Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer: This is going to be a long post without a TL;DR so read it or beat it.

While it may feel like SPv kitten lowly regressing and the devs don’t care much for SPvP, in the last patches I’ve noticed that the game is slowly headed in the right direction. That being said, people might have a different idea of what that right direction is. The following suggestions are what I believe to be necessary implementations for this game to be successful and fun. I will do my best to list these in descending priority (more important to least important).

• Structured Queues
  What I mean by structured queues is that there must be different queues for different purposes. So, there should be a team queue, in which only teams can get matched against other teams, a ranked solo/duo queue, in which one of two people queue up to get matched against similarly ranked people, and an unranked everything-goes queue, in which people get matched against similarly skilled players to mess around without any visible consequence. Onto more detail:
  • Team Queue (Ranked): a prearranged team (this is important, I will discuss this later on) can queue up here to get matched against other teams of similar rating. This queue should have its own visible MMR.
  • Solo/Duo Queue (Ranked): people can queue up, optionally, with a friend, to get placed in a group of five, against another, similarly ranked, group of five. This queue should have its own visible MMR.
  • Everything-Goes Queue (Unranked): anyone can queue up, regardless of whether they are alone of with a group of any number of people (less than 4), to get placed in a group of five, against another, similarly skilled, group of five. This queue should have its own invisible MMR. Nobody can see this MMR except for devs, but it’s important that this is in place, so people don’t get matched with or against people of different skill levels.

• A More Accurate MMR
  MMR needs to be character based, and NOT account-wide. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. Very few people are actually at the same skill level with two or more different characters. There are two things that are happening right now because of the way MMR is currently implemented:
  • People that not as skilled with a second profession are punished when they queue up with that profession because they go up against other people that presumable know their class better.
  • People are scared to play their secondary professions because they care too much about their MMR and they don’t wanna talk it just to learn another class. This is not a good environment for competition.

• Hotjoins & Custom Arenas
  Hotjoins as they now exist need to disappear from this game. There is no point in having 8v8 servers when the main competitive attraction of this game is a 5v5 game. That being said, we can’t just get rid of these servers because there are still a lot of people that like playing these “custom” games. That’s where custom servers come in. I have read about what is being tested internally for this and I think it all sounds good. One change I would make, would be to put both the PvP Browser and the Tournament Master right next to each other. Currently, the first thing new people see when they zone into the mists is the PvP Browser. This directs most newcomers to hotjoins, and they continue to hotjoins for endless amounts of time, unaware of the existence of tournaments.
  That is bad because many players are lured into thinking that SPvP revolves around these hotjoins, where there are countless amounts of thieves, mesmers, and the like. Balance in this game cannot be worked around 8v8 servers when the competitive games are all 5v5.

• “Oops, we’re losing! Better get on my main class…”
  Many people do this! I admit, even I do it sometimes, but this needs to be disabled for Team Queue and Solo/Duo Queue. Due to formatting, I will offer my proposal first, and then explain it.
  After the 2:30 minute mark whichever characters are in the tournament should get locked into it, that way anyone that logs out and tries to swap characters is unable to join the game again, but people that get disconnected are allowed back in as long as they do so on the same character.
  Quick example of a scenario where changing classes can be detrimental:
  • Suppose I get into a game with my bunker guardian and the enemy team has five necros. At first, I’m confident, my guardian skills are unparalleled in these lands, but shortly after I get to mid point I realize that I’ve just been torn a new one because I got nuked with more condis than my cleansing abilities could handle. It’s OK, I can switch classes and everything will be fine for the rest of the game. This is not OK in a competitive game.

