season (and in seasons past). As such, Legend queues have been worse than ever this season.

This is largely because if you’re a casual player, there’s nothing to do once you hit Legend; grinding for Legend x19 doesn’t hold any allure whatsoever.

However, if we were to add another division—call it Masters Division—where there can only be 50 or so players at a time, this would undeniably keep Legends in the game and queuing, thus helping queue times over all.

At the end of the season, the ~50 players in the Masters Division are awarded a special stat-less backpiece (cape pls?) or armor/weapon skin, for actual prestige.

Thoughts?

PS. This isn’t just about queue times. When the top players of the population are leaving the game once they get Legend, and tell their friends they only play for a couple days to get Legend, then they leave the game until next season, this is spreading a hugely negative rep for GW2 PvP. Adding a Masters Division is something that must be done, to ensure the continued success of the game.

Queue times are bad because the game sucks and people quit. What can you offer as a reward for doing more of something you don’t enjoy?

Fix the game and players might come back. It’s no surprise that player population issues coincide with the release of another popular PvP game.

Exedore.6320:

Queue times are bad because the game sucks and people quit. What can you offer as a reward for doing more of something you don’t enjoy?

Fix the game and players might come back. It’s no surprise that player population issues coincide with the release of another popular PvP game.

Speak for yourself. It was actually fun reaching Legendary as a Guardian compared to the first two seasons. The balance is almost there but not quite. Matchmaking now needs to catch up more than ever and removing class stacking is a huge leap.

As for “keeping Legendaries in the game”… add prestige mode and throw us back in the amber pool, forced to queue with low mmr players. Now, a player who can actually grind up back to legendary gets an extra special something. Bragging rights and possibly a new emblem/title/backpack/new rank 81/etc.

Yea, i’ll tell everyone how bad mmr hell is when i’m going through my second legendary round in the same season. That’ll keep me playing non stop probably.

The question then becomes how you are getting the top 50. Will it be by prestige levels or by pips or by MMR?

A lot of the top players don’t grind games but they do play a fair bit and have high MMR.

If it is by pips then the people that play the most will be top rather than any skill based thing which makes it pointless. Like does anyone really believe CJ is the best player on NA? lmao

If you’re going by MMR people are gonna complain that MMR is unfair, their MMR is lower than should be etc, especially with the obscurity behind the MMR system that ANet uses.

I feel that ANet could just significantly increase the rewards for the guild teams that play and end up being top rated. 50 mithril ore was a joke and even though I can’t form a PvP team myself I wouldn’t be mad if they got more prestige items / stuff by being top 10.

Would this help?

fishball.7204:

The question then becomes how you are getting the top 50. Will it be by prestige levels or by pips or by MMR?

A lot of the top players don’t grind games but they do play a fair bit and have high MMR.

If it is by pips then the people that play the most will be top rather than any skill based thing which makes it pointless. Like does anyone really believe CJ is the best player on NA? lmao

If you’re going by MMR people are gonna complain that MMR is unfair, their MMR is lower than should be etc, especially with the obscurity behind the MMR system that ANet uses.

I feel that ANet could just significantly increase the rewards for the guild teams that play and end up being top rated. 50 mithril ore was a joke and even though I can’t form a PvP team myself I wouldn’t be mad if they got more prestige items / stuff by being top 10.

Would this help?

You’re talking about top 10 or top 50 as if the game can actually distinguish the two. Anet themselves have said that the difference between “top 1” and “top 100” player is a fraction of a number. A fraction! It means there’s no reasonable way to measure a player’s individual skill in this game. It’s all team based. Only way to do so is if every player queued with their duo/trio/team consistently throughout a season and that’s no where near realistic to do so.

The only way to do a “top anything” would be to consistently play with a Team. So, most likely playing in tournaments consistently and telling yourself you’re top 5 out of the 7 teams who participate competitively.

Add a reward track that provides SIGNIFICANT rewards and only progresses from ranked matches at legend tier.

SIGNIFICANT rewards may include lots of T6 mats, hundreds of gold, account bound precursors, etc.

Saiyan.1704:

Exedore.6320:

Queue times are bad because the game sucks and people quit. What can you offer as a reward for doing more of something you don’t enjoy?

Fix the game and players might come back. It’s no surprise that player population issues coincide with the release of another popular PvP game.

