Guild Wars 2

Ok so the topic title seems fairly obvious of course pvp should be fun but hear me out.

Now everyone wants the whole esport thing to happen but its not going to if casuals players cant enjoy the pvp they join up hop in a hot join and instantly get bursted down by thieves or warrior or whatever and its no fun. I mean think about it about a half hour of getting your kitten absolutely handed to you and what are most people going to to do? They are going to say screw it this sucks im outa here.

You could of course say they are new l2p or other things like that but for the game to make it as an esport there has to be a huge casual community to support the few teams. casual players don’t want to spend an hour reading up on a build then another 5 or 6 hours of playing before they can start to defend themselves and have fun. There needs to be some system so that new players can play new players and actually get an idea wtf is going on be for being thrown to the sharks so to speak.

Now to back up what ive said before i have some evidence today i got one of my friends who plays computer games of various sorts casually to set down and play guild wars for a little while.

So he sets down makes his character decides he wants to play elementalist goes through the opening thing for his race then heads to the mist he looks around trys a few skill messes around with a couple different weapons and then jumps in a hot join… and just starts getting torn apart has no idea whats going on dies to everyone he sees half the time he has no time even wonder what is going before hes dead. I get him to stick with it for half an hour and then he says he has had enough and doesn’t want to play.

There needs to be a way for people to get an idea of whats going on and try pvp without getting stomped by people who have been playing for hundreds of hours or spending hours looking up stuff and reading about builds casual players don’t want to spend forever reading about how to play they want to jump in and just have some fun and get a few kills that’s why games like halo and CoD are so popular even if your just starting you can at least out put up a fight.

Basically from what you’re saying, it sounds like “the game needs to be more casual friendly”.

I think the builds the game starts you with could be much better and there probably should be some recommendations (or warnings) for starting classes when it comes to pvp (because the elementalist is generally not one of those a new player should start with). Did your friend even manage to defeat the test NPCs? (I think the game should direct new players to defeat the test NPCs first before heading into a pvp match).

Anyways, for new players, I think the Guardian is likely to be the best choice. Depending on how fast they learn, the thief can also be a good choice.

If they want to better match players with equivalently skilled peers, then they’d have to go to a system where ppl can’t choose the rooms.

Elementalist is not a good class for a new player.

Yeah he managed the test npc and im not saying he is amazing at games just an example of what a new player experiences. Basically yes more casual friendly im not saying dumb the game down but casual players need to be able to get started and have fun not just get destroyed and discouraged.

I play an elementalist and purposefully levelled to 80 first before trying pvp as I knew the understanding and fluid use of the attunement class mechanic would be essential for any chance of success in pvp.

As stated above, if you had directed your friend to the gurdian, thief, warrior class I am sure he would have had an easier time and picked up a few kills. Not trying to sound elitist but some classes are a lot easier to start off with than others.

Eon:
And how would you solve that? I mean, the more the performance depends on player skill and not avatar skill, the more the controls are direct, the gap is wider. Try to get ONE frag in quake if you are starting and got in the map with some, even sub-decent players. And you will fail. Simply, quake is 100% player dependent.

GW2 is less player dependent, as you have some non-quakeish math going on, but in essence, it’s pretty quakish, to be honest.

That said, the game is young. There are A LOT of players that are starting now and I am sure your friend would meet them on a regular basis in PvP. He would have to actually play PvP for a while, though. You mentioned half an hour, I mean, that’s really little, even for the most newbie friendly games out there. I mean, after half an hour, I am still thinking I am pressing the heal skill, while I am in fact pressing the AoE damage skill, and while it’s on cooldown:) You simply know nothing and that’s normal.

I mean really, half an hour…

besbin.6302:

I play an elementalist and purposefully levelled to 80 first before trying pvp as I knew the understanding and fluid use of the attunement class mechanic would be essential for any chance of success in pvp.

This also. All other MMORPG’s simply don’t give you top level character to play with in PvP. You go through a process of knowing the class and that process takes days and weeks and months even.
WoW has literally three or four times more abilities than GW2 available at the same time and hotkeyed allover the keyboard. But, an average player has absolutely no problems with managing and knowing them by heart what they do and where they are and has muscle memory to boot. Because you are going through the process of learning and adapting with that character over the course of many hours and levels and situations.
Exactly the same happens in GW2, if you are not some god given PvP prodigy, why throw yourself in the fray right away?