• The Rookie Leagues
  Many people find it extremely frustrating when they get matched with low ranks against “pre-mades”. This is driving many people away from solo queuing and increasing the and number of “pre-mades” queuing up into low ranks. It is because of this that there need to be “rookie leagues” for low ranks so that they may learn the game along with people of their rank. This is my proposal on the matter:
  • Anything below rank 30 is NOT allowed to queue up for Solo/Duo Ranked Queue. Instead they should be placed in separate leagues when they queue up for Unranked Games. For example:
    • All rank 1-10s get matched in the Beginner League.
    • All rank 11-20s get matched in the Intermediate League.
    • All ranks 30+ get matched in the Open League and are allowed to queue up for Solo/Duo Ranked Queue.
  • However, it is extremely important that regardless of rank you are still allowed to participate in Team Queues. This is self explanatory.

• Teams vs. Rosters
  It is important that in order to queue up for Team Queue all your members that want to participate are all members of the same guild. This will make guilds a more important part of the SPvP aspect of this game. Additionally it will make it easier to record progression in Leaderboards in terms of MMR and such. You wouldn’t want the Team Queue Leaderboards to be filled with names of individual people instead of Guild/Team names.

• Spectator Mode
  Once all of those features are in place, the game will be in a good place for people to start spectating it. In my opinion, this feature should be lowest in the priority list. It is a key feature for this game to be popular and for tournaments to be more accessible, but it is not the first thing that needs to happen for SPvP to be competitive.

Now, notice that all these features are all about infrastructure. In my opinion these are all features that should’ve been implemented on release (exception of maybe spectator mode). But I’m not terribly upset over it as long as there is a clear understanding that these are basic things the system needs. I am convinced this game is headed in the right direction, and this is what I believe to be the ideal SPvP system to be.

Thanks for reading,
Ac

I can probably agree on most of your Post, but there is a thing I want to explore a bit more:

You name all those features, yet some of them are incredibly more pressing than others IMHO. Many of your features simply accomodate casuals and solo-q’ers and atm I think that GW2 offers more than enough to them. What’s truly hurting right now is the support for high-level competetive Teams.

So even though those Players/Teams are the ones that would drive GW2 forward as an e-Sport, would help to establish a competetive scene, show the world how complex and fun the Game is by streaming high-level play etc. they got almost nothing for months and tons of Teams left and opportunities passed by

GW2 had some decently skilled high-level Teams that were eager to compete. At the hight of Paid Tournies, the Competition was high for such a young Game and we had Top-Teams streaming, a few showmatches etc. and ESL even wanted to start an Amateur-Series. Tell me which Feature for Solo-q’er can drive this Game forward as fast as that?
—> Now we don’t have Paid Tournaments anymore and no 3-Map System and the things that tooks their place don’t work: Single-Map is a neat Idea, but no1 wants to play the same Map over and over and while Paid Tournaments offered a high level of competition (during the few months at it’s peak), the Matchmaking now doesn’t work and it’s once again like farming free Tournaments if you are in a dedicated and competetive Team.

So what’s important IMHO, is not to focus on better Solo-q Features, but features for the really competetive Players, because GW2 is loosing them rapidly.

How can they do that? Custom Arenas and Spectator Mode go a long way, but they also need to focus more on proper Matchmaking for Teams, so they don’t get paired up against a group of Solo-q’ers or Teams that are way beyond their Skill-Level. Anet should also encourage Players to find a Team and to not simply solo-q, with much higher Rewards for Team-q’s, because Team-q’s are so much more skill-demanding and tell much more about the skill of a Player and a Team than Solo-q’s.

We should simply move away from a Matchmaking based off the accumulated points by individuals to a Matchmaking for Teams based on the performance of the Guild, why?

1) Adding up Points of Individuals doesn’t tell you how good the Team as a whole is. You can easily have ppl with double the amount of Points get demolished by a Team that plays well together, has a strategy and well thought-out builds.
2) ANet doesn’t have to worry about leavers or single Players dragging down Teams etc. because the Guilds will sort that out themselves to keep a good ranking.
3) It’s easier for newer Players and new Talent to play at their respective Skill-level, because other than a simple Algorithm that establishes how much worth you are based on results in the Past, a Guild uses much more sophisticated ways to search their Players. Why should a new Player that is incredibly good but didn’t play too much (or on another account/server) drag down the whole Team, if the Team decided that this Players is worthy of playing with them?

