Guild Wars 2

For sPvP to be taken seriously, make it 5vs5. if it is 5vs5, it emulates the 5v5 tourney settings. the only difference is that the teams are not that organized and there is no voice communication used. but the good side to this is that players develop their commonsense, understand their classes more because it is operating within their “natural” realms and probably will get to master how to play the maps the right way. i’ve been in a few random tPvP teams and yes in a few occasions my random team without voice communication beat organized guild teams with probably voice communication. imagine what 5vs5 random sPvP will do with the community of new comers to PvP who are afraid to do tourney PvP randoms because they’ll be facerolled by other team (which is a bigger chance) or insulted by their team mates.

again, a thinline will just separate random 5v5 sPvP to 5vs5 tPvP if implemented ASAP. the game is still young.

It’s quite the dilemma at the moment if you ask me.
However, let’s look at current format contra 5v5 and TF2:

Amount of player
The less players on a team, the more important each player gets. This means, that in games like TF2 where there’s over 20 players on a server, the individual player is not as important as they are in, say, 5v5. 12v11 is more balanced than 5v4.

The maps
Now, the maps are obviously not designed for 12 player-teams, but instead for 5. The current maps still feel clutched and zergy for 8v8 though.

Now, 8v8 is a “weird” amount of players, seeing as it’s neither a small nor large amount of players.

Joining a game
The current way of joining a game is imitating that of FPSs, where you choose from a list of servers. However, this is really only “viable” if you have, like in TF2, a large amount of players. Why? Because no matter how many people are on the server, someone’s gonna leave at some point, and when a game only allows 16 players per server, a player leaving can suddenly be a huge backlash.

The other way would be matchmaking or hubs (but hubs are terrible for quick games, since the wait is normally longer than the actual game, so let’s leave that out). While server lists are good for many players, matchmaking are good for few players. This is because eventually, the player base will go low, and if there’s only 15 players (for an 8v8), a match will never happen.

Also, server lists grants more freedom to the player (as he/she can leave and join whenever), while matchmaking are locking players in a match for 10 mins (but they are mostly guaranteed to stay).

In my opinion, the options:
1) If ANet decides to change from 8v8 to 5v5, the server list will suddenly become very inefficient. So with 5v5, a matchmaking system must be made.
2) Keep the current system, which leaves more freedom for the individual player, but the games are very clutched
3) Remove down-state from spvp to get rid of players quickly in case of zergs. But this would remove a core mechanic, and may or may not improve the situation.
4) Make 2 versions of future map. A big version for 8v8s and a version, where ex. an area is cut off to be the size of a current map.
5) introduce different modes. With different map sizes.

I hope this made sense. And please note, I’m not stating facts, only speculations.

Just make there be 5v5 servers and 8v8 servers. Those that want 5v5 without doign a tourney can then do it and deal with the “downsides” ANet always states. Heck keep hot join 8v8 only and make it so you have to browse the server list to find the 5v5s.

At this point I imagine it is a coding/priority thing as its abosultely silly to not at least have the option, so either their server setup system is hard to change, or they simply have more important things to do at this point and will worry about 5v5 non tourney when they do the whole pvp server overhaul.

Sylv.1960:

Just make there be 5v5 servers and 8v8 servers. Those that want 5v5 without doign a tourney can then do it and deal with the “downsides” ANet always states. Heck keep hot join 8v8 only and make it so you have to browse the server list to find the 5v5s.

At this point I imagine it is a coding/priority thing as its abosultely silly to not at least have the option, so either their server setup system is hard to change, or they simply have more important things to do at this point and will worry about 5v5 non tourney when they do the whole pvp server overhaul.

Agreed.