I know what I’m saying because I am that average player. And, I have entered GW2 PvP without going through the leveling process and got stomped, of course. But, in my third match, I kinda started to notice if I am taking damage or not lol (yes, I didn’t perceive ANYTHING, so to speak). In my 4th match, I killed a guy. It was in a zerg fight, but still, I managed to target him, and to release some offensive abilities:) which is a big progress for me at that time.
Lastly, in my sixth match or so, I have won my first full HP 1v1 encounter. It was against a very bad player apparently, but he wasn’t a bot or anything like that, he was just bad, spamming buttons and not doing any synergy with his abilities. And he was warrior. And I was ranger.
So, basically, you just need to actually play the game and gratification, while delayed, is not THAT delayed, but more like several hours away. That is really, REALLY, nothing.

If that is too much time for somebody, maybe he shouldn’t play the game – I don’t mean this in any derogatory way, I mean any game. EVERY game is pain in the start. Every single one. Even if the pain is as light as “now, what key should I press to jump, aaaah kitten, I must check the options”.

Your missing the point of course it takes more than half an hour to understand the game but for pvp to be popular people need to be able to jump in and not get completely destroyed sure they wont be real good but being able to at least play a bit and not get instagibed. You also missed another point it only took half an hour before he was fed up with it because it was just instantly thrown in with people of all skill levels.

If you were to play starcraft, would you immediately jump into a competitive match and get frustrated that you didn’t understand how to play?
I understand your argument, but it’s a faulty one. Just because you can immediately jump in and pvp doesn’t mean you should.

On the other side of the argument, I think if there was some kind of ladder involved it might be easier for newer players to not have to fight much better players.

Eon:
Hm, I have addressed both of those points in my post. I have also brought out some additional aspects, which it seems remained neglected by you:)

“If you were to play starcraft, would you immediately jump into a competitive match and get frustrated that you didn’t understand how to play?”
This has been mentioned a couple of times in this topic. Go and install Starcraft and play a multiplayer match, you will get bad player to play with, as Starcraft have ladder system. You’ll get DESTROYED. Your friend would quit Starcraft even before the half hour mark.

Yea as others stated, Ele was prolly the worst class to start with. Sure they look cool, but they have the highest learning curve from all the classes, being able to use 20 weapon skills and 5 utilities according to the situation and chaining them would be really intimidating for a new player.

The idea of matching rooms by level is nice and would be nice to see that.

Also you can’t really expect that he’ll play for 30 mins and get good at ANY game. Yes, you will run into ppl that can just steamroll you, and you can’t really complain that someone is better than you. It’s like saying “I’m gonna start playing LoL” gets into a game with little to no clue of anything, gets hit by a truck. Pretty much the same case. You could have at least dueled with him a bit before hitting pugs even.

I think the casual community needs to change their mindset and accept the fact that: yes you will come across skilled players, and they will give you a hard time. But that’s part of pvp, the challenge of meeting players and playing against them. You’ll lose, you’ll learn (hopefully), adapt and grow into a better player. But expecting to do well off the bat without knowing anything is ridiculous.

Knowing what to do is fairly straightforward, the game even shows you the map with points and gives you an overview. Capture points, defend them, your team gets score for holding points and scoring skills. The finer points of play, like knowing were to be, how to move across the map, when you should bail, and when you need to defend can only be gotten with experience. Same goes with building and playing your chosen profession.

Use the option to be placed in a match based upon rank, you’ll get matches that are fairly balanced skill wise across the board for the most part until you hit rank 25 or so.

You people are all idiots.
I want to be l33t and own everyone because you sit at a computer 20 hours a day.
This game is kittening garbage.
Pure garbage.
The structured PVP was designed by blizzard 5 years ago and was better then.
This is a kitten copy of a system that was already bad.
The class design, the PvP, the PvE, ALL of it is pure kitten.
Stop playing stupid kitten like this game and endorsing crap design.

Ive playe WoW Dota LoL HoN and kittenloads of other stuff and Tpvp is very good here, Spvp is all about best Bursters while PvE is a bit not my taste :P Most people dont like wiping a lot and running back.

pretty easy way match ppl based on their pvp rank. 1-10 fight 1-10 .

Spvp if you get automatchd is not that bad) picking a server instead might lead to problems of beeing matched to ppl with 10x more experiance.

Stin.9781:

Spvp if you get automatchd is not that bad) picking a server instead might lead to problems of beeing matched to ppl with 10x more experiance.

