Guild Wars 2

I never said Rankings would kill casual gaming. All I say is you can’t just focus on the “premade 5v5” tournaments and stuff like that.

What u need is solo ranking, good hot join mode & stuff like that.
So the casuals keep playing and eSport grows.

@Prince Having more tournaments then anyone has nothing to do with how tournaments are currently as in (after the patch) you go into a tournament and through out a game half or more then half your team crashes and the same goes for the enemy, if you want to have all your tournament tickets / qualifier points won by how many times your team crashes or the enemy teams then well nothing to say I guess.

@Taym, Yeah we did about 6 full tournaments so 18 games and through them 18 games id say we had around 40 or so crashes won every game but it was still ridiculous.

I remember Jon saying soon, but not saying a certain date. When did he Say a certain date?

This is exactly why Anet usually doesn’t say anything before it’s solid enough that they are sure they can deliver on their promises. The PvP scene starts getting anxious becauseAnet isn’t saying anything so they put out official statements that imply a certain date and then you get people upset because they feel like Anet hasn’t followed through. kitten happens in game dev. I feel like there will be plenty of time to do paid tourneys whenever they do get put into the game but hell that’s just my gut feeling.

because im sure you guys would be so happy playing broken sPvP matches were you lost your tickets but didnt get prizes for placing at all….

GG dev good work,many players leave for your false promise….go PVE kitten game

maybe they want people to buy gems for the event items before allowing us to earn them through tournaments?

Three Words.
Free To Play

They don’t need to keep you here to stay afloat. Their model is based off of transactions that occur primarily in PvE. So the decision to emphasize PvE is a business one. That being said if you think about it, compare and contrast. Us hardcore PvP players don’t purchase near as much from the gem store as PvE players. So the ratio of content released to content paid for is reletivley appropriate.

That being said I hope you can at least understand while this is a PvP game and they want it to be an e-sport, in order to bring you that content they MUST release more PvE than PvE as it keeps them paying their devs. The company would not survive in its current state on PvP Alone.

@Soulstorm
That’s the problem; there is a contradiction. Given the chance, they will always speak of what high aspirations they have for PVP and how dedicated they are to it. However, deliverance on tangible results is incongruous with claims.

In other words: So far – a lot of talk, not a lot of walk.

There is a very big issue of financial viability when it comes to PVP and because it is likely true that we simply are not worth it, they simply should not make it seem like they are pushing hard with pvp and then instead we get pumpkin filled mists and a pittance of updates.

What they should have done from the start is given us PVPers more features that we would care to spend gems on. Rented servers, interesting (cosmetic) consumables that can be used in PVP, at least hot join. Template slots could be bought with gems, I’d buy em.

Besides that, I’ve already spent a lot on dyes and bag slots for my chars as I know many in my team have. Its not like we aren’t feeding them money. I honestly want to support them, but I certainly feel like I’m paying someone else’s tab cause I don’t have an time in PVE or even wvw and don’t intend to. I haven’t spent a dime with them since I started losing faith in their intent to deliver on PVP content.

We lost a lot of players yesterday :/

Just read the latest info from Jonathan Sharp. Not happy. We know the best players will want to participate in paid tournaments With that statement ArenaNet immediately closes the door to the non-hardcore sPvP crowd.

I believe Jonathan Sharp’s history in sPvP makes him a great person to be heading up the hardcore aspects of the game, but what GW2 desperately needs is mechanics in place to make sPvP fun for all. With GW2 most of the players are PvE crowd, they don’t want to cross over to sPvP and only be given the choice to do hot-join ad-hoc matches without any real structure or go full on hardcore and devote many hours a week to sPvP.

This is not good for GW2.

In the sPvP intro video up on this site where you hear him say it’s about you bring your A game and I’ll bring mine and one of us goes home licking our wounds I cringed and realized he is not the right person to head up sPvP in this game. That is not a personal attack, it’s an opinion I will qualify.

My A game as a casual MMORPG player is entirely different than the A game of someone who’s trying to compete at pro level. If I want to organize five members of my PvE guild and go into sPvP and play to win I should not be paired up against a five man group from a hardcore sPvP guild like Team Paradigm.

