Guild Wars 2

LACK OF DUELS:
The problem here is yet again not developers being lazy to introduce duels, no. The problem here lies in class balancing and the lack off (will talk later in this blog.) Imagine mesmer with 3-4 stealths and phantasms dealing up to 5k damage with illusionary unload? Or thief with Cloak and Dagger + Back Stab the one who can crit up to 40% of your health bar and vanish up to 6 times in 1 match?!

Yeah good luck balancing here… The problem with introducing dueling in GW2 will also be admitting that the balance in the game is an absolute joke outside of objective playing for battle grounds / warzones.

The sad thing is that people are still dueling – they join the specific game / server with no people in it and start dueling. Unfortunately they do however have to deal with random people joining and playing warzones like they are supposed to (killing everything and capping nodes). Which makes it a pretty irritating experience for random people joining somebody’s dueling game and people in a dueling game having interruptions.

SUGGESTION ABOUT DUELING:

You can’t stop or force people to change their mind about dueling. If they want to they will find a way how. What you created is a poor joke of a dueling experience with tons of frustrations! If developers want to go that route of not introducing dueling in the game – fine, but they are missing out on a big aspect of PvP that MMOs have to offer. Rework class balance reintroduce it – yup thats all I got when it comes to suggestions about dueling.
BORING MONOTONE BATTLE GROUNDS:

For people that a new to MMOs, or PC gaming then battle grounds in GW 2 will look fun. For seasoned PvP veterans this is a joke… and a bad one…

When I quit this game the things that made people rage is just 1 simple mechanic – node capping (capping the objective points) with a slight variations with one having water combat (YUCK!). 2 more battle grounds came out – and what do we have – MORE node capping and a slight stench of water combat.

ENOUGH! It is boring. Essentially all we have is 3 node capping over and over and over and over and over again. The worst part of it is that you get to chance to play your favorite one once in a rotation of 5 and if you want to get into another one you have to leave your own warzone / battle ground and join a new one.

PLEASE for the love of twitch, youtube, google and anything else that is holy in PvP come up with some other designs for battle grounds. 5 maps of the absolutely the same game mechanic is over done. (FYI the most fune is prolly frost of niftell or w.e its called beause at least there is much easier to find and engage in team fights.)

I agree.
As a Guild Wars PvP-only player, I’ve forced myself to play PvP because I found it way too boring
.
I’ll pay 100$ too to have a Guild Wars-like game with better graphics and Guild Wars 2 skill/combat system. Why ArenaNet betrayed his most beloved fans, the PvP players?

He sounds like he is mad it isn’t WoW…

But anyway a couple of things – scoreboards, he claims raw healing / raw damage means it lets people know they are doing something right, erm, well that sounds pretty newbish to me.

Apparently he has never played a game where bad players pad their damage / healing numbers with AOE damage / group heals to top the scoreboards, whilst better players actually focus fire, use skills that don’t appear on the scoreboard (CC, debuffs, etc) and in the case of healers actually keep people up rather than fluff AOE heals and win the game.

As for arenas, again sounds more like he is just mad they didn’t have his prefered format, it doesn’t seem to prevent LoL having 30 million+ active accounts and the arena version Bloodline Champions well not having that (or WoW despite having the huge userbase failing as an e-sport, in part because arena is too simplistic).

Also in regard to duels, yes they should of had some sort of system built in, but where is this mysterious MMORPG with 1v1 balance, because it is not WoW, Rift, etc.

And yes they should have had more modes, at least for hotjoin, but as LoL shows millions of people are quite happy to play the same mode, even the same map over and over again.

PvP in GW2 would be in a much better state if they had simply actually stuck to their mantra of “when it’s ready”, instead they launched a half finisihed product missing features that should of been there from the start.

And the feature that stands out the most is matchmaking, you would think the guys who make these games would learn, but this is yet another MMORPG that launched instanced PvP without matchmaking and then once the population has collapsed decides to put in matchmaking in with a population too small for it to be effective.

