Guild Wars 2

Ok, i played GW2 for around 550 hours, balanced those around sPvP, a little tPvP, WvW, and PvE. So i have at least some knowledge of this game. I also played GW 1 for quite the extensive period i could say, and did manage to get to the top of the GvG scene, im also not completely devoid of PvP knowledge as i have played severall mmos, and always focused on the PvP aspect.

I would like to congratulate Anet on an amazing pve game. Its pretty refined, fun, could use some work on bossess, mainly as they act as damage sponges but thats not the point of my post. Its the pvp aspect that has let me down. And apparently not only me, a lot of people have been let down. Now many will maybe jump to the conclusion that the expectations were too high, that guild wars 2 would never be able to live up to it. Maybe, that might have been part of it. But mainly my issue from the start was the lack of content.

Guild wars 1 from the go had more pvp options than GW 2. I don’t know why there is only 1 gamemode availible in the entirety of GW 2 PvP. If you look at it, all you do in the end is capture points. Be it in WvW or in sPvP or in tPvP, while in GW 1 you had to kill the enemy team+priest, just deathmatch, point capturing, wich team gets the most kills in a certain ammount, running relics and king of the hill. Also you not only had alliance battles (WvW now it seems), random/team arenas, hero arenas and most importantly GvG and Heroes Ascent. (not all of those were in GW 1 from the go).

There was not only the rewards, there was also glory in GW 1. People who held HA, or towns or were generally good in pvp got known troughout their respective pvp area. Here this was completely disabled in WvW thanks to the genious anonimity Anet put in. So all you have left is a horribly imbalanced or at least a game mode that allows for little to no change in tactics.

Now here come my problems with the pvp:
1. Downed mechanic
Almost in every game i have seen an attempt for something like this, it was generally disliked. I myself am not much of a fps player, but apparently something like this has caused such an outrage in the cod community that it has been removed in the sequel.

This is just bad. You cannot customize your downed skills, you cannot counter some of those skills. Its just that terrible knowledge that if you down an Ele, he will be able to mess with you and contest the same capture point for a little longer or even fly off to an ally to get rezzed fast. The skills arent balanced around the classes and some end up beeing stronger than others.

2.
The horrible interface problems. Trying to kill a downed enemy on the corpse of an ally is pure gambling. Your click might register on the enemy or it might hit your ally. Mess up once its ok, mess up twice, your probably now downed as well. Especially in a hectic battle.
Mesmer illusions, a pain to target even if you know wich one is the real one, that combined with the next thing.
Invis beeing broken. Game models are not rendering in time, the only workaround atm is tab targeting, gives you maybe 1/2 of a second more time to react than if you target only based on what you see. But even then the enemy is “invisible” and you dont know what they are doing.
3.
Build balance. Builds that lean towards the tanky, more resistant side are better than the ones that focus on the offensive. This is why atm guardians are pretty much top tier when it comes to organized PvP. Im not saying that they are completely broken but the game mode that is played now is favouring them too much.
4.
GW 2 my rights end where my oponents feelings begin. Why are you trying to shelter people in PvP. Its a PLAYER versus PLAYER enviroment. You should know who you are fighting (this is mainly a WvW complaint).
ice in some skills and not others).

5.
Incentive. Why would i want to play pvp. Besides tPvP noone will know of my acihevements. The pvp rank at this moment and for all future is useless and means nothing. You do not require any pvp skill at all to attain high rank. Actually at the moment even making a losing build that would just net you many kills might be more profitable (see 22222222 thiefs). In GW 1 you were either winning and gaining higher and higher rank points or you got nothing. Why shelter players who would feel more comfortable in pve and try to push and squeeze them somehow into pvp.
6.
Small pve into pvp balance issue. Why are not the same stats used in pvp that are used in pve? It seems that someone was just lazy, and decided thinking and balancing was too hard so he remade the whole stats thing in pvp.
7.
Different class same skills. GW 1 started to suffer from this late on. Different skills were doing the same or almost the same thing. GW 2 already suffers from this. Especially when it comes to traits. (movespeed signets, falldamage reduce, swiftness traits). The last “buff” to the ranger signet really baffled me. I was hoping that it would actually get buffed in a way that would encourage you to use the active portion of the skill. And not have a skill sitting on my bar that i do not want to touch.
8.
Elite skills arent elite. In many cases i take an elite skill because im forced to take one. The utility skills are way better, and not once i found myself in a position where i would want to build around an elite like i did in GW 1. So many times where i could really use that 4th slot for another utility skill, but i end up taking a meh elite with a too long cooldown.
9.
PvP pace. This one is a bit wierd. It might be that i still need more pvp experience. But at the moment, i think the dodge mechanic, and the ammount of survivability skills, just postpone and drag out the battles, that i could deal with, but add downed mechanic to this and its too much. Also someone dodging a 3 minute skill is a bit of a kick in the teeth. Not because he played great. Sure he deserves a win. But because i know for the next 3 minutes i play with a skill less, and that that skillslot did nothing for 6 minutes.
10.
Skill/trait descriptions. Those are just downright awefull. I just want to know what my skills do. And not aproximately what they do. Cool my aegis heals now, but for how much? How much damage does my X skill do now that i traited this. So many skills are written terribly.
11.
RNG is baaaaad for PvP. No matter what people say. RNG dependance is just bad in competitive play. You have put so many % chance to trigger on X things into GW 2 that you can’t really remove it anymore. But honestly, someone who gets lucky, and yes i can use the word lucky here, can anihilate someone. A couple of lucky procs on his runes and traits and he can win a match that would not be winnable trough skill. And as someone who is competitive i can assure you that noone likes to lose just because the RNG gods were not on his side.

