Guild Wars 2

So I enjoy PVPing, and I’m in a guild that does mostly do PVE, so I am the de facto PVP Guild Mission organizer. After tonight, I think I’m done doing that.

The PVP (and WVW for that matter) Guild Missions are screwed up any which way.

They need to be DIFFERENT than standard PVE Guild Missions because of the timer – I understand giving a guild 15 minutes to get to 10 locations, or kill 3 bosses. But how can you reasonably give a guild a 30 minute time limit to complete any number of PVP tasks when they lose tons of that time to the Queue? Even if you wait until the last moment to pop the PVP Guild Mission, if you’ve got something like “Win 2 Stronghold matches”, you’ve got to be lucky with the queue to do it. We failed at that a few weeks ago despite getting two wins because we were in the queue for SEVEN MINUTES in between our two matches. How is that close to fair?

But I just accepted that and moved on, and decided not to bother with missions that require multiple iterations since the queue was so unreliable. (Or reliably long, I should say). Tonight, though, I lost my mind.

Why does participation require individual success??

If my guild is completing in the Guild Race, as long as I transform and attempt it, I don’t have to finish to get credit. If my guild does a bounty, I just need to tag a boss. If I literally WALK IN to the instance for a Guild Challenge, and they succeed, I get participation credit.

But if as part of a 5 person PVP team actively running around and trying to win I happen to not get one of the Top Stats for the match, I don’t get personal participation credit for being in the mission? Come ON!

PVP matches aren’t necessarily about who gets top stats. Sure, it’s nice, and I’m sure some folks will say “git gud” or something like that. In my particular case I got caught in a glitch and couldn’t move, and the other team seeing this decided not to do any damage since I could not get out. But even if I just flat out wasn’t very good (or at least, not as good as my colleages), why shouldn’t I get some reward too?

And apparently in reading some of the older reddit threads, the guild PVP mission ends as soon as a team succeeds and accomplishes the task, so if we have two teams going at the same time, one won’t get any credit at all after the other finishes?

I understand the desire for uniformity. And while I appreciate having the PVP and WVW guild missions to recognize the other areas of the game besides PVE, it’s clear that they are an ill-conceived after-thought.

Can you please put some effort into making them more reasonable? It wouldn’t even be hard.

You already have the “Team” system which has to be used for the Guild PVP Mission – just award everyone on the Team credit.

You have a timer system – why not just suspend the time of the Guild Mission count down during the time that the team is in the queue (your queue, which you can measure?)

I’ve always felt that one shouldn’t complain unless one has suggestions or solutions. Those, IMO, are two very reasonable remedies for the two problems I cited, and should be fairly easy to code from a dev standpoint.

That said, I think that you need someone with a PVP focus really take a look at the how the Guild Mission system works for PVP and WVW, and make it something that does actually work. Otherwise, it’s just too much aggravation to bother with, and that’s a shame.

Yeah I just ignore PVP missions all together. There are some solo do-able ones. But there’s always a minimum requirement of players. Guildies will happily do PVE or WVW, but never touch PVP.

Those missions seem like they need updating. I don’t do guild missions, but to me they should incentivise getting people to play the game mode as a group1st. Then have some rewards based on winning for the more competitive PvP guilds.

• Getting x kills in an hour. Could be done in the training area
• queue x number of matches in a day as 2+ team in ranked or unranked.
• participate as a team of 3+ in daily/monthly AT — bonus for wins
• complete ranked season with enough matches played for placement — bonus for placing higher

For the longer duration missions, players would commit to a guild for the duration regardless of their actual rep status during the period.

You are meant to do missions with like 20+ people, ie run multiple pvp rounds at once. Getting 2 wins on say 10 matches doesnt seem so unlikey.

The timer for the medium and hard missions needs to be higher. The OP is absolutely correct in this statement. Here is why:

