Guild Wars 2

I wanna talk about this game mod in gw2 – spvp . Obviously , it is not successful.

2 years ago, ESL 2011 on youtube we got 123,845 viewer but this year less than 4000 .

How much do you take the whole e-sport aspect into consideration when developing the game?

This has been a concern the entire time PvP has been in development—as far back as day one, meeting one

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/691-guru-pvp-interview-with-arenanet-and-our-pvp-section-is-growing/

2 years,the words still in my mind.

So, maybe you really should take it seriously

• “out-of-date”
  Every map just capture point ,whatever the type you are bunker,assaulter,team fighter,romer. It’s too monotonous & unfashionable. We been played this mod almost 8-9 years in WoW.

• “put the cart before the horse”
  What kind of property make games ‘immortal’?
  i.g.
  Esport : Star/War Craft, Counter Strike, DotA, Street Fighter, FIFA, NFS
  Video/Online Games: MineCraft, Lord of the rings, Star Wars, World of Warcraft, DC/Marvel Comic Games,Mass Effect, Assassin Creed, Call of Duty, Diablo, Need for Speed, Halo, Grand Theft Auto,Dragon Age, Fallout, The Elder Scroll, Zelda…too many more!
  1. Competition
  2. Unique Advantage
  3. Attractive background
  4. Semi-open
  You can’t win Minecraft/FO/TESO/GTA in semi-open or sandbox,
  Can not win Lotro/WoW/ME/DA/SW in story
  Can not win Ninja Gaiden/DMC/Diablo in Combat flu
  ….
  What is our Advantage?
  2013 Best selling with whole different combat style in MMO
  Focus on PvP, there is no Third-Person MOBA in this world now, even we have the easily bored dynamic events and Personal Story.

• “Lack of entertaining, passion, achivement”
  Especially for audience,I think we can learn from other moba games and I highly recommended Heroes of the Storm. This game unlike lol,dota,simte has a money system.
  Every map has different style and feature (4 maps for now) ,but it is still based on smash down your enemies’ core construction

Why can’t we bring this idea to Guild Wars 2?

Desotry gates/towers/base, capture mercenaries/point…etc.

I’m sure this gonna improve many flaws

For the 3D MOBA!
For the Next Esport Generation!

I like capture points. For me it is the most enjoyable possible mode out there. I do not want any other mode ever. I do like side objectives though, like treb, capricorn cannon, orb on SW, skycannon, guild lord, animals. And of course the god of all maps: the temple – for me it is just perfect PvP map and there is no way a better one could ever be made.

Larger maps with more side objectives would really be ideal. I know a lot of people like Deathmatch and would probably like to see a WoW arena-style setting, but I personally don’t think that GW2 is a good platform for that.

Also, objective-based PvP is generally more accessible to a wider audience since victory isn’t just about who has the fastest reflexes, but also who can have the best battlefield strategy.

As it stands now, sPvP is too small and compact to really have a more grand or diverse strategy and WvW is too large to have the same impact from small fights.

I think that many of the GW1 GvG maps are a good example of a more balanced approach to size and scope of PvP matches.

Well, personally I also love the conquest style, but since it seems it is not working out, the obvious solution is not to bring out new maps, with the same mode, but rather have them all new modes. Really only after testing them out first (the might not even need to be that polished at the first release for the custom arena), we can really say, if it is a fun mode, or not.

Basically how the moba-three-lane-maps started. At their first appearance nobody expected them to get so famous.

Different games tried different twists on the map design f.e. with Heroes of the Storm as the newest one, ANet could also go in that direction. As seen in Heroes of the Storm you can feel free to take twists on the secondary game mechanic, and it might work out well.

Fazit: Yes, we need more game modes. A modification of the moba system might be one good example, but there are many many option to go, feel free to be creative!

My point is two past years A.Net put too much time on “Girls’ stuff”.
We play online games because we wanna fight to/with each other communicate with each other and the core is Human Interaction
We wanted more challenge,competition,passion that make us feel like a MAN !

Capture points are a great method of competition. Just look up some tournament games on youtube and you’ll find a bunch. The problem is GW2 doesn’t have a community or incentive for competitive play; no skill ranking system. Look at any good competitive game (LoL or SC2) and you’ll see a well structure ladder system with effective matchmaking. Although new map types/game modes will be efficient in bring more players in, I personally don’t think it’ll sustain it and I think that’s what makes games competitive and addicting.

It’s a lot more simple than that – spvp flopped because it isn’t fun. If it were fun, people would play it.

