Guild Wars 2

reedju.5786:

Alot of the reason that PvP is empty is the lack of venues for casual players to feel any sense of competition or progress. I feel confident after seeing percentiles that we have plenty of players to support a solo/duo only Q. I think what alot of players are afraid of is the disappearance of pops for teams who currently are often farming pick up groups or pugs. Still solo Q is healthier for the game and would give “pro” players and upcoming teams a better competitive platform. Not to mention giving solo Qs breathing room and a chance to improve and form their own teams.

That is the reason why sPvP has been mostly empty of myself and I completely agree with your suggestions.

I’ve started solo queuing tournaments recently and am finding it much more enjoyable than the cesspit that is hot-join, and am discussing starting a team with my guild, but I still don’t feel like there is much room in this game for casual sPvP.

Its a shame because there is so much potential here – they’ve done so many things right with PvP (imo), but the execution is somehow lacking for me (in a big way).

I love the combat in this game. I play a pure melee build and I don’t have any problems with range trying to kite me. The reason I feel that turns most players away, and even myself sometimes, is the lack of game types. They’re all the same game type!! Every single map!!! and the maps: they all feel the same after a while because they’re all small. I left WoW for this game and I don’t regret it. But I miss WoW battleground maps so much. I miss Alterac Valley, Eye of the Storm, Twin Peaks, and I especially miss Warsong Gulch. A Warsong Gulch map in this game, same size, capture the flag, 10v10, same rules, etc, would be kitten awesome.

I’ll spvp for about a week, then get tired of it for 6 weeks then try it again, and realize how tired I am of the same kitten game type on every single map… and did I mention the maps feel the same because they’re all relatively small and cramped. I like Kyhlo and Temple of the Silent Storm the most because of the multiple levels, and multiple ways to get to each level.

But yeah, that’s just opinion on the matter. I truly believe if Spvp had a Warsong Gulch, Eye of the storm, alterac valley, etc: just some WoW battleground type of maps and game types there would be so many more people spending time in the Mists consistently. I really don’t think it has to do with a lack of rewards. I used to be hardcore in the WoW pvp scene, and my friends also, and since coming to GW2, the one thing we don’t miss is the gear treadmill and gear meaning so much more than skill in pvp. We love that we can just make a character and play. We don’t have to worry about missing a week and falling behind on gear and then not being able to stay competitive. We don’t care about the lack of rewards. Actually, we love just being able to get cooler looking armor sets with no stat upgrades. That’s enough for us, but plz, give us some thing more than capture the point on every single map.

Iason Evan.3806:

it all depends on why you play. if you care about ranking in a game that pits randoms against pre-mades YOU are the one doing it wrong. If you like how the pvp plays in this game more than a ranking system that is obviously not representative of how things should be, then you should keep on playing. I play it because it is fun, ignore the ladder because it isn’t right yet and hope that they implement a better system in the future.

I see people all the time putting their chest out about ranking, but then say it’s broken. Why would you boast about being on a ladder that is broken?

Fun runs out without incentive. And fun with out incentive is pain.

This is bigger than me or you.

It is not about finding a good "group" in the future and being top50-100 because that self-centered.

It is about encouraging new players or players that haven’t played Guild Wars 2 since beta like me with tools and systems to form groups and teams without the fear of being punished for being part of an MMO culture.

Let me give you a practical example.

Someone creates an account today only for SPvP. He has never played Guild Wars 2. In fact it is his first MMO. In fact none of his friends play Guild Wars 2. When will he see what is "competition" like in Guild Wars 2?

Rank 40+ regardless of skill - So he is forced to hot join until forty because forty is the justified rank.

He reaches 40. No one knows him because the justified rank is 40, hot join is hot join and soloque is soloque,

I could go on and on but I think you should be able to see as well the factors discouraging that player from "belonging" somewhere or having a way to get recognized/respected as a player in order to be invited to more teams and better ones.

I think it’s both a population and a design issue.
Right now the population is heavily splitted between hotjoins (which don’t have too much in common with the intended game-mode) and tourneys (which have too many veterans and premades). The transition from hotjoins to tourneys is brutal both in tactics and avergae player skill.

If you have one game mode, you should just put everybody in the same queue. The higher the number of players, the fairier the matchups you would get.

If the palyerbase is still small for splitting solo and team-queues, then split ratings.
Make every new premade (duo, trio, full premade, it doesn’t matter) to be registered and asign a fresh team rating to it. Whenever this premade plays a game, it will be matched in base to the highest between individual rating and team rating, and whatever the score of the match is, only team rating would be modified.
This system should eventually bring team ratings above individual ones, so if a bunch a solo players is matched agains a full premade, then the first ones will be superior enough individually to produce a somehow fair match.

