Guild Wars 2

Out of all the issues this meta currently has, Grenade bug abusers, Mesmers (lol really? People have problems with fighting mesmers?) Warriors hitting 10k damage with Rampage (WTT my 3 second delay Tornado trash for Rampage).
No matter what your opinion is on what is broken, bugged or balanced, it all has ONE thing in common.

Guild Wars 2 PvP is a newcomers nightmare.

I should not tell any of my friends who are interested in PvP, “oh, you might practicing against a guy with 3,000 games on his Mesmer.”

That is not okay. Unbalanced builds and classes be dammed, the real issue with unbalanced is the player skill level.

There needs to be a lot of changes to modes and I’m not just talking about unranked and ranked.

• Make a Practice Mode, a REAL practice mode.
  PvP rewards for practice should reward players trying new classes. Win or lose, you need to reward players trying different classes, reward exploring your PvP system. I should get 500 points for practicing my warrior, I have 50 games on him. Why am I getting 500 points for ‘practicing’ on my Elementalist? I have 4,000 games on him, I should be getting less!

• Make a Beginner, Intermediate, Expert and Competitive Hotjoin modes.
  Want to play a quick match with your Elementalist that has 4,000 games? This is the place. 500 if you win, 200 if you lose. Simple. Breaking the tiers into rank. To reward healthy playing, if you are rank 80 and going into beginner, you should get little reward for playing. Reward the community for playing at their level. Unlike practice mode, the hotjoin modes should limit what maps the play is experiencing.
  
  -Mode Breakdown-
  Beginner: Rank 1-20, Maps: Battle of Kyhlo, Forest of Niflhel, Legacy of the Foefire.
  Intermediate: Rank 20-40, Maps: All above plus Temple of the Silent Storm, Courtyard.
  Expert: Rank 40-60, Maps: All above plus Skyhammer, Spirit Watch.
  Competitive: Rank 60-80, Maps: All maps available.
  And more importantly, Spectate is LOCKED for the hotjoin modes.

• Make Random Arenas (GW1 style).
  Get rid of unranked. For those that doesn’t know, Guild Wars 1 had a mode called Random Arenas, you are given a team and you play until you lose.
  This.
  Is.
  Important.
  This is where PvP friendships are made and bonded. A single match with random people is not enough, especially the very next round you could play against each other. You want to reward your community for playing together, something GW2 PvP really lacks. Although, the amount of points to win needs to be toned down, preferably to 300 to win.

• Do NOT give everything at the start.
  This sounds great on paper, but you want to ease people into PvP. Reward them for getting ranks, allowing them to play with more options as they go on. Allowing a rank 1 Warrior to go full berserker glass is toxic, the only thing he will learn is his downed state. Allow players to feel for their class and build. Start with easy to use Trinkets, Sigils and Runes. As their rank goes up, give them more options and eventually (probably around rank 20) they’ll have everything they’ll need to build whatever they want.
  Lastly, get rid of using gold to unlock items, who the kitten thought that was a good idea?! Can I have his job? I promise you I can do better than that!

Guild Wars 2 combat has changed greatly, and some might disagree, it changed for the better. It’s fast, fun and exciting, however, the PvP modes needs to reflect the new combat. Guild Wars 2 combat has evolved past beta, the game modes however, are still 3 years behind.

Good post. I liked gw1 where you would stick with your team after each win.

Altough, courtyard is not really a map for competative pvp I think.

Very good post! Bump!

The biggest problem PvP in the game is not class balance. It is the player skill balance.
I noticed the players I got matched up with tend to have dramatic skill difference. I am not a PvP veteran but still has rank 70 and a fair amount of games under my belt. How come do I get matched up sometimes with players who barely played any PvP before? It is really not fun for either of us.

Would be so happy if Anet can implement some of OP’s suggestions.

1) your title is ridiculous
2) Players are put in easy/intermediate/etc mode with matchmaking rating. It’s not perfect, but there’s always a trade off between queue time vs perfect matchup. If you create modes, then you might as well name “easy” mode “GANK NOOBS HERE” mode for the inevitable trolls.
3) I agree with random arena mode, but that would just be another mode that further divides the queuing population, which reduces the ability to match players against equal MMR players in each queue.
4) If I had to grind for gear to be able to compete, I would have stuck with WoW. The availability to all gear at the start is one of THE best features of GW2.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Guild Wars 2 PvP is a newcomers nightmare.

I should not tell any of my friends who are interested in PvP, “oh, you might practicing against a guy with 3,000 games on his Mesmer.”

That is not okay. Unbalanced builds and classes be dammed, the real issue with unbalanced is the player skill level.

Totally agree. Player skill/experience level relative to one another will overwhelming be the biggest deciding factor in how a fight turns out. This is why I believe balancing should only be done around the highest levels of players where player skill is relatively close to each other.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Make a Practice Mode, a REAL practice mode.
PvP rewards for practice should reward players trying new classes. Win or lose, you need to reward players trying different classes, reward exploring your PvP system. I should get 500 points for practicing my warrior, I have 50 games on him. Why am I getting 500 points for ‘practicing’ on my Elementalist? I have 4,000 games on him, I should be getting less!

