Guild Wars 2

Now that custom arenas and spectator mode are going to be released, it seems that PvP is finally moving forward. However, it feels like the future of PvP relies a lot on which features that Anet will provide and work on in this year.

A lot of people want GvG, dueling (which will be possible with custom arenas), and new game modes. I personally think that PvP gearing needs quite a bit of polish, since the entire setup in HotM is pretty bad and unnecessary.

What should Anet work on next? What does the PvP scene of GW2 need the most after it has taken this huge step?

If the CA/spectator + balance changes are enough than possibly CA/5v5 hot-join will reach a state where you can solo-play comfortably (ideally).

so…
1. Another mode / builds
2. See your ICD’s +Templates
3. Keg brawl in the mists/ Higher health pool for golems.

I would say order of importance (logic included):

1) Seperate Solo and team que while removing 8v8 (or hot join all together) from anything but Custom Servers.
-It pushes the fragmented community into a common que, thus reducing que times for most players.
-Gives the MMR system a larger number of players to select from in order to function better (I suspect this is badly needed, because lopsided matches are sooooooo common atm).
-Encourages learning to play correctly rather than mindlessly zerging about HJ servers.
-Makes the game more fun for both solo’s and teams (better competition)
-Ladder must be in place for Team que, and it would be wise to have a seperate one for solo

2) See #1. The importance of this cannot be stressed enough

3) Reque for tPv kitten illy. Bloodline Champions had a great function for re-que where at the end of a solo que match everyone got a toggle selection to stay with the same team. If they all voted yes, then the team stayed together and immediately re-qued. If just 2/3, then those 2 re-qued together and got another random. Something similar should be implemented.
-It reduces the time between PvP matches which is currently too long.
-It fosters a community/friend building environment by facilitating multiple matches with the same randoms in order to evaluate if you enjoy playing with them.
-Ultimately facilitates creating more teams for team que in an organic way (which is also badly needed).

4) Templates need to be made just like in GW1
-re-skilling and re-gearing is a waste of time, and is not fun. Put templates in.
-Make it possible to load a template with 1 button push in the wait time before a match starts (gear, skills, traits, sigils, weaps, ammys, everything).

There is plenty more to do, but these 4 are probably asking a lot already. At the current update pace 4 months for this is probably the best we can hope for, and by the time #1 is in for a month it will be so game changing that this list might even change.

Large team games, new game types, and a hardcore mode that requires you to select some one to determine if there friend or foe. Would make for great ambushes. Assault/defend game type akin to rush in bf3.

Dedalus.3065:

Now that custom arenas and spectator mode are going to be released, it seems that PvP is finally moving forward. However, it feels like the future of PvP relies a lot on which features that Anet will provide and work on in this year.

They need money to make good sized steps forward.
They have to have a decently sized PvP population to be able to make money from them.
They have to have a reason for people to play PvP to have a decent sized PvP population…

Anet is in quite a pickle.
The PvP population is trash atm and they have literally no income and never did since they didn’t even sell skins when allot of people played the game.
It will be a slow kitten crawl forward for them at best, full of minor half kitten tweaks, bad que’ing and conquest…

You guys will be waiting a very long time…

garethh.3518:

They need money to make good sized steps forward.
They have to have a decently sized PvP population to be able to make money from them.
They have to have a reason for people to play PvP to have a decent sized PvP population…

Anet is in quite a pickle.
The PvP population is trash atm and they have literally no income and never did since they didn’t even sell skins when allot of people played the game.
It will be a slow kitten crawl forward for them at best, full of minor half kitten tweaks, bad que’ing and conquest…

I think that this patch will increase the PvP population, and at least bringing back those who thought that Anet didn’t care about PvP. They will probably make some money from the custom arenas as well, which they can use to improve PvP further.

If not, then they can always buy their population. Put up a tournament with a big reward and the players will come streaming (hehe) in.

1) Split solo-q and team-q with seperate q’s and Ladder.
2) Guild/Team-ranking Ladder
3) New Maps with more important secondary Objectives or fully without Conquest.
4) Really start reworking some skills/traits/runes that don’t get used.

Dedalus.3065:

If not, then they can always buy their population. Put up a tournament with a big reward and the players will come streaming (hehe) in.