Make the highest between individual and team scores to be displayed on leaderboards. Since the defining rating would probably be the team one, players that belong to a team won´t be afraid of playing solo, which contributes to a bettter population.
You could even make individual rating to be class dependant in order to not discourage experimentation and ensure fairier matches.

Later on it would be possible to get real torunaments (the actual torunaments seem no more than a regular gameplay to me, with hotjoin being some kind of aberration where every player in the match is looking for something different).
This tourneys could consist on the same two teams fighting on 3 different maps and could include things like class turn-picking, etc.
They could only accept full premades with team rating above XXX score and could take place at exact hours (or half-hours) so every interested team would fill the same queue.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Draygo.9473:

All they have to do is what league did in normal queue.

For matchmaking purposes provide an ELO bump to premade teams. This should bump up the full premades out of soloqueue territory while allowing premades vs soloqueue to happen, but the soloqueue players would be much better overall as individuals over the premade queue bringing the win chance to an even 50%.

Made up numbers go:
Player 1a elo 1200
player 2a elo 1300
player 3a elo 1100
player 4a elo 1150
player 5a elo 1000
Team A elo: 5750 * 1.20 (premade) new Team A elo: 6900

then team A would be matched against a team with a total of roughly 6900 elo.

The system would automatically adjust, recording win/loss rates based on how the teams are matched, if a 20% rating boost for premade teams isn’t enough it will automatically up that until match made games are roughly 50/50.

It solves the problem while not splitting the queues. Everyone wins because you as a player are assured that you have a fair chance to win.

This game is really fast paced and has more to do with proper communication than rough skill. I don’t like to pair up randoms and premades. And I wanna actually see a guild-ladder in the future, this would mean they have to split the qeues.

Proper communication is important true

however you can put a mathmatical number on it and adjust the MMR system based on it. At a certain point highly skilled premades wont have any solo queue to match up with, if this happens and the solo q team has a calculated chance to win of 10% then the winning team will get little elo for winning and the losing team lose very little elo for losing. Unless there is an upset ofc.

In a practical sense it will natureally seperate the queues, while letting new premades and unskilled premades to get in fair matches mixed in with solos. Even partial premades.

As far as gvg ladder they dont need to seperate the queues for that either, just any match that is 5 of one guild agaisnt 5 of another counts on the gvg ladder in addition to each players solo rank. If spvp kicks off then they can seperate the queue.

It is important which map you are playing. Some maps need more communication. I just noticed this when I started some days ago when Spirit Watch was in tournament rotation and started to play tPvP and then played a few matches every map(except Capricorn which is not in rotation).

I think the Kyhlo and Foefire need more communication. Foefire seems much bigger than the other maps. Too much running around in the wrong direction is hurting more than on other maps. Kyhlo has the trebuchet. Not helping if some players that are not good at trebuchet are using it(and you need at least to tell if the guy if he is hitting if he is trying to hit something he can’t even see. I think the far away capture point it is hard to see from treb location… clocktower is easy to see if you hit it.

Spirit Watch you should decide in which person to carry the orb but I think it also works on random if someone just takes if if there is an opportunity…. and that map is getting an update… really want to see the changes and I’m going to play a lot.

Nifhel and Temple of the Silent Storm also worked fine without communication the most matches I played. Smaller maps and you can see where the people are going and it is easier to decide where you should go even without communication.

Of course teams with communication and especially with teamspeak still have an advantage but I think biggest gap between communication and no communication is on Foefire and Kyhlo(and I heard a lot of “pros” like Kyhlo).

Vargamonth.2047:

I think it’s both a population and a design issue.
Right now the population is heavily splitted between hotjoins (which don’t have too much in common with the intended game-mode) and tourneys (which have too many veterans and premades). The transition from hotjoins to tourneys is brutal both in tactics and avergae player skill.

If you have one game mode, you should just put everybody in the same queue. The higher the number of players, the fairier the matchups you would get.

If the palyerbase is still small for splitting solo and team-queues, then split ratings.
Make every new premade (duo, trio, full premade, it doesn’t matter) to be registered and asign a fresh team rating to it. Whenever this premade plays a game, it will be matched in base to the highest between individual rating and team rating, and whatever the score of the match is, only team rating would be modified.
This system should eventually bring team ratings above individual ones, so if a bunch a solo players is matched agains a full premade, then the first ones will be superior enough individually to produce a somehow fair match.

