Guild Wars 2

So I have entered ranked to try and get ascended gear. I am a lvl 1 bronze, so really, nothing special. I have over 100 games played in pvp. but most of that was from before HoT and just in unranked.

Now that I am trying to play serious the flaws of PVP come to light.

Hard to read confusion
I play Smite, I play Overwatch and I play paladins. For the sack of comparison I will stick with smite since the other 2 are FPS.
In Smite, thanks to a slower pace in terms of both movement and skill usage. plus the closer perspective. it is much more clear what is happening. while I don’t expect this from GW2, what I should expect is that characters have voice lines that make what they are casting noticeable. Hearing Scylla shout sic em, follow by the gnashing and barking of her wolves, you know she just used her skill 1 and can react.
while this isn’t always the case. for the most part, you learn the unique sounds, like the cracking of Bastet’s whip, and the yowling of her pounce. A lot of sounds in GW2 jumble together.

Of course I understand part of the reason Smite has casting voicelines goes with the fact that it is a skill shot based game. where GW2 is targeting based so hearing the casting might not save you anyway cause it will home in. but hey, thats what dodge and blocks are for.

Another contributing factor to the chaos is not knowing who you are fighting at a glance. GW2 lacks on glance identification, there needs to be some kind of floating icon above their head that displays their class.

Bad mini map.
The mini map needs to be a simple layout map instead of a detailed one. and I would probably opt for simple dots instead of the class icon. because when there are multiple characters in the same spot. that class icon is unhelpful since that point on the map is a jumble of icons

lack of Callouts
A voice line system would go a long way towards facilitating teamwork. Callouts like “Attack Home, Attack middle, Attack Far, Defend the base, Attack the enemy lord, Attack Svanir, Attack the Chieftain, Help, Retreat, Enemy incoming”

Argol Vazin.3061:

So I have entered ranked to try and get ascended gear. I am a lvl 1 bronze, so really, nothing special. I have over 100 games played in pvp. but most of that was from before HoT and just in unranked.

Now that I am trying to play serious the flaws of PVP come to light.

Hard to read confusion
I play Smite, I play Overwatch and I play paladins. For the sack of comparison I will stick with smite since the other 2 are FPS.
In Smite, thanks to a slower pace in terms of both movement and skill usage. plus the closer perspective. it is much more clear what is happening. while I don’t expect this from GW2, what I should expect is that characters have voice lines that make what they are casting noticeable. Hearing Scylla shout sic em, follow by the gnashing and barking of her wolves, you know she just used her skill 1 and can react.
while this isn’t always the case. for the most part, you learn the unique sounds, like the cracking of Bastet’s whip, and the yowling of her pounce. A lot of sounds in GW2 jumble together.

Of course I understand part of the reason Smite has casting voicelines goes with the fact that it is a skill shot based game. where GW2 is targeting based so hearing the casting might not save you anyway cause it will home in. but hey, thats what dodge and blocks are for.

Another contributing factor to the chaos is not knowing who you are fighting at a glance. GW2 lacks on glance identification, there needs to be some kind of floating icon above their head that displays their class.

Bad mini map.
The mini map needs to be a simple layout map instead of a detailed one. and I would probably opt for simple dots instead of the class icon. because when there are multiple characters in the same spot. that class icon is unhelpful since that point on the map is a jumble of icons

lack of Callouts
A voice line system would go a long way towards facilitating teamwork. Callouts like “Attack Home, Attack middle, Attack Far, Defend the base, Attack the enemy lord, Attack Svanir, Attack the Chieftain, Help, Retreat, Enemy incoming”

Has it crossed your mind that GW2’s PVP is fine as it is, and it’s you that has to adapt, not the other way around? Perhaps the game doesn’t have to spell out who you’re fighting, but you have to take a look. Perhaps the mini map is just that – mini – and not meant to be a huge strategic tool.

You freely admit to being a newbie but already you feel experienced enough to point out “serious” flaws? It’s not like your input is invalid, but I have ~150 ranked games played in total in GW2’s PVP mode, 90 of these in the current season, and I wouldn’t even know where to begin voicing feedback of this kind because I have to be honest: I know almost nothing, and any input would be flawed because of this.

Smite, Overwatch and other games might be more comfortable. Doesn’t mean that GW2 has to change.

You can see the class once you targeted the enemy; also turning on the standard enemy models in options helps a lot.
Minimap would be useless without class icons, it is extremely important to see who did go far and who fights on mid etc.
Voices in GW2 are utterly useless, apart from “your lord is under attack” and “trebuchet!” there is literally 0 useful ones.
150 games is basically a start and at that point every groupfight looks like a huge clustercat – once you used to this game you will distinguish enemy skill animations better and will be able to counter/react to them efficiently.

I’d have to disagree with you here. When I have issues with a class, I study that class and play it a bit in unranked. Then I know how it plays, what to predict a player to do on that class, and what animations to look out for. For instance, if a DH throws his F1 spear at me, I dodge it. If I failed to dodge it, I prepare for the pull that I know is coming by either making sure I have defense skills to ready to survive a burst, popping stability, or breaking the chain with distance.

As for the mini-map, the icons are very important. Being able to see what classes are where at a glance is a vital tool. As for calling targets, we already have that in game, as well as the ability to ping different icons on the mini-map to help direct teammates.

The difference between a team that utilizes the call target system and min-map and a team that doesn’t is huge. I don’t really see an issue here.