Speak for yourself. It was actually fun reaching Legendary as a Guardian compared to the first two seasons. The balance is almost there but not quite. Matchmaking now needs to catch up more than ever and removing class stacking is a huge leap.

As for “keeping Legendaries in the game”… add prestique mode and throw us back in the amber pool, forced to queue with low mmr players. Now, a player who can actually grind up back to legendary gets an extra special something. Bragging rights and possibly a new emblem/title/backpack/new rank 81/etc.

Yea, i’ll tell everyone how bad mmr hell is when i’m going through my second legendary round in the same season. That’ll keep me playing non stop probably.

if u’re gonna “reset” legendary division by letting players go back to amber, then maybe calling it “smurf” mode would be more suitable. XD

and if they grind it solo, it would be a good way to carry some players up some tiers or divisions too!

in fact i’ll start a new topic about it.

thanks Saiyan !

Eh, why continue in legendary when they just reset you every couple months. They should just start everyone where they left off last season or subtract one level. Legendary x2 goes to Legendary x1, Diamond to Ruby, etc.

It gets boring, grindy, and purgatory-esque to keep pushing if progress gets wiped out all the time…

The problem with people leaving when they hit legendary is nothing to do with the league system or giving people incentive to play. What I believe the problem is that these people simply do not enjoy pvp so want to get legendary in as few games as possible and then leave. Yes, you could add another division or two to keep these players playing but the same problem will still exist, just that people will abandon pvp at division 7/8 then rather than 6.

What I think needs to be done is to try to improve the game mode itself rather than the league system (I personally do not believe that pvp needs improving at all and I keep playing for the whole season, but I have seen many others asking for this). If pvp is more fun for the player base then there is no need to give people more incentive to play because they would be playing for fun. The league system is great how it is in my opinion so the focus should be on adding more maps and improving existing maps. Maybe this is not possible though. Maybe most of the players in guild wars 2 just do not like playing pvp and will never enjoy the pvp play style no matter what is done. This is also a real possibility.

With all this said however, I am in legendary x1 tier 4 now, so almost at the very top of the matchmaking tree and my queues only exceed 5-6 minutes when I play early in the morning so I, personally, have not seen an issue with queue times.

Saiyan.1704:

Exedore.6320:

Queue times are bad because the game sucks and people quit. What can you offer as a reward for doing more of something you don’t enjoy?

Fix the game and players might come back. It’s no surprise that player population issues coincide with the release of another popular PvP game.

Speak for yourself. It was actually fun reaching Legendary as a Guardian compared to the first two seasons. The balance is almost there but not quite. Matchmaking now needs to catch up more than ever and removing class stacking is a huge leap.

As for “keeping Legendaries in the game”… add prestique mode and throw us back in the amber pool, forced to queue with low mmr players. Now, a player who can actually grind up back to legendary gets an extra special something. Bragging rights and possibly a new emblem/title/backpack/new rank 81/etc.

Yea, i’ll tell everyone how bad mmr hell is when i’m going through my second legendary round in the same season. That’ll keep me playing non stop probably.

Does the game get to reset your MMR too when you start back at Amber?

The “legendary” players are simply re-rolling as ambers and farming the ranks again. I posted screenshots last season of an ESL player running an alt in emerald over a 6 hour period.

Personally I think it would be much better if they did in fact stop playing at legendary and let the rest of us advance instead of trolling.

Ithilwen.1529:

The “legendary” players are simply re-rolling as ambers and farming the ranks again. I posted screenshots last season of an ESL player running an alt in emerald over a 6 hour period.

Personally I think it would be much better if they did in fact stop playing at legendary and let the rest of us advance instead of trolling.

This is a by-product of ridiculous queue times and no real incentive to play at legendary.

I also play on alts sometimes to play with friends who are not hardcore PvPers who are trying to progress in the earlier divisions. It’s actually really hard to play with my more casual friends on my main account, because the system will drag them into legendary matches making them sit through long queues to play a legendary division match which will make it a lot harder to progress for them if they’re in Sapphire or Ruby.

I resent the fact the system makes it so hard and unfeasible to play with others who are at a different level of progression than you are unless you play alt accounts.

Tiffany.8576:

I resent the fact the system makes it so hard and unfeasible to play with others who are at a different level of progression than you are unless you play alt accounts.