I do agree to pretty much everything BUT do we really need a “pro” to mention all these obvious flaws?^^

I am pretty sure most PvP players know about all these probems and if we do, Anet does too. Remember, they have people working full time just to improve the game. It’s not about knowing, it’s much rather about fixing these problems. And a “pro” complaining about PvP won’t change Anets mindset.

Yeah… I mean I’m pretty much on the verge of taking a break from GW2 myself but it is not for any of these reasons. Arena is the most shallow type of game mode there is and would be horrible as an official game mode.

If I were a decision-maker/dev at ANet, I would try to model the game after similar successful competitive games, and the only thing similar would be MoBA’s (LoL/DotA). These games have 1) a strong match-making/MMR system, 2) a ton of hero options (GW2’s equivalent would be builds), 3) a robust scoreboard/player stat tracking system that allows player to visualize how they are doing.

All this other nonsense about deathmatches, duels, 1v1 balance, various game modes, holy-trinity is moot. If anything, these things have been proven to NOT work as no game with these features in it every exploded on the competitive scene. And this is coming from a hardcore GW1 player who loved that system as well. Both were fun, but if I were to bet which system would have more success to explode on the competitive scene, I would bet on GW2’s system.

Right now what’s holding GW2 back can be mostly summed up as:
1) lack of PvP systems (custom servers, ladder, player stat tracking, and only recently was a rudimentary match-making system implemented, etc.)
2) lack of varied builds/balance between builds. You can have the best combat system in the world, but anybody will get bored if the class you play only have one viable PvP build.

Blackhat.4016:

I do agree to pretty much everything BUT do we really need a “pro” to mention all these obvious flaws?^^

I am pretty sure most PvP players know about all these probems and if we do, Anet does too. Remember, they have people working full time just to improve the game. It’s not about knowing, it’s much rather about fixing these problems. And a “pro” complaining about PvP won’t change Anets mindset.

Pro shmo has nothing to do with the fact that when we all listed the game mechanics, class imbalances and what we would like to see – Developers from ArenaNet just turned around and shoved another “node capping” maps right into our faces. YEAH Awesome feedback mechanism we have here going

So…essentially a huge rant about mesmers and thieves alone and wrapping it under the guise of genuine criticism. Nice.

Anyone who thinks that Null Field which only an idiot would remain in for more than one second should be an elite skill…I mean mind blows. If it was so kitten awesome, every mesmer would be running with it. But they don’t do they?

On the weakness of that observation alone this entire “OMG nerf thieves/mesmers” post deserves to be ignored.

When did he stop playing? It seems pretty outdated to complain about Thiefs and Mesmers.

He claims that conquest mode in comparison to arena is monotone. But in my opinion arena sounds more boring, when it’s just “all about crowd control or focus fire, they are also about healing and healing prevention”. This doesn’t even sound like a game mode, he’s just listing the combat mechanics. I guess conquest can be pretty boring, if you can’t come up with strategies.

He then goes on to explain why arena wouldn’t work in GW2. If he gets why arena isn’t in the game, why does he want to force it? I mean, does he really want to bring the trinity to GW2, so arena would work? He would change the core mechanics of this game just to play this game mode?
I stopped reading right there. I guess it’s nice that he got some accomplishments and tries to sound all clever and stuff. But he shouldn’t mistake that for stating his opinions as facts. This forum already got enough of that.

XIII.9615:

When did he stop playing? It seems pretty outdated to complain about Thiefs and Mesmers.

He claims that conquest mode in comparison to arena is monotone. But in my opinion arena sounds more boring, when it’s just “all about crowd control or focus fire, they are also about healing and healing prevention”. This doesn’t even sound like a game mode, he’s just listing the combat mechanics. I guess conquest can be pretty boring, if you can’t come up with strategies.

