Guild Wars 2

zinkz.7045:

Saiyan.1704:

Thx for the post Colin! So many people are statistically misinformed on so many levels.

Erm he told us nothing of any real meaning in relation to the point he responded to.

I don’t know, below sounds like a near direct answer to the post he was responding too.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

Nope.

Like others have said if the pvp population is growing then there is no reason not to add back solo q.

ellesee.8297:

The reality is that they added reward tracks and achievement points to PvP and so all the PvE and WvWers flock to do hotjoins and unranked “arenas” who don’t actually care about PvP or getting better, just their AP and wallet. Sorry but I don’t consider inflating PvP with useless people growth. I define growth as adding and attracting people who actually contribute to the scene, people who want to get better and join the competitive side of things, people that don’t just play PvP for the rewards but because it’s fun and they enjoy it. The reality is that many names of good PvPers that I saw early on in the game are no longer playing replaced by anonymous names triple capping points and not contributing to anything whatsoever (though that’s also an issue with the awful matchmaking) and the competitive scene right now is just a handful of people. Talk about false population data to support points!

But this is elitist nonsense, the game needs to attract a healthy population then guide them into becoming worthwhile contributors, can’t do it without a healthy pop though. The issue is the population not being big enough for the ranking system to work properly so that high ranking players regularly get matched with each other and not against low ranking players.

Saiyan.1704:

zinkz.7045:

Saiyan.1704:

Thx for the post Colin! So many people are statistically misinformed on so many levels.

Erm he told us nothing of any real meaning in relation to the point he responded to.

I don’t know, below sounds like a near direct answer to the post he was responding too.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

Nope.

No that was a half truth. New player population grown from new f2p model. That’s not the same thing. Since the vets numbers have gone down, and over time the new f2p players will as well.

Half truth still equal half lie.

Knighthonor.4061:

Saiyan.1704:

zinkz.7045:

Saiyan.1704:

Thx for the post Colin! So many people are statistically misinformed on so many levels.

Erm he told us nothing of any real meaning in relation to the point he responded to.

I don’t know, below sounds like a near direct answer to the post he was responding too.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

Nope.

No that was a half truth. New player population grown from new f2p model. That’s not the same thing. Since the vets numbers have gone down, and over time the new f2p players will as well.

Half truth still equal half lie.

If you read the whole post, it was growing before it went free, focussing on the first and last part of the sentence, not just the middle.

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched

Saiyan.1704:

zinkz.7045:

Saiyan.1704:

Thx for the post Colin! So many people are statistically misinformed on so many levels.

Erm he told us nothing of any real meaning in relation to the point he responded to.

I don’t know, below sounds like a near direct answer to the post he was responding too.

Saying that there has been steady growth is pretty meaningless, a 1% increase a month is steady growth, so is a 25% increase a month, there is quite a difference between the two.

Furthermore growth in itself doesn’t mean much without context, people are complaining about the playerbase in relation to matchmaking, so lets say PvP has grown on average 3% a month, the question is how many of those players are playing hotjoin / rank farm servers, and how many are playing ranked/unranked, it could be that the “queued” PvP is shrinking, but overall PvP has grown because of hotjoin, we don’t know from the answer given.

And the second part about the influx of new F2P players in the last three weeks is not relevant at all, whether the systems effect on the playerbase has been, good, bad or indifferent, those new players were not subject to that and are here because of F2P nothing else.

zinkz.7045:

Saiyan.1704:

zinkz.7045:

Saiyan.1704:

Thx for the post Colin! So many people are statistically misinformed on so many levels.

Erm he told us nothing of any real meaning in relation to the point he responded to.

I don’t know, below sounds like a near direct answer to the post he was responding too.

Saying that there has been steady growth is pretty meaningless, a 1% increase a month is steady growth, so is a 25% increase a month, there is quite a difference between the two.

