Guild Wars 2

Does anyone know or can any DEVs answer why the 8v8 system exists? Was it to combat the initial surge of players and to allow less server power to handle the masses? Just curious. Since the player-base is starting to even out, can’t we just have SPvP set to 5v5 now? I think that will quell a lot of the complaints.

Thanks.

Good point. I always look for games with 7 or 9 players to join in and hope it doesn’t fill up, but it often does. I usually end up wasting quite a bit of time just trying to find a server with constant max 10 players.

Probably so they wouldn’t need as many servers, and they figured people in hotjoin wouldn’t care anyways.

Would like to see an answer to this topic from DEVs or if there are any plans to make hot-join 5v5

I agree, 8v8 servers should definitely be made 5v5. Let’s get rid of that mindless mess! :S I also think that the join game system should work more like RA worked in GW1. Player enters the game at the beginning of the map into a full team. And matches should be made a bit shorter, so there’s less chance for people leaving mid-game. If people hot join a game, they don’t want to waste too much time in a loosing team, they just want a quick in, quick out. 300 points should probably win the game…

“8v8 is there to teach newbie players how gw2 pvp works”
- devs dogma

..cool story

They said it was less intimidating for newbies to join and play, as they don’t feel like they’re hampering the game with their poor play as much.

Yeah new players don’t get to learn much about pvp in 8v8 arena. Tho one can always argue that you can join servers that aren’t that full. That’s exactly what I’m doing. However all servers either become full before the map ends or get empty when the next one begins…

The thing is also that a lot, a lot of new players did not like GW2 pvp at all, because their first contact with pvp in this game was 8v8 zergfest on conquest maps that were made for 5v5.

To me making these maps 8v8 is like trying to play football on a hockey field! It can’t work, and every football player will say: “this is crap, I’m not doing it!”

Can you please explain to me why you think 8v8 is so bad and why you think those problems will be solved in 5v5?

8v8 is bad because maps become too full of players. It inherently biases the game towards those with ranged AoEs, and those who rely on distracted opponents.

Increasing player counts inherently makes the game more spammy, and as such, you need to strike a proper balance for team play.

The game was balanced towards 5v5, and as such, the game can only get less balanced as it deviates from that.

I thought of this.

More chance to meet more and different classes at once? Which is better practice as you will quickly have all classes to practice against?

Obviously 8v8 is higher Glory than 5v5 so that might also have something to do with it. Tournaments already gives the extra chests which reward you with Glory, and even got bumped up in these rewards earlier. People should consider whether they want their Glory reduced in this hotjoin game mode. Why not let us choose what we join? 5v5 or 8v8.

Perhaps they feel that 8v8 is less personal and intimidating than 5v5 where your individual skill matters a tad more. Maybe its meant as sort of a cross between WvW and Tournaments? I dunno, i just think it couldnt hurt to just put the option of 5v5 hotjoin in the game.

Rottaran Owain.6789:

8v8 is bad because maps become too full of players. It inherently biases the game towards those with ranged AoEs, and those who rely on distracted opponents.

And those players don’t have those advantages still in 5v5 how?

Honestly, I think the arguments against 8vs8 are a whole lot of hooey.

The maps aren’t designed for it? Really? No map has a point on it that can be hit from another point. There is a run through empty terrain to every single point of interest in the maps. There is plenty of room for eight people. Realistically, there is room for more than that.

The fight points are all smaller places with a more or less open area and various LOS and chokepoint type situations. There is room for the whole team on any one of them.

The bigger problem is the scoring system. Holding points for a period of time doesn’t win matches they way being there when kills happen does, and it’s even worse for your personal statistics. The lack of strategy necessary forces the entire team to congregate in ways that make any crowding a person might feel be greatly exacerbated.

As far as a more practical “why”, I think the hotjoin dynamic needs it. Running 8 vs 7 for a few minutes or even a whole match isn’t nearly as detrimental as running 5 vs 4. The slightly higher body count means that people coming and going don’t destroy it the way they would with a smaller number.

I personally enjoy 8v8 and would enjoy even bigger battles.

Larger game modes should be exclusive to more organized game modes. Pick up style matches like RA in GW1 were limited to four players per team. As the coordination necessary for game modes increased, so did the amount of players required for a team.

I remember playing sPvP for the first time in beta and wondering, what were they thinking? Like any other sane person I leave matches that get too many people involved. They turn into Unreal Tournament very quickly.

It seems to me that the people complaining about 8v8 are old GW1 players. I still haven’t seen any rational argument to say why 8v8 is supposedly so bad.

Do you think the problem might be more your attachment to the GW1 system? The games seem more fun to me when there are lots of players in them.