He then goes on to explain why arena wouldn’t work in GW2. If he gets why arena isn’t in the game, why does he want to force it? I mean, does he really want to bring the trinity to GW2, so arena would work? He would change the core mechanics of this game just to play this game mode?
I stopped reading right there. I guess it’s nice that he got some accomplishments and tries to sound all clever and stuff. But he shouldn’t mistake that for stating his opinions as facts. This forum already got enough of that.

Because almost the entire GW1 fan base coming to GW2 expected arenas.

bhagwad.4281:

So…essentially a huge rant about mesmers and thieves alone and wrapping it under the guise of genuine criticism. Nice.

Anyone who thinks that Null Field which only an idiot would remain in for more than one second should be an elite skill…I mean mind blows. If it was so kitten awesome, every mesmer would be running with it. But they don’t do they?

On the weakness of that observation alone this entire “OMG nerf thieves/mesmers” post deserves to be ignored.

If I were to guess he’s probably just going by the incorrect skill description implying that null field removes ALL boons/conditions per pulse, when in reality it only removes one per pulse.

But yeah you would think a “pro” would actually know what the skills of other classes actually do. “Know thy enemy” and all that good stuff.

Not that interesting and i don’t agree with this guy on most of his points.

-This game doesnt REALLY need arenas, i mean, fights with objectives are fine and add something to the game, but of course, arenas will be welcome when they come, and also, what’s the problem of fights beeing too fast? He’s probably just used to wow (where 20 min match are the bread of the day) where theres a 5min cd stun and after wasting it they have to wait another 5 mins to try to burst and end game. —-> Just because fights are fast it doesnt mean they wouldnt be about skill and coordination.
Bottom line is, this is the not the problem of this game. We dont need/want healers!

-Lack of duels, ok we could have dueling but its not a key feature. And yes, there would be no balancing, but there isnt balance in wow (the game op wants gw2 to be) neither.

-5 maps of the same mode, yes thats a problem. With the time they spent designing 2 maps they could have introduced a new mode.

-Regarding class balance, i’m sorry to disappoint you but there will never really be a class balance. They can tweek it and revamp somethings, but there will always be some classes that will feel unbalanced. Balancing is a thing thats is never finished, there will never be a point where we can say “there, everything is at the same level”. And OP is really exagerating, there isnt a “HUGE” unbalance.

-Scoreboard isnt an issue either, maybe scoring distribution is, the scoreboard not having damage/heal etc etc is fine (it just seems again like OP wants this to be wow with better graphics)

-Make hotjoins 5v5 —-> problem solved.

-Heartseeker needs some tweeks, yes, but all professions have abilities that may seem op at first glance (well maybe not warriors).

Overall bad post, not many new/good ideas and after reading this it just seems like op doesnt really know the game and its real problems:
-Too much “this isnt WoW” QQ and too much thief and mesmer rant.
-Not a mention on the only real OP profession(eles) and the most UP profession (warrior).
-Not a mention to lack of build diversity.
PS: like skyro, if im gonna quit this game, its not because any of the reasons op said.

Anet listen to the man who spoke !!!!!!

No complains about guardians or elem? Ok.
I wonder if he even noticed that thieves don’t have other useful spells except that.
LOL HE KNOWS BALANCE GUISE.

lol arena healers, probably the worst idea ive ever heard on these silly forums. the lack of holy trinity is actually working out for the game very nicely. the only issue is bunker imbalance, i.e. guards and eles being the strongest. every prof should have a viable bunker spec, and the bunker needs to be slightly nerfed so they have less condition cleanses. condition specs should be a hard counter to the bunker playstyle, which simply isnt the case now.

Agree with the basis of many points though not all completely accurately display the problem.