If ANet would publish the Single-Player Ladder now and I’d see someone at the Top, I’d most likely say: Well, he sure puts a lot of time into it, because such a Ladder would say nothing about skill if it’s based on a flawed Matchmaking System were you can get points in solo-q. If there would be a Team-based ladder and one team would clearly stand out, it would actually tell me that they firstly know how to play together AND that they’ve played against other organized teams, which has a drastically higher skill-level than solo-q.

There was once a man named Jonathan Sharp.
He said, “Soon.”
And, at first, we all swooned.
But then, as time passed,
The devs became relaxed,
And we knew no good patches
Would come to pass.

@Davinci LOL

@PowerB I did put quite a bit of emphasis on the solo-queue aspect of what needs to be done, but I don’t think I left out anything that needs to happen in order for teams to be pushing the game to be more competitive. IMO The most important thing that needs to happen for that is a Team Queue in which only teams can queue up against other teams. Teams hate that there is no competition right now because solo queue and team queue got merged.

Davinci.8027:

There was once a man named Jonathan Sharp.
He said, “Soon.”
And, at first, we all swooned.
But then, as time passed,
The devs became relaxed,
And we knew no good patches
Would come to pass.

I’m so gonna use this in other threads lol
Is there any copyright?

All the ideas in this thread are awesome. It’s too bad the company doesnt want to spend money on pvp

Acandis.3250:

@Davinci LOL

@PowerB I did put quite a bit of emphasis on the solo-queue aspect of what needs to be done, but I don’t think I left out anything that needs to happen in order for teams to be pushing the game to be more competitive. IMO The most important thing that needs to happen for that is a Team Queue in which only teams can queue up against other teams. Teams hate that there is no competition right now because solo queue and team queue got merged.

True, but I didn’t complain about a lack of Features you mentioned, but a lack of an order of Priority in which they should be implemented. Because even though your Features are necessary, it could hurt GW2 even more if they simply worked on everything to make solo-q’ers Happy and neglect the organized competetive Scene for another X Months.

PowerBottom.5796:

True, but I didn’t complain about a lack of Features you mentioned, but a lack of an order of Priority in which they should be implemented. Because even though your Features are necessary, it could hurt GW2 even more if they simply worked on everything to make solo-q’ers Happy and neglect the organized competetive Scene for another X Months.

You have a great point, I do think the first thing that needs to be implemented is the Team Queue. Hence why it’s listed at the top

As for spectator mode… Maybe there needs to be a couple spectator spots in custom arenas for the Shoutcasters/etc… But I really don’t think a full-on spectator mode needs to be on the top of the priority list.

Very good points in here.

I particularly agree with the character lock during matches and preventing people from switching character. It’s just cheap and proves nothing but the fact that you’re being a sore loser and want to win at all costs. From the moment they locked skill bars and weapon swap (a choice on which I still don’t completely agree) they should have done the same for characters.

kagemitsu.3657:

Very good points in here.

I particularly agree with the character lock during matches and preventing people from switching character. It’s just cheap and proves nothing but the fact that you’re being a sore loser and want to win at all costs. From the moment they locked skill bars and weapon swap (a choice on which I still don’t completely agree) they should have done the same for characters.

For the record, I agree 100% with locking traits/skill bars/weapons, it was exploitable and several people got unfair advantages because of it.

locking weapons killed many builds. Many weapons that lack mobility died that day.

Who plays staff ele now? No one.

Staff will never have RTL, so it will never be worth using.

Rerroll.9083:

locking weapons killed many builds. Many weapons that lack mobility died that day.

Who plays staff ele now? No one.

Staff will never have RTL, so it will never be worth using.

I would argue with this but I don’t want to derail my thread. Feel free to make a thread about it, though

Rerroll.9083:

locking weapons killed many builds. Many weapons that lack mobility died that day.