Make the highest between individual and team scores to be displayed on leaderboards. Since the defining rating would probably be the team one, players that belong to a team won´t be afraid of playing solo, which contributes to a bettter population.
You could even make individual rating to be class dependant in order to not discourage experimentation and ensure fairier matches.

Later on it would be possible to get real torunaments (the actual torunaments seem no more than a regular gameplay to me, with hotjoin being some kind of aberration where every player in the match is looking for something different).
This tourneys could consist on the same two teams fighting on 3 different maps and could include things like class turn-picking, etc.
They could only accept full premades with team rating above XXX score and could take place at exact hours (or half-hours) so every interested team would fill the same queue.

Population for Guild Wars 2 in beta was never about population. However, these days SPvP population is going up and down depending on days. Some days I have to wait for two-three or even more hours to find a group to TPvP with and usually that forces me to switch to other games and relog a bit later on. I really do not understand how some individuals can be on mist for 8-10 hours without TPvPing and either hot joining, being away from keyboard or practicing their builds with dummies.

For TPvP to grow it is not about numbers. Guild Wars 2 as a game and as a title can easily match other MMOrpgs numbers but first it needs to apply basics (from lfg tool tab) to different leagues of progression. You can’t make an argument that because TPvP population is low therefore improvements shouldn’t be made. TPvP population is low because some decision makings and delays made it that way.

I remember there was someone from Arena that stated just because other MMOs are doing it doesn’t mean that we should do it; that shows significant inexperience because if that particular person wondered why those MMOs are successful, esporting like and have got big numbers in their player-database he would then understand that MMOrpgs are not about reinventing the wheel when it comes to promoting a competitive scene.

i think match making are good now.
i hardely find solo queque when i play with my team but i would run anyway a solo queque where you dont lose ranking (i almost dont play anymore tournaments with out my team since there is leaderboard out).
so my question is :
Separate the Solo queque and change hot join with solo queque.
this actuallly would delete hot join that is pretty useless since you really dont train you new build in the right way and new players dont understand the right way to play tournaments.
hope you understand my bad english and i m sorry about that. i tried to do my best
cherrs
Godo Piu Io Team Flying Monkeys [TFM]

GodoPiuIo.9785:

i think match making are good now.
i hardely find solo queque when i play with my team but i would run anyway a solo queque where you dont lose ranking (i almost dont play anymore tournaments with out my team since there is leaderboard out).
so my question is :
Separate the Solo queque and change hot join with solo queque.
this actuallly would delete hot join that is pretty useless since you really dont train you new build in the right way and new players dont understand the right way to play tournaments.
hope you understand my bad english and i m sorry about that. i tried to do my best
cherrs
Godo Piu Io Team Flying Monkeys [TFM]

I think it depends on the time you play and or the days.

I have had i.e a day this week where we were being matched with 1s and 20s in 3-4 matches in a row.

Hot join needs to be replaced because it is a negative side effect transitioning from it to TPvP scenery and also because it has influenced more than it should in fact patch-decision-notes.

Luthan.5236:

It is important which map you are playing. Some maps need more communication. I just noticed this when I started some days ago when Spirit Watch was in tournament rotation and started to play tPvP and then played a few matches every map(except Capricorn which is not in rotation).

I think the Kyhlo and Foefire need more communication. Foefire seems much bigger than the other maps. Too much running around in the wrong direction is hurting more than on other maps. Kyhlo has the trebuchet. Not helping if some players that are not good at trebuchet are using it(and you need at least to tell if the guy if he is hitting if he is trying to hit something he can’t even see. I think the far away capture point it is hard to see from treb location… clocktower is easy to see if you hit it.

Spirit Watch you should decide in which person to carry the orb but I think it also works on random if someone just takes if if there is an opportunity…. and that map is getting an update… really want to see the changes and I’m going to play a lot.

Nifhel and Temple of the Silent Storm also worked fine without communication the most matches I played. Smaller maps and you can see where the people are going and it is easier to decide where you should go even without communication.

Of course teams with communication and especially with teamspeak still have an advantage but I think biggest gap between communication and no communication is on Foefire and Kyhlo(and I heard a lot of “pros” like Kyhlo).

My personal experience leads me to Spirit Map in terms of the lack of communication playing a bigger role than in other maps. Simply because that is the map where score differences of winning and losing usually sky rocket more often than in other maps.

It’s a bad system. Personally until they split solo queue and team I simply ignore the leaderboards. It’s not that hard. I generally climb up to the the 300’s if I play with just my guild for a couple of nights, but not only do i want to solo queue sometimes I want to do it with classes I don’t usually play for variety, cause it’s fun. Until I can do that in a way that won’t affect my premade serious play rating I just don’t care… lol.