Lack of healers
I am tempted to say it was just a mistake. Really Gw1 was based entirely around the monk. The design of the monk was really iconic to the game and all the depth that class brought to the table is missing in gw2. It hurts the degree to which fights can scale on the high end and takes away the depth or coordinating attack upon multiple fronts to apply pressure. Now this isn’t to say it can’t still work, it will just work in more of a niche sense. It does have a large impact on what game modes work. A lot more can still be done with the supportive aspects of the game without committing to healers though.

Game modes
With the choice of game modes I don’t think it was a terrible choice in itself. What was a terrible choice was to only focus on this single game mode. The game mode itself doesn’t encompass enough of the spectrum to stand as a single entity. Dueling would have been a good option to help, but the game has a lot of core issues that need to be worked out first.

The big difference between a game like league and gw2 is phases. League progresses, Gw2 remains static. Static games don’t have as much re-playability and as such can’t really be stand alone. Other options are needed, even if only one of them is truly supported competitively. Arenas would also be a rather static game mode and wouldn’t alone fix the game but could help break it up. Right now though given the low population of the game taking an approach of giving a large number of options could be bad by splitting the population up too much. Could of worked before but is probably too late now.

Rewards
Really are non-existent. The funny thing is for a number of players they help deal with repetitive gameplay thus giving the devs a chance to implement more options to break the repetitiveness. But really there were no reward systems in place so the population drops quicker than it would have otherwise. But rewards could still be added to try and bring some of the PvE crowd over. Something that could inflate the population but would require other areas to be fixed first to have a lasting effect.

Class balance.
Yeah core mechanics need refinement. Counterplay just wasn’t fully taken into account. There is just so many things that could be redesigned around counterplay.

One thing I find a bit funny. Warrior are made to be vulnerable to conditions such that they must rely on their teammates. Now who are these teammates that pack enough condition removal to help a warrior over come this weakness? Few classes have strong team oriented condition removal, usually having lengthy cds. I don’t think I have seen team coordinate this type of play. Also the thing that really makes you go huh, warriors have arguably the best team oriented condi removal. How does that work?

Thats really just an aside but just showcases how core class identities weren’t entirely thought through and a lot of work can still be done there.

Arenas are the most boring thing in existance. No real means of using the surroundings, being limited to a small space is just annoying and mindnumbingly monotone.

Malcastus.6240:

Arenas are the most boring thing in existance. No real means of using the surroundings, being limited to a small space is just annoying and mindnumbingly monotone.

i don’t get how ppl like you think. do you find combat to be boring?

milo.6942:

Malcastus.6240:

Arenas are the most boring thing in existance. No real means of using the surroundings, being limited to a small space is just annoying and mindnumbingly monotone.

i don’t get how ppl like you think. do you find combat to be boring?

It’s just different strokes for different folks. Diversity of game modes is definitely a good thing for this – but at the same time it has some severe implications on balancing the professions. I can imagine that is part of the reason why we only have conquest and no duels.

I’ve read the 1st post.

about 1v1s. Im used to believe, that GW2 is a tactical game. There is an option, that u can swap characters before the tourney starts(even in-game, but i believe its gonna be fixed anyways). Therefore, if you honestly believe, that a class which u wud prolly face 1v1 is stronger than urs, then counter pick it. Or run the same build.

Most ppl are leaving GW2 not thanks to 3nodes system.

People are leaving GW2, because there is no motivation in PvP.
It has no challenge atm. No ladder, no championships, no goal at all.
There is no observable ranking. 2 things that can be seen: rank & QPs. Both of those depend on time spend in-game. Which seems pretty unfair to people, who come home and wanna play 1-2 hrs after job.

Yet, many people stay, because Anet managed to develop the most amazing and most skill req(well i believe so) MMORPG. Its like what for do you need monks, when you have stun breakers, 2 dodge rolls & vigor?(more over your teammates can actually heal you up).

Once again to stress my point. Hardcore PvPers need some motivation to play it.

