Guild Wars 2

Just returned to GW2 to see if improvements have been made to further their esports aspirations. There is a lot of complaining about the condi-heavy meta on these boards and in-game. However, there are niche counters to a condi-heavy team. Having niche builds, imo, is a very good thing. The problem is the system of how the tournaments are started. You enter your team and if you don’t swap out characters to optimize your strat then you will be at the mercy of a blind match-up of two teams. If your tournament doesn’t allow you to swap characters and you randomly happen to go up against a team that has the right counters to your groups make-up, gg. There is no skill in countering your opponent. There is only the skill in designing a team that will be good and at least have a chance against the most possible enemy team comps.

What has this done to the meta? It has prioritized general builds over niche builds. General builds are polished and eventually turn into generic builds and you get pretty much the same builds over and over again because they are strong against most teams. Niche builds are only strong against certain team compositions, so very few teams run them because you’re unlikely to randomly be matched up against consecutive teams who are running the perfect composition for your niche builds.

A lot of people are complaining about the CC meta and focusing their ire on certain classes that have changed the general meta. However, I believe there is a more fundamental change that should happen: add a character select system at the beginning of every tournament match.

League of Legends does this very well: alternate selections and once the selection is made lock it in. For GW2, I would suggest that each player has a couple minutes to select his character and set the traits/gear. Once a character is selected, the traits and gear are locked for that particular match and all players (and viewers) can see the traits gear of the characters as soon as they are locked into place.

This would do a number of really good things for GW2:

1. Add an interesting tactical element to the start of the match

2. Related to number 1, it would give shoutcasters a specific chance to talk about the choices of team composition and character builds. This would help unfamiliar viewers have a better understanding of what the builds and team compositions are trying to do.

3. It would reward inventive, flexible, and skillful players. Players that master multiple builds would, and should in my opinion, be able to leverage that as an advantage.

4. Change the generic build meta into a more specific niche build meta, which adds variety and interest to the game.

5. Allow for better balance control. I am not a developer, but I am basing this off rock-paper-scissors and other games I’ve played. It’s very difficult to balance all of rock/paper/scissors with each other. I can’t imagine trying to balance all skills across all classes and skills in GW2. But creating balance through counters is much easier. At least in theory. One particular build too strong generally? Add new skills that counter it, or tweak old skills to counter it and let players create a niche build to counter the meta.

6. Provide another source of revenue for ANet. I would recommend dropping the price on pvp character slots (after adding pvp-only slots), but serious players would be willing to buy slots for many of the niche builds they master so they don’t have to worry about setting traits/gear in the limited character selection time period.

7. Eliminate the blind, and therefore random, nature of the current tournament match system. The blind matching system dumbs the entire system down for all of the reasons stated herein.

8. Creating more viable builds. There are so few viable builds, because players are having to design their builds for general play. As soon as they can start designing builds for specific situations, there will be a ton of new builds that are viable under certain conditions.

9. Creating more viable group comps. Comps are designed to deal with the general meta and for the map that is being played. The fact that these comps are usually determined before the match even starts leads to very stale group comps.

10. Eliminating the constant swapping of characters to counter the enemy once people get into a map. Countering will instead happen gradually and no team will be caught off-guard by their enemies builds and comps. Countering will therefore be PURPOSEFUL.

11. All of these things will increase the skillcap, and truly good players and teams will shine brightly.

Anyway, I think balancing all classes to one another is a recipe for banging your head against a wall. A character selection system at the start of each tourny match would forever change the generic slant of the meta and provide players and devs alike the framework necessary to counter stale metas with niche builds. More interesting matches to watch. More opportunities for first time viewers to become grounded in what teams are trying to do before the non-stop intensity of the match. Plus more money for ANet. Everybody wins.

I should also add that the current system leads to teams being extremely protective over their builds during streamed scrims and non-tourny matches. There will always be some of that in competitive play, but the current blind matchup system exacerbates the problem.

And it IS a big problem, because when someone like Blu is streaming he often can’t go over builds because teams don’t want to randomly be caught off guard by a team comp that is designed to counter their team set-up. Viewers do not like being in the dark about builds. Builds are at the heart of the game! And let’s be honest, GW2’s combat is very busy with visual effects. Leaving viewers in the dark about the capabilities of the combatants only further muddies the waters. If GW2 is to become a legit esports game, it is going to have to get new people to understand what they’re watching. Viewers bring advertisers/sponsors, advertisers bring $$, and $$ brings more players. This secrecy of builds does nothing to help viewers enjoy watching a match.

and the templates are in the horizon!

But would 1 min be enough time to set up strategic counters ?
or
maybe increasing the time but make the “Ready” Button more intuitive to use? (Very few seems to use it), make it a 1 time pop up in the middle of the screen? any thoughts ?

Schlieffen.2054:

If your tournament doesn’t allow you to swap characters and you randomly happen to go up against a team that has the right counters to your groups make-up, gg. There is no skill in countering your opponent.

Personally, I like the idea of GvG, where you did not knew what your enemy team plays and where you werent allowed to swap professions before/during game, so you had react and think of counter tactics in a few seconds and do the best with your chosen team comp. That takes real skill imo. Knowing what the enemy plays and change your professions takes less skill than that imo. But the problem is that this form of counter-play isnt possible in GW2 where some professions (rather builds) dominate the scene and are a must in every team. It should be possible to play multiple styles with several team comps, like the good old balanced <3.