To make an analogy, this would be like a local community organized mens basketball team going up against NBA pros. The answer is not to have a single league system where only the pros can participate in the for pay Tournaments. This is a closed system. Coming from a pro background, Chaplin seems to only want to cater to this group.

Someone who plays 8-10 hours a week and wants to split their time between PvE/WvW and sPvP should have an sPvP system that accomodates that and not one that forces them to sPvP 100% of the time and be devoted to an sPvP guild. When they do enter a Tournament, They should be paired with similar skilled teams so the competition can be fair. That type of player represents the majority of the GW2 demographic. It’s very sad that sPvP forces players to devote 100% of themselves to that aspect of the game so often with these type of games. The more recreational serious type of players should have their own monthly and yearly rewards separate from the best of the best. Yes, I am proposing a two league system, I just don’t think the qualifier points should be an exclusive thing given out to only the pros. I don’t think newcomers who want to do paid Tournaments should be paired against a team in a hardcore sPvP guild.

If there are things planned to stop this sort of thing that I’m missing I would like ArenaNet to talk about it.

I think the sPvP side of the game would do good if Jonathan Sharp would either consider this other group of perhaps have a peer on the sPvP team with him that understands the dynamics of casual sPvP. The non-hardcore players don’t want to be treated like second class citizens just because we have other time commitments and can’t practice as often as the pros. We should have a league of our own with our own Paid Tournaments. Without such a thing, the real structured five man sPvP will remain a very niche, closed aspect of the game. Who is that good for? Why can’t there be a more open design. Why can’t games like Team Fortress 2 serve as an example?

well i will probably get this post deleted but i love GW2 and all this talk of how GW1 was a great game makes me sick…the game play was bad the pvp was horrible(all in my opinion) this game is so much better than GW1 that i had to prove to my friends that this game was completely different than GW1 so they would play it.

that is not the issue, the issue is that if we as a GW2 community want to see this game flourish we need to stick with it and be patient. if you dont care about the game or are too kitten off to stay. thats fine but dont post here. if you are leaving , just leave gracefully, the game and its developers know when you dont log back in, there is no reason to post rage quits posts and never have been.

We are the GW2 community and While the developers work behind the scenes and create the “arena” we are the “gladiators” so if you love this game put on a show and do what you love. if you leave you wont be missed, at least not by the majority.

Also, if “serious” PvPers are quitting over delays like this then maybe they werent serious about this game at all. maybe it was a flash in the pants and this was just the reason they needed to go back to whatever game they were already dominating in, and they jumped at it. either way when its ready and the paid tournaments come out and when the committed players are still playing , all of you who are leaving are more than welcome to come back. The Serious GW2 community will be willing to see what kind of challenge you all will be.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Just read the latest info from Jonathan Sharp. Not happy. We know the best players will want to participate in paid tournaments With that statement ArenaNet immediately closes the door to the non-hardcore sPvP crowd.

I believe Jonathan Sharp’s history in sPvP makes him a great person to be heading up the hardcore aspects of the game, but what GW2 desperately needs is mechanics in place to make sPvP fun for all. With GW2 most of the players are PvE crowd, they don’t want to cross over to sPvP and only be given the choice to do hot-join ad-hoc matches without any real structure or go full on hardcore and devote many hours a week to sPvP.

This is not good for GW2.

In the sPvP intro video up on this site where you hear him say it’s about you bring your A game and I’ll bring mine and one of us goes home licking our wounds I cringed and realized he is not the right person to head up sPvP in this game. That is not a personal attack, it’s an opinion I will qualify.

My A game as a casual MMORPG player is entirely different than the A game of someone who’s trying to compete at pro level. If I want to organize five members of my PvE guild and go into sPvP and play to win I should not be paired up against a five man group from a hardcore sPvP guild like Team Paradigm.

To make an analogy, this would be like a local community organized mens basketball team going up against NBA pros. The answer is not to have a single league system where only the pros can participate in the for pay Tournaments. This is a closed system. Coming from a pro background, Chaplin seems to only want to cater to this group.