This, I think hitting “Play now” matches you with people of similar “rank points” which means you will be roughly the same PvP level as those in the server.

Manually picking from the list bypasses this and puts you with whoever else joins that server. Good players or not so good players.

Mogar.9216:

pretty easy way match ppl based on their pvp rank. 1-10 fight 1-10 .

Agree, it really is that easy.

And to all the others bashing the OP, get over yourselves. You know kitten good and well there is a serious issue with melee damage in this game. This kid made a bad choice at starting with an Ele. But, his points are still sound, whether you like it or not.

besbin.6302:

I play an elementalist and purposefully levelled to 80 first before trying pvp as I knew the understanding and fluid use of the attunement class mechanic would be essential for any chance of success in pvp.

As stated above, if you had directed your friend to the gurdian, thief, warrior class I am sure he would have had an easier time and picked up a few kills. Not trying to sound elitist but some classes are a lot easier to start off with than others.

You phrased it well without sounding like an elite d-bag. Ele is the toughest class to play in the game, you are literally juggling 4 spellsets to come close to other classes dps. That isnt a class thats for a persons first toon. Thief is what he should have played so he can come here an spam “Learn to play” when people complain about thieves 20k damage in 6 seconds while being untouchable. He wouldnt walk away from that kind of gravy train lol.

Having a beginners-area would be kinda cool, really. Only new players and rank 1-10 and perhaps just 1 map.

And ele was a horrible choice … really tough luck. Guardian/Warrior/Thief would be my choices.

@ronnie: elaborate what you are mad about. You can only get help if you ask or specify what it is about.

Because you are not supposed to go to spvp without playing the game. If you friend made the effort of playing whatever might be for some time, he would grasp the game mechanics better and so on…
Besides there is no game I can think that you start playing and you are so kitten good from the start – you are supposed to get facerolled in the beginning because of the skill gap. People are already complaining that the game isn’t hardcore enough and you want it to be dumbed down even more?

You guys are misunderstanding no im not saying the game should be dumbed down no im not saying you start and be amazing at the game im saying it needs to be accessible to casuals so they can have fun even if they don’t do real well.

Yes, but maybe there’s a difference between a “half hour casual experience” and “five hours casual experience”. I mean, even if we had brackets, I think your friend would get roflstomped by “five hourers”, who would still be in the “beginner” bracket.
Unless we were to have like 20 brackets, which I think would cause problems with queues.
I am not sure of this, but that’s what I think. You have to “bite the bullet” and to expect nasty experience for first single digit number of hours or so, which should flower into smooth sense of control afterwards:)

Also, I haven’t done much playing, but does the “play now” option work and is it any good? I mean, in terms of matching players of similar skill?

“play now” button tries to put you in a server with others of similar glory rank

Dont just think of my friend here he was just an example of what it like for new people. Also do we know for sure play ow trys to match you or just think it might?

Well, it’s description says it does…

I am thinking of all the new people, your friend is just an examplary term for “new people”

I’m with Eon on this one, because there’s several ways it can be more casual/newbie-friendly.

However, I’m thinking, maybe once Anet puts in the Dota-like game-play mode (they’re supposedly working on) it won’t be too much of a problem. (I’ve never played Dota or any of its variants, but I’ve seen plenty of youtube videos or others playing). The reason I say this is because in Dota, there are NPCs which are easy to kill. This means that people can often feel like they are contributing to the team and accomplishing something by going against the NPCs, which are usually much easier.

Im pretty sure the dota thing game is just a mini game not going to be actual pvp in the mist but i could be wrong.

i think gw2 wanting to get into esports is lame and silly, and i think that esports must be out of their mind to invite gw2 for it.. unless the pvp really gets balanced, which i don’t see happening

@incisorr the pvp isnt that imbalanced. it does need tweaks but its about as stable and balanced as wow is at any one point. I have yet to see a mmo actually be “balanced” where everything was perfectly equal without ending up feeling like the flavor of different classes is lost. this game gives every class if played to their strengths a fighting chance in pvp sooooo.

to the OP click play now and enjoy. sometimes you’ll still end up stomped but 90 percent of the time youll play against similar ranks and skill. just try to avoid getting zerged. learn to dodge. and all that fun stuff and it gets better fast.

PVP will always, always have a learning curb. thats just the nature of learning to fight another sentient human being. have to anticipate what a thinking person is going to do when and even then youll always get curve balls.