Evan Lesh.3295:

This would also help solo queue players a lot, allowing them to form balanced teams after joining a match.

I prefer the old model of RA, where it was random what professions your mates are and you had to deal with it, but thats only my opinion, I dont like the “Build Wars” model in general..

Counters should only be available if you lose. From my experience, winners should choose first what they play, then losers can change after them. However the first game should always be random.

tiko.9206:

But the problem is that this form of counter-play isnt possible in GW2 where some professions (rather builds) dominate the scene and are a must in every team. It should be possible to play multiple styles with several team comps, like the good old balanced <3.

I prefer the old model of RA, where it was random what professions your mates are and you had to deal with it, but thats only my opinion, I dont like the “Build Wars” model in general..

My hypothesis is that the current system where players are blind to what they’re up against directly leads to the state where certain strong generic builds are in almost every team comp. Niche builds are niche builds for a reason – they perform a specific function well under a particular set of circumstances. Blind matchups mean you don’t know whether you’re going against comp A, B, C, D, or E.

Your niche build might be superior against comp E and not good against the rest, while the generic build would be better against all the rest of the comps. Not knowing which comp you face, your smartest play is to bring the generic build. Every other person in sPvP faces the same decision. Thus everyone brings the generic build and we have stale comps and stale matchups.

One way to deal with this is to try to perfectly balance all professions in relation to one another and all skills within a profession. What does perfect balance even mean? Each class has multiple builds that are all equally viable in a spvp match? If you want to avoid the stale meta described above while keeping the blind match system, then I think this type of balance is what you would need to achieve. This type of balance begs the question: if each class has multiple builds that are perfectly equal in strength, then does group comp cease to be important?

The other way to fix a stale meta is to balance through counters. Paper/rock/scissors style. The thing about counters though is that counter balancing will only work in a system that supports it (the blind matchup system does not support it). Yes, in this type of system builds become extremely important.

So in my opinion you either try to achieve perfect balance between all classes or you allow certain builds to be powerful in some situations while being weak in others. If you choose the former, a blind matchup system is fine because it doesn’t really matter which of many classes/builds you bring. If you choose the latter, then you need a system that supports the counter-build system because builds and team comps are extremely important.

You can call it build wars if you like, but I think the latter option is way more interesting and based on which games on twitch have large followings I think the esports viewers would agree with me. An Esport never becomes more than nerds playing a video game without viewers who are willing to watch the matches. MOBAs like LoL got it right in terms of balancing through counters and developing a framework which supported and even showcased the counter-balancing system. Anyway, I think GW2 needs something more to support counter-based builds and comps in competitive play.

Schlieffen.2054:

[…]

I agree that different builds of the professions should be stronger/weaker depending on the situation. But what I mean is, that there should be more team comps that can deal with several situations. In GW1 you could play a pressure or spike build, but you always had the possiblity to react to/counter diffetent tactics or team comps (e.g. split). The best example was balanced, what was hard to master but with that build you could play spike and pressure and split tactics. I dont say that all profession builds should be equally strong in general, but as a team you should have the possibility to play several playing styles and tactics so you dont need to know what you enemy plays.. The team comps should not be equally strong in everything, but they should balance out (one has more spike dmg, one has more condis, but both are equally viable in pvp, maybe with different skill caps but at least they are)

tiko.9206:

Schlieffen.2054:

[…]

I agree that different builds of the professions should be stronger/weaker depending on the situation. But what I mean is, that there should be more team comps that can deal with several situations. In GW1 you could play a pressure or spike build, but you always had the possiblity to react to/counter diffetent tactics or team comps (e.g. split). The best example was balanced, what was hard to master but with that build you could play spike and pressure and split tactics. I dont say that all profession builds should be equally strong in general, but as a team you should have the possibility to play several playing styles and tactics so you dont need to know what you enemy plays.. The team comps should not be equally strong in everything, but they should balance out (one has more spike dmg, one has more condis, but both are equally viable in pvp, maybe with different skill caps but at least they are)

Gotcha, I agree that would be great. I just think that the blind matchups mean that it falls on the Devs to create this broad balance that also has strengths and weaknesses of matchups within the broad balance.

Players expect this, but this is extremely hard to do at a macro level—there are always going to be inefficiencies in a system. Players are smart and super-motivated and will discover the inefficiencies and leverage them. That’s what leads to FotM builds and a meta of generic builds in the current system.

If players are given the opportunity and tools to counter enemy builds/comps then that same player intelligence and motivation will lead to a more dynamic meta. How often do players complain that Devs don’t play as much as them and therefore don’t know the intricacies as well? To some extent this may be true, and a system that empowers the players to specifically counter inefficiencies (e.g. automated response engies being used against a pure condi cleave enemy comp) will ALWAYS result in better balance and a more dynamic meta as compared to a system that relies on Devs to create proper balance while making matches blindly.

I love the idea. Probably not anytime soon but especially when the meta has a lot of variety I think this would be amazing.

I thought about bans in a draft mode but that just doesn’t work. Only picks imo!

I mentioned this before (though not as nicely and extensively worded as you). But this indeed is a very needed function to make solo queu work. There needs to be a way to incentice (is that a word? :P) to talk and discuss strategy before a game, because atm that simply isn’t happening and it makes tournies even more frustrating.