Guild Wars 2

I strongly believe that both the Daily Participation achievement (participate in 3 ranked matches for 15 days) and 1x/2x/3x Class (League “Insert Class”—Recruit) Wins achievements should be removed from ranked season achievements. Why?

1) The class wins achievement forces backpiece/shiny hunters and AP farmers into playing classes they cannot play at their level of true skill.

2) The daily participation achievement has created a pool of players who merely play 3 matches for the sake of 3 matches, and subsequently may not care for the outcome of the match.

3) Both reasons 1 and 2 then compound with one another alongside the additional lack of having an X # of class restriction per team in ranked. This in turn creates horribly balanced matches purely based on comp amongst other reasons.

Due to these reasons there now exists a player pool of inexperienced players, grinders, apathetic players, experienced players, skilled players, and trolls. For clarity and use later on, these different types of players will be labeled as a “player type”.

Your current match making system does a so-so job of addressing three of those groups, as the system was designed to appropriate skill as best it could. Those groups are obviously the inexperienced, experienced, and skilled players. The system however does little to address the remaining grinders, apathetic players, and trolls.

- Grinders are what I would refer to as AP hunters and or players merely in PvP for the backpiece, not for PvP itself. Any skill level could apply to these players, but their main objective is not the quality or competitiveness of a PvP match.

- Apathetic players are a result of the current match making system. Their skill range can include players of any skill level, but more than likely below average and average players. These players are fed up with the quality of matches and most likely log in daily for their ranked match participation to move forward in getting the backpiece; winning or losing these 3 matches is not a priority.

- Trolls are an unfortunate evil that will always exist within the system. I will state that the current system does very little to punish and or report these players.

Now that we’ve established the player pool and their motives, what does a general match look like around prime time/reset. *Note that these player types can exist at any MMR.

Team A: Thief, Scrapper, Scrapper, Scrapper, Druid

Team B: Tempest, Necro, Rev, Necro, Mesmer

In any match I’ve played with a similar class distribution (1 class heavily concentrated on one team, 3xnecro, 3x druid and so on…) the team with the class concentration will lose (within ruby/diamond/legendary). Now it is quite obvious that players on Team A could swap to adjust their comp, which they most certainly should, we also have the independent variable that is the “player type” effecting that choice.

On Team A, the 3 scrapper players could be trolls, varying skilled players, apathetic players, or grinders. In the case that they are grinders or an apathetic player, they’re more unlikely to switch and communicate with the team. This will generally result in a loss, most notably due to comp in this scenario. Again to these two player types winning is a secondary or third objective/motive to playing a match.

On top of being a grinder or apathetic player, one or all of these scrappers could be inexperienced or have very few matches in ranked; these players could have highly volatile MMR and be mis-matched due to unsettled MMR. Not having much experience or being unskilled, these players will likely not contribute to the team in a positive manner.

In this situation we’ve come to the conclusion that 3 of the 5 players on Team A are more than likely not going to positively contribute to a match. The 2 players left on Team A could be skilled or unskilled players. These players regardless of skill level are however focused on PvP as an objective; looking to improve, progress, play as a team, etc… . Unfortunately 3 of their teammates consist of a volatile player type, which can exist as a direct result of the two achievements I propose to remove.

Now, the match could be lost simply due to skill discrepancies between the teams, but there is an important thing to take away from all of this. When designing a skilled based PvP system, why would you introduce/keep variables such as these achievements that can heavily influence match quality when there are clearly issues with the base system that have been acknowledged?

These achievements directly effect and harm match quality, furthering volatility in the game mode and community. I see matches like this on a daily basis, and ALWAYS during prime time/reset. These are generally the only matches I lose as players refuse to work as a team and even bother to communicate. The second myself, my brother, or any of my friends play during different times, comp and communication issues seem to disappear and closer, more competitive matches result. I know this is a subjective analysis, but I think my reasoning, example, and player experiences easily back up the fact that these achievements do nothing to help the current quality of
matches

As a final note I would like to suggest that for future PvP rewards, please think about the use of those items and possibly restricting them to PvP only. The ranked PvP system shouldn’t be about grinding out a backpiece, even if only a portion of the PvP population are only there for it.