P.S.: About the MMR system. Its pretty horrible, cuz i farmed it up in couple of days, when the map has just released(won about 70-80 matches, lost about 4-5). Now when i solo/due que with my friend i face only decent premades AND have guys with 10-19 rank in my team. MMR idea is good, but it needs to be separated(team from solo/due que)

Leadfoot.9071:

milo.6942:

Malcastus.6240:

Arenas are the most boring thing in existance. No real means of using the surroundings, being limited to a small space is just annoying and mindnumbingly monotone.

i don’t get how ppl like you think. do you find combat to be boring?

It’s just different strokes for different folks. Diversity of game modes is definitely a good thing for this – but at the same time it has some severe implications on balancing the professions. I can imagine that is part of the reason why we only have conquest and no duels.

Well I do believe the vast majority of people want some way to duel or practice team fights and stuff. Dueling is fun. Arena is fun. Practicing with your guildies is fun. Testing out wonky builds with them is even more fun.

But I think all these things are best served via custom servers. In SC, the majority of the playerbase didn’t actually play on the ladder, most were playing custom games.

And srsly, I have a feeling, that old gamers have simply forgotten how “good” was WoW’s 1st year, GW1’s 1st year. Take a look at the new MMOs (around 2010ish). Im pretty sure, 90% of those people abandoned during first year(and please name at least one, so i can change my mind).

People want everything from the start. They are LAZY and dont want to spend more time in game to understand how it works.

dont agree with most of your points op. sound like your mad that this aint wow. this isnt wow. this isnt gw. this is gw2. so if you dont like it dont let the door hit you on the way out.

I agree with some of your points, but please keep in mind that I’ve only recently started getting serious into the pvp side.

I think a more thorough score board that shows dmg done, hp healed, and could probably toss in a few more stats as well or just more detailed info would do amazing things for the game.

I love the downed state and I’m saying that as a ranger. I also love the challenge of taking down a mesmer/thief/ele, sure they are annoying, but it feels so much better finishing them than anything else.

By the end of the OP though, I really just felt like this is a Mesmer/Thief hate thread, and overall a pretty poor review due to the fact that 80% is about 2 out of the 8 classes.

Its not really the gameplay, its the fact that everyone is mostly the same, there are not many unique builds at all.

This guy calls Node capping and down state monotone and stupid.
If fact he suggest a 4-wall arena WHICH IS NOT- in any form whatsoever monotone??
i feel like i’m reading a post about a guy who plays warcraft all the time, he played GW2 for 2 hours and he starts trashing it
i agree This game has some balance issues accross the classes, but the combat system of GW2 is the best one i’ve ever seen so far in mmos, and i would never,EVER change it
(dynamic fights, Fast reactions, ability to cast while run, dodge, COMBO fields )
ETC

thank you for taking time and letting us know why you quited GW2,
now please, move along

Arx.4891:

and the last thing anyone serious about pvp wants is a confusing, nonsensical debate over complete non-issues.

If we had all the whiners from the various forum sections , we woulddnt be in this situation , where we must delete the hotjoin in order to inject the ppl tPvP , or that we cant implant solo-group ques in order not split up even more the population :P
But thanks god alll the whiners are quiting and we can hapily play our game :P

Fourth.1567:

Few classes have strong team oriented condition removal, usually having lengthy cds. I don’t think I have seen team coordinate this type of play. Also the thing that really makes you go huh, warriors have arguably the best team oriented condi removal. How does that work?

I think the main speedbump here is that skill bars are given to players via the weapons, there really aren’t any decisions to be made. In gw1 if a team chose to run condition overload, they would have to give up a lot of other utility / variety of damage, this decision simply doesn’t exist in gw2.

Why did I decide to bring up condition builds? Because a condition build will always have tons of conditions on you – they are not defeated by removing conditions en masse. Instead you must either nascar better than them, or explode them before you crumble to the pressure.

It seems to me that access to lots of conditions is just too easy and doesn’t give a lot up – if I’m just talking crazy though, do tell me.

