Guild Wars 2

The problem isn’t incentive. The problem is that the PvP isn’t fun, and doesn’t feel skillful or fair in most cases.

No amount of rewards is going to MAKE pvp fun if it isnt fun to begin with.

One of my favorite competitive games, CS:GO, has no rewards for winning except ranking up. The reason I love that game is because it is challenging and actually feels like my actions matter and require skill. Nothing in GW2 matches that feeling of pulling a clutch 4v1 out and winning.

@bhagwad: none of this has anything to do with you, actually. I’m not sad because you enjoy what you enjoy. I’m sad because I personally don’t enjoy progression in my PvP games, but it keeps surfacing everywhere. Rewards are a low-hanging fruit to get people to play/keep playing your game, but they are shallow and unfulfilling to me. So I want ANet to focus their time and effort on something that isn’t progression-based, because they have limited amounts of time.

Also, I thought ranks did a number on the quality of games because people would go out of their way to, for example, sit on nodes when only 1 person has to stay. They rewarded rank points for bad tactics. So, yes, you could argue that certain types of progression could change someone’s playstyle.

And if you want to get personal about it, yes, they can do whatever they want in the game, because they’re free spirits and no one can hold them down. However, I am also a free spirit, and I want to avoid playing with people who would sacrifice the game to get a few progression points. It’s like if you are playing chess against someone, and they just throw their pieces away repeatedly for no reason. You ask why, and they say “If I finish 100 games, I can get a new chess set, so I’m just trying to finish as quickly as possible”. They are free to do that, and I’m free to think that it ruins the spirit of the game.

It’s a casual game, since it’s “Play how you want to play” and “Do what’s fun”. That’s all there is to it. Play it like you would play Fruit Slice on your phone.

Cynz.9437:

+1
i joined this game for pvp, i love combat of this game but only thing i did for past few weeks is log in, do daily gathering in home instance/crafting; log off…. :|

- too buggy
- too imbalanced
- too slow updates
- ranked are pointless
- qing alone is pointless
- stuck in hotm jumping around same rock to 10th millions time and staring at q timer because nothing else to do :|
zzzzzzzzz

+1, biggest issues are queuing i the hotm, no leaderboards or progression. No way to prove your skill

Team play would be nice if you felt accomplished with your team. However, team matches often say little about your skillful play although they say allot about your synergy with people. As much as I love team play, it is dueling that forces you to have to play better one on one to someone who may be speced similar to you. Also, in solo que, win rates rarely exceed 70% because of the dependence on team mates who often afk, troll, and so on. This is somewhat depressing because good players could do allot but get nowhere because of someone else’s disrespect. Last, Guild Wars 2 really needs five times the number of skills and on this note, it doesn’t even compare to Guild Wars 1 in terms of variety.

-There is no number one player or victor in ranked but instead five lessening the incentive to compete against the rest of the world.
-There is no real awesome pvp rewards that make it worthwhile. ( I don’t grind pvp matches for stuff)
-Solo que is pointless and more about who has played it the most.
-Players don’t have enough variety and start using the same meta spec till they are bored. Then they have nothing new to do and stop playing.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I get that we’re dealing with an MMO, so the playerbase involved is more progression-oriented. However, I’d argue that progression doesn’t make a game more fun. If anything, it takes away from the game, since it’s very easy to focus on the carrot and not the enjoyment of getting it. Then when you get it, what happens? You look for another carrot. If there isn’t one, you don’t feel like playing. Progression is self-destructive, like an addiction, requiring more and more rewards to keep people hooked.

What should get you hooked in a PvP game is the competition, otherwise people will just leave, and any progression you add will have a quick boost of people that don’t actually care about the game.

I think it’s part of the reason why PvP will probably never stick in an MMO. People don’t have the right attitudes to make it stick.

EDIT – And look at FPSes of late. If I’m not mistaken, Call of Duty and Battlefield both employ level-up mechanics and progression to allow people to earn new guns, new skins, new abilities. I remember the moment I decided I didn’t want to play Battlefield 3. I jumped into a jet, took off, then realized I didn’t have any counter-measures, because my jet flying wasn’t a high enough level.

What a load of bs. Progression in pvp isnt just carrot on a stick. It is mmr leaderboards and in game tournaments. It is competition where you can work to improve yourself. That is what successful pvp games give. This game has none of that so no point playing.

bhagwad.4281:

“You can’t have it as your sole reason” – why not? How does it affect you? It doesn’t. Live and let live. You play for your reasons. I’ll play for mine. You don’t get to dictate why other people should play.

