Guild Wars 2

Professions that can build for burst and still have escape mechanics tend to rise like cream to the top of hotjoin. They are frustrating to play against for most, and good players are impossible for new players to defeat, even with these professions and builds not really doing as much good on a tPvP team, so they kind of get ignored, because they are not really relevant to higher level play.

So new players that don’t run off either roll one of these professions themselves, or they build defensive, bunker-ish, to defend against them.

People favor massive AoE to single-target damage because of how many pets/turrets/clones/minions are running around, and in a cluttered fight, it’s much easier to lay down blankets of mass AoE than to try and pick out your target again out of 12 targets when your enemy drops into stealth or blinks.

My point… despite bug fixes, and more maps, or any additional things Anet decides to add to the game, there still seems to be a large disconnect for how tPvP is supposed to be played vs. the way new players are weened into the game, alongside the fact that at any point and time, it seems that the top tier builds that are widely accepted dictate the types of builds that are run more consistently to counter them.

Players join up to try out sPvP, and are immediately slapped in the face with 8v8 zerg matches, rank 30+ thieves and mesmers having their way with them, and absolutely no reward for playing good map control or good node defense or support.

And if they actually DO try a tPvP match, they often have no clue what to do because the hotjoin experience is essentially… a completely different game (you notice it the most when you see people running towards you, alone, capping a point so they can get their glory points for it).

I think, until this fundamental “weening in” period is addressed, the community will continue to only grow in the serious scene, where already established PvP minds come in to try their hand, I’ve played the game since release now and I still stand by my original claim that for such an amazing PvP game and engine, it has arguably the worst new player experience on the market to offer, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to go away.

Dunno. Just some things I’ve been mulling over. Anyone agree? Disagree?

i agree
there are many other issues you didn’t mention that all come together to make the pvp game not easy to get into and not easy to stay in.
suffice to say, devs have not thought many things through in this game from a pvp perspective.

In the beginning (pre-release) Hot Join was 5v5, and it was good. Then some brain surgeon said, “Let there be 8’s.” and it was ruined ever since.

OK, so apparently you have identified the issue, what is your solution?

Well said ayden. My thoughts exactly.

I’m here to say to the new players—please try tPvP. Look up the maps on the wiki, learn what the objectives are, and once you’re in a match ask questions. Most of us are helpful. You’ll see a completely different game in the 5v5 mode—one where your team oriented play is rewarded. It can be frustrating at first, but nowhere near as awful as the 8v8 zerg experience.

Even as a fairly decent tPvP player, I tend to avoid the 8v8 mode because all of my experience and skill matters little when I get jumped by 3 or more people and nobody is there to help each other.

Gaidax.7835:

OK, so apparently you have identified the issue, what is your solution?

For starters:

1) Eliminate 8v8 altogether. I’m sure there will be a backlash now, since it’s been around so long, but in the long view it’s best to have no other mode but 5v5 if you want to simulate how the game is actually played. 8v8 could be available only in custom arenas.

2) Adjust the way glory is obtained. There are several ways to do this, but mostly, you have to reward good map play and node defense and support play. That means there should be glory achieved from buffing your teammates, for bunkering a node (incremental glory over time at a small rate), less glory for skirmisher kills. Have the actual ending amount of glory be increased for the winning team based on how much of the game they played, based on time elapsed. Someone there for the full 15 minutes and wins, they should get a few hundred glory at least, especially considering how slow ranking up in PvP is, and nothing but cosmetic reward for the most part. To make this fair, however, you would need a better matchmaking system in general and better anti-botting technology.

Some of the other flaws, like stealth, pets, targeting, etc. are a matter of opinion, and will realistically NOT be fixed, because it requires a fundamental change of the game entirely. In other words, I won’t ever convince Anet it’s a bad idea to have a Necro running around with 5 pets, or that clones shouldn’t be able to be respawned instantly over and over again… they are necessary for those professions to be viable, and at the same time, are cheap mechanics that are, generally speaking, not fun to play against (my opinion) and are devastating to a new player trying to get the basics of the game.

Just a few ideas, hopefully if the thread lasts without derailing there will be some other suggestions that are actually possible to implement.

Fair enough, though I think that eliminating 8v8 would be a bad idea, honestly we could use more game modes and not less to begin with.

What could be good is improving the left side menu to split it into 5v5 and 8v8 players sections. That would make things more clear and user friendly.

I am not so sure about your glory suggestions, it may sound good on paper, but many players including me hotjoin to have some fun and that means more fighting around and less babysitting some circle. Encouraging bunkers by giving points for guarding capture points may sound like a good idea, but at the same time you are creating another problem – there will be more bunkers, less roaming, less action and more idle lazing around. I think that a price of turning hotjoin into tPvP tutorial will be less fun and less fun = more boring PvP and less people playing it.