Furthermore growth in itself doesn’t mean much without context, people are complaining about the playerbase in relation to matchmaking, so lets say PvP has grown on average 3% a month, the question is how many of those players are playing hotjoin / rank farm servers, and how many are playing ranked/unranked, it could be that the “queued” PvP is shrinking, but overall PvP has grown because of hotjoin, we don’t know from the answer given.

And the second part about the influx of new F2P players in the last three weeks is not relevant at all, whatever the systems effect on the playerbase has been, good, bad or indifferent, those new players were not subject to that and are here because of F2P nothing else.

morrolan.9608:

But this is elitist nonsense, the game needs to attract a healthy population then guide them into becoming worthwhile contributors, can’t do it without a healthy pop though. The issue is the population not being big enough for the ranking system to work properly so that high ranking players regularly get matched with each other and not against low ranking players.

Attracting PvE players who will never ever ever take PvP seriously isn’t elitist nonsense. I’ve seen people post on these forums who say that they hate PvP and only play it for the reward tracks, AP, and titles. These kinds of people do not contribute to a “healthy pop”. These kinds of people AFK games.

If you want good matchmaking, you need people who like PvP and who will play it often and get better so they can be matched with better players. Matchmaking will still be terrible even if you somehow managed to get 10000000 PvE players to play if they never leave the trash tier. This game will never attract that demographic because of the reasons I already listed: bad balance patches, infrequent balance patches, bad leaderboards, bad matchmaking, bad game mode, only one game mode, and now this “F2P” mode which is really just pay2win.

A potential competitive PvP player sees GW2 as F2P so he installs the game, sees that a large chunk of builds costs $50 to unlock, and the only game mode he can play is conquest. If that were me, I’d pretty much uninstall immediately.

Randulf.7614:

Knighthonor.4061:

Saiyan.1704:

zinkz.7045:

Saiyan.1704:

Thx for the post Colin! So many people are statistically misinformed on so many levels.

Erm he told us nothing of any real meaning in relation to the point he responded to.

I don’t know, below sounds like a near direct answer to the post he was responding too.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

Nope.

No that was a half truth. New player population grown from new f2p model. That’s not the same thing. Since the vets numbers have gone down, and over time the new f2p players will as well.

Half truth still equal half lie.

If you read the whole post, it was growing before it went free, focussing on the first and last part of the sentence, not just the middle.

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched

What does “best weeks” even mean? Who knows? For example if it’s counted by the number of players entering the PvP lobby, then that stat is near meaningless as a large proportion of F2P players are going to enter to check it out.

Again, we’ve seen Anet twist stats in the past to make things sound better than they are, so you’d be foolish to trust their words without backup empirical evidence.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

While I’ll let the PvP team respond to the other points here, I do want to take a moment and address this:

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.

I don’t want to trivialize your points – and our competitive team has some great reasons why things operate the way they do they’ll lay out and explain in relation to leagues soon: I do want to call out you’re using false population data to support your point.

From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.

I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ

I came here from MMO Champion’s front page post and I just wanted to comment that this is how community relations should be. Thank you for treating players like competent, reasonable human beings, and assuming good intentions of the original commenters position. It is even more impressive that you clarified and let him know his data was not current, without being demeaning or dismissive. Kudos!

I will reconsider checking out GW2 again, as I have been away for a while, as well as HoT, because of this post.

Other MMOs could learn a lot from this by treating the playerbase as peers while actively working together to propagate and create our common goals and visions.

Cheers!

zinkz.7045:

(…) growth in itself doesn’t mean much without context, people are complaining about the playerbase in relation to matchmaking, so lets say PvP has grown on average 3% a month, the question is how many of those players are playing hotjoin / rank farm servers, and how many are playing ranked/unranked, it could be that the “queued” PvP is shrinking, but overall PvP has grown because of hotjoin, we don’t know from the answer given.

And the second part about the influx of new F2P players in the last three weeks is not relevant at all, whether the systems effect on the playerbase has been, good, bad or indifferent, those new players were not subject to that and are here because of F2P nothing else.

I would think that PvP Growth is in the context of X amount of players playing PvP on a given day/weekend. It’s irrelevant who or where these players came from because PvP is getting utilized.