Well if you have no interest in PVPing and your sole reason for PVPing is for some artificial carrot, then it does affect others because it leads to situations that Cogbryn described in his chess example (a chess player forfeiting all of his games so that he can quickly reach 100 games played).

We see it today in sPVP where people will join and just afk, players from one side all going into spectate mode as soon as their side starts to lose and then join the winning side after autobalance has kicked in, etc. These are extreme examples but I do see it happen from time to time.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@bhagwad: none of this has anything to do with you, actually. I’m not sad because you enjoy what you enjoy. I’m sad because I personally don’t enjoy progression in my PvP games, but it keeps surfacing everywhere. Rewards are a low-hanging fruit to get people to play/keep playing your game, but they are shallow and unfulfilling to me. So I want ANet to focus their time and effort on something that isn’t progression-based, because they have limited amounts of time.

Also, I thought ranks did a number on the quality of games because people would go out of their way to, for example, sit on nodes when only 1 person has to stay. They rewarded rank points for bad tactics. So, yes, you could argue that certain types of progression could change someone’s playstyle.

And if you want to get personal about it, yes, they can do whatever they want in the game, because they’re free spirits and no one can hold them down. However, I am also a free spirit, and I want to avoid playing with people who would sacrifice the game to get a few progression points. It’s like if you are playing chess against someone, and they just throw their pieces away repeatedly for no reason. You ask why, and they say “If I finish 100 games, I can get a new chess set, so I’m just trying to finish as quickly as possible”. They are free to do that, and I’m free to think that it ruins the spirit of the game.

The situation you describe about two people standing in a circle was something I remember from the early days of GW2 in hotjoin. Very quickly however, Anet started to rationalize the rewards with the gameplay. Meaning that now in today’s matches, players realize they get a lot more points if they win. Meaning they don’t do silly stuff like multi capping a point because they know it reduces their chances of winning and getting that huge carrot at the end.

In fact, I solo all the time and I can’t even remember when I last saw someone 2-capping a point. It just doesn’t happen often enough to matter. All people want now, is to win.

Also, you’re once again not taking into consideration about what I said regarding primary and secondary rewards. I may play for carrots. But during the game, winning is all that matters. It’s just that I wouldn’t play at all if the carrots weren’t present in the first place.

Leodon.1564:

bhagwad.4281:

“You can’t have it as your sole reason” – why not? How does it affect you? It doesn’t. Live and let live. You play for your reasons. I’ll play for mine. You don’t get to dictate why other people should play.

Well if you have no interest in PVPing and your sole reason for PVPing is for some artificial carrot, then it does affect others because it leads to situations that Cogbryn described in his chess example (a chess player forfeiting all of his games so that he can quickly reach 100 games played).

We see it today in sPVP where people will join and just afk, players from one side all going into spectate mode as soon as their side starts to lose and then join the winning side after autobalance has kicked in, etc. These are extreme examples but I do see it happen from time to time.

Wait…if you’re talking about hotjoin, then that is not competitive at all. I don’t think @Cogbryn is referring to hotjoin either.

Just in case this wasn’t clear before…we are not talking about hotjoin.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Cogbyrn.7283:

I get that we’re dealing with an MMO, so the playerbase involved is more progression-oriented. However, I’d argue that progression doesn’t make a game more fun. If anything, it takes away from the game, since it’s very easy to focus on the carrot and not the enjoyment of getting it. Then when you get it, what happens? You look for another carrot. If there isn’t one, you don’t feel like playing. Progression is self-destructive, like an addiction, requiring more and more rewards to keep people hooked.

What should get you hooked in a PvP game is the competition, otherwise people will just leave, and any progression you add will have a quick boost of people that don’t actually care about the game.

I think it’s part of the reason why PvP will probably never stick in an MMO. People don’t have the right attitudes to make it stick.

EDIT – And look at FPSes of late. If I’m not mistaken, Call of Duty and Battlefield both employ level-up mechanics and progression to allow people to earn new guns, new skins, new abilities. I remember the moment I decided I didn’t want to play Battlefield 3. I jumped into a jet, took off, then realized I didn’t have any counter-measures, because my jet flying wasn’t a high enough level.

What a load of bs. Progression in pvp isnt just carrot on a stick. It is mmr leaderboards and in game tournaments. It is competition where you can work to improve yourself. That is what successful pvp games give. This game has none of that so no point playing.

I’d label an MMR system as a competitive system. There’s no tangible reward, you just are rated higher when you perform better relative to your opponents. A progression system involves some tangible goal you’re striving towards.

I’m all for competitive systems for PvP.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I’d label an MMR system as a competitive system. There’s no tangible reward, you just are rated higher when you perform better relative to your opponents. A progression system involves some tangible goal you’re striving towards.