1) is intended to produce experience. How can you consider yourself a legend if you only get 1/9th of this game’s mechanics.
However, you can just swap classes before the match ends for the victory points.

2) Timegating is important to force you to play the season and not just farm it all in one day. It is a season. 3 matches is very reasonable, about an hour, which works nicely with people who like to play casually.
Stop yelling at people who play this GAME for fun. It is a Game.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

1) is intended to produce experience. How can you consider yourself a legend if you only get 1/9th of this game’s mechanics.
However, you can just swap classes before the match ends for the victory points.

2) Timegating is important to force you to play the season and not just farm it all in one day. It is a season. 3 matches is very reasonable, about an hour, which works nicely with people who like to play casually.
Stop yelling at people who play this GAME for fun. It is a Game.

Please read the entire post. These achievements are direct reasons that certain players are not playing PvP for fun, but a means to get an item or AP.

Your second statement also contradicts itself. Why put in place a timegate or grind, which is generally accepted as a mundane/not fun task, and say that someone is yelling at people for playing a game which is fun within the same line of reasoning.

On top of that, timegates will always push players away from certain objectives that simply do not have the time to consistently play. Personally I’ve had time to play once for 2 hours in the past 8 days. There are other players who may not even have the time to sit down for more than 1 game a day, is that fair to them?

I just had a game with 3 Mesmers. Coincidently, Mesmer is on the daily achievments list for the day.

We lost because they died pretty quickly in team fights.

1. The Profession achievement should not be removed. But they MUST be changed. Unlike most other achievements that aim to get players to do the same thing, these should do the opposite. Because of that, a system that allows achievements tailored for the account needs to be implemented, to be used for achievements that should not be the same for all. In this particular case, the best option to eliminate the weight of daily achievements in profession stacking would be:

• One achievement that rewards using one random profession among the 3 most used professions of the account other than the most played.
• One achievement that rewards using one random profession among the 3 least used professions of the account.
  These two combined would scatter the distribution of professions among players. The more players play the same professions, the more they’ll get others in their dailies.

2. Daily participation should be changed to be like this:

• Takes 3 (or more) points instead a match.
• A win gives all points needed to completed the daily.
• A loss gives just 1 point.
  Once you have that set, the number of wins will adjust the chances of people losing on purpose. Too few loses, and people may lose on purpose anyways. Too many, and it’ll take too much through loses.

3. There should be restrictions of professions in teams. I’ll go as far as restricting so it can only be 1 of each profession with team sizes of up to around5, and 2 for larger team sizes of up to 10 teammates. Custom arenas should be able to disable the profession limitation in settings.
But before this can be done, we need a way to be able to queue with more than one profession. For example, a system could be introduced to register characters for PvP. You go to an NPC with a character of a profession and talk with the NPC to register this character as you character of that profession. So you’ll be able to register up to 9 characters, one of each profession. There characters must be current, so if you delete the character, it gets unregistered. Once you have the characters you want to use registered, so queue. And if a match can’t be found for your current profession, one of your other registered characters is used.
Once you have a system like that, you can have things like draft matchmaking, and profession limits in matchmaking.

I’d prefer no more of two of the same class. The problem with limiting it down to one is that it seriously limits how different the matches are when it comes to team composition. The matches would become uninteresting. It’ll also increase the queue time by a lot for those playing any of the very popular classes.

Bump; I’m looking for some more feedback/opinions.

I do believe that AP hunting and grinding out the backpiece are both detrimental to match quality in regards to the current league system. I think some further thought is required by anet and devs on “doing PvP for a reward (current application for some players) rather than being rewarded for playing PvP”.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

1) is intended to produce experience. How can you consider yourself a legend if you only get 1/9th of this game’s mechanics.
However, you can just swap classes before the match ends for the victory points.