I don’t know whether or not this is right or wrong… I just think the specifics as where this population is coming from doesn’t matter. If PvP is getting more players, a few are bound to stick around. Maybe even form a team and play more competitively. Who’s to say they wouldn’t?

ellesee.8297:

morrolan.9608:

But this is elitist nonsense, the game needs to attract a healthy population then guide them into becoming worthwhile contributors, can’t do it without a healthy pop though. The issue is the population not being big enough for the ranking system to work properly so that high ranking players regularly get matched with each other and not against low ranking players.

Attracting PvE players who will never ever ever take PvP seriously isn’t elitist nonsense. I’ve seen people post on these forums who say that they hate PvP and only play it for the reward tracks, AP, and titles. These kinds of people do not contribute to a “healthy pop”. These kinds of people AFK games.

Who are you to say that a PvE player can’t turn into a competitive PvPer? For the record, the people who AFK games are Elitests who disagrees with his team comp, or his team open strategy within the first 20 seconds of the game… so he afks. Newer players will continue to roam and capture nodes regardless if the score is 50 – 200.

ellesee.8297:

…. this “F2P” mode which is really just pay2win.

A potential competitive PvP player sees GW2 as F2P so he installs the game, sees that a large chunk of builds costs $50 to unlock, and the only game mode he can play is conquest. If that were me, I’d pretty much uninstall immediately.

wut…?

Perfect World, Archeage, Lineage II, are examples of pay to win video games.
Planet Side 2 is considered more of a P2W game than GW2.

A trial, reduced version of a full game where players have to buy the game to receive full content, is not a Pay to Win game.

ColinJohanson.2394:

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.

Hope you folks are using I.P.‘s to help filter down those of us with multiple accounts? And, to be honest, we’re freaking bored and have little to do in game. Thus, we’re just killing time in PvP

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

While I’ll let the PvP team respond to the other points here, I do want to take a moment and address this:

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.

I don’t want to trivialize your points – and our competitive team has some great reasons why things operate the way they do they’ll lay out and explain in relation to leagues soon: I do want to call out you’re using false population data to support your point.

From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.

I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ

It’s gotten a lot better sense launch and I’ve got my fingers crossed you guys are going to do Leagues right and give us Guild team leaderboards that rank the guilds not the individual players in those guilds…. If ArenaNet had shipped GW2 with balanced PvP and a lot of the mechanics in place today then it would have gotten a lot more popular sooner. Honestly Colin, because of the amazing potential for GW2 pvp I was very disappointed how things use to be. I have returned to the game and bought HoT in large part because PvP is fun. It’s not fun when the ranking system doesn’t work right (and one you’ve been playing a while you know when that happens) but it’s really an amazing experience when two matched teams are pitted against one another. Please give us more info on Leagues asap.

DeWolfe.2174:

ColinJohanson.2394:

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.

Hope you folks are using I.P.‘s to help filter down those of us with multiple accounts? And, to be honest, we’re freaking bored and have little to do in game. Thus, we’re just killing time in PvP

If only they were releasing an expansion in like a month, then people might have something new to play.

Oh wait, they are releasing an expansion in a month.

The biggest mistake in this game was not allowing The Open World PVP!!! in all the maps. why? cause when u hit max lvl thats a good way to spend the time in. You want to create love for the game? then u need to make the players feel competitive… how? Make them create their history by doing pvp, hating another players for killing them, hating other guild for ganking… and wishing to get more peoples to kill them back and thats how ur gonna make it work… OPEN WORLD PVP FTW…

Yay Colin, I’m so excited.
Maybe we will even get balance patches every 4 months then?
It’s awesome to see that you put that much work into developing PvP. I’m sure it has a bright future. And just don’t give up your e-sports. This will work perfectly with the balance system! And how quickly you always manage to fix gamebreaking bugs, that’s incredible. You do so much better than the first game!
And don’t listen to the pessimists here. The growth in player numbers is definitely not a result from the fact that WvW has been the same boring stuff since 3 years, or that PvE didn’t get any more content since LW2 and is a simple matter of grinding everything you see. And it’s of course not because many players made a new account to be able to farm PvP newbies.
People simply love it for all the variety you brought into the gamemode in the last 3 years. Not to mention the awesome balancing that makes this game so much fun!