For me, the reasons spvp is not fun: downed state and game mode.

I think anet’s best tack would be to get back to ensuring the game is FUN, instead of e.g. including a widely-loathed downed state that exists only to sell finishers.

Any game that has more than 6 skills/character is unsuitable for eSports. Any game that has more tracking-target abilities than ground target will never have a high skillfloor. Any game with passive health regeneration factor that can outheal the damage of any other single character will never be fun to watch…
Any game without class roles (like holy trinity) will fail in terms of PvP.
The devs probably knew this when they designed GW2 and I’m sure that talking about esports was a clever ploy to get competitive players into GW2 PvE.
Oh yeah and downed state is just terrible for viewing experience. It eliminates risky plays because if I have 200 health left I won’t dive in to gank another low health person because I’ll be instant downed by their downed abilities.

Any game that has more than 6 skills/character is unsuitable for eSports ?
lol, Most of Esport game has more than 6 skills/character ok?Except FPS game.

Any game that has more tracking-target abilities than ground target will never have a high skillfloor.
Yeah,DotA,SC,WC so many RTS games that require APM above 200-300 is too easy ha?

Any game with passive health regeneration factor that can outheal the damage of any other single character will never be fun to watch
This is not the most important problem,the problem is there is no significant visual impact during any match
a bunch of guy around the point, dizzy flash, number changing, you tell me who wanna see this?
but please imagine a picture of wall fell, tower shattered and the castle full of fire, two team of champions fighting for their homeland.They capture mercs, tame beasts, enslave demons from the forest,island,underwater nearby
oh, I wet myself

Shen.4206:

Any game that has more than 6 skills/character is unsuitable for eSports ?
lol, Most of Esport game has more than 6 skills/character ok?Except FPS game.

Any game that has more tracking-target abilities than ground target will never have a high skillfloor.
Yeah,DotA,SC,WC so many RTS games that require APM above 200-300 is too easy ha?

Any game with passive health regeneration factor that can outheal the damage of any other single character will never be fun to watch
This is not the most important problem,the problem is there is no significant visual impact during any match
a bunch of guy around the point, dizzy flash, number changing, you tell me who wanna see this?
but please imagine a picture of wall fell, tower shattered and the castle full of fire, two team of champions fighting for their homeland.They capture mercs, tame beasts, enslave demons from the forest,island,underwater nearby
oh, I wet myself

Ok clean yourself up and now try to present all that to an audience of 300k-1mil people in a way that they all understand. Because that’s what they call esports. You described a M. Bay movie.

Lol this interview has the collaboration of arenajunkies, and they have already closed their gw2 section. So sad.

Shen.4206:

but please imagine a picture of wall fell, tower shattered and the castle full of fire, two team of champions fighting for their homeland.They capture mercs, tame beasts, enslave demons from the forest,island,underwater nearby
oh, I wet myself

So Lol is not appealing to you, I guess. That’s why is the least successful esport ever.

eye candy is useless if you can’t see what’s going on. We have enough of visual impact ruining the game.

I saw one rapid fire lol match. You know what the problem was? You already knew who was going to win. Without cooldowns there weren’t clutch escapes, outplays and similar. The build counted more than the player.

There is nothing wrong with conquest. Out of every MMORPG PvP mode I’ve seen, it’s the best for small-scale competitive PvP. It forces you to consider different factors like mobility, power in a group, power while solo, choosing what target to attack, etc. There’s always play and counter-play going on not just within combat, but at the map level.

The downside to Conquest is that it’s hard to show to a spectator the map-level action at the same time as the node-level combat. Watching only the map is boring, but trying to home in on a battle and missing a side node change hands feels like you’re missing part of the game.

Here’s where GW2 sPvP missed the mark for e-sports, and it has little to do with the Conquest game mode.

• Too much focus on promoting the game through a few teams rather than growing the base within the game. If there aren’t enough people interested to watch it or play it, it doesn’t matter how good it is. sPvP was too isolated from the rest of the game initially (this has been fixed at least). There was little incentive to stay in sPvP compared to PvE or WvW and become a fan of that part of the game or even gain more understanding of its depth.
• Slow to address game balance. I would say this is what caused the game to shrink on the e-sport scene more than anything. When there is little variety and it’s hard to showcase skill, competitive players get bored, and casual players feel that it’s futile to try something that isn’t the most overpowered build. And when the most powerful build is more about the build than how well it’s played, there’s no point in being competitive.
• Weak ranking system. All too often, especially for solo players, there’s little close competition. You’re almost always pulled down by a weak player on your team rather than how the team works as a whole. The wild swings in the leaderboards, once they were implemented, make a leaderboard rank almost meaningless and it can’t be used to match players of relatively close skill and knowledge.
• Combat is too “spammy”. At some moments, you can tell who’s the better player and who’s just mashing abilities that are off cooldown. But most of the time, especially in larger fights, there’s little penalty for spamming, especially dodges/evades and is too often the only way to avoid dangerous enemy attacks that have minimal tells.