Very true. Both Riot and Valve have shown a willingness to put up $1+ million in tournament prizes. And both of these companies’ games are top 2-3 viewed on Twitch.

I’d like to see ANet do something similar around the 1 year mark. This would give them time to get the rest of features in and polished.

I only foresee massive “necessary” nerfs for most of the classes, stagnating the mode even further at this rate…
They should bring everyone up to the same level instead of pulling them down

Templates and GvG, plus a test krewe like in GW1 so we can actually get some decent balance rolled into the game. Rewards that carry over to pve, why are we not allowed to make gold by investing so much time into pvp? We could in GW1.

Custom servers can bring people back, if they have allot of hidden features they didn’t mention yet. Few if anyone cares about scrimmaging in a game with dead competitive PvP, no one cares about only adjusting respawn timers, turning the game into deathmatch by turning on/off BOs will just make worse PvP than conquest.

GW2 devs may not not care about PvP, but they have shown themselves so far to be pretty incapable of timely, even just somewhat, well done fixes.
That drives off a population.

Dedalus.3065:

If not, then they can always buy their population. Put up a tournament with a big reward and the players will come streaming (hehe) in.

Every Esport team has abandoned the game.
The state of the game streams only net about 2k views on youtube over their lifetime.

The game’s fallowing isn’t all that large atm :/
If not too many people come back because of custom arenas… the game’s instance PvP is dead until further notice.

garethh.3518:

If not too many people come back because of custom arenas… the game’s instance PvP is dead until further notice.

Sad but true. Instead of trying to sell more copies of the game through new game modes, Anet is trying to make it off the backs of the loyal players.

The future of PvP is far away in my opinion. The updates just come in way too slow, and aren’t that big either.

It isn’t like GW1 where they added tons of stuff in the first months.
One year in, they actually got their first expansion out. Before that, they released updates like battle isle as a main hub for each of the different PvP modes, or 4 months after release, when they added observer mode.

They also seemed to add way more balancing changes, which were probably really hard to test, as there are millions of possible builds that might get changed by a single skill change in GW1.

Not only that, but they also patched way more often, with a nice list of update.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:Updates

They also made multiple, class changing adjustments further down the line.

Mathias.9657:

Templates and GvG, plus a test krewe like in GW1 so we can actually get some decent balance rolled into the game. Rewards that carry over to pve, why are we not allowed to make gold by investing so much time into pvp? We could in GW1.

Yeah, what’s up with that? A person has to play pve just to get coin.

I have said it before, PVP is pretty much going to be as good as it gets, it isnt going to get any better really. People will always say “just keep waiting, because the gaming market is known for sitting on its bum and not moving”

We even have a new generation of consoles, god knows what thats going to throw up! PVP has one massive, major issue that has failed to be addressed from the get go. Hotjoin. What is it? is it a training ground? no, its a cluster fest of theives and mesmers, always. It fosters bunkering and bursting, with a huge zerg. Try taking a nice hybrid into hotjoin and watch as the moment you show up, you are nuked. Repeat over and over again.

I personally just do tournis, which of course is the right choice, but hotjoin just sits there, and I have other guildies who want to pvp, try hotjoin (as it appears to be noob friendly) and they hate it, and vow to never pvp in this game again. I spend most of my time in guild trying to convince people that PVP is ok if they just queue for tounis and ignore hotjoin, but the hotjoin stain is already upon them.

Who wants to spend most of the time eating mesmer clones or watching as your health bar plummets as 4 burst thieves eat you alive. Hotjoin was always an issue, and ANet failed to fix it (even now its a poor fix, and this is over half a year ahead)

If ANet doesnt like the fact it has to work faster in order to keep up, perhaps it should consider not making games, as this is the new way of doing things. (I blame MW2 entirely, its success and massive income showed the business world that gaming was no longer the passion of the weird nerd of old, its now global and even your aunt has a Wii and is a potential gamer, BIG money can be made. This is a new world, good or bad, its much more cut throat)

What future of PvP?

@OP if you think fixing gear takes priority over creating a better game mode (GW1 GvG) – You would be perfect working for ANET – That is why the PvP is in such a huge pile of kitten right now.