Keep up the work….not

Srsly what are you doing all day? Everyone is complaining about broken classes, mechanics and matchmaking in PvP and you think everything is fine just because you see the player numbers rising? wow

Another game on my warr where we got outmanoeuvred by a full premade, at least 3 4 of them were in the same party. Sure we had two thieves, but still enemy team had their coordination and us being PuGs had people giving up early. Stuff like this kills it for those who are new and start to experience the other side of the coin. Surely Leagues will fix it, Colin? If PvP truly is growing in population, surely one could afford ranked soloq again. Till then theres really no room for us who are not in a position, time wise, to form/join teams.

Now if they’ll bring back solo queue, I’ll be very happy along with many others.

Balance game —-→ Players will have more fun —→ More players in pvp --→ More ESL Hype/Twitch viewers——> Game gets more popular —→ Get cash from new players/gemshop.

So many of my guildmates dont play pvp just because its:
-Way too frustrating.
-Balance sux.
-Hard to master and after you master it you still get nothing.
-Offers no way of creating your own playstyle.
-Forces you to find team.

I realise that new league system wont fix matchmaking, i consider “guild teams” to be great way to play and form new bonds in guild, but still NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY PVP and thats is strange, in other games if i even asked even most hardcore pve’rs “wanna go pvp?” random ppl were like “yea sure, np”, in GuildWars2 all i get is “no point/no fun”…

bhagwad.4281:

Just for the record, people used to solo in Team q only because Team q had higher rewards and better maps. I know I did.

If Anet implements solo Q, it had better have the same rewards for team and solo. Otherwise, I will obviously go where the rewards are higher. Why should teams get higher rewards than soloers?

Not why I did it. The queues were too long for solo and I got better matches in team and more people seemed to know what they were doing. I personally hope they bring back solo queue but allow me to solo q for team still if I want.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

While I’ll let the PvP team respond to the other points here, I do want to take a moment and address this:

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.

I don’t want to trivialize your points – and our competitive team has some great reasons why things operate the way they do they’ll lay out and explain in relation to leagues soon: I do want to call out you’re using false population data to support your point.

From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.

I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ

This made my day! can’t wait for news.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

While I’ll let the PvP team respond to the other points here, I do want to take a moment and address this:

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.

I don’t want to trivialize your points – and our competitive team has some great reasons why things operate the way they do they’ll lay out and explain in relation to leagues soon: I do want to call out you’re using false population data to support your point.

From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.

I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ

I have read (in multiple places on the forum) the reason solo queue was removed is because the pvp population dwindled to the point queue times were unbearable.

If what you’re saying is true, that means there should be MORE reason to implement solo q because there would be theoretically lower queue times than when it was removed.

Also, I am not trying to use false data, the falling population argument is the only logical explanation I have heard as to why solo queue was removed. I cannot think of any other conceivable, logical, reason a pvp game would not offer a solo queue option. League of Legends is right now the most successful pvp game I can think of. I believe it would be logical to emulate their matchmaking structure to the best of your abilities assuming it does not create a burdensome amount of costs to implement.

There are many discussions here about matchmaking not doing a good job. It “seems” that matchmaking is at its worst when it tries to put a pug group against a premade group. I do not have “proof” or “data” that it is worse but from my personal experience and from what I read in the forums, it appears to be worse for 5 random people to play against 5 people who are organized and most likely communicating via 3rd party voip. Assuming what I am saying is true, why wouldn’t anet want to minimize these mismatches by offering the options of “solo queue”, “premade queue”, and “fastest match” in which case the fastest match may put a PUG against a premade team?

Colin said the PvP guys will respond. We should start a pool to see how long it is until they do.

style.6173:

Colin said the PvP guys will respond. We should start a pool to see how long it is until they do.

