So this is probably gonna be a text wall so i’ll try to make it somewhat structured.
The PvP in every game has problems, when you fix one problem there comes another one around the corner. It’s normal, it’s what every game has to deal with and there will always be people who complain.
However, the PvP in Guild Wars does not have minor issues. There are many major issues. I’m going to list a few problems that i’ve encountered in game and also what i’ve read on forums and seen on video’s. Keep in mind that they might have a personal tint as to what i think of certain classes. If you feel that way about something i’ve written feel free to comment on it. The problems are also listen from severity, where as 1 is the worst and going up is less severe. This will also have a personal tint to it so take this with a grain of salt.
1. Pip system.
The pip system is, in my opinion, not all that bad. I think it’s good that you have ‘safe points’ which are represented by the tiers. Since there are always times that you are in a bad mood/get matched with bad players/… You all know what i’m talking about. It’s also great that when you are in a disadvantage, this meaning someone in your team is AFK or the enemy team has higher division players, you don’t even have to win to get a pip. You just need to get to a certain point threshold and you don’t lose a pip if you do lose. If you manage to get more points you can even win a pip if you lose, and if you manage to beat the odds and win you get multiple pips. This is great! this gives players that have a disadvantage something to fight for.
This however it has some problems. First of all i’ll start with something that happened to me.
– our mesmer was afk from the start, during soloq. He was not DC’d, he was simply standing at spawn. After 3-4 minutes, while we had suffered a serious blow by the enemy, obviously since we were one man less, he came back. During the time he was back i logged out and back in again 3 times. Obviously we lost the match. We did manage to get 228 points. I lost 3 pips. I asked him what happened and he said ‘i was eating’. How can i lose 3 pips when we were at a distinct disadvantage?
So yes, this happened and i lost 3 pips. I was sad. The pip system is linked to the entire PVP system because they did all the things i mentioned in the beginning. This makes that sometimes you randomly lose more pips because of reasons. Of course this has good reasons, the game is programmed to do so, but the player does not know anything about why he lost 3 pips when he had an AFK. This is to me something that the devs should’ve thought about while they were making this.
2 Matchmaking.
The matchmaking in this game is very bad. Amber players play against sapphire or higher and emeralds play against diamonds. The reason why this is is because there aren’t enough players in the high tiers. And otherwise they would get matchmaking que’s of 45+ minutes. That’s why there’s the pip system wich is a rather good solution. Now, for me, PvP isn’t about the pip or rank. I want to have fun. A game where both teams were fighting to the last second winning just by a smidge because you played around their tactics and managed to get those 2 more points are absolutely great! And yes they do happen! how ever rare. Ofcourse in PvP you should not just play for fun you should play to win, but that does not take away the fact that the game has to stay fun. The game matches you with higher tiers when you are on a winning spree, this is a thing that lots of games do.
But this is NOT the correct way to do it. To get matched against 1 or more diamond players because i am by far a veteran PvP’er.
So let’s say i’m matched against such a team, where they have 2 diamond players and i manage to get to the point threshold where i do not lose my pip. I still did not have a fun match. I got my kitten recked. And this happens WAY too often. Ofcourse the system matches you up with them for a reason but we don’t know that, in our eyes we got owned by regular players.
Having a streak of losses because of this makes players angry and it’s natural that they start complaining. People cry out OP and flood the forums or start a fight (in chat) in game because they got owned by mesmer and mesmer is OP, little did they know that that mesmer was a diamond player and they’re only emerald.
Every aspect of a game should be fun. Ranked arena should be taken more seriously but you still have to have some sort of fun. Even if you lose.
500-100 matches are a regular occurance. That’s just sad. Not because the players are that bad, but because they are matched against higher tier players. This is ‘solved’ by the pip system but it is still NOT solid solution. A casual pvp player should not get matched against OR with a veteran who only plays PvP and is in diamond rank.
People will get mad, regardless of them losing or not losing the pip.
3. Balance
Yes this is the annoying part where some classes get called names and are pulled in the spotlight because they are stronger than some and i get that if you play that certain class it’s somewhat personal. But please keep an open mind.
If i name a class this is not me yelling OP. It’s me saying that they’re not in a right place in the PvP Meta or that they are just bad in a way that they are toxic to the game.
-Dragonhunter guardian; and by this i mean a very specific build, wich i’ve run when i started ranked pvp and stopped because it was not challanging of any fun. We all know this, the med-trap dragonhunter. Teleporting to an enemy and laying the traps, recking the entire team because they’re pulled in it by whatever thing is not hard and not fun. It’s easy and cheap. There is no skill whatsoever in doing this. You can see the good DH from the bad but this is still a build that is making people mad because it’s requires little to no skill to play.
-Reaper necromancer: stacking 20 poison stacks just by one player is a little over the top. They do A LOT of AoE damage and on top of that they have an insane amount of health with the reaper shroud.
-Mesmer Chronomancer: This has been nerfed recently and is still in a very bad spot. Having the ability to block-dodge and become invulnerable for an extended amount of time is not a good way to make a class. I can’t play mesmer myself but i’ve had many occasions where they just evade and block their way through thousands of damage.
-Scrapper engineer: It’s insane to have a moving shadow refuge. The devs nerfed the mesmer mass stealth because it was too strong and oppressive in PvP. Why the hell make an AoE stealth that has a 20 second cooldown and stacks 4 stealth ‘stacks’ on a player. You can argue that you can see the drone so you know where he is but that’s not the case at all. He can still be in a pretty big radius our of the circle and still be stealth. They have way too much survivability and it’s not fun to play against.
Many of the classes mentioned above are not ‘OP’ i mentioned them because they are toxic to the game/community. These 4 are the ones that kitten people off the most and they need to be adressed to.
Now there are many other problems, no doubt and feel free to post them underneath.
Thank you for reading!