2) Timegating is important to force you to play the season and not just farm it all in one day. It is a season. 3 matches is very reasonable, about an hour, which works nicely with people who like to play casually.
Stop yelling at people who play this GAME for fun. It is a Game.

Thanks, first time they add something worthy to PvP i won’t be able to get it. Why !? Because i won’t be able to play 60 days in all 4 seasons combined.

You cannot walk into PvE and get a legendary, why should it work that way in PvP?

AegisFLCL.7623:

Team A: Thief, Scrapper, Scrapper, Scrapper, Druid

You know what will happen, don’t you? The loss will be blamed on the Thief because he didn’t change to a Scrapper ;-)

But yes, I don’t care for the multiple professions achievment. And it seems more beneficial to require 3 wins per day instead of participation.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

You cannot walk into PvE and get a legendary, why should it work that way in PvP?

So skill mean nothing right ? Grind is ? Oh, okay.

I don’t do pve, but afaik they don’t force you to play the game for 60 days for 1 hour for the luls when you have all the mats needed for legendary.

It’s not like i care about them, but it’s hilarious if you think that daily quests should be the gate. Not being legendary in 2 seasons or w/e.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

You cannot walk into PvE and get a legendary, why should it work that way in PvP?

You don’t need to play x amount of days to get a legendary – you just need to farm it and complete a couple of other content goals (not time gated). You don’t need to play any specific profession or more than one profession to get a legendary in PvE – this is something that is only done in PvP.

The reasons the OP raised are real – people who are in good faith trying to play competitively are being paired with people who have an incentive to be less competitive (play a weak profession) or who don’t care about the match outcome. These issues are brought on by the achievement designs.

I am pretty sure pve players farm mats for this period of time. That is a time gate. You cannot instantly generate mays or gold without farming something over time.

Skill is thrown around alot in pvp. If you are skilled at basketball do you deserve to be in the nba? You know who is in the nba, players who completed their timegated levels from youth to college.

You should learn multiple proffesions to broaden your game depth. Are you really skilled if you only know 1 class?
Skilled at the class, sure. But is that enough for the game to say, yes I have mastered conquest and the understanding of 9 proffesions, give me legendary.

Tldr class profession achievements are better for the player overall.

I agree that there should not be “dailies” attached to ranked. I feel it does have a negative impact on the teams that end up with 4 or 5 thieves or whatever and nobody wants to change because they want their daily.

All you do is swap before the game ends. This is well known and counts for the class achievements

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

All you do is swap before the game ends. This is well known and counts for the class achievements

Not everyone does that. That’s why it is easier to progress at in the middle of a tier than at the beginning or end of one. People use the safe points as a chance to work on those achievements.

style.6173:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

All you do is swap before the game ends. This is well known and counts for the class achievements

Not everyone does that. That’s why it is easier to progress at in the middle of a tier than at the beginning or end of one. People use the safe points as a chance to work on those achievements.

Ok so now we have hit both sides of the coin. People do not want to swap for the easy achievements, and people do not want to play the class for the achievements.

People just want to remove the achievement because it is easier for them.

To be competitive you should be able to switch classes if your team has too many of the same class. This is pvp so I see nothing wrong knowing more than one class. all the recipes have time gated materials in them, so I don’t see the issue about doing 3 matches a day.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

style.6173:

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

All you do is swap before the game ends. This is well known and counts for the class achievements

Not everyone does that. That’s why it is easier to progress at in the middle of a tier than at the beginning or end of one. People use the safe points as a chance to work on those achievements.

Ok so now we have hit both sides of the coin. People do not want to swap for the easy achievements, and people do not want to play the class for the achievements.

People just want to remove the achievement because it is easier for them.

It has NOTHING to do with removing the achievement for the sake of making the game easier. I don’t see why it’s so hard for you to realize how these achievements can heavily influence the quality of match making; this is on top of the fact than Evan and another PvP dev have already acknowledged the system needs additional adjustment.

For the sake of a competitive system, and in all honesty, I wish there were no achievements for ranked. Give players a skin/token/reward at the end of the season if you want people to have some kind of goal outside of knowing where you stand in placement.