How can you fix it? Adding more game modes isn’t the answer. Sure, there will be a “new toy” appeal when they come out, but it will quickly fade when players realize the flaws of that mode and how the balance issues are as bad as or worse than conquest. But it consumes developer time that could be used in other areas for greater benefit.

• Improve balance. Major problems need addressed quickly, within a month of them becoming issues. Smaller changes should come every two to three months.
• Improve depth. Make more traits and skills viable. This opens up new potential counter-play options. It’s a daunting task, so many pick a focus on a certain profession(s) each cycle rather than trying to do an across-the-board change. Add more stat customization to sPvP to support potential and future potential builds.
• Polish offensive abilities so that their visibility increases as their power increases. I should be able to see every hard CC ability coming with enough time to dodge/evade/block/blind/sidestep/etc it. The same is true for high damage attacks and single attacks that apply conditions that add a lot of damage in a short time.
• Stop the arms race. Only add new abilities or mechanics which negate other mechanics (unblockable, condition immunity, crit immunity) when absolutely necessary. Not just because it seems interesting. Adding one extremely powerful ability doesn’t fix all the weaker abilities of the profession; it just leads to overpowered builds that use this new, powerful ability to ignore mechanics that used to counter the profession.

Shen.4206:

Focus on PvP, there is no Third-Person MOBA in this world now, even we have the easily bored dynamic events and Personal Story.

http://www2.hirezstudios.com/smite

SMITE, Third Person MOBA, It’s actually pretty good. And has espawts.

Exedore.6320:

There is nothing wrong with conquest.

No, but clearly, there is something wrong with GW2’s implementation of it. I too have enjoyed it in other games but not in GW2- IMO it’s not fun at all. I am still convinced that it’s downed state that is the underlying cause of spvp’s failure to thrive among the general player population – IMO it just does not work in PVP on any level and fundamentally detracts from the game.

scerevisiae.1972:

Exedore.6320:

There is nothing wrong with conquest.

No, but clearly, there is something wrong with GW2’s implementation of it. I too have enjoyed it in other games but not in GW2- IMO it’s not fun at all. I am still convinced that it’s downed state that is the underlying cause of spvp’s failure to thrive among the general player population – IMO it just does not work in PVP on any level and fundamentally detracts from the game.

I’m not quite sure if that’s it. I’d say it’s probably the annoyance of having to constantly be checking enemy numbers and figuring out if you’re where you need to be, or are the reason for an outnumbered fight, causing your team to lose nodes. Lots of people are true deathmatch players, and that has a comforting simplicity to it – you’re already where you need to be, just focus on surviving.

Well, actually downed state IS a problem because to kill someone you need specific classes, unless you are already dominating the fight. You need warriors or guardians.

conquest is a good mode. but playing on 3 maps for 1y+ =/ without any reward, without any profit/exclusive titles/items. I like idea pvp for pvp, but most of the ppl not, they want a carrot.

a lot of new modes can be “stealed” from BF or any other shooter.

When I mentioned MOBA, I mean more objective definition which is one of the game genre(Multiplayer Online Battle Arena)
2 teams, 3 Lines, 4 abilities, God’s angle…… those are what most people think presently indeed

In my opinion, I suggest the primary mission is design a epic whole new third-person battlefield for Esport to make history

Certainly, we not just learn from other useful ideas but ourselves, like a mini WvW?
Look at Blizzard(doesn’t include Blizzard North), never be the bellwether but a ‘copycat’. Nevertheless they prove itself to the world that pool all the ideas together and improve it to the best can be very successful

Chaith.8256:

I’m not quite sure if that’s it. I’d say it’s probably the annoyance of having to constantly be checking enemy numbers and figuring out if you’re where you need to be, or are the reason for an outnumbered fight, causing your team to lose nodes. Lots of people are true deathmatch players, and that has a comforting simplicity to it – you’re already where you need to be, just focus on surviving.

Pretty much this. It’s not a problem with the Conquest mode, it’s that some players just don’t want that much depth.

They’re adding team deathmatch with the patch, but here’s the dilema: which