Guild Wars 2

Players need more incentive to play, it has been said before but for a lot of players it is becoming less of a request and more of a necessity without which is game breaking. This is going to be a long post and most of it you may either know or not care about at all, throwing in headers so you can hop to what part concerns you particularly.

Where are the Tourney Teams:

The problem is cyclical. Right now tourney pops are slower than they were without match making, but we need MMR to make sure that top teams aren’t stomping lower skilled players. So we wait a little longer and that is not terribly bad. Do we end up facing many of the same teams over and over again? Usually. This is bad.

Solution: More Teams!

Short of attracting more players to the game (which is unlikely if players who PvP check on forums or ask friends before buying) we simply need players who log consistently to group up so we can see meta changes and competition. But why don’t we seem to build more teams? Well once a newly formed team loses 5-10 matches they split as opposed to working until they are skilled enough to beat the teams they are being placed against. Why don’t teams feel any need to stick together? Well for one, losing all the time isn’t fun, but there is more than that. It is because winning is not all that important and it is even less fun losing knowing you wouldn’t really have been better off winning.

So Why Keep Playing?

The rewards are either cosmetic, more tickets, or qualifying points. Even as a casual player with relatively small amount of paid matches played compared to teams who play every day, I have all the cosmetic gear I want from paids. Why would I want more tickets? So I can Q with a pug again? Even with what I have to guess is a low MMR, I find myself 60% of the time facing a guild/premade probably because of either low amount of other teams in Q or a cumulative MMR between members of the pug that is a terrible representation of our team ability against anything other than a pug.

Solo Q!

What is the fix for this? People have said it before but the answer hasn’t changed. Solo Q would alleviate a lot of issues with players facing groups that have much higher coordination. For a game balanced around 5v5 and team fights it is very odd to see Anet so lax in its stance on this. They know how well classes can coordinate. We all know what a difference voice communication can have in team fights. Pugs do not have access. Generally teams do. You put them together and neither party, the stompers or stompees, are going to be having much fun.

Not if but when…

Longterm, or even short term for players with less patience, this is a major issue. It will be nice being able to play teams of the same skill and avoid people who are consistently grouping together. But this won’t last us forever, eventually even solo Q will become stale if it is the only change to the current system. Considering in the time sPvP has been out the significant updates since launch have been MMR and paids (same as free’s just with gems and QP…and now just QP). Casual players are the foundation of games. Pro players draw audiences and are awesome and contribute a lot. But they are ‘pro’ for a reason. If 90% of players were pro and topping the QP charts and revolutionizing the meta I could be entertained with what we have for ages. But that is not the case. Approx 70% are going to be casual, 10% pro, and 20% being competitive skilled teams who play regularly but have not reached a skill cap.

So we see the need for solo Q. Anet is watching this, hopefully they see sooner than later that no MMR system will make up for the gap between players who have history and voice access and those who don’t.

Dead Reward System:

That leaves us with QP. Currently all it does is allow us to check the forums to see who is playing the most. Pro players already have more than they will ever need. Casual players have far fewer. But why is this important? It isn’t…and that is the problem. It currently has 0 use. When they implement whatever we are ‘qualifying’ for I see another problem arising. Lets say my rough approximation of player percentages is even remotely correct. At best 30% of players will see any benefit from this. Those with QP will go on to play the same conquest mode against the same teams for a reward that is, more or less, inaccessible to casual players.

Sound familiar? It should, because it is the exact same boat we are in now. By then we may have spectator mode, which will allow us to watch those on top stay on top. Without more incentive for more teams to form no one will really every challenge their current dominance. Not to mention the ability to watch better players should get people excited about playing, as opposed to showing them something they have no reasonable access to.

Awesome Gameplay and no reason to play it…

The game has potential and that is very obvious. But this is an MMO. Eventually people won’t log on for free’s or paids without much more to keep us occupied. I know it takes time, but even PvP in vanilla WoW had more sustainability due to multiple game modes, titles that actually meant something and didn’t come from glory grind, and yes a gear grind. Should GW2 follow suit? Hell no, but we should find a way to make players want to play.

