Keep in mind it doesn’t take hotjoin into account, so it’s not necessarily representative of the entire population.
Still, this probably explains why we get so little attention in the first place. This is a terrible number, particularly when considering the game has about 450,000 peak concurrent players.
Because whole sPvP part was very unfriendly to beginners for VERY long time. Getting you kitten handled by countless mesmers and thieves for 8+ months is not encouraging kind of experience. No balance → loss of newbies → loss of reputation (“this game mode is totally kitten one, don’t want to try it ever again”) → declining population. I think now sPvP crowd is something like 1/30 of PvE and 1/10 of WvW population.
Is this 17,000 people who have tried soloQ? I like the other poster in this thread was expecting alot less like 10,000.
Even so, theres probably only like 200-300 max players at any given time doing soloQ in my opinion. How the hell would you explain running into the same people time and time again hours apart.
The game is incredibly alienating to new players. Let me describe new players first experience: Hotjoins. Every high ranked player stacks up on the team that the primary pubstar hotjoin hero joins first, then they disregard gameplay and literally farm the lower ranks for points. It’s not even in-depth pvp, it’s just rolling newbies for points. Would you want to play more matches if Xx Demonslayer Phoenixrank Xx just bullscharge>frenzy>100 blades’d you for the 10th time? Probably not. And I’m almost certain the hotjoin crowd – or the potential hotjoin crowd – is bigger than the tPvP crowd.
Anet said solo queue was kind of a soft introduction to real tPvP, but I believe we have to go further. Abolish hotjoins completely (keep custom servers for specialist intrests like dueling and massive clusterkitten 10v10s) and have a “soft unranked queue” – points hidden, 5v5 or 6v6 or so, few other gametypes like tdm and payload from TF2 – stuff you can really just jump in. And leavers should be replaced by people queuing. That way you can actually match people to skill and they can learn with people their own skill level instead of being mercilessly stomped by the full burst d/p thief over and over.
Accesability changes like that need to happen ALONGSIDE balance though, I certainly ain’t going to play the next patch if playing a reactive spec like zerker roaming warrior nets me far fewer wins than my current 90% winrate by rolling my face across the keyboard as a spirit ranger. Game has to be not trashcan before doing major tournaments like PAX again please.
Mortryde/Cold/Thugmentalist Bara
really bad engineer
Yes, this number is depressing, but all it shows is what we already knew—that the game launched with badly-underdeveloped PvP systems.
By the way, any time it feels like the devs just aren’t giving enough attention to PvP, think: 17000. Out of those, maybe 1000 PvPers are gem store customers. In other words, Anet is probably making an income of something like ~$10000 a month on PvP. In other words, any time/money Anet spends developing PvP is wasted, from a business perspective.
im pretty sure they lost 50% of the population in these months.
“i think it’s an underserved nerf. now we have to slot a stun breaker??”
“berserker stance clears all CC on you and you’re still immune to CC for 8 seconds”
-Excalibur.9748
im pretty sure they lost 50% of the population in these months.
So 0,24%? That didnt even make Anet blink.
Now I understand why they keep saying, if you are not happy about the current state of pvp you can always come back later to check out whats new. They don’t care if 0,48% takes a break, they got our box sales, as long as the other 99,52% get more content in a faster pace. We can’t blame them for that.
We can blame them though that these numbers are what Anet brought to themselves. PvP isnt big because it isnt big on the priority list either. PvP never got big enough for it’s downfall to be noticed by anyone other than the PvPers.
im pretty sure they lost 50% of the population in these months.
So 0,24%? That didnt even make Anet blink.
Now I understand why they keep saying, if you are not happy about the current state of pvp you can always come back later to check out whats new. They don’t care if 0,48% takes a break, they got our box sales, as long as the other 99,52% get more content in a faster pace. We can’t blame them for that.
We can blame them though that these numbers are what Anet brought to themselves. PvP isnt big because it isnt big on the priority list either. PvP never got big enough for it’s downfall to be noticed by anyone other than the PvPers.
Fair points and pvp players don’t tend to buy things from gem shop so they have to look after where they are making money. Its just good business sense.
im pretty sure they lost 50% of the population in these months.
So 0,24%? That didnt even make Anet blink.