Who plays staff ele now? No one.

Staff will never have RTL, so it will never be worth using.

Exactly this.

Every profession who has movement skills on a different weapon than their main got damaged with that change. I can see how it is exploitable to an extent, but still it wasn’t worth removing the possibility altogether imho.

And yeah, enough derailing. Wouldn’t want people to miss the point of this great thread here. :P

Davinci.8027:

There was once a man named Jonathan Sharp.
He said, “Soon.”
And, at first, we all swooned.
But then, as time passed,
The devs became relaxed,
And we knew no good patches
Would come to pass.

Davinci for president.

the pvp population is similar to that of liechtenstein, make plans with so few players, it makes no sense

If game-devs of another concern would read this forums, they’d prolly laugh at how the playerbase suggest so much flawless pvp content and A-Net is incapable of benefit from it.

Kesil.8034:

the pvp population is similar to that of liechtenstein, make plans with so few players, it makes no sense

There actually aren’t that few players, problem is that most of the players only do hotjoins. Many of them are unaware of the existence of tournaments.

Davinci.8027:

There was once a man named Jonathan Sharp.
He said, “Soon.”
And, at first, we all swooned.
But then, as time passed,
The devs became relaxed,
And we knew no good patches
Would come to pass.

^

I agree with OP, right now i just get the feeling that we keep doing that boring 2-team tournament for all eternity, the pvp in this game is so amazing, it would be a superb spectator e-sport. But it’s all thrown away.

Iv been saying to myself for a year now that no no, they will fix it. They will make use of this really fun and challenging pvp and make it worth while, but i start to loose hope

I don’t think there are enough people doing tpvp for those kinds of queues to work all that well at the moment. The queue times would increase dramatically for 3 man groups and up and people would be fighting the same groups over and over again. Maybe not in Europe but in NA for sure. I totally disagree that e-sports is going to drive this game’s pvp forward. This game has already assured itself that it will never be true e-sport. The goal should be adding features that everyone both casual and hardcore want and trying to increase the player base to something approaching what it was at release. This game has already blew its chance to be the next big pvp thing. You only get one chance and they blew it already. It’s a tough pill to swallow but the 100% truth.

I’ll have to agree with Kwll. With the small pvp population that we already have, Anet needs to develop a model that will attract parts of the PvE population which will then lead to an increase in the PvP population. Hotjoins definitely has an adverse affect on players who want to try PvP. Jumping into a small map with 16 players AOEing themselves to death is not casual friendly. I only run tournies myself, but every potential PvP player has got to start somewhere. I played WOW since vanilla but didn’t get into PvP until Wrath, and it all started with some guildies inviting me to play battlegrounds with their group. Lots of skirmishes on a large map made me develop a love of small scale pvp. From there, we moved into arena, but battlegrounds are available to play casually when I didn’t want to farm. After Wrath, I couldn’t stand the gear grind anymore so I waited around for a new PvP based game. GW2 fit the bill so I bought it and then played hotjoin exclusively the first 5 months because the tourney system seemed too hardcore for me as I didn’t have a team. With the changes to the tourney system with the last patch, we’re starting to see more “pvp noobs” and that’s a good thing. At least there is a developing interest in PvP and tournaments. There really should be more game modes for the casual player to at least learn how to PvP because hotjoins aren’t cutting it.

In any case, everyone starts from the bottom with some entry level PvP, such as battlegrounds, arenas, CTF, etc. in order to generate an interest in higher level PvP. That’s how I got my start and now I’m strictly a PvP player. I want the game to be casual friendly because that’s how the PvP community is built. The elitist attitude of some tournament players is what really kills the community. E-sports might or might not happen, but both Anet and the PvP community needs to foster that environment so that more players will come to the mist.