You should consider that.

I think the best solution would be massively increasing victory bonus and then letting the players sort out the best way to get it themselves, without tacking on babysitting mechanics like “stand on this circle like a good boy and you get a lollipop”.

Gaidax.7835:

Fair enough, though I think that eliminating 8v8 would be a bad idea, honestly we could use more game modes and not less to begin with.

What could be good is improving the left side menu to split it into 5v5 and 8v8 players sections. That would make things more clear and user friendly.

I am not so sure about your glory suggestions, it may sound good on paper, but many players including me hotjoin to have some fun and that means more fighting around and less babysitting some circle. Encouraging bunkers by giving points for guarding capture points may sound like a good idea, but at the same time you are creating another problem – there will be more bunkers, less roaming, less action and more idle lazing around. I think that a price of turning hotjoin into tPvP tutorial will be less fun and less fun = more boring PvP and less people playing it.

You should consider that.

I think the best solution would be massively increasing victory bonus and then letting the players sort out the best way to get it themselves, without tacking on babysitting mechanics like “stand on this circle like a good boy and you get a lollipop”.

That mechanic already exists, which is why you see 5 people standing on a node to get their 10 glory points.

That is not the same as getting points for standing on an already capped node.

I was thinking about my suggestion of boosting victory bonus and I don’t like it anymore. If there are more incentives to win, there will be more trash talking and bickering on the losing side. I don’t like that idea in a mode which is supposed to be fun.

Which brings me to another point. What is the purpose of the hotjoin?

Everyone sees it differently, for some people it is a training grounds for tPvP, for some people it is a place to test builds, others join to farm glory, many just want to hop in into action and kill stuff for fun.

Basically it is not really defined – it is a bit of everything for everyone and I think it’s good. And we should remember that, a dude who wants for example to make it more similar to tPvP surely has his best intentions in mind, but while there will undoubtedly be people happy to support the idea, there will also be people who will be sad or angered because their interpretation of hotjoin and their aims for it are getting negatively affected.

Last point is, in my opinion, we don’t need two tPvP modes, one is enough really so no need to ruin Hotjoin just to make people more prepared for tPvP.

Award points for winning games and nothing else. People are selfish, I am no exception. As long as certain behaviour (guarding) yields inferior gains (glory), people will always stick with what gives them the maximum return. At the same time, implement a leaderboard (idk what that thing we have right now is supposed to be). Everyone should have a rank not just the top 1000. New players must feel demotivated once they see they’re rank is simply xx% and wins/losses don’t have any consistent effect on that rating. Sometimes you win two games and lose rank, that just “feels” wrong even though there might be some logic to it.

Why ANET implemented these 8v8, I don’t know. Then again, I don’t understand most of their decisions. Make 8v8 – and whatever people feel like – available in custom arenas that don’t give any rewards at all. Everything else should be tournament style only, but with the option to join ranked and unranked games.
Force them to play GW2 and not CS:GO@GW2.
Now I can /ragequit

I would say that new people leave the pvp because:

A) 8×8 is pure kitten
B) Tournaments are just there to feed premades
C) Conquest mode is very boring, and it is THE ONLY MODE for pvp.

Lukin.4061:

I would say that new people leave the pvp because:

A) 8×8 is pure kitten
B) Tournaments are just there to feed premades
C) Conquest mode is very boring, and it is THE ONLY MODE for pvp.

A can be fixed, but there will be an initial backlash from people who enjoy it.
B can and MUST be fixed, and seems to at least be a priority for them.
C will never change anytime soon and may never change. I do however, find it contradictory that they use one game mode in the name of focusing on making conquest as good as it can be, then make 8v8 available knowing there’s no way to even remotely balance that around 3 nodes on a small map.

There are 5v5 spvp and you can filter your search so that’s all you see. It’s what I’ve done and prefer. I won’t jump into an 8v8 because of the zergfest. Personally it’s why I left wvw and jumped into pvp, I get to actually play the game. I’d say do the spvp 5v5 if your just soloing or want to practice a build. If you have a full on team then jump into tpvp as it would be hard to get your team together in spvp. I also solo in tpvp and do just fine.

I think the aoe / target issue is a pretty big issue tbh. Even as warrior I mostly play sPvP untargeted, because trying to target my enemy takes more time than it’s worth. One reason being the high amount of targets and the other being the even higher amount of stealth/teleport/transform/dodge roll and the high movement speed (cause nobody runs without speed buff). GW2 is too chaotic, and because of that, people favor AoE, which means even more spell effects all over the place etc.