I’ve been thinking that one of the things GW2 really lacks that couldn’t be too horribly difficult to implement is some sort of pick/ban part in PvP.
We already have a full minute before matches start to completely change our builds, so why not make that an actual important part of the game rather than just having another minute of AFKing?
For those who don’t already know the impact of a player-based ban system:
It lessens the impact of horribly obnoxious builds – Why complain about d/d ele when you can just ban blinding ashes or soothing disruption?
It forces evolution of the meta – when your OP freelo build suddenly misses a key trait in every match, you start having to branch out and over time, the meta will change in response. This is less of a case in LoL, where there tends to be a larger meta than can be entirely banned, but in GW2 there’s maybe three builds that dominate at any given moment.
It gives a buffer and an indicator for balancing – If people ban something constantly, it puts that out of the meta and also tells Anet that it needs looking at.
It creates a whole new element to the metagame, so that you can pick more diverse strategies and ban common counters.
TL;DR, ban phases make the game way more interesting.
Since queue times are long enough without people having to take two minutes to sift through what’s banned or not, I assume conventional pick ban phases are out of the question.
I have a few ideas what it could look like in GW2.
Option A: Part of your build includes your three bans, which can be any trait or utility skill, but not weapons or amulets because that would allow way too much control over a match. In each match, one random person from each team gets all of their bans.
Pros: Quick, doesn’t actually mess with queue, can’t actually ban everything from a single class (though you could wreck a single utility type or traitline).
Cons: If you banned three same-level traits in a tree, you could effectively ban a single traitline if you wanted, which might be too much control, especially if the other team’s bans are another traitline in the same class!
Option B: Each person has a single ban in their build, everyone gets their ban. Still limited to traits and utilities.
Pros: Everyone gets their ban!
Cons: bad for soloqueuers, because overlapping bans are less common for team queues where you can coordinate it beforehand. Possibly too many total bans, turns into ten total bans in competitive when teams are coordinated.
Option C: Voting, like on map select in current queue. Three bans in total.
Pros: more intuitive, and more random, so builds that are hated would still see play.
Cons: Interrupts queue, making it longer, very few bans, could create people dodging matches repeatedly to try to get their build not banned. Less control for players hurts the metagaming aspect.
If anyone has ideas of their own do share.
I’m of the opinion that this would be an easy thing to implement (it’s all menus with minimal design options and no skill animations or icons that aren’t already in the game), which would make the game more fun overall. Also would reduce the sheer number of ele threads.