PowerBottom.5796:

I can probably agree on most of your Post, but there is a thing I want to explore a bit more:

You name all those features, yet some of them are incredibly more pressing than others IMHO. Many of your features simply accomodate casuals and solo-q’ers and atm I think that GW2 offers more than enough to them. What’s truly hurting right now is the support for high-level competetive Teams.

So even though those Players/Teams are the ones that would drive GW2 forward as an e-Sport, would help to establish a competetive scene, show the world how complex and fun the Game is by streaming high-level play etc. they got almost nothing for months and tons of Teams left and opportunities passed by

I think this is one of the reason this game is dying . e-sport doesnt occur in a vaccuum. Nor it is actually the product of few “pro-teams”. Its is quite the opposite – esport happens when the game is popular first place, where is large casual population who is genuinely interested in the game.

They play game and understand it well enough to follow the actual competitive events , they are the fan base ,the spectator base – they are the ones who make it possible . No one would follow any esport if they dont know whats going on. and thats the case with spvp in gw2. No one cares, no one plays .

That is biggest problem with tournaments and hotjoin firstplace. The tournaments are nothing like hotjoins (which are more of a deathmatch arenas) and no casual ever stepped into tournaments for logistic reasons ( you need to find and/or organize a team)

All successful esport games (SC, LoL) have soloq with ladders. All pro players in those games came from soloq ladder ( not jumped straight into competing for $$$ prize events out of nowhere). Even if we talk about not very successfull esport but very popular pvp game (number wise) which is WoW arena – most players who started played are casuals who dueled/world pvp/ran BG before, not some self proclaimed pros

Spectator mode is nice to have but not necessary (LoL only recently got it) .What is necessary is soloq (5v5 not 8v8) and ladder

Tournaments in GW2 were an island of its own and no one but few hardcores cared about it . Now with paid tournament gone the hardcores stopped caring but casuals never started ( they still have hotjoin , why even bother with tourneys?) .

There was this hardcore game called bloodline champions, which focused on precisely hardcore arena. It is pretty much dead and was always obscure. – the consequence of focusing on pre-made teams at the expense of everything else

Nore hit the nail on the head with his reply. Pros come from noobs and if there aren’t any noobs, then there will be no pros.

Nore.8431:

That is biggest problem with tournaments and hotjoin firstplace. The tournaments are nothing like hotjoins (which are more of a deathmatch arenas) and no casual ever stepped into tournaments for logistic reasons ( you need to find and/or organize a team)

All successful esport games (SC, LoL) have soloq with ladders. All pro players in those games came from soloq ladder ( not jumped straight into competing for $$$ prize events out of nowhere). Even if we talk about not very successfull esport but very popular pvp game (number wise) which is WoW arena – most players who started played are casuals who dueled/world pvp/ran BG before, not some self proclaimed pros

Spectator mode is nice to have but not necessary (LoL only recently got it) .What is necessary is soloq (5v5 not 8v8) and ladder

Tournaments in GW2 were an island of its own and no one but few hardcores cared about it . Now with paid tournament gone the hardcores stopped caring but casuals never started ( they still have hotjoin , why even bother with tourneys?) .

There was this hardcore game called bloodline champions, which focused on precisely hardcore arena. It is pretty much dead and was always obscure. – the consequence of focusing on pre-made teams at the expense of everything else

This man. So much this. People don’t seem to understand that the population is there, they’re just all in hotjoins and the competitive aspect of this game isn’t centered around 8v8s.

A functional ladder will go a long way towards reviving this game’s competitive scene.

Also, there isn’t a need for a public spectator mode so long as custom arenas will have a couple slots for private spectators such as shoutcasters or the like.

Although my personal view I think balance may be more important then these things atm. I do not disagree with the structure you laid out. However I wonder with character based mmr which is better imo what happens is you climb the ladder and something gets a big change on your class. Now you have to start over basically if you switch classes. And it could go either way your terrible or great at that new class. But then the ladder becomes even more dense with characters on it. 5 times as many slots.

Unless you broke it down by class, which is what I think it should display anyway. How do you compare a dps rank to a bunker rank.