• Ques as a 5 man team can take a ridiculously long amount of time in unranked/ranked, due to the fact that not many other 5 man teams are que’ing nowadays. Sometimes our guild team will complete the first portion of a medium task, still have plenty of time to complete a 2nd match with like16-20 minutes left but then the que for 2nd match takes 10 minutes, eating the mission timer.
• Running two separate teams for completion is not practical. With the way spvp guild community dynamic works, it is very difficult to get two functional teams running within a single guild, even within large guilds. Generally everyone in a guild would rather wait for a slot to open up, to be in with their preferred trusted captain and better players than shuffle themselves onto a B Team. The reasons are for win rate and to maintain that pride that all players have. No one wants to run as the Team B. Even if you had two teams running within a single guild, the chances are high that the Team A and the Team B would get que’d against each other due to lack of player base. This is counter productive for completing mission requirements concerning win rates.
• Larger guilds that actually have the man power to run two or even three teams at once are generally the types of guilds full of almost strictly PvE players. Their win rates are low even against random solo ques and these players usually find it bothersome to run PvP to begin with. This doesn’t synergize with any incentive or ability to complete missions. And even if they did run three teams, would everyone even get rewards for mission complete? I mean if the two first teams finish their matches and complete a mission before the third team finishes their match, does the third team even get rewards for participating?

All in all, these pvp guild missions could use a serious rework. At the very least, the timers for medium and hard need to fixed. Either create some system where the mission timer freezes during que and then resumes once a match begins or simply elongate the mission timers. Consider that even a pro team could find it impossible to complete medium and hard missions due to limitations on mission timers vs. que times.

As far as reworking pvp missions entirely, I dunno.
I’ll have to think about it and post ideas later.

You know what, rereading Faux’s post, he has the right idea for pvp mission reworks. It should be to better incentivize players to participate in the game modes not only as a team but as a guild:

• Easy mission – Win 1 match as a guild team All players in a match, who are in that guild and tagged up together in some guild team, receive credit upon mission completion so long as they ran a match during the mission timer. This way two teams could run, one of them gets a win and completes the mission but the 2nd team who loses, still receives credit because they participated within the time frame. Only players tagged together in a guild team receive credit. 30 minute timer is fine on this. Plenty of time to que and win one match and possibly time to play/win a 2nd if the guild fails to win the first match. This would help propagate more 5 man teams again who are playing to win. ~ 5 players required. Why 30 minutes? Remember that some of us when in a 5 man team have ridiculously long que times. Also remember this is supposed to be an easy mission.
• Easy mission – 5 players from the guild tagged up but doesn’t have to be in a guild team, win the game they are in, Ranked or Unranked. So a 5 man team could complete this mission in one game or 5 separate players running solo win their games to complete the mission. Any player who is tagged up for the guild, who participates within the time frame will receive credit, whether they win or lose their match. Again, this encourages everyone to try in their matches. 30 minutes should be allowed for this mission timer. Why 30 minutes? Same as above.
• Medium mission – Same as the first easy mission but the guild teams will be required to win two games within a 45 minute time frame. 45 minutes is realistic concerning que times and how sometimes matches can be very long if there is much node neutralization happening, stalling point ticks. 45 minutes is also possibly long enough to win one, lose one and then win another if the matches happen to be all short with lucky quick que times. 45 minutes should be the timer on this.
• Medium mission – Same as second easy mission but the 5 players are required to win two games within a time frame or alternatively, 10 tagged players only need to win one each, in unranked or ranked of course. 45 minute timer.
• Hard mission – Guild team must participate in and win a match in automated tournament. All guild teams within a guild receive credit if they participate in the AT but one guild team must get a win to complete the mission. 30 minute timer is fine for this.

These missions encourage participation in all pvp game modes and the propagation of more actual 5 man guild teams, which we need. They encourage participation where players are actually trying to win. Which brings me to my final point and suggestion:

• Remove missions revolving around “get top stats for mission complete” because it encourages teams to end a match quickly by throwing, so they can beat the mission timer before it runs out. The community does not need anymore incentive to throw matches. Just remove top stat missions and replace them with some other goal that involves wanting to win matches.

Dawdler the problem with that theory is that you only get credit if you have achieved the goal and your match has ended at or before the mission success. If the mission is to win 2 matches and you have 10 teams participating, only the guild members in the first 2 matches to end in a win will receive participation credit. That, to me, is part of the issue.

I mean, these are easy things to fix. I agree that as a concept they could use to be re-worked.

But as they stand now, they are directly contrast with the PVE Guild Missions where all you have to do is support your guild’s efforts. For example, in a Guild Race you can transform once and then help your guild by killing the Champs along the way once you are no longer transformed. You’re still helping with the race, and you still get credit.

I don’t care what you say, if you are part of a five person team in a PVP match, unless you are AFK-ing you are contributing to that success whether or not you get a Top Stat. It’s ludicrous that you don’t receive any credit for it.