I agree with him on most of the post. The scoreboard part is effy, but on class balance he makes a point. I went from engineer to mesmer. Im 20-5 in kills, and 8/1 loss ration on matches. I hardly ever play regular non turny spvp, and when I do mesmers and thiefs do take up a majority of the population. Both my Gw1 pvp buddies and WoW pvp buddies came to GW2 and were very disappointed by it. None of them play anymore because most of the problems he listed in this article. I may stick around for another week or so, but considering i’ve gained about 65% of a level in 3 hours of non stop tournaments, Ill probably end up going back to PvE and doing mostly WvW. I really hope they get to improving it, gw1 pvp was the best part of the game and the best in the gaming industry for its time.

I would just like to point out that saying that node capping/battlegrounds is boring is only your opinion. I personally have always enjoyed battlegrounds objective based pvp over straight killing or death match and have many friends who feel the same way, adding a deathmatch or non objective based arenas shouldn’t be off the table as a possibility but taking out or redesigning the game hurting battleground style pvp to introduce arenas would not be a step forward.

Hawke.6943:

This guy calls Node capping and down state monotone and stupid.
If fact he suggest a 4-wall arena WHICH IS NOT- in any form whatsoever monotone??

In a good game (requires some balance), fighting an enemy team with your team never gets old. Capping a point however, got old to me after first week of GW2.

Dinster.7063:

And srsly, I have a feeling, that old gamers have simply forgotten how “good” was WoW’s 1st year, GW1’s 1st year.

Cause the company that made GW1 could not learn from its mistakes and strong points while making GW2? So many people seem to think this, yet I fail to see why…

Dinster.7063:

Yet, many people stay, because Anet managed to develop the most amazing and most skill req(well i believe so) MMORPG.

Your definition of “many” is probably different from mine. I counted the hot join browser on a weekend night, and there were roughly 400 people in it. Compare to the few million copies that have been sold, and the conclusion should come easily.

Kando.9046:

I would just like to point out that saying that node capping/battlegrounds is boring is only your opinion. I personally have always enjoyed battlegrounds objective based pvp over straight killing or death match and have many friends who feel the same way, adding a deathmatch or non objective based arenas shouldn’t be off the table as a possibility but taking out or redesigning the game hurting battleground style pvp to introduce arenas would not be a step forward.

+1

That being said there is something missing from GW2 pvp. I just could not find it fun. The lack of builds, the broken and buggy traits. The meta that is just not fun. Sitting on a node for 15 min while my team fights gets old very fast.

It also never felt like it took much skill to play. Perhaps that’s because there was not an MMR system but really who won a fight had more to do with who had the right build and who didn’t. Skill could not over come builds that just didn’t work. In the end my team would just roll most groups, which is not fun.

While wow was never balanced, it was at least fun. Using CC’s to control or at least to get away was fun (not that it was always fun, kitten you stealth). Abilities felt like they did damage, conditions were fun and not just spammed by everyone. Much more so than GW2 the fights felt like it came down to skill if you won or not (when some spec were close to balanced).

The problem is that GW2 tried to RUN when it could not even WALK yet. Going for the esport before you even had a fun pvp was a bad idea.

Having one shot wonders in hot join is no different than the OP Spec that would pop up in wow. It takes fun away from the players. And just because it sucks in tpvp does not mean that its bad for the game.

Remove hot join and make a solo que, and change the scoring system so that the winner gets way more glory then the losing team. This is the only way to make players try to win vs just farming kills and glory.

please nerf forum rage. it’s so overplayed.

ppl are just upset b/c for all GW2’s faults, there is nothing better. so let’s just grade this on a curve for now, shall we?

nailed it. good job.

Dueling needs no balancing, the fact this guy says that to introduce dueling the professions and specs must first be balanced so that every profession has the same chance to win a 1v1 is just utterly daft.