The system in GW2 is already really forgiving in that respect, in other games, DOTA 2 for example if you play ranked then the lowest player in the group has to be within 2000 MMR (if I remember correctly) of the highest player, which is how it should be, if you want to play ranked in a game then there should be limits that assist the matchmaking (and you should have actual matchmaking, unlike GW2, but that is something else), that legendary can even queue with amber (I’ll just suspend reality for this and pretend legendary = good player) is ridiculous in something that is supposedly a league.

Which of course is part of the reason it has failed, it is a mish mash of a supposed competitive league and a giant reward track for wings, backpack, etc, with the result it fails in both regards and just annoys most people.

I think it’s possible to create somewhat balanced mixed matches. If I queue with a ruby friend, making the composition 1x Legend 4x Ruby the enemy team could also get a Legend player of similar MMR to myself to balance things out. This would, in turn, give some Legend players faster queue times (maybe this could be optional to allow players to opt-in to being put as a balancing factor into games outside of their own league.)

I dunno. I have fun queuing with others, but there are two ends of the spectrum which are equally not fun. If I queue with a lower tier friend, we wait in queue forever for a match that may be almost impossible for them to perform well in. If I premade with ESL/Pro League friends every match is a stomp as very few things can actually compete vs. such a strong premade team, then people start complaining about premades/matchmaking and it’s actually not even fun either.

For some, you’re literally forced to solo queue for any semblance of fun games which sucks if you enjoy playing with friends. I know this is only an issue for probably a minority of people, but I thought I’d put my view out there. This is why some play alts, then of course people complain Legend players are farming the lower tiers again. Can’t win. :P

Acandis.3250:

However, if we were to add another division—call it Masters Division—where there can only be 50 or so players at a time, this would undeniably keep Legends in the game and queuing, thus helping queue times over all.

I like the idea, Heroes of the Storm did something similar just now with their Hero League (ranked play) revamp to keep former rank 1 players interested. However, there’s a huge caveat to implementing a system like this. This top 50 or top 100 rank should be awarded based on Glicko rating, not by grindable pips. Otherwise the people there are just poopsockers who grind 24/7, and the rank has zero relation to player skill and zero prestige. To do it, Anet would have to shift the ladder system from participation to skill, which, let’s face it, is never ever going to happen.

There is no reason for legends to stay currently why grind up prestige with no difference in title or badge and its not like you could say to work towards the leader boards as it gets reset at the end of season…

The misconception in my experience is that people grind to legendary for the one time title that you keep….

The badge WAS Nice to have but the recent patch just deleted it from 1/3 of the game from being visible so id imagine that its only gonna get worse….

all my legend friends immediately jump on Smurf accounts soon as they hit legendary so they can play with all the friends who are not of equal skill bc they simply couldn’t on the main account…

in order to keep people queing as legends 2 things need to happen..

1. anet needs to come up with a system so legends can que with lesser skill players without dragging them to hour long ques and at that level and 50/50 time run into esl promenades bc thats basically the only other premades running in legendary..

2. there needs to be a huge monetary gain for queing in legendary or maybe even certain reward tracks that only unlock at legendary level….. legendary armor???(not like in one completion of the track but maybe unlocks a currency that can buy the armor meaning you would have to complete it multiple times once you get legendary which is a task beforehand)

im sure people have better solutions then me but i know me personnally once i got legendary i stopped queing bc it simply wasnt worth que times and even tho there is a slight increase in income as you tier up it simply isnt worth it when i can jump on a alt and winstreak like crazy ill make double the money in half the time!

I see a lot of Legends in unranked. Even if you don’t win unranked can still be fun since pip progression isn’t at stake so instead of getting mad at obvious noobies following you and triple capping home at start while you cap and backcap you just laugh at it. So yeah the full spectrum is in unranked. I even managed to bypass a guardian’s downstate (part luck due to Impact Strike’s chain being modified by precision so you could overshot thinking you’re getting 1,700 damage from IS and uppercut but get 2,100 leading to downed state and you only have a few seconds when Finishing Blow is up) in a 1v1. Thief should never win that matchup since the traps, blinds, pulls, and blocks make bursting chances too risky and is the toughest matchup for thief.