My guess is they’ll put out a big announcement on October 23rd…

=P

people don’t realize that in the first year of this game when you was playing the ticket tournament and you were under the top 100 and getting matched vs teams like Paradigm, Good Fights over and over again due the small population and its visible the number of teams subscribing in amateur tournaments nowadays and the great number of different people in queues.

To add to that, we got a full roster of 64 players in the recent 1v1 Tournament. Thanks to Storms for hosting it, looking forward to the next one. Point being, I remember 1v1 tournaments were only a handful of 5-10 people. Wowzers

PvP scene has definitely grown.

TorsoReaper.8530:

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

Colin Sohandsome

I have read (in multiple places on the forum) the reason solo queue was removed is because the pvp population dwindled to the point queue times were unbearable.

If what you’re saying is true, that means there should be MORE reason to implement solo q because there would be theoretically lower queue times than when it was removed.

Also, I am not trying to use false data, the falling population argument is the only logical explanation I have heard as to why solo queue was removed. I cannot think of any other conceivable, logical, reason a pvp game would not offer a solo queue option. League of Legends is right now the most successful pvp game I can think of. I believe it would be logical to emulate their matchmaking structure to the best of your abilities assuming it does not create a burdensome amount of costs to implement.

There are many discussions here about matchmaking not doing a good job. It “seems” that matchmaking is at its worst when it tries to put a pug group against a premade group. I do not have “proof” or “data” that it is worse but from my personal experience and from what I read in the forums, it appears to be worse for 5 random people to play against 5 people who are organized and most likely communicating via 3rd party voip. Assuming what I am saying is true, why wouldn’t anet want to minimize these mismatches by offering the options of “solo queue”, “premade queue”, and “fastest match” in which case the fastest match may put a PUG against a premade team?

Have some links sir:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-improvements-to-pvp-and-the-ladder-test-season/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/finding-the-perfect-match/
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/go-with-the-flow/

If I’m not mistaken, this was the only official info ANet ever said about the changes.

Whatever the forums are telling is not official information, it’s just common beliefs, feelings and misconceptions we all suffer from our past experiences, such as past ANet failures.

All your other points are completely valid, even though I don’t share them. It’s just that I can “understand” why they removed Solo Queue (must be their game phylosophies looking forward to game state and Leagues) and I simply don’t think many premades use 3rd party voice communication. We both have the same info, so we can’t tell who’s right or wrong I guess!

P.S.: I personally haven’t had a good matchmaking experience in League of Legends, though.

Marcos.3690:

The twitch viewership is still very poor tho

Compared to other games? Yes, most definitely. Smash Bros Melee came out in 2001, and yet they have 20k viewers at each major tournament.

Compared to WTS Beijing? The numbers were multiplied by three.

If PvP is the highest growing part of the game then it deserves more attention, especially in the form of balance. Yet, nothing happens……

Chokolata.1870:

If PvP is the highest growing part of the game then it deserves more attention, especially in the form of balance. Yet, nothing happens……

It’s only growing because after 3 years it’s the only gamemode left, that gives you at least a small tiny bit of variety.
You can’t tell anything realistical until the addon.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

While I’ll let the PvP team respond to the other points here, I do want to take a moment and address this:

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.

I don’t want to trivialize your points – and our competitive team has some great reasons why things operate the way they do they’ll lay out and explain in relation to leagues soon: I do want to call out you’re using false population data to support your point.

From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.