If people want to play 1v1 that is their choice with whatever they bring, they can organise who and what to fight themselves.

It’s a team based game and a team balanced game.

Arenas with passive healing to replace the lack of healer in GW2? Nah.

Seems like someone is just used to playing a mindless pure damage build profession that relies on someone else to do the real work of cleansing negative effects and keeping him alive while he just runs around spamming attacks skills, or worse – a macro.

If you can’t look after yourself with ‘6’, use situational awareness, dodge and the other skills you have to avoid or deal with damage, this is perhaps not the game for you.
Not so much carrying here like in other games with healers that did the real work.

Ezrael.6859:

healers that did the real work.

And always got blamed even tho he did right >_>

Watching this guys GW2 footage on Twitch sums it up really.

He plays a Warrior with no situational awareness, no consideration for what he’s facing.

He just runs into combat against everyone, doesn’t consider where his team mates are and what they are doing or even which enemy on the team would be a good choice to attack first.

Just runs in and starts attacking on his own and gets killed 1v3 because he thinks he’s Rambo. He then rage quits out of a tournament because they are down 60-150!…

It all clearly comes from a mentality of playing a mindless DPS build that relies on someone else to do the work of keeping him alive, he’s hopeless without someone to hold his hand and carry him.

Either this type of player will learn to look after themselves in a game with much more dynamic combat where you need to be responsible for yourself and join in with team work.
Or they will not be able to handle it and should be left to just head back to WoW or whatever caters to the type of play style they want.

GW2 was not built for arena based PvP, and lots of us are glad it isn’t. As someone who used to play a healer in MMOs but got sick of it in PvP due to the mentality of DPS players I’m so glad we have our own heals in GW2.
We are sick of arena based PvP where most people play mindless DPS that charge into the enemy spamming their attack macro then shout at the few healers on the team for not being able to keep them up 1v4.

If you want that kind of PvP, it isn’t here.

I miss the holy trinity. But that ship has sailed.
AT this point it would be a betrayal of the game vision and the amount of people playing in this game to bring back the holy trinity.

faeral.7120:

please nerf forum rage. it’s so overplayed.

ppl are just upset b/c for all GW2’s faults, there is nothing better. so let’s just grade this on a curve for now, shall we?

There are lots of things better, and everyone left to go play them. Were do you think they all went?

Problem is that our expectations were a lot higher than what Anet had ready for the release day. Releasing the game when it wasn’t good enough to satisfy players needs was a terrible idea. All they had to do is what Frictional Games did. To postpone the release date and work on the game more, and make it ready. Choosing fast money rather than good quality is always bad, but then again I didn’t expect more.

I love the people saying that people who don’t like the game should leave. People have already done this and now there are maybe 300 players logged into sPvP in NA at any given time. So keep telling people to leave whenever they say something you don’t like, I wonder how this game will be in a year or so.

This guy makes some good points and the people opposing him address irrelevant nuances rather than the main issue at hand here. Arena net has backed themselves into a corner by not having a dedicated healer class in GW2. While I think this has hurt the game in other ways, his point is that you can’t have Arena type PvP because damage is extremely high and there is no healer class to counteract this.

I bought this game under the assumption that sPvP would be developed and keep me interested for a long time. What I got at release was something that could be described as an alpha client. Perhaps we’re in open beta now but none of that matters because people lost interest within the first few weeks.

I’ve realized that this is a PvE game and that sPvP is just an afterthought that was used to generate interest but never really implemented.

How is his assessment of why arena won’t work here any different than what WoW deals with? (You know, the only game with arena) — not even mentioning the same team compostions were always on top of their respective brackets (for example: RMP).

I stopped as a multi-season glad, and if memory serves there were many class builds that were not even remotely viable in most brackets, or at all.