Now I understand why they keep saying, if you are not happy about the current state of pvp you can always come back later to check out whats new. They don’t care if 0,48% takes a break, they got our box sales, as long as the other 99,52% get more content in a faster pace. We can’t blame them for that.
We can blame them though that these numbers are what Anet brought to themselves. PvP isnt big because it isnt big on the priority list either. PvP never got big enough for it’s downfall to be noticed by anyone other than the PvPers.
since you based it on their box sale, what makes you think that those 99.52% still plays this game every day. back in feb i’ve always been in overlow in LA. in June is just like, no overflow at all.
“i think it’s an underserved nerf. now we have to slot a stun breaker??”
“berserker stance clears all CC on you and you’re still immune to CC for 8 seconds”
-Excalibur.9748
17,000 that is 0.5% of people who bought the game. lol, truly awful retention rate.
And its funny because solo q killed team queue. And solo q is dead itself.
Terrible game is terrible. Anet will know this. They have their internal figures. Yet in spite of this they chose to let the game die by not making changes due to some pax tournament which is promoted a ton and is a one-off and yet still cant get close to other games get just from streaming.
Also 17k is way too high. Alot of people came back or tried out solo q. But then quit because of how crap everything was. I would guess 1000 active pvpers.
Character: Henry rank million/Duke Henry
Necromancer/Casual Warrior
[Team] Best WvW guild of all time. EASILY.
SoloQ – newbie unfriendly – bad balance – whatever other reason they say to me are only excuses.
The simple truth is that the game mode (conquest) is horrible.
Is not fun.
Is not good pvp.
It’s the only mode, even after a year.
And they persist in pushing it.
And, cherry on top, there is the huge elephant in the room of “Gw1 PvP” that makes spvp look even worse – a 7 years old game that blows out Gw2 under every aspect, on the pvp table.
Seafarer’s Rest EU – PvE/WvW – 8 × 80 chars.
Most used: Guard/Mes/War/Nec/Ele.
Yes, i use 5 chars at time. Because REASONS.
SoloQ – newbie unfriendly – bad balance – whatever other reason they say to me are only excuses.
The simple truth is that the game mode (conquest) is horrible.
Is not fun.
Is not good pvp.
It’s the only mode, even after a year.
And they persist in pushing it.
And, cherry on top, there is the huge elephant in the room of “Gw1 PvP” that makes spvp look even worse – a 7 years old game that blows out Gw2 under every aspect, on the pvp table.
the game mode (conquest) is horrible. -whatevery other reason they say to me are only excuses too
“i think it’s an underserved nerf. now we have to slot a stun breaker??”
“berserker stance clears all CC on you and you’re still immune to CC for 8 seconds”
-Excalibur.9748
Because whole sPvP part was very unfriendly to beginners for VERY long time. Getting you kitten handled by countless mesmers and thieves for 8+ months is not encouraging kind of experience. No balance -> loss of newbies -> loss of reputation (“this game mode is totally kitten one, don’t want to try it ever again”) -> declining population. I think now sPvP crowd is something like 1/30 of PvE and 1/10 of WvW population.
Overall, the balance in this game is not as bad as people think – especially when you consider how many different options per profession they have to “balance”.
On the plus side…if you are ever on the “short stick” of balance, you can easily re-roll a new profession or build.
On the downside…they made the game VERY unfriendly to new players. Your comment about thieves and mesmers is probably accurate.
No new player is going to enjoy trying to fight an experienced thief and dying instantly without even doing any damage to them. Trying to find and target a mesmer is even more frustrating for new players.
Whoever thought that fighting constantly invisible, evading professions with multiple pets/clones/phantoms and super high burst would be fun for new players is to blame.
There are other select builds that also turn people off to the game pretty quick.
Only once you gain a LOT of experience can you deal with these professions/builds and play with any type of enjoyment. Sadly…the initial frustration is too great for new people to stick it out.
So why might it be so low?
A : Because PvP in this game is garbage, full of passive play rangers and aoe spam necros or just hideously unbalanced in general.
That’s not to say GW2 as a game is bad. I think the world itself is amazing. The PvP is just terrible. And that’s from someone who usually loves PvP.