Someone who plays 8-10 hours a week and wants to split their time between PvE/WvW and sPvP should have an sPvP system that accomodates that and not one that forces them to sPvP 100% of the time and be devoted to an sPvP guild. When they do enter a Tournament, They should be paired with similar skilled teams so the competition can be fair. That type of player represents the majority of the GW2 demographic. It’s very sad that sPvP forces players to devote 100% of themselves to that aspect of the game so often with these type of games. The more recreational serious type of players should have their own monthly and yearly rewards separate from the best of the best. Yes, I am proposing a two league system, I just don’t think the qualifier points should be an exclusive thing given out to only the pros. I don’t think newcomers who want to do paid Tournaments should be paired against a team in a hardcore sPvP guild.

If there are things planned to stop this sort of thing that I’m missing I would like ArenaNet to talk about it.

I think the sPvP side of the game would do good if Jonathan Sharp would either consider this other group of perhaps have a peer on the sPvP team with him that understands the dynamics of casual sPvP. The non-hardcore players don’t want to be treated like second class citizens just because we have other time commitments and can’t practice as often as the pros. We should have a league of our own with our own Paid Tournaments. Without such a thing, the real structured five man sPvP will remain a very niche, closed aspect of the game. Who is that good for? Why can’t there be a more open design. Why can’t games like Team Fortress 2 serve as an example?

No offense sir, but they can’t even pull off one league, how will they make it a 2 league system? I do agree that it would be unfair to the non hardcore players, but I highly doubt that will happen, they have given nothing but broken promises, or misleading answers that make us believe one thing so we shut up for a bit to then mislead us again when the time comes.

I am seeing a trend here, and I’m not sure how many people will stick around for it, I am trying my best…. but its tough when all my RL friends went back to WOW or League… I will hit them up whenever this supposed e-sport develops if I am able to make it through all their misleading BS, just hope its not too late.

Sadly, predictable…

Uh, isn’t the fact that all of the pros will move on to paid tournaments include the fact that free tournaments will be left wide open? If you want to tr something more competitive, you solo queue up for a free tournament, get matched with other players, play. You have friends? Then you group queue. The stakes won’t be as high, the pros won’t be stomping you, and you still get your taste outside of hot join. That’s why this paid tournament system is so important; it indirectly helps all of us casual pvp players by getting the pros out of our way, making free tournaments safe to use.

And your comparison to TF2 is weak. Competitive TF2 only allows a taste through community run leagues and tf2lobby.com. With paid tournaments, free tournaments essentially become the equivalent of the tf2 lobby system. Community run leagues and tournaments will come as soon as we can rent private servers. Some are forming right now, in preparation for the future and using the fact that you can “sync” yourselves into the same tournament if you queue at the same time.

And just like in TF2 and many other multiplayer online games, hot join is just something that people will play a lot of that has a lot more going on only to be toned down for comp play. For both GW2 and TF2, toning down means less players, as TF2 fits 12v12 on a lot of maps that the pros use for 6v6 or 9v9.

TL;DR There is already a casual league. It’s called free tournaments, which will become casual the second paid tournaments are out there.

Well I see you took the route of lets add more vanity items for people to waste their money. Instead of listening to the pvp community. You know the main back bone to this game.

Proven.2854:

If you want to tr something more competitive, you solo queue up for a free tournament, get matched with other players, play. You have friends? Then you group queue. The stakes won’t be as high, the pros won’t be stomping you, and you still get your taste outside of hot join

What most likely will occur is the hardcore teams will use the free tournaments as a testing grounds. Not avoid them. In fact with paid Tournaments in place I would imagine you’ll see a lot more activity from the hardcore sPvP teams across the board filling up both for pay and free Tournaments. Why would they not do this? Until ArenaNet implements some kind of algorithmic pairing best on the combined, evaluated skill level all teams in the tournament it will be gank fest for any non-hardcore player to even apply paid or unpaid.

I suppose the priority they are tackling this with does make some sense. Right now sPvP is kind of useless to everyone. I mean, you get glory points, but without the qualifier points in there has been no larger goal.

“Thanks again for your understanding and for hanging in with us while the team works to fix those bugs.”