New Rewards! (Titles, Achievements, Legendary weapons, PvE Crossover)
Solution? If you are going to make a game that is clearly handicapped for those people without a team (and it is, people can argue against it but the sPvP population from launch to now proves it) give us something to work towards or a way to be competitive/show skill solo. Currently we have absolutely nothing besides glory grinding. Those who haven’t played since launch are getting frustrated trying to grind up rank just so they can be accepted into mist chat pugs. Unacceptable Anet.

Hotjoin gets hate and right now it deserves it. Make it interesting; give achievements for things that take skill and that eventually lead to titles. It cannot be that hard. For example: Ninja (steal a boss kill from opposing team with less than 5% health), Impregnable (Hold a point being contested by enemies for 3 min), Anarchy (kill opposing team guild lord in the first 3 minutes of a match), Animal Control (kill an enemies summon before the stomp- applicable with minion, ranger pets, guard weps etc.), and Hoarder (your team stole every communable buff in temple from the opposition). These things would take time, skill, and would give players a sense of accomplishment and a reason to come back.

Give PvE players a reason to cross over. I know I have seen mention of gems needing to come back in and laurels added to PvP. But why not throw in some PvP exclusive dyes as well? Titles, dyes, achievements are all things MMO players can work for whether a PvP or PvE fanatic. And where are the PvP exclusive legendaries Anet? Surely you don’t think simply bloodying someone up is enough? I want to do it with a flaming fiery dragon whatever-ya-call it. Let us use our glory and different achievements (maybe even laurels) to get something only killing people can give you!

Right now players who have done exclusively PvE since launch must cross over to the mists and think, why the hell would I do any of this? They are behind the rank curve and there isn’t anything there they want or can use. PvP has no use for them and they cannot even show off gear they worked for. Make the gear skins they have from PvE a toggle already. Not to mention those who have PvP’d since launch cross over to PvE and despite skill and countless player kills are simply a lonely level 2 in a big wide world with not even a scrap to show for it. This distinct separation between game types (PvE/WvWvW and PvP) does not foster a welcoming community.

And we are back to the daily grind…

sPvP in Guild Wars 2 essentially goes against their philosophy. It is a grind for anything you might want. QP? grind-able. Titles? total grindfest. Glory? All grind! Same goes for aesthetics. Eventually everyone will have all the gear without requiring any skill. Make specific skins locked to different achievement chains.

In the years of GW2 development is seems the only thing they did for PvP was combat. Sure it is monumental, but you have to have something to fight for! The skins already were needed for PvE, for amulets/runes/sigils they only had to decide which to throw in for balance, and beyond that there is the just mists (compared to the wide PvE world and each unique city, PvP got the short end of the stick). Anet has told up before it takes substantially less manpower and hours than most things in the game. What are tournaments and hot join besides an endless rotation of those maps? Just saying that for those who bought the game for PvP we can all see we got substantially less attention than WvWvW and PvE. And it is showing so evidently that it really is upsetting for people who want to play and enjoy the game in their desired game mode.

Finally…

For those of you that read this in its entirety I thank you. Hopefully it will get some dev love because I really do believe there are small things that we could work towards while developing all the perks like custom arenas (if they cost anything they will fail to hotjoin for most casuals and once again be something only ‘pro’ or players with excessive time to invest will use), spectator mode, and all other things that go into e-sport. Make things like skins and grindable titles slightly less accessible so there is a sense of accomplishment. I play for fun and doing the same thing over and over repetitively is not fun neither is gaining something without any real thought or skill required. I’d love to see the communities ideas, thoughts, comments, etc. on this topic.

…I love you. When I first logged in during the 3-day headstart for my pre-order I grinded out about 21-22 ranks. And about then, I started asking myself why I’m forcing myself to play this incredibly terrible game. I really do hate to say it, but the PvP in this game is just laughably terrible. So, what did I do? I swapped over to PvE, only to find out it was just as bad!

I ended up quitting around October, then came back for the Halloween and November event, then quit again because I couldn’t find a reason to stay. The ‘balance’ if you can call it that is nothing short of silly.