In fact I would like to see pick-up games with even more players; if dev time was to be spent, working on a 12vs12 or larger map with a new mode (like flag capture or whatever) would be really cool, rather than obsessing over whether 5v5 or 4v4 or 6v6 or 8v8 is better.

8v8 should be saved for diff type of maps when they make them. i.e. CtF and a All vs ALL mode!

Yasha.5963:

It seems to me that the people complaining about 8v8 are old GW1 players. I still haven’t seen any rational argument to say why 8v8 is supposedly so bad.

Do you think the problem might be more your attachment to the GW1 system? The games seem more fun to me when there are lots of players in them.

In fact I would like to see pick-up games with even more players; if dev time was to be spent, working on a 12vs12 or larger map with a new mode (like flag capture or whatever) would be really cool, rather than obsessing over whether 5v5 or 4v4 or 6v6 or 8v8 is better.

Well if you haven’t seen any rational argument that says why 8v8 is so bad, it might not be a problem of arguments not being rational, it might be you, who’s not thinking rational about what structured pvp is all about. There is nothing rational in having 14 people bunch up at the center point of Legacy Of Foefire and unloading everything they have on their arsenal and hope for the best. None of the involved people in there really knows what’s going on. Even a cat that walks over your keyboard could come out victorious in that battle. Before the release Anet has been saying alot like: “Yo man, 5v5 is tha s**t, no mo 8v8, 8v8 bad, no way”

And now that the game is released they make people play 8v8 on maps they designed for 5v5. And don’t give me that crap that someone said up above the maps “were not designed for 5v5 blah blah”. Yes, these maps were designed exactly for 5v5 my friend. When they made these maps they MADE THEM for 5v5, because 5v5 format in pvp is all they’ve been talking about. And if those maps weren’t made for 5v5, the tournaments played on those maps would not be played 5v5.

Seriously, if you can’t see a good argument in this topic, that rationally says 8v8 is bad, you haven’t read through the topic at all, or you’re just oblivious to everything while reading, I can’t think of any other explanation…

Logically, hot-join should prepare you for tournaments. The fact that it’s 8v8 and not 5v5 makes it a poor environment for preparation. The meta is completely different.

You’d have a lot less balance complaints if you made hot-join 5v5. So many people complain about professions that are imbalanced in 8v8, but not necessarily in tournaments.

I didn’t play GW1.

I just wanna see more people enjoy the game, and those who do already to have another, more competitive avenue for playing solo.

8v8 is chaotic and creates a constant flux of contestants across the map, making the whole battle too volatile for pugs to survive and learn themselves or other classes. Nor do they learn to react to the field of conquest properly, because people just get zerged out. 8v8 takes a carefully weighted, awesome combat system (with classes balanced around 1v1), and reduces that delicate balance to button-mashing lynchmob mode.

I’ve made other posts about this,

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Paid-vs-Free-Let-s-take-a-look

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/People-Will-Leave

but honestly I think the rational points given here in this thread are as good and better than my justifications.

Let’s have both 5v5 and 8v8, for now at least. I don’t see how it could hurt, or be that costly to implement… especially given the potential turnaround with new players.

There’s a super easy fix to all this crap.

8v8v8.

You want dynamic, add a third side to screw things up! It made the games I played that did that (on a smaller scale then WvW) work really well.

8v8 is too zergy. Its basically run with the zerg or get zerged by it. Occasionly you will find youre rare 1v1/1v2 but not enough to make it worth playing. I do free tpvp to counter this but get stomped by premades all day because I dont have a pvp guild. Cant take it anymore!!!

Clearly some people like 8v8 and some people like 5v5, so ive come up with an ingenious plan to make everyone happy.
Make half the servers 5v5. 80% of the servers arent being used at all so…

game is balanced around 5v5, maps were designed for 5v5…

Having a 5v5 hotjoin option would make spvp much more enjoyable imo.

The more people there are, the less pressure each individual has to play top-notch. 8v8 isn’t meant for competitiveness, it’s meant for players to get their feet wet in PvP without being raged at for screwing up.

The reason for 8v8 hotjoin is because devs believed that a larger format would be more appealing to casual players, by putting less focus on individual performance. Jon Peters cited the example that in Team Fortress 2, Dustbowl is by far the most popularly played map, due to its large size.

The concept is that by having more players in a game, there’s more room for an individual to make mistakes without affecting their team’s overall performance too badly. This in turn would theoretically make it easier for new players to learn game mechanics without being forced to face more experienced players in 1v1 fights, where they would become frustrated due to their lack of experience.

It’s a nice concept, but it falls apart in reality:

• This isn’t an FPS. You can’t hang back with your group and snipe a guy in the face without putting yourself in any personal danger.