I understand no game developers care more about their pvp’ers than there pve’ers. THIRTY yes THIRTY events got added to the game but they couldnt add one thing for pvp. Yeah they updated the score board….woooo. Its and iceberg cause most of there dev team is working on pve. Its the truth with most games ( i say most because even though all of they games i have played are this way I am sure there is one out there that does)

Proven.2854:

TL;DR There is already a casual league. It’s called free tournaments, which will become casual the second paid tournaments are out there.

problem is that there is still no challenge whatsoever for top teams besides queuing up at the same time and try to be lucky and get in the same tournament as the others

I love it how people quote GW2 for a major MMORPG title. It was only HYPED to be a major title, but in reality is nothing like it. So far from it, in fact.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Update on paid tournament status: we’re still working to correct some bugs, so unfortunately paid tournaments will not be activated today. We’re looking at tomorrow for those to come online. Thanks again for your understanding and for hanging in with us while the team works to fix those bugs.

Thank you, this is precisely the information we desire!

Sam, you’re making absolutely no sense. In defense of your ridiculous demand of a separate queue for PAID tournaments you insinuate that the super hardcore uber leets will continually plague free tourneys for “testing” purposes.

I know players that currently have over 100 tourney tickets. They are itching to stop the pub stomps and get away from you. There is literally no reason why a team would want to sit in free tourneys all day unless they themselves are casual.

Your demand for a complex matchmaking algorithm is insane and would only serve to implement more bugs and lengthen queue times. Paid tourneys are not for casuals, simple as that. Why would you want to PAY for a tourney as a casual?

Ostricheggs.3742:

Sam, you’re making absolutely no sense. In defense of your ridiculous demand of a separate queue for PAID tournaments you insinuate that the super hardcore uber leets will continually plague free tourneys for “testing” purposes.

I know players that currently have over 100 tourney tickets. They are itching to stop the pub stomps and get away from you. There is literally no reason why a team would want to sit in free tourneys all day unless they themselves are casual.

Your demand for a complex matchmaking algorithm is insane and would only serve to implement more bugs and lengthen queue times. Paid tourneys are not for casuals, simple as that. Why would you want to PAY for a tourney as a casual?

Makes no sense? Ridiculous? Insinuation? Insane? you’re over-dramatic, bub

@Ostricheggs.3742 What I said not only makes sense, it’s a proven system in real world sports. In real world sports you have amateur/local leagues, high school level, college level and the pro. You could even break it down more than that. Each of those leagues has their own monthly and yearly reward system. A high school football team would never be paired against a pro NFL team.

So juxtapose that against what ArenaNet has in the works for sPvP. In sPvP there are qualifier points that must be earned to get into the monthlys and (eventually) yearly. It’s best of the best mashup and since qualifier points can only be earned in for pay tournaments it is a single league system.

Once paid tournaments are in place there is only a single path for monthly and yearly rewards. If you’re in a PvE focused guild and you want to bring some guildies over to sPvP and play serious but at a recreational level (i.e. you aren’t planning to join a dedicated sPvP guild and commit 20, 30 hours a week in game devoted to sPvP in GW2), if you fall into this not-hardcore, but very interested in structured sPvP demographic then what will sPvP in GW2 offer for you?

It will only offer hot-join experience (which is not really structured since the team strategy is all ad-hoc, un practiced and not coordinated on voice chat) or it will offer free tournaments that only provide very short term objectives. There is no real advancement path for the GW2 player who wants to spread his time among WvW/PvE and sPvP in the system they are planning to deliver. Again, it caters to only best of the best. Going back to my American football analogy, this would be like a system with advancement, reward and recondition features designed only those who want to be NFL pros of GW2.

I don’t give a kitten if every other sPvP game on the planet works that way, it’s not good enough. To say just roll up your sleeves and put more time in is an ignorant response

There is plenty of research out there to qualify that one’s ability and commitment to practice and also inherent skill comes into play. We don’t all have the same amount of time to practice, we don’t all have the same inherent skill when it comes to playing but yet we’re all pitted together. Again, in real sports you would never take a recreational mens baseball team and pit them against NBA players. We all can’t be an NBA star but some of us are quite good at the game of basketball and we can form our own league and have our own monthly and yearly awards.