Acandis.3250:

When the top players of the population are leaving the game once they get Legend, and tell their friends they only play for a couple days to get Legend, then they leave the game until next season

Can only speak for EU but the lack of players does not come from that there is nothing to do once you reached legend.
With reference to the good players, most of them didn’t even get legend simply because we immediately stoped to play actively after pro league. Basically, every good and cool tournement-player is inactive except tcg and rank 55 (finals) because there is no real incentive to play.

What’s mainly left in pvp are the usual causals and a few wannabes who suddenly come out of their corner and start to tryhard in a time where 90% of the good players don’t play anymore.They have been non existent for the pvp-scene for 3,5 years and suddenly think they would be the peak of pvp itself. Only a very few people I’ve already seen before season 3 are still playing. So since this is atm additonally the worst pvp-community and playerbase we ever had in gw2-history, I also doubt that anyone will come back tbh.

This wouldn’t work. 50 would just ensure it was only people that grouped the vast majority of the time would be in that. Your average semi casual legend would have zero chance of making it and thats the the majority of legend players and they would know it and it wouldn’t cause them to play any more. I just think there needs to be a minimum amount of games played to keep your legend status plus more rewards and division loss. Its all screwed up right now. You should need to play continuously per week game minimum something not to grindy 10-20 games to keep your rank and you should be able to lose divisions. Those are the best kind of fixes imo.

Drussthelegend.2630:

This wouldn’t work. 50 would just ensure it was only people that grouped the vast majority of the time would be in that.

This is exactly why master’s wouldn’t solve anything. Make next season a solo queue only season, and then yes, master’s would be a good idea.

Acandis.3250:

Let’s be real. Many players dipped out as soon as they got Legend rank this season (and in seasons past). As such, Legend queues have been worse than ever this season.

This is largely because if you’re a casual player, there’s nothing to do once you hit Legend; grinding for Legend x19 doesn’t hold any allure whatsoever.

However, if we were to add another division—call it Masters Division—where there can only be 50 or so players at a time, this would undeniably keep Legends in the game and queuing, thus helping queue times over all.

At the end of the season, the ~50 players in the Masters Division are awarded a special stat-less backpiece (cape pls?) or armor/weapon skin, for actual prestige.

Thoughts?

PS. This isn’t just about queue times. When the top players of the population are leaving the game once they get Legend, and tell their friends they only play for a couple days to get Legend, then they leave the game until next season, this is spreading a hugely negative rep for GW2 PvP. Adding a Masters Division is something that must be done, to ensure the continued success of the game.

The idea is nice, the reward is not. The players either want gold to actually buy skins in the game, or custom armor and weapon sets only available to the top 50. I could give 2 kittens about some worthless back piece that you can’t sell, they look horrific anyways.

Countless

make the game fun because as it is now, the game is simply not enjoyable to many people:
- matches are unfair and you can tell the winner 90% of the time before the match has even started
- skill/class design is awful and literally every meta build is unfun to play against because of passive dmg/cc, AI and too many spamable high damage and/or high defense skills and evades.

This wouldn’t work, plus you’d just be making legendary x# into “Masters” division. Not a very appealing idea. I’d rather them just make playing pvp year round, especially during leagues more viable by allowing pvp players to work towards legendary armor tracks or precursor tracks, etc. I don’t care if they take a long time, I’d just like to see them be an option because pvp only has the backpiece to work towards right now and the champion brawler title as far as end game content/gear is concerned. The game mode also needs way more maps. Every competitive games I know of especially e-sports games have new maps come out regularly yet we have had the same rotation forever. The maps being bland really hurts the longevity of the game mode.

To tackle a few replies here.

I like the idea of unlocking a “Legend only reward track.” This would certainly cater to the casual population as well as those HC that care about golds and shinies. Though, I still very much like the idea of a division with a competitive amount of slots available.

The issue of having a small number of slots then heavily incentivizing grouping up to assure spots on the Masters Division is an interesting one. Obviously, we are no longer at a point were splitting Solo/Team queue is a good idea—I think the population in higher divisions would suffer greatly if that happened. Perhaps, it could be a Solo/Duo only division such that any game played with a roster of size 3+ does not count towards your placement.

Acandis.3250:

To tackle a few replies here.