• Games that allow large team sizes also have maps to accommodate them. The maps in this game were designed for 5v5, and were not enlarged to accommodate more players. This is why a rolling zerg is a viable strategy in 5v5, and why newer players just find themselves getting stomped by huge groups in 8v8.

It seems like the community generally agrees that 5v5 would be a better format for hotjoin. The nice thing is that there’s a really easy way to determine the truth of that. Make half the hotjoin games 5v5 and half the hotjoin games 8v8. See which gets played more.

No one is saying that they should remove 8v8, just add the option to queue into 8v8 spvp or 5v5 spvp. Don’t say tpvp because i don’t want to pug v premade when my team is offline.

Since Tf2 is a popular analogy, I’ll use it as well. In Tf2, random players don’t HAVE to join a dustbowl map, they can join a 2fort map and get matched against other randoms that wanted to play in 2fort.

mouse.1689:

The reason for 8v8 hotjoin is because devs believed that a larger format would be more appealing to casual players, by putting less focus on individual performance. Jon Peters cited the example that in Team Fortress 2, Dustbowl is by far the most popularly played map, due to its large size.

The concept is that by having more players in a game, there’s more room for an individual to make mistakes without affecting their team’s overall performance too badly. This in turn would theoretically make it easier for new players to learn game mechanics without being forced to face more experienced players in 1v1 fights, where they would become frustrated due to their lack of experience.

It’s a nice concept, but it falls apart in reality:

• This isn’t an FPS. You can’t hang back with your group and snipe a guy in the face without putting yourself in any personal danger.

• Games that allow large team sizes also have maps to accommodate them. The maps in this game were designed for 5v5, and were not enlarged to accommodate more players. This is why a rolling zerg is a viable strategy in 5v5, and why newer players just find themselves getting stomped by huge groups in 8v8.

It seems like the community generally agrees that 5v5 would be a better format for hotjoin. The nice thing is that there’s a really easy way to determine the truth of that. Make half the hotjoin games 5v5 and half the hotjoin games 8v8. See which gets played more.

Not to mention FPS is mainly all about ranged combat.

Also the maps here just aren’t made for 8v8.

I wouldn’t mind an 8v8, 10v10 or w/e Spvp MAP.

But everywhere? Meh.

Make free Tournies PUG only solo ques

The idea behind making hot join 8v8 instead of 5v5 was to lessen the impact of the individual, creating an easier environment for new players to learn in. In other words, Arenanet wanted hot join to be friendly to new players and casuals. Which isn’t a bad idea. If you want a pvp game to be successful, it needs to be accessible to more than just the highest tier players.

Unfortunately, Anet then made the colossally stupid mistake of making hot join solo only. You know how many new and casual players are going to go into spvp solo and stick with it more than a few games? If you don’t, port over to the mists on your server and count them; it won’t take you long.

For all the things WoW did wrong, and all the reasons I despise it for corrupting the MMO genre, one thing WoW did incredibly well was provide easy and enjoyable casual pvp. Get your friends in a group, queue up for a battleground, and screw around for a while and have a good time. Spvp would be 10x more popular if Anet had just carbon copied WoW’s battlegrounds and then added arenas for more competitive play before people jumped up to tournaments.

Unless you seperate the PUG solo vs group que, solo-players like me are going to have a very bad time getting rolled by premade groups.

I hated going into a WoW random battleground and seeing a premade.

The answer is not “go make some friends and form your own premade” because I don’t enjoy that. I simply enjoy playing with other randoms.
So I am fine with implementing what you say, only if PUG solo players can have their own que,,, but then, the que times and number of available games would get worse

Kat.5982:

The idea behind making hot join 8v8 instead of 5v5 was to lessen the impact of the individual, creating an easier environment for new players to learn in. ….

Unfortunately, it’s had the opposite effect. 8v8s are much harder to learn in because it’s so much easier to get killed. Honestly, 1v1s will teach you more about mechanics than any other kind of fight. It should be 5v5s only, outside of some future new game mode.

GankSinatra.2653:

I thought of this.

More chance to meet more and different classes at once? Which is better practice as you will quickly have all classes to practice against?
.

If that is their reason, it doesn’t happen at all. You end up seeing more classes, but you never get to fight them 1v1 so you never learn more. If you do find a player 1v1 and start a fight, it almost always gets another participant within 10-20 seconds.

8v8 feels zergy to me. If the maps had more points (ie Dominion in LOL had 5 points) and were a bit bigger it might not be so zergy.