Class balance is fairly atrocious in this game, as it was in WoW (DKs, for example, say.. oh.. the season they came out).. the difference is that WoW knew it, and their pvp was an afterthought, whereas ANET still denies it and their game released with pvp as a fully functioning part of the system, and all their experience from GW1. That is the astounding part.

Whether the forum agrees with it or not, there is something wrong with sPvP right now. It doesn’t have nearly the amount of players it should.

Deified.7520:

Whether the forum agrees with it or not, there is something wrong with sPvP right now. It doesn’t have nearly the amount of players it should.

Totally my opinion to follow.

I think the problem here starts with the binary sort of logic pvpers use — they make the assumption that the average joe player loves pvp as much as they do, and will actively join into that system given every opportunity. This just isn’t the case, for starters. You have a LOT of people who play because they enjoy PVE. So there is a chunk removed from jump — now, let’s take the player who likes an even portion of both pve and pvp on their plate, and what they get to experience in s/tpvp right now:

1. Constant stream of kitten talking, tells, and general crap from other players telling them how bad they are, to delete, etc etc.

2. Joining as a pug, to face either wildly seasoned players, or teams of players with coordination. In these situations you get stomped so quickly and efficiently there isn’t time or opportunity to learn anything. More to the point? It’s not enjoyable.

I can list more, but it comes down to the same point in that the rapid pvp playerbase is a large reason you don’t have a larger general playerbase for pvp (as well as, if you look at the WoW model for pvp, the reward system). While the pvpers enjoy that aspect of the game enough to push through frustration and negative experiences, the average player plays the game for fun. When something isn’t fun, they don’t play it — and seriously, is there someone out there right now who would regularly call gw2 spvp fun?

I could seriously write my own blog post against this post but I won’t because I can’t be bothered.

Whilst I agree that spamming certain skills like HS shouldn’t be possible, I feel that there’s enough in each profession to counter that.

On your team deathmatch suggestion; Truth is, I feel it could still work even without a healer. If you think about how people play now on Capture point maps with Signet of Undeath and Illusion of life, you can easily see how people will play TDMs as well. It could even get to the point where people will call you a noob if you don’t have a skill for rezzing people just like they did in GW1. Of course everyone is going to want to go for damage at first but once a good team starts whooping everyone’s kitten with their ability to work as a team and rezz in each other (as they do now!), everyone is going to follow that bandwagon and say that it is the best way to do things.

On your assumption that condition builds won’t work in TDMs, I would wager that you’re wrong. Unless a group is entirely built around condition removal, I don’t think there will any problem dealing condition damage. There’s only so many conditions you can remove when a person can reapply them as soon as you throw them away.

On your hating on Null Field and other skills like it. Arenanet had been talking about two-pronged skills for a LONG time. In fact, the ele skill; Geyser was said to be a knockback skill at the area of effect whilst healing allies (and that would have been a much funner version of the skill if you ask me) and even Trident was supposed to knock people back but that didn’t happen either. So you complaining about it now, is like you didn’t know much about how they intended the game to be.

@Dueling; Custom Arenas.

How him being a multi glad Dk relevant to gw2 pvp? I think for someone who claims he played during 12 years other games Pvp content exclusively and then bashing with ad hominem other people posts because they brought some Lol or Gw1 comparison in their posts is just a sign of hypocrisy on his part really .

i think team dm could work. it would however require players to be actually good and have situational awareness enough to defend their allies with cc, but the other half is the classes need further balancing to make this a reality.

Do the guys here really think that the Guild Wars 2 PvP isn’t lacking?
Hell, we have only one game mode and, by far, one of the most boring according to a good part of players.
Guild Wars 1 had a lot of PvP options with a bunch of maps. There was RA, TA (and then Codex) for casual and semi-casual play, then HA for a more organized game and finally GvG to satisfy everyone’s taste about tactical gameplay.
Now look at Guild Wars 2. Where the heck is PvP?
6 maps of the same point capping. You like point capping? Fine. But you can’t debate this isn’t a proper sPvP.