I like the idea of unlocking a “Legend only reward track.” This would certainly cater to the casual population as well as those HC that care about golds and shinies. Though, I still very much like the idea of a division with a competitive amount of slots available.

The issue of having a small number of slots then heavily incentivizing grouping up to assure spots on the Masters Division is an interesting one. Obviously, we are no longer at a point were splitting Solo/Team queue is a good idea—I think the population in higher divisions would suffer greatly if that happened. Perhaps, it could be a Solo/Duo only division such that any game played with a roster of size 3+ does not count towards your placement.

Why lock higher end rewards to a single division? I’d rather have more people playing pvp whether they are in legend with me and you or not. I really just want to see reward tracks that allow for all the stuff to make an account bound precursor and/or all the stuff to make legendary armor. Not everyone wants to PvE, yet we are forced to if we want to earn the most rare items in this game its stupid. I don’t mind some stuff being specific to PvE like the fractal back piece but they should give PvP new maps, and reward tracks that actually are for earning the same stuff as PvE players are working towards like legendary armor / precursor journey materials.

Erzian.5218:

make the game fun because as it is now, the game is simply not enjoyable to many people:
- matches are unfair and you can tell the winner 90% of the time before the match has even started
- skill/class design is awful and literally every meta build is unfun to play against because of passive dmg/cc, AI and too many spamable high damage and/or high defense skills and evades.

This!

More/better rewards would just turn PvP into even more grind. And as soon people got what they want, they would still leave. And many PvP players don’t even care about rewards (which are useless in PvP anyways).

If pvpers got exclusive capes, the Universe as we know it would cease to exist. We would descend into a Never-Earth; our hollowed out souls forever revisiting the demise of our existence in an endlessly recurring sequence of regret and sadness. Each moment that passed would gently suffocate us, steeped in the black swell that binds the vastness of space. The tar would freezes around us as we took our final glance out into the past; to picture a world that would never bear the horrors of this place, with the mantle of pride that birthed it thrust to the ground, only to sink and be forgotten.

But yeah it’s a nice idea OP, defo worth a mention to the devs

+1

The fun in this game for me has always been acquiring new skins. Well there haven’t really been many new skins introduced, and the few that have are either bought with gems or gained through pve.

4 seasons this year, but it only takes 2 to get all the rewards? Well then what…

I prefer the large scale, chaotic, unbalanced combat in WvW tbh. Though that has gone down the drain tbh. Community cried for maps that have been out for multiple years to be brought back (which I never understood), and was completely disinterested in the beautiful maps we were given with the xpac

How is being in the top 50 going to attract casuals?

Nobody is responsible if legendary players stop playing but legendary players. Either you pvp for fun and get to legendary or you do it for “look I’m legendary” or something. You don’t need to design the game around that kind of players.

Erzian.5218:

make the game fun because as it is now, the game is simply not enjoyable to many people:
- matches are unfair and you can tell the winner 90% of the time before the match has even started
- skill/class design is awful and literally every meta build is unfun to play against because of passive dmg/cc, AI and too many spamable high damage and/or high defense skills and evades.

I agree with the first part. The second part is indeed true and really sucks how passive and spammy the game is but the combat/classes are still fun enough to fight. While I do prefer pre-elite spec/HoT talent trees I’d be ok with PvP as long as the first problem(matches being unfair) was fixed.

Right now unfair matches just make me not enjoy pvp at all.

Good idea from OP.

Half of the legends win 85% of their games in complete stomps and the other half loses 85% of their games in complete stomps.

There’s a reason that most play unranked and just kitten around. Waiting 30 minutes for a queue for a game that’s decided based on your win % isn’t fun, and Anet doesn’t have any intention of changing their system.

There’s a reason that the majority of people quit pvping immediately after getting their wings. There’s a reason that the majority of people quit pvping immediately after getting legendary.

There is ZERO reason to try and make suggestions when Anet will NEVER do anything about it.

mrauls.6519:

How is being in the top 50 going to attract casuals?

That’s the point, it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to keep the top ranked players playing and feeling competitive.
That said though, I think this would work better if it was applied to Team queue as well. Like a seperate master’s division for team queued players.

They need to include actual, GOOD PvP rewards for those in legendary or prestiged. There’s not much you get other than trans charges and gold, which is nice, but it gets old and there’s really nothing of value.

