Guild Wars 2

This thread is based on some thoughts I was having regarding Paid Tournaments and based on the info Jon Peters released while talking to players in the mists.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10szrq/insight_from_jon_peters_and_karl_mclain_ingame_in/

A player asks about separation of premade/pugs and potential rating system. Based on Jon’s response, the only thing that seems close to happening to alleviate these issues is paid tournaments. This, according to Jon’s theory will separate premades groups from pug groups.

While the final structure is not available for analysis, I remember their costs originally listed as five tournament tickets per team member. The problem with this being their “competitive” format should be obvious to anyone with knowledge of what fosters competitive environments; barriers to entry such as the tournament tickets forces teams to either farm pugs in the free tournaments or purchase tournament tickets. This barrier to entry has nothing to do with the skill of the players on their team but rather how interested they are in farming pugs or buying tournament tickets.

Since Paid Tournaments sound like they will not be releasing with a rating system, playing in the tournaments will be about gear for many teams. While there are many teams who are just looking for the chance at competitive play after going against so many pugs, there will be lower tier teams who will not want to “waste” their tournament tickets if they see big name teams appearing in the tournaments with them.

Does anyone else agree that this seems to be a really poorly thought out solution to the issues facing the current tournament system and the requests of the PvP community?

I know personally that I would not give one kitten about the paid tournament system if there were either player controlled private servers or an ELO matchmaking system. It seems like ArenaNet doesn’t have the manpower to implement ratings anytime soon or even translate a kittening blog post, if ArenaNet opened up server rentals then players could create their own ladders and competitive play and expand the competitive community.

It seems that if we are to rely on ArenaNet’s timeline this game won’t have the infrastructure for a competitive scene for several months and by that time the interest of the competitive groups will have likely waned dramatically.