Acandis.3250:

• The Rookie Leagues
  Many people find it extremely frustrating when they get matched with low ranks against “pre-mades”. This is driving many people away from solo queuing and increasing the and number of “pre-mades” queuing up into low ranks. It is because of this that there need to be “rookie leagues” for low ranks so that they may learn the game along with people of their rank. This is my proposal on the matter:
  • Anything below rank 30 is NOT allowed to queue up for Solo/Duo Ranked Queue. Instead they should be placed in separate leagues when they queue up for Unranked Games. For example:
    • All rank 1-10s get matched in the Beginner League.
    • All rank 11-20s get matched in the Intermediate League.
    • All ranks 30+ get matched in the Open League and are allowed to queue up for Solo/Duo Ranked Queue.
  • However, it is extremely important that regardless of rank you are still allowed to participate in Team Queues. This is self explanatory.

Ac

I agree with pretty much everything with some minor exceptions, mainly based around the leagues system -simply put; I think low ranks should have the option to queue into Open league if they want to. That way once i get 3k elo (i totaly will ;p ), i can make an alt account and climb the ladder again without having to grind my way to r30 for the next 4 months.
Also,

A More Accurate MMR
MMR needs to be character based, and NOT account-wide. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. Very few people are actually at the same skill level with two or more different characters. There are two things that are happening right now because of the way MMR is currently implemented:
People that not as skilled with a second profession are punished when they queue up with that profession because they go up against other people that presumable know their class better.
People are scared to play their secondary professions because they care too much about their MMR and they don’t wanna talk it just to learn another class. This is not a good environment for competition.

How could this work with changing classes pre-game? -i like the idea (maybe only in team queue?), I just don’t see how it could work in solo queue where your thrown into teams without some of the needed roles filled.

Other than that, I love everything about this post, and even the league system in general. Great work!

Zodian.6597:

How could this work with changing classes pre-game? -i like the idea (maybe only in team queue?), I just don’t see how it could work in solo queue where your thrown into teams without some of the needed roles filled.

Other than that, I love everything about this post, and even the league system in general. Great work!

I did mention that within the 2 minute grace-time, it should be okay to swap classes but whichever one you’re on when the tournament starts will get locked to that specific tourney to avoid the class swa kitten ue.

I like most of it, but disagree with the rank 30 requirement for tournaments. Rank 10, 20 at best maybe but not rank 30.

Valkyriez.6578:

I like most of it, but disagree with the rank 30 requirement for tournaments. Rank 10, 20 at best maybe but not rank 30.

Maybe 30 is a bit too steep, but 10 is too low.
20 would be a safe compromise, but tbh I’ve still seen a lot of 30+ that are just /facepalm. Maybe that will go away when hotjoin heroes disappear.

I want to try and revive this thread because it touches on a lot of points that I think are vital to the success of this game.

Additionally, I want to say the following:
@Devs, it seems like you have been prioritizing Custom Arenas and placing them above a lot of other pressing issues. I understand why you’re doing it, it’s a feature that has been requested for a long time. My opinion on the matter—as has already been stated—is the following: You need to split up team queue and solo queue. That needs to be your #1 priority right now, you are risking losing a lot of players, not just high tier players. There are a lot of players in the lower brackets of the MMR ladder, that are very discouraged by the current queuing system. This means that with each passing day, they are less willing to play tournaments, and more content with playing hotjoins. While I understand that CAs have been a highly requested feature, the most pressing issue in SPvP became separating team from solo queue, when you made 1 round (2 team) “tournaments” available, and got rid of 3 round (8 team) tournaments whilst letting people queue up for the more competitive tournaments, by themselves against other “premades.”

You have to understand that this is not only my opinion, but the opinion of many others.

Spot on Acandis. It needs to happen as priority. The sheer amount of overwhelming support for a split que should be obvious and the driving force behind development.