Make a Beginner, Intermediate, Expert and Competitive Hotjoin modes.
Want to play a quick match with your Elementalist that has 4,000 games? This is the place. 500 if you win, 200 if you lose. Simple. Breaking the tiers into rank. To reward healthy playing, if you are rank 80 and going into beginner, you should get little reward for playing. Reward the community for playing at their level. Unlike practice mode, the hotjoin modes should limit what maps the play is experiencing.

Totally agree with the having different tiers of Hotjoin but I don’t see the difference between Practice and Beginner Hotjoin mode. It seems Practice is redundant and can be removed/combined into Beginner Hojoin.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Mode Breakdown-
Beginner: Rank 1-20, Maps: Battle of Kyhlo, Forest of Niflhel, Legacy of the Foefire.
Intermediate: Rank 20-40, Maps: All above plus Temple of the Silent Storm, Courtyard.
Expert: Rank 40-60, Maps: All above plus Skyhammer, Spirit Watch.
Competitive: Rank 60-80, Maps: All maps available.
And more importantly, Spectate is LOCKED for the hotjoin modes.

No reason was given for these changes and I don’t see one, so would disagree with this especially the spectate part. Why lock Spectate?

Nova Stiker.8396:

Make Random Arenas (GW1 style).
Get rid of unranked. For those that doesn’t know, Guild Wars 1 had a mode called Random Arenas, you are given a team and you play until you lose.
This.
Is.
Important.
This is where PvP friendships are made and bonded. A single match with random people is not enough, especially the very next round you could play against each other. You want to reward your community for playing together, something GW2 PvP really lacks. Although, the amount of points to win needs to be toned down, preferably to 300 to win.

Love your idea about making PVP bonds and your Random Arenas idea sounds like a good start. Having an emotional/personal connection with the people you play with/against is extremely important if you want to keep people around. Without this, the PVP in this game feels less like an MMO and more like a single player experience.

This is an area that I feel Anet is lacking. They simply don’t know what drives PVP players and how to keep players interested in it. Creating a sterile environment with basic tools will only get you so far.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Do NOT give everything at the start.
This sounds great on paper, but you want to ease people into PvP. Reward them for getting ranks, allowing them to play with more options as they go on. Allowing a rank 1 Warrior to go full berserker glass is toxic, the only thing he will learn is his downed state. Allow players to feel for their class and build. Start with easy to use Trinkets, Sigils and Runes. As their rank goes up, give them more options and eventually (probably around rank 20) they’ll have everything they’ll need to build whatever they want.
Lastly, get rid of using gold to unlock items, who the kitten thought that was a good idea?! Can I have his job? I promise you I can do better than that!

I don’t think this will be as great of a problem since new players will be matched with each other but it doesn’t hurt to simplify choices for new players so that they can just jump in and fight others without trying to maximize their build.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Guild Wars 2 combat has changed greatly, and some might disagree, it changed for the better. It’s fast, fun and exciting, however, the PvP modes needs to reflect the new combat. Guild Wars 2 combat has evolved past beta, the game modes however, are still 3 years behind.

I feel the same and implementation of these ideas are needed more than ever since new players simply won’t play more than a few games before giving up in frustration.

“Make Random Arenas (GW1 style).”

+1, as I religiously log off after finishing my dailies because I don’t have LTS to keep me interested.

Practice mode is quick match for me. I don’t want to wait long queue times for one match.

Especially when I have to wait in the PvP lobby where I can’t do anything while I wait for the long queues.

Very good job!

They just need to rebalance the entire game, all the skills and all the traits.

Xillllix.3485:

They just need to rebalance the entire game, all the skills and all the traits.

i agree.

I do like the random arena idea, and the hotjoin proposal. Just chiming in to +1

I disagree with not giving everything at the start though, this is what makes sPvP in this game different from pvp in other games.

Xillllix.3485:

They just need to rebalance the entire game, all the skills and all the traits.

You may want to check out the July 23rd patch notes…cuz that’s prettying what they just did, lol.

Dahkeus.8243:

Xillllix.3485:

They just need to rebalance the entire game, all the skills and all the traits.

You may want to check out the July 23rd patch notes…cuz that’s prettying what they just did, lol.

Well they need to do it again. Maybe eventually they’ll get it right.

coughmaster.6870:

“Make Random Arenas (GW1 style).”

+1, as I religiously log off after finishing my dailies because I don’t have LTS to keep me interested.

+1 for RA. it would def make pvp more fun

I agree with OP’s suggestions. PvP needs a better system to match players against players of similar skill level. Heck, Practice mode should be new players vs smart AI. So newbies can have a chance to understand the game and their class before they face real competent players. I also like the random arenas system. The only thing OP hasn’t mention that I would like is to seperate different sPVP modes. I think sPVP should have 3 game modes: 1. Conquest 2. Stronghold 3. Deathmatch (2v2).