The customization! I was kittening all over myself before the release/beta weekends, always theory crafting weapon slots, traits and utilities, even before I had numbers, and even worse, before I had any idea how small the customization actually was…

I know, I know, you don’t want to keep reading about what I dislike about this game. So, i 100% agree with the OP about adding in laurels and/or mystic coins to the daily/montly PvP. I’d also like to see some sort of experience jug gained per rank up, much like the Draught(and lower tiers) of Karma. This way, a player can save those vials and when he decides to join the PvE frenzy, has at least some experience to show for it. I’m not saying that 1 rank should give 1 level worth of experience, but 1/4 wouldn’t be bad I’d think, as well as adding the vial of experience to daily/monthlies for added effect.

Yes, yes, yes. Titles, achievements, and ohmyyes PvP Legendaries. Special skins, more maps and more. I’ve done more than my fair share of insulting ANet for having one game mode. I don’t expect Capture the Flag to be a tournament mode. But is it so much to ask for to have some variety? Or at least give us a map that makes it look like you’re actually trying.. ~~~ HELL! Better yet, release an editor, and hold a map maker contest!~~~ By the gods ANet, where are all your thinkers? : / You obviously need to hire a better team..

Honestly, besides wanting more utility/weapon customization, that’s my input for the time being. I’ll stop by another time and write another short story for you soon.

~~~The stuffz in these are the most important partz~~~

Do you want to know the real reason why teams split up after a bad streak of losses?

The answer is simple: For various reasons that would require months and months of changes, you do not see progress, you do not see improvements.

It’s not the rewards that are the issue, it’s that there’s no way of telling whether you are improving as a player or a team. You lose and win games for reasons that are not displayed anywhere and that sometimes can only be retraced after a game (if lucky) and often these situations are also decided by luck (down state battle, rallying of team mates, a rezz utility, lucky interrupts, a 1v1 between points or at the trebuchet etc.).

We have an absolutely lackluster UI, incredibly weak combat log, a end of match overview of glory points earned (great way to judge performance right there) and a multitude of other vague pieces of information that give your team no way of analysing a game, be it a win or loss and expanding/improving upon that.

It’s no wonder people don’t dedicate much time or invest heavily into GW2 PvP.

In order to create a healthy competitive scene (not using esports in this context, as there’s no need for it), you want teams to want to practice. In order to practice these teams need to know what they need to improve on, where their mistakes are.

Ask these teams why they are losing and 9 out of 10 will either blame class balance or admit to not know why (if they are honest instead of just frustrated).

I just got 1 shot by 3 walls of text.

Med.6150:

Do you want to know the real reason why teams split up after a bad streak of losses?

The answer is simple: For various reasons that would require months and months of changes, you do not see progress, you do not see improvements.

It’s not the rewards that are the issue, it’s that there’s no way of telling whether you are improving as a player or a team. You lose and win games for reasons that are not displayed anywhere and that sometimes can only be retraced after a game (if lucky) and often these situations are also decided by luck (down state battle, rallying of team mates, a rezz utility, lucky interrupts, a 1v1 between points or at the trebuchet etc.).

We have an absolutely lackluster UI, incredibly weak combat log, a end of match overview of glory points earned (great way to judge performance right there) and a multitude of other vague pieces of information that give your team no way of analysing a game, be it a win or loss and expanding/improving upon that.

It’s no wonder people don’t dedicate much time or invest heavily into GW2 PvP.

I’ve always disliked the idea of downed state combat. It is an interesting concept, but only for the PvE aspect. Hell, I’d even be okay with players only lasting 3-5 seconds in the downed state before auto dying with no chance of resurrection.

Everything about the PvP system is rather lackluster, imo. As it is right now, I’m just going to keep attempting to play an hour per day(split between PvE and PvP) and dedicate my time to Smite and developing my MMO. And it’ll have Blackjack! And Hookers!… In fact, forget the MMO!

We’ll make the first MMHO’!

very excellent post 1+

Med.6150:

We’ll make the first MMHO’!

Yus! Totally putting subtle hints of hookers into my mmo… Although, they probably won’t be very subtle.. : /

My condolences. For those who do not know:

GW2 was born dead…. We just did not realize that at the time.

I cant waste more time on this failed game. Buying GW2 was a mistake.