In the end, what many expected is what anet was trying to make. If they failed, or if someone decided that that was not profitable, i don’t know. They if i can recall corectly said they want to make GW 2 a e-sport, a competitive game. A great PvP experience. But its more than obvious that GW 2 was made for the more casual gamer and that is and will hurt the longevity of the pvp scene.

This post might have just been a vent of mine, and will most likely not produce any impact or changes in the mindset of the developers. But i seriously hope that they start on pvp soon, or it might be too late. Altough i know that there are many bugs, not even the ones that would take 30 seconds to fix get look at (why is condition damage also known as Malice in some skills and not others).

PS.
Bring back Isle of the Nameless.

I agree with a lot of the things you say. The main issue that I think we’re facing now is that it is a slippery slope. The SPVP side got far less attention at the start because it was the minority of the 3 game aspects (pve, wvw, spvp). Now, I believe were going to find less and less attention(not sure how you can get less than it is, but I’m sure we’ll find out) because this game mode is on life support. A lot of the things you stated should have been in at start. They weren’t, so they should have been in pretty quick after launch, but they weren’t. Now, SPVP is pretty much a wasteland so the chance that we’ll see ANET dumping MORE resources into this mode to catch up is slim to none.

I had high hopes as you did. I am more let down by this game than any other. I’ve still put almost 500+ hours into it and that’s because of the foundation that was solid. I’m disappointed not because it’s the worst game I’ve ever played (obviously 500 hours can attest to that) but that it had the most promise and did the least with it.

It’s like hearing about two 25 years olds that are strung out on meth and living on the street. One was a terrible kid his whole life and got into trouble and did terrible in school, the other was an honor student and had the world by the roundies. It would be sad that both are now wasted, but it would be more sad that one wasted so much.

I more or less agree with everything. It’s very sad that several of the professions are only good because you need to wrestle with the UI or even with the rendering engine when fighting against them. A thief downiong me and then finally appearing out of stealth while already stomping me, even though I dodged twice while still alive, is not fun or fair and cannot be part of a game that is considered playable in any way, shape or form. Really, if it’s that much of a problem to do it properly, why weren’t placeholder graphics implemented? I wouldn’t mind fighting a black shadow instead of how the thief or mesmer is actually supposed to look if that means I get to actually participate in the fight I’m in.

I also agree with the main problem in PvP being the game mode. Tanks will always be overpowered on the point capture maps we have now because of the simple nature of cap points.

And yes, elite skills are a joke. In GW1 you could at least bring a normal skill instead so the devs were forced to make them viable. In GW2 it’s almost a miracle if an elite skill somehow fits into your character build.

I don’t see the level of reward for spvp participation as being conducive to it. Suggestions are as follows:
1) All spvp should allow party groups – randomizing players make it less enjoyable and to be honest how can you claim it is structured when the players can’t group as they see fit (in other words eliminate the tournament ticket requirement).
2) Rewards need a massive improvement. Wow, the chests you get as you advance in rank …. suck. Oh gee, I got armor or weapon I can’t use. At least auto-match those to your profession. GOLD should also be awarded especially if a majority of the games are won that day.
3) Unlike the above comments, I like the down-state mechanic. It adds another dimension to the gameplay.
4) Several times during pvp matches I have to hit my action keys more than once for the action to work. Also, character movement action has also stopped/stuck for no apparent reason. This same problem exists in PvE side as well. FIX THIS!
5) 80% of the Elite skills are a joke (I agree with all above on this)
6) Similar skills between professions are uneven, betraying that they were developed by different people/teams. eg. Why can warrior savage leap cross gaps, when no other character blink/teleport can do it? Makes no sense to me. Allow all blink/leap/teleport skills to cross gaps.

Agree with all you said. I laughed when I read what you said about trying to stomp someone close or on a friendly downed player, I don’t know how many times I’ve began to res instead of landing that stomp, loosing cruical seconds and going down myself because of that.
All of these issues, bundled with all the lag/disconnects and other terrible mechanics…

GW2 was released too early.

First off, someone who says gw2 PVP is like AB or AB was no PVP never played it in a serious way. Further Gw2 does not require that amount of tactics, flexibility, synergy, teamplay, coordination, communication, reconcilement and game awareness that gw1 did. I can tell that by my 45min in gw2pvp, then I quitted. You said that the maps do have to much benefits for guardians and this, plus point 7, is a very important point and one of the main reason why PVP is dying. There is no requirement for teamplay cos the game forces you not to play in a team. Every character is its own healer, dps, support, it’s own synergy. Combos are not a necessity to be good, but they actually should. Your high cool downs are not game affecting enough. You don’t have enough control over your character(rndm trigger effects) or your enemies, like whoop 1sec cripple, you can’t interrupt them or shut their skills down. That is a big loss. Anet doesn’t have to change that much but they maybe have to rethink their game design, mechanic and balance.