I agree. In 8v8, the game feels chaotic. You end up having a choice of staying with a big zerg or just getting jumped on by groups whenever you try to go anywhere.

yes change it. i have heard absolutely 0 positive comments about 8v8 format

i like 8v8. people complain about the zerg far too much, as though there is no answer but to join it.

accept 8v8 for what it is & find a place to excel in the meta. for me, that is backcapping. it’s such a simple strategy & it destroys the zerg strat nearly every time. usually 1 person will realize there is a backcapper & break off from the zerg, that’s where my duels come from ( which also weakens the zerg moving to the next point ). if they do all come back to re-cap, i am buying time for my team across the map by fighting Xv1 & we still end up 2 nodes to 1.

you also get duels often with the extra map mechanics. 1v1s at the treb or peeling players off my lord’s gate ( niflhel not so much ).

altogether, i get plenty of duels, learn map control / map mobility & gain valuable experience playing survival against superior numbers, meeting up for team fights when they happen.

i get plenty of glory, except in the games where i am playing survival for the majority of the match. but my team inevitably wins these games even if my glory is lower because i create an imbalance that my team can capitalize on.

glory also takes a hit because i never wait for a point to turn if a teammate is there & it is uncontested. there is action happening somewhere else, why would i do nothing for 10 seconds when it does not benefit the team in the slightest? ( now think about this in context of these zergs moving around the points—every player past the first is entirely wasted potential for that team, giving me a better window for victory across the map )

my reward for playing is fighting people & winning the game; glory is frivolous & not really representative of anything—it’s not even representative of time investment.

the biggest cause of zerg mentality is chasing glory. it doesn’t matter what tweaks are made to glory, it will only affect the mindset of what the zerg is seeking. the benefit for me is it makes everyone’s movements highly predictable ( both my opponents & my team ) & it is not hard to outplay the majority of a team by yourself if you have decent movement.

the server gets interesting when there are more people willing to buck the zerg trend. these are usually servers with tourney players who are queuing 8v8 for kicks, & we have some great, close games that feel relatively balanced. it is these matches that convince me that 8v8 is competitive & too many players overlook the format simply because tourneys exist.

cannot wait for custom servers, omg. that will be like, the actual launch of GW2 PvP…being able to play casually on the same server with the same people over a longer period of time. a community, if you will.

Dear god yes please give us 5v5 hotjoin. 8v8 is fine for about a month but then it seems way too zergy, players going after glory rather than objectives, it gets dumb. Anet please give us casuals a 5v5 hotjoin soon. Free tourni’s are no good to us – PUGs dont get much of a run, we mostly get done by pre-mades farming tickets for paid tourni’s. If this doesnt change soon i predict a large number of casuals leaving this game. dont make us leave.. nooooooooo. Help us help you!

Animosity.5231:

The more people there are, the less pressure each individual has to play top-notch. 8v8 isn’t meant for competitiveness, it’s meant for players to get their feet wet in PvP without being raged at for screwing up.

Well yeah but, who really cares about winning in a hotjoin? I dont think i’ve ever seen people rage at eachother for losing a random 2v2. Im pretty sure you have Anet’s reasoning spot on, but it still doesnt make much sense. At least not enough sense to not include hotjoin 5v5 for those who wish to play that.

Problem with 8vs8 hot join is that there is no incentive to win a match.
Rewards for playing as it was intended and winning are so small and meaningless that its just better to run around with zerg (using DPS spec), recapping points and killing enemies.

When I tried to play hot join to win the match, capping and defending points, sneaking behind the enemy zerg and capping their points etc, I usually ended up with around 100 glory with + 30 bonus for the win, while whole enemy team got 200 + glory for lost match just becouse they run around in zerg killing everything they spotted and not bothering about game objectives. This was very common situation.

The moment I changed my node defender build for roaming spec and started running mindlesly with my zerg I was getting usually 250+ glory, doesnt mater win or lose…

In tournament pvp you get nice rewards(chests, glory) for getting into next rounds(and winning tournament), winning is everything there, so ppl play as it was intended. In hotjoin “playing as it was intended” is not rewarding at all.

Hotjoin is not even very good for testing new builds, as 8vs8 has totaly diferent gameplay dynamics than tournament 5vs5.

Te problem is that maps and whole spvp system was build around 5vs5 tournaments. Putting 16 ppl in maps that were designed for 10 ppl, and not giving any good reason to win hotjoin game is a totail design fail.

Arenanet has to do something, and fast, or spvp part of this game will end up with very small, hardcore playerbase.

I agree that testing builds in 8v8 is deceptive. The herd changes things and you dont get much of the 1v1 which comes up far more often in 5v5.

Can’t stand 8v8, refuse to play it now, but I agree with the rationale for its existence. Just go pug some 5v5. You face an organised team and lose, so what? What did you invest? 15 minutes? Personally I appreciate every chance I get to face good players.