Private Tournaments wouldn’t go far enough either as these would require a third-party to put up the rewards and would provide no leaderboards in game. There needs to be a separate league for the more recreational type of player simply because that’s majority of the GW2 player base! The recreational, but serious types need their own monthly and yearly rewards and ladder and the best of the best need their own.

GW2 has two strong needs for sPvP. It needs to be taken seriously as an eSport but it also needs its sPvP side to be cater to it’s primary player base. A Player should not have to give up spending many hours a week in PvE in order to go to monthly or yearly sPvP tournaments. A league system that categorizes players and keeps the best of the best away from the recreational serious types would solve this problem in a proven way.

Without this here is what you will have

• sPvP recondition and monthly, yearly rewards limited to those who commit hundreds of hours a month in sPvP
• Mostly financial obligation to contribute to private server for practice time with team
• A sharp division between the players who do PvE/WvW and the sPvP crowd (do you really think there will be players winning the monthly and yearly tournaments who continue to spend any time in game outside of sPvP)?

You can’t argue it’s a closed system. You may disagree with me and prefer it that way (bad for the game, again it’s clear most of the player base is PvE or WvW and you want a system that entices these players to come over, not makes them feel like sPvP pointless beyond their occasional one free tournament victory)

Real world sports are the apples to E-sports oranges. I’m surprised you didn’t realize the impossible difference when you juxtaposed the two.

If you want the actual analogy, real world sports created systems based on the game itself. I can set up a league for Flag Football if I want to, and the people that join all have the same mindset as me: a casual league for fun.

The NFL isn’t regulating my fun, I can go out and have it once I find a ball and a yard. Why should GW2 have to regulate your fun? Find like-minded individuals and play against each other. Create a “minors” league between more casual guilds/players. Have everyone put gold or whatever reward into a pool and hand it out to the winners as you see fit.

What’s stopping you? Well, a few missing mechanics such as custom arenas, so yes, GW2 still has some work to do. However, expecting them to set up matchmaking is like expecting one single authority to regulate all matchmaking between all Football teams in the entire nation.

Once ANet gives you the ability to have your own playing field, it’ll be your own laziness alone that inhibits your ability to enjoy sPvP.

Cogbyrn.7283:

What’s stopping you? Well, a few missing mechanics such as custom arenas, so yes, GW2 still has some work to do. However, expecting them to set up matchmaking is like expecting one single authority to regulate all matchmaking between all Football teams in the entire nation.

Once ANet gives you the ability to have your own playing field, it’ll be your own laziness alone that inhibits your ability to enjoy sPvP.

If an NFL player has a string of bad games what stops him from going and joining a high school team and doing some ganking? Shame. His time commitment and inherent skill at the game has been branded on him also his age would make it difficult. In real world spots you having pairing provided through leagues and safe guards in place that generally prevent a group of players from one league of crossing over to other

Being able to pair the teams in a given tournament is critical to opening sPvP up to the non-hardcore crowd. If this doesn’t happen it will die and it should die. It effects the fun for everyone accept the hardcore crowd.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

If an NFL player has a string of bad games what stops him from going and joining a high school team and doing some ganking? Shame. His time commitment and inherent skill at the game has been branded on him also his age would make it difficult. In real world spots you having pairing provided through leagues and safe guards in place that generally prevent a group of players from one league of crossing over to other

This analogy is just so hilariously bad that I had to quote it for posterity.

What’s stopping an NFL player from joining a high school team? Probably the fact that he’s an adult, and he isn’t enrolled in that high school.

He would also probably just be benched, he’s known for being an NFL player, and he still belongs to that team. If he’s removed from his team, he has the option of joining the Canadian Football League. He can also join up with local flag football leagues, but they’ll probably know who he is and recognize he isn’t a fit for their league. They control who is in their league, after all.

I can’t believe this discussion is even happening.

I already stated I think this analogy doesn’t work. I took it the other direction because it’s easy to twist bad analogies to serve your own purposes. That’s how you know they’re bad.