Guild Wars 2

This is going to be a slightly long winded post, slightly idealistic. Essentially what this post is going to consist of is strategies to make PvP more prominent, both as a playable mode, and a spectator sport. Splitting up the message because it’s too long. So read all parts!

Minimap clarity

So here are the points:

• Pathways clearly drawn – the minimaps now look great, but take skyhammer for example, you aren’t able to see where players can walk, or even where the jumping pads are due to how cluttered it is. Drawing clear pathways will help alleviate this. Foefire’s map does this better than Skyhammer. All maps need to be at Foefire’s level of pathway clarity or higher.
• Objectives are more descriptive – the control points need to display more information. Instead of swords for a contended point, why isn’t there more detail on how far along the node is? It could be an outer ring drawn on the node that displays how many seconds remaining. There should be more clear indication on other objectives like the bosses in Nifhel – such as health remaining (to indicate to other team whether a steal is still possible or not). Spirit Watch – the player holding the orb will have their health displayed as a ring around the orb on the map.

Different Game Mode Queues

This is a point of contention, and I understand why – splitting the queues from deathmatch and conquest would break the community. Hear me out on why this is a GOOD thing.

First, you are scaring players away by bundling them together. There are players who just want pure conquest (as seen in other games in which they profess they only play conquest and none of the other modes), as there are players who only want pure deathmatch. Splitting them up may cause harm at first, but in the long term, you will keep more players as you manage to maintain these two groups who only want purity in their queue.

Additionally, splitting deathmatch and conquest will reel more people (most notably casuals) into SPvP. Deathmatch is something many players know of. Conquest on the other hand is more complicated, even if just incremental. Splitting them will allow for new players to join a deathmatch queue, get into killing people, and get back out of the game. There’s no learning strategies or rotations, they simply kill and enjoy themselves. This will lead to these players becoming comfortable with PvP, and eventually trying to learn how to play conquest.

Debate whether there should be ranked deathmatch or not is up to AN & other players.

Getting rid of Practice

Unranked should be where players learn to play. Hotjoin/practice is simply useless in really learning to play because the matches are really different and most often you’ll get really troll teammates or opponents. Getting rid of practice will mean players now have to find something else to do during queues. That’s where mini games come in.

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Mini games in Hearts

Players should have the ability to play some mini games in Hearts while waiting for their queues. Quite simply, giving them something to do will benefit the game as players then won’t load up the likes of hearthstone in between queues.

Give Players a Carrot

Again, look at other games and how they handle their PvP. They have tiers of carrots. From items/loot, xp, to levels/masteries, and even more characters to play as.

GW2 needs this in PvP. Right now, there are PvP levels, and there is the reward tracks. Both are good, they need to be expanded.

1. Levels can be raised, although that would cause a rift between PvP and PvE/WvW. They can be done in ways that make it clear they are exclusive to PvP. Think of how Call of Duty handles it’s ranking once you prestige. Not exactly that, but just to get the creative juices flowing.
2. More development for playing a class in PvP: in Mobas particularly, you get things for playing certain gods/characters/champions. Something similar has to apply to GW2, in which the more you play a class, the more you are rewarded for such. Say you play a mesmer for 300 matches, you should have a more prestigious title than those who only play mesmer once in a blue moon. These incentives shouldn’t hurt those who like to enjoy all classes either.
3. Titles. As touched upon above, titles are important. There should be titles for those who have saved teams from losing from stealing an objective, there should be titles for those who have played 10 ranked matches and won. None of these titles should be RNG, all earned, and some extremely difficult.
4. Reward people for being patient. Reward players with a baby carrot when they’ve been in queue for 10 minutes. Players feel a little bit better knowing it’s abnormal timing and that this shouldn’t be the norm.
5. Ranks. Players who participate in ranked during the season should absolutely get not only titles, but also different tier borders around their player portrait. Take a look at the Legendary Monster border, and the veteran monster border. Similar should be added to the pvp aspect of the game for players who have reached certain points during the season in ranked. This border should also potentially be seen in party lists (maybe even character selection screen). Another way for players to show off their hard work, and motivate others to do so.

Quicker Access to PvP

What would be great, is for players to immediately choose to log into the game and from their character screen, boot right into Hearts of the Mists.

“What’s the difference now?”
Well, now you can only do so if you logged out in a PvP match or while in the Hearts. What if you could toggle a button (on the character selection screen under each character icon), and it logs you into Hearts even if you were somewhere else on the PvE/WvW map? Quick access, and a godsend for many current PvP players who dabble in PvE and get tired of opening up the PvP menu and jumping to Hearts. Less loading screens = win.

Critique, add, ponder, and state your piece below.

In addition to mini games I’d like them to just let us que for matches while outside of the HoTm and not HAVE to be teleported there. I feel like it would appeal to more people if they could be running around crafting, gathering, leveling their low lvl, or heck even just idling in LA. Just keep it so you can’t que/accept que while in combat, then make it so you can’t que while in a dungeon and removes you from que if you enter one while currently qued.

Something I’d like to see added, and it may just be me, is to not be able to switch classes/characters before a match starts. You que up for PvP on the class you want to pvp with, go into a match and have that minute or w/e to change traits/weapons/runes/sigils then thats that. I’ve see a lot of people, including streamers and players from top teams, go into a match and look at the other team then log out and pick a class to counter them. Its absolutely ridiculous IMO. I’d like to see it so that if you accept a match but then log off, even if its to the character select screen, then you cant get back into the match and you’re dishonored. People want this game to grow and become a bigger esports name, and being able to log off and counter pick a character is just not esports.