Guild Wars 2

Wall of text incoming, but if you care to see GW2 on a competitive scene you might want to read that.

1) First of all its unbalanced teams (4v5, 6v5 etc) while you can say as much as you want “it doesnt matter whats going on outside of tournament mode” it DOES matter, players need a place to practice or merely have fun at if they like sPvP. Besides no serious competitive game allows leaving matches go unpunished even if its a non-ladder game mode.

There should be added some serious penalties for leaving a match. Most matches hardly last for 10 minutes, a player who respects his opponents and teammates should find time to finish the match that has began and avoid ragequitting it.

Whats even worse is that matches simply start too often in unbalanced teams even without anyone leaving, player placement system should be more advanced than this.

2) Another significant problem that is unthinkable in a competitive design is free switching of teams, if a person is in a losing team they can simply switch teams if enemy team is lacking 1 player and grab the win bonus and there is even no limit for team switching. It completely makes no sense for balance because either way one of the teams is going to end up with 1 less player.

The only way to stop that is to block the team switching completely unless one of the teams is 2 players short compared to another one and even then team switching should be processed by randomly picking a player through the existing autobalance system.

3) Another problem is free farming of rank points. Its easy enough to explain: you simply go with a friend on an empty map and farm it together by recapping points from each other. Or you join in a non-peak hour, get into a 1v1 match with a newbie enemy, kill him couple times and make him ragequit, then you just run around switching teams and recapping points from yourself.

Effectively that brings more points than skirmishing and active playing even in a 8v8 match. The main design flaw here is that in a pvp mode player is able to get pvp rank points without participating in pvp at all.

4) Bad rank system. While its already too late to change something right now for the future it would be good too see the whole rank system revamped.

Ranks mean completely nothing and bring nothing. From above point you can already see how easily a player can get to high rank while not being a pro player or not even doing pvp at all.

5) Another thing is that no matter how much rank does mean players should be placed against equal opponents and preferably with equal teammates. That being said there should be no way that 3x rank 40 players and 2x rank 20 players will be placed against 5x rank 10 players. And that happens often enough, matchmaking is completely random without doubt.

Even if high rank (unfortunately) doesn’t determine player’s skill it still means that player most likely spent a lot of time pvping and they have more experience than a low ranked player. And in most of cases the team that heavily outranks their opponents wins.

There are more things that also affect tournament mode.

6) Some maps are unbalanced in favour of one team over another. While its not necessarily to have an absolutely identical map for both teams since good players should be able to adjust to some conditions the present differences are rather significant.

- For example on Battle of Kyhlo map red team has destructible boxes near the building that allow them to get to the clock tower faster than blue team. Blue team also has those boxes on their side, but they are at the wrong place so blue team has to take the longer way.

- When you own the Ruins point on the Raid on the Capricorn map sharks dont always become hostile to you if the enemy has neutralized the point. Not only that bug should be fixed but also once the enemy neutralizes the point sharks should reset their aggro and have a 50% chance to attack the ex-owners of the point too if they are in sharks’ range.

Losing the control over point should mean losing all the benefits it gave to you, but right now sharks just lock on their current targets and wont attack anyone else unless they take enough damage.

- On the Legacy of Foefire map its possible to kill either Lord while not triggering 2 or more of its NPC defenders also its possible to take out NPCs one by one and hitting defender NPCs is not displaying alarm to the team. I doubt that its working as intended – killing the Lord brings a lot of points and its supposed to be the main event of the map where teams fight for their last chance of try to achieve an overwhelming victory, but the way it works right now is a bit of broken.

That’s all from me. Constructive criticism and opinions are welcome.

Also a small request. If you are going to post here please refrain from mentioning class balance, its a thing that is better left to game designers rather than being judged with prejudice by community because in most cases the community is wrong here.

Everything in your post can be fixed by a simple answer of “Play free/paid tournaments.”

Reikou.7068:

Everything in your post can be fixed by a simple answer of “Play free/paid tournaments.”

if you actually came here to do something more than random trolling you would see that i mentioned other problems related to map design which spread on free/paid tournaments as well

besides i have mentioned that non-tournament mode is also important, its where all players start and its important that it shows them that they are playing a competitive game

on the other hand, sadly now that i re-read my topic and the first reply to it im starting to feel that discussing serious things is completely out of place here, everyone’s too busy with whining about thieves and bunkers

In addition to your valid points, may I add:

HOTJOIN 8v8s

Further discussion in another aptly named thread in this specific subforum.

Reposting what I posted in that thread:

Psychrome.9281:

…i believe that if you make hot joins 5v5 you will see a decrease in zergs, a more suitable place to test builds, a more casual friendly environment and a way for entry level players to get there feet wet and see what structured PvP is all about…

there will come a point where Spvp tournaments paid or free will become smaller and smaller as teams move on to other games over time, or simply get bored facing the same teams over and over. This will increase queue times longer and longer until they will just stop. the solution to this is to teach or provide a place where New players can learn.

hot join matches are the suggested place for this to occur but hot join matches are not even close to what tournament level of play is like. even IF a new player learns his class and many others, the zerg beats skill everytime. it becomes frustrating and ruins his experience. this essentially stops players from wanting to get better or maybe avoid PVP altogether. creating a smaller player base willing to go the extra mile and start his progression to tougher challenges.

…

Arena Net should change 8v8 to 5v5 to allow easier access for new players to learn, experiment and develop into stronger players. increasing the accessability of PVP and encouraging growth within the PVP community.

Seconded.

If Anet would like a place for new players to learn their classes and try out their builds, custom servers are the spots for it. We now know that these are on their way, at last.

As mentioned in previous posts, what is seen in most 8v8 hotjoins are zergs and players mostly playing as solo characters, with a tiny amount of team dynamics and coordination. These hotjoins simply reinforces the wrong style of play, especially if it is the intended purpose of bringing the player base, eventually, toward tournament play. It’s not that these players can simply join free tourney games; the fact that 8v8 hotjoins are there breeds a wrong understanding of the real sPVP GW intends to portray. As the overall hotjoin player base gets more accustomed to 8v8s, shifting them to 5v5s will create other unnecessary thorns. If left as the way it is, you will have two distinct sPVP player bases with distinct playstyles, and could eventually lead to balancing dilemmas. Yet that is still not the greatest concern. As the current high level player base move further up the “skill ladder”, who are going to fill their place? Where are the new blood going to come from?.

We’ve got to give new players a chance to learn the proper dynamics of a map and its relation to the team – and not perpetuate a false understanding of GW’s intended sPVP.

Remove 8v8s and move them all to 5v5s.

Also, make hotjoins more “serious” (after the switch to 5v5s). Leavers have to be penalized more; not just withholding them from joining any matches for a mere10 minutes like in GW1. No team switches. In essence, think mobas.

If gameplay is intrinsically good, I don’t see how that acts as a barrier for new players. And by then we would have custom servers, right?