I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ

Whilte I understand your reasoning behind this post, it serves as a double edged sword even if you might not realize it. Pairing players that have been playing this game mode for 3 years together with people who bought the game during one of your recent discount campaigns or are simply “free to players” sounds a bit insulting and at the same time serves as a reality check for both sides. However, keeping things real – how many of of those new players that joined a pvp game in recent months (boosting the numbers to an all time high) do you think will stay for another 3 years and how many will become part of the “esports” scene? I don’t want to sound mean, but the main part about sPvP is the competition and numbers in casual games mean nothing when people have no incentive to compete in your game. Reward tracks are not an incentive to form a team and practice daily, they can be farmed regardless, achievements too. ESL cups can barely get 4 teams to enter with each of the teams playing with replacement players from other known teams.

tl:dr – The new League system will be your last chance to spark some competition into this game mode and if you ride the idea that numbers are the most important thing you will have the same four teams in every future WTS, unless of course some of them give up along the way. Pairing casuals with hardcore players is the worst thing for any competition and you’ve been doing it for quite some time now.

tldr; see last questions

In following the above poster, as a person who produces reports on a daily basis, the post by Colin may not produce the intended response. If you have a small playerbase (1,000) and say you get 200-500 new accounts because it’s free, your growth is going to be greatly increased. However your pool of people is still small when compared to your PvE growth which has 10’s of thousands. Also, you need to track growth based on meaningful activities. Players who only sit in HoTM or in Hot Join are not really participating in PvP. They are there for dailies, waiting for a game to spawn, or afk. So the real measurement of PvP growth is to ask, "What was my number of matches for ranked/unranked queue before HoT was announced, what was it after? The same for pre and post free to play. You can also look at MMR. I would guess that prior to the influx of F2P individuals, MMR on average was mid to high based on the activity of a smaller playerbase. With the influx, average MMR would drop considerably. The key to long term growth would to see MMR move to an average level while number of matches either is sustained or grows. If matches go down and MMR goes up, you have a small base of loyal customers, if MMR goes down and matches go down then that means people are playing PvP for a bit and leaving. Your game is not sustainable if your matches count goes down.

Player hours is also not that great a metric. You would want player hours in matches that are not in HoTM or in Hot Join. You also want to throw out AFK’d individuals for time since I have seen botting in a few of my matches. However, hours and matches are going to be equal since each match is 15 minutes. The more matches that I play then the more time is spent. #Matches = Total Time/15 min. So really, it doesn’t matter of I use total time or # matches, I will know the percentage of my player base that are committed to PvP and those that are not.

Lastly, if I were looking at the playerbase numbers then I would want to see player creation dates that are older with a steady amount of matches in PvP or growth and I would always want to see newer creation dates with steady growth. If I see either of those two fall, then something is wrong.

So the key questions to the PvP team in terms of metrics are:

“How many games did the average PvPer play in every quarter since launch?”
" What has been the number of specific accounts that have reached the average number of matches in each quarter since launch out of the whole?"
“What is the rate of F2P average matches per quarter vs established Players? Is there decline in the established player matches vs the F2P players?”

Those are crucial if you want to refute the argument that PvP is doing poorly in GW2.

Edit for clarity

Just use the league of legends system but with a better report system to punish toxic behaviour that will ruin other peoples experiences.

Which will mean no premade vs randoms. Allow for solo or duo queue only but increase the duo queue MMR for that game to compensate for their communication/coordination advantages.

Jiggawattz.2697:

Why would this be the case if it was low population. The current reason the queues are slow is because of OVER population.

Oh, so overpopulation is the reason why players have to play with the same pool of ~15 people for hours. I have more variety in matchmaking in GW1 atm.

All clear now, thanks.

ColinJohanson.2394:

…
From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.
…
I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ

This is really great to hear. Thanks for setting the record straight. I queue PvP just about every day, for an hour or so, and really enjoy the changes that have been made. Even as a solo player in Ranked, I find it exciting and fun. It is always getting better.

Looking forward to Leagues and Stronghold. It really does seem like the PvP population is growing. I rarely run into the same players on a day to day basis.

OK they have a twitchcon panel on leagues, do they have one of their leading pvpers (Phantaram) on to discuss it with Grouch and Hugh or do you get some streamer who doesn’t even stream GW2 exclusively (DJTechlive). The answer should be Phanta right, bzzzt wrong.

AND PHANTA WAS JUST ON THE PREVIOUS PANEL DISCUSSING PVE.

WTF anet.

Selling badges/leagues will be real :/