Acandis.3250:

Zodian.6597:

How could this work with changing classes pre-game? -i like the idea (maybe only in team queue?), I just don’t see how it could work in solo queue where your thrown into teams without some of the needed roles filled.

Other than that, I love everything about this post, and even the league system in general. Great work!

I did mention that within the 2 minute grace-time, it should be okay to swap classes but whichever one you’re on when the tournament starts will get locked to that specific tourney to avoid the class swa kitten ue.

okay cool, yeah and queue’s need (and are likely going) to be split for this to rely mean anything imo, right now it’s just premade >.
And the rank thing would be okay, maybe rank 10 (that’s like 20 hours or so of playing right?), rank 30 is too steep, hell I’ve been playing casually since launch and I’m only rank 36 haha. It’s worth noting that there are definitely r20’s sticking it to r50’s right now in the ladder queue.

Acandis.3250:

• Hotjoins & Custom Arenas
  Hotjoins as they now exist need to disappear from this game. There is no point in having 8v8 servers when the main competitive attraction of this game is a 5v5 game.

No, the problem isn’t that competitive PvP is different… but that SPvP sucks.
The way SPvP es setup is just utterly terrible since it leads to chaotic zerging, something that not only isn’t fun, but also this game just isn’t at all balanced for.

The whole SPvP system atm is my biggest problem with the game.
If they released the game with it fixed up so it wasn’t such a kittenhole there would still be a pretty large population (not because GW2 is great but because there isn’t much competition in the MMO PvP market atm).
Scrapping what they have for a normal Queing system is probably a good play for them.
Getting a better casual map seems to be the next most important thing.

Sure, playing the game with a focus on capture points competitively can work, but for casual players… this style of map just sucks with no sort of voicechat and the kittenty visible map. LoL and Dota 2 at least have designated lanes where people are matched up against someone and constantly working towards a goal, you can see on the map where enemies are and can get pings about warnings. GW2 maps tell you nothing, you have to hope someone specced to be a bunker to spend minutes at a time doing nothing on a base or your at a terrible disadvantage, pug combat is extremely hectic and involves little if any teamwork short of throwing your kitten at the same target and rezzing… they got rid of the trinity for rezzing and spike dps/bunkers which is kitten #8230; GW2’s base combat mechanics are good, everything else just isn’t at all made to hold the attention of a large audience.

Soooo much needs to be done for this game to get a decent population again.
I am just worried about whether or not Anet can get through it before another big MMO comes out and takes the last of the people clinging to this game away.

Haha, I disagree with almost everything:p the ideas are good and make sense in themselves but I think they overlook some issues:p

First, on separate queues.

- What about 3 or 4 -man groups. What about pugs created in the heart of the mist?

- why separate the queues when it’s more healthy to have a single and massive pool of players, a good MMR and separate ladders?
Mixing players is good: talented solo’ers can then get some recognition, good players can meet more easily.
If the MMR is good matches will always be balanced regardless of team structure. If the ladders are separated then the solo ladder isn’t filled with teams only.

The only reason why you want to separate queues is when the population grows so much there is no sense of progression by mixing all the players. But then again you don’t separate solo/team queues. You put in a league system just like lol and sc2 did.

On ranking per character: no need just adjust the account rating depending on % played time per class.

On removing 8v8 hot joins. 8v8 is good because it hides mistakes from individuals in the mass of players. It’s perfect for fooling around and testing new stuff. I agree on the Ui though. More directions to tPvP would be good.

On character swapping during a game. Agreed.

On rookies leagues. Agreed on the idea, disagreed on the rank 30 limit which is too high. 20 maybe?

On being in the same guild. Tough one. I agree guilds are definitely not in the spotlight in the current system
– complete opposite to gw1for good and for worse as guilds were everything back then. You couldn’t do anything without a guild but there was so much to get from a good one-
the question IMO is how to put teams in front of the scene? Team ladder will help but that’s only the start. So much more is needed to include the concept of “team pride”. Which is essential to competitive gaming.