Guild Wars 2

I’m not normally one for forum posts, and I’m generally not one for whinging. Nor am I the best player going around or a self styled “Pro” (unlike half the people that demand “Leaderboards and rating”, I know I would be middle of the pack, like 95% of the PvP population). I only have two main gripes about PvP and after reading these forums and most topics every day since launch (on my iPhone cause I have stuff all else to do at work lately) I wanted to add my 2 cents.

Hot-Join / sPvP: Yes, I know. It’s just hot join, and it doesn’t really matter. I agree to an extent. I mainly do Tournaments where I can (Free cause I’m an Aussie player and the population is a lil low in my primetime) so I’m aware that Hot-Join is specifically a place to test builds, have a bit of fun and play around with guildies, friends or meet randoms.

The issue is this, if Hot-Join isn’t an enjoyable experience, how do players then get the urge to progress to tPvP? I had no issues slipping straight into Tourney’s, but the vast majority of gamers, specifically solo players who may be looking for a guild/team, if they find the sPvP part unenjoyable why would they bother hanging around?

What do I find unenjoyable about sPvP I hear you ask?

“It’s perfect, cause all the fanboys tell me so and A-net made it”.

Only the scoring system. I know that glory means stuff all, its only cosmetic, winning means more, you only get skins etc etc etc. That’s fine, but the scoring system needs to change regardless of what it gets you because it is breeding a mentality in Hot-Join that is not team orientated and makes the game unenjoyable. It is most likely adding to the issue of low population. If it’s our only form of a visual progression, then it needs to be a form of progression that is enjoyable. As a bunker, I spend most of my time doing the right thing and guarding points and end a match on 80 points or so per game. My team mates finish on 200+. its only cosmetic, but jeez, it takes a while when ur pumpin 80 a game to care.

How to change it for the better though without breeding a culture of afker’s, farmers, kill stealers etc is the hard part IMO. My suggestion, which may need some tweaking, is to credit all players on a team for every action. Ultimately every player at the end of a game ends up with the same amount of points as thier team mates, regardless of what they did in the game.

“But, but, I worked hard and he didn’t”. That’s fair enough, at the screen at the end of a match players need to be ranked differently, so that there is still a “leaderboard” as such.

Tell me, anyone who plays as a bunker, would you actually play your bunk spec and hold a point if you knew you would get the points for kills on the other side of a map? It’s gotta be better then the current ring a rosy that goes on with node swapping all game.

I think a “ticking” Glory system is not the way to go either. Look to some other games. SWTOR has a terrible system which is individual medal based and has its own issues. WoW credits everyone “roughly” the same amount of honor per player. That game has bots, buts that’s due to their gear system, not their honor system.

Anyway, u got a better idea then throw it up.

My 2nd issue is Oceanic and latency related. I’m fine with current balance, and understand that most damage is avoidable including PW from thieves, HB from warriors etc. My issue is quickness and its effect on lag. Quickness by itself isn’t an issue if we are all on the same ping. But when my Aus team has a lowest ping that is most likely 10 times higher then the highest of the US teams we play against, its an issue (roughly sub 40ms in the US and ~400 – 500 on a good day in Aus with GW2 servers).

When I am going 1v1 with someone and a warrior charges me, I know to break stun and dodge or I’m going to eat the dirt. Yet, with quickness, its pretty much already happened before my computer renders it. I get charged, health drops super fast and dead. I don’t even get that stability pop and roll opportunity anymore. Against other Oceanic players, its much less an issue (we do guild sPvP sometimes).

So, 2 solutions that I can see here (3 if you include the standard “don’t like it then quit” attitude people tell you when you raise a concern). Give oceanic players their own servers, which wont happen and I actually wouldn’t want to happen. We aren’t a big enough pop to make it work (see SWTOR even tho that game dropped subs faster then the Titanic sank) and we certainly aren’t big enough to do WvW and it would be same servers matchups all year long.

Other option is to reduce the overall affect of quickness and put that dmg back into other abilities. I would prefer it gone tbh, cause it has become too much of a staple and essential to certain specs but I can see the argument against removing it and that’s fine as well, different opinions are different. But if you want to do E-Sports, and have anything other than pure NA teams on NA servers, it needs to change slightly. We already have to deal with teleporting and rubberbanding in Aus when we play GW2, don’t make it harder with quickness.

TLDR: Change the scoring system in sPvP to reward all players, not just the circle jerk of roaming we have now and consider a change to quickness as to not alienate your playerbase that doesn’t reside within 2000 miles of your server farms.

If you actually made it through that long kitten post and you are Oceanic, send me a tell if you want a Guardian to tPvP with. I’m avail. most nights.

Valkyriez.6578:

Only the scoring system.

Came to the forums for the first time just to make a post about it myself, and cannot upvote this enough.

Current system is badly designed, because it encourages players (in pug teams mostly) to act selfishly and not work as a team. What I see now is people gathering at points too much, a few examples:

• everyone is getting the point instead of running for the next one or getting a buff;
• players get points in groups, even if that particular point they’re getting is defenceless;
• in some rare cases, nobody wants to use a trebuchet on “Battle of Kyhlo” map.

And players do this just to get more points for themselves, it’s wrong.

Now, I don’t remember exactly, but in WoW — let’s remember this one, shall we? — you get points on your damage and healing. I might be wrong, though, please correct me if I am. What I mean is maybe such system will work better than current, as you would still be getting personal points for defending a point or striking enemy players with a treb.

I would love someone from Anet to comment on this, problem is there and must be solved.

TL;DR Make it so players would get personal points in a different way, for damage dealing as a possible solution.

I’d say what determines whether sPvP will be successful or not is not if it has a good scoring system or ranking system, etc… It all goes down to whether its fun or not.. Currently its not. Its bland. AB style PvP which wasn’t even that popular in GW1. Everything is more orientated towards tanks and bunkers which is silly because as long as you have a tanky team you can exploit the rez system to basically achieve near infinite defense. At least let dmg orientated builds have “crit rez chance” to make it more fair.