I’m all for competitive systems for PvP.

Then sorry for wording it wrong, but even this is something I, and many others long for.

Your name on a virtual list ingame or even on that freaking leaderboards site (which should’ve been ingame) is a reward. That is something you wanna work for, a goal to chase.

Carrots come in all kinds of forms and flavours, one enjoys them uncooked, the other prefers them with some sauce. Does it hurt anyone to implement a carrot of which people can compete for? On contrary, I am thinking it would solve a lot of issue concerning the dedication people have to stick around for the long run.

It is not just about an ingame reward that shows off things – honestly, little people but yourself care about that. It is about the combination of aspects that makes people feel like they are achieving when competing, something this game is missing (you do not need to win, because it doesn’t matter). Leaderboards, MMR, Leagues – these lead to a cohesive overview of which you can make adjusted tournaments, big events where you want to train for, get better and higher up the ladder for. etc, you get the point by now I think

Can anyone tell me why we can’t have all types of carrots to satisfy everyone? Is there a shortage of carrots?

bhagwad.4281:

Can anyone tell me why we can’t have all types of carrots to satisfy everyone? Is there a shortage of carrots?

There is shortage of devs.

Vieteriukko.6075:

>bhagwad.4281
>Does anyone miss ranks yet? One of the incentives for me to play was to get higher >and higher ranks. I need some goal.

I do miss rank progression. No idea why it needed to be watered down.

cause pve guys used to cry because it was too long…obviously

right now there is no indication of anything…leaderboards promoting farming instead of skill, crap mmr (You wait 8+ minutes while SOLO in UNRANKED and then you go with a pve pug team vs 3-4 ppl premades), crap chests with crap rewards inside, pretty much no money from pvp (Compared to what pve heroes get for just stacking near walls in dungeons doin nothing), no unique rewards for having tens of thousands pvp matches on your back and on and on and on…

There’s no reason to tryhard…at all

My (Active) friedlist gets shorter and shorter everyday…not a surprise tho, i’m kinda inactive too since this pvp is just pointless atm…well…let’s say even more pointless…

Morwath.9817:

bhagwad.4281:

Can anyone tell me why we can’t have all types of carrots to satisfy everyone? Is there a shortage of carrots?

There is shortage of devs.

There is no way it can take more than an hour or so to implement a tiered “Champion” system for every 150 matches. Or to have infinite PvP levels instead of stopping at 80.

bhagwad.4281:

Morwath.9817:

bhagwad.4281:

Can anyone tell me why we can’t have all types of carrots to satisfy everyone? Is there a shortage of carrots?

There is shortage of devs.

There is no way it can take more than an hour or so to implement a tiered “Champion” system for every 150 matches. Or to have infinite PvP levels instead of stopping at 80.

Hey everybody we have an expert here. He knows how Arena net’s system works and all their priorities.

I know you are not very happy about the system, but hyperbole like that is doing the devs a big disservice, since they are not in control of what gets worked on.

Just testing the new system probably takes more than 1 hour. Someone has to code it, design UI elements, have those UI elements tested to ensure that it doesn’t break something, obviously translate it to different language and then test it.

All of this assumes that there is a dev currently not doing anything MORE important than making a few people on the forum happy about grind.

Tl;DR

It might be a good idea to not make estimates about a system you are not familiar with. That is part of being a professional, never making assumptions about how long something takes to implement.

PlatinumMember.5274:

bhagwad.4281:

Morwath.9817:

bhagwad.4281:

Can anyone tell me why we can’t have all types of carrots to satisfy everyone? Is there a shortage of carrots?

There is shortage of devs.

There is no way it can take more than an hour or so to implement a tiered “Champion” system for every 150 matches. Or to have infinite PvP levels instead of stopping at 80.

Hey everybody we have an expert here. He knows how Arena net’s system works and all their priorities.

I know you are not very happy about the system, but hyperbole like that is doing the devs a big disservice, since they are not in control of what gets worked on.

Just testing the new system probably takes more than 1 hour. Someone has to code it, design UI elements, have those UI elements tested to ensure that it doesn’t break something, obviously translate it to different language and then test it.

All of this assumes that there is a dev currently not doing anything MORE important than making a few people on the forum happy about grind.

Tl;DR

It might be a good idea to not make estimates about a system you are not familiar with. That is part of being a professional, never making assumptions about how long something takes to implement.

I’m a programmer, and what I’m doing is making educated guesses. There is no new UI that needs implementing. To extend ranks beyond 80, you simply need to find the code creating that limit and changing it to something like 10 million.

The champion tier will take more than a few minutes though. But yeah, doable in an hour.