I think there should be titles, weapon skins, and maybe armor skins. Would give a bit more incentive to play and actually try to work for it. When I look at the league vendor I’m appalled at the fact that all there is is llamas and stuff for wings. Vial of Salt was a step in the right direction, it was funny and cool for PvPers. Bigger things should be added. It should be catered toward people who are in the high level of pvp, from legendary division to ESL players. (Ideas: aura infusions (which need to be allowed in pvp), ascended weapons with cool skins, cool ascended armor skins, titles, backpieces (capes please) and more.)

The GCL rewards should also be increased (literally just potions and gold….really?) Again, there’s not much reward there. There needs to be more incentive to play and work for something.

I also think Skyhammer should be added, as it’s actually a really decent map after the changes, and would just freshen things up a bit.

Honestly this is probably a bigger problem than the bunker mesmer meta.

Tbh this season i just wanted my shiny black button. Ain’t stepped foot in PvP since like first week of this league. There does need to be an incentive/worthwhile reward to play other than for buzzwords like “fun”. Fun is for filthy casuals.

Well now that they removed the PvP badge in WvW there’s probably gonna be a lot less players doing the leagues next season at all levels.

Season 4 will be the ultimate queue wars 2 since backpiece people are done, WvW players probably won’t bother so gg

CAPE.

/15 chars/

Exedore.6320:

Queue times are bad because the game sucks and people quit. What can you offer as a reward for doing more of something you don’t enjoy?

Fix the game and players might come back. It’s no surprise that player population issues coincide with the release of another popular PvP game.

This. I quit PvP because it is no longer fun.

fishball.7204:

Well now that they removed the PvP badge in WvW there’s probably gonna be a lot less players doing the leagues next season at all levels.

Season 4 will be the ultimate queue wars 2 since backpiece people are done, WvW players probably won’t bother so gg

You just made fun of me in the other thread for preferring WvW over PvP, but now you want us ‘no skill scrubs’ in your queues?

So, you really just want to farm and mock casuals till they leave then. Brilliant. Great way to solve the population issue.

If you think legend is a goal, you are wrong cause it really means nothing
Now you want to fix ppl stop playing, just fix pvp (the whole thing)
soloq vs teamq, troller/afker of any sort (espcially on end of tier – diam tier teamed with extra noob leggy doing the ap farm class is epic), balance & so on
Why ppl stop ? cause the game is just boring, high skilled player don’t give a kitten of a badge (and they rigth).
Anet have just ruined the only thing make by buy gw² and that’s why switched to bdo 1 month ago
Why post then ? only cause i check sometimes the states of game

Make an open spectator mode for legendary matches. Legends love prestige and lower player can learn from them.

Kylden Ar.3724:

You just made fun of me in the other thread for preferring WvW over PvP, but now you want us ‘no skill scrubs’ in your queues?

So, you really just want to farm and mock casuals till they leave then. Brilliant. Great way to solve the population issue.

You’re stuck in sapphire and from what I read about your ‘roaming’ forum posts involves you pvdooring and backcapping and avoiding fights.

Don’t really care if people like you leave or stay in either PvP or WvW tbh

This thread is talking about legends anyway, you couldn’t make legend if it was 6 months long so your input hardly matters when we’re talking about retaining legend players or even diamonds.

There are plenty of good WvW players who play both game modes sufficiently well (GvG/Roaming) and they’re the ones I’m talking about. Not you, not even close.

It’s actually a problem with both gameplay and rewards.

As Erzian pointed out, it’s simply not fun to play against current builds. They rely on damage spam to pierce through massive amounts of active damage mitigation/cleanses/protection.

Supporting isn’t fun because as always only viable supports rely on Shouts and others means of healing/cleansing that don’t require any coordination or attention from support and one being supported (huge AoE etc.).
Add annoying passives to that, no space for build diversity, because meta ones are usually three times better and rarely a skill/utility that’s not optimal to use on cooldown and you have the picture.

PvP League system could be replaced with new Heroes of the Storm system, that’s basically it. They share many similarities, but HotS one provide competition for higher rank players.

Rewards…We simply need something WoW had for years – unique rewards/skins for finishing season in top X%, different for every season, unobtainable in any other way. Pretty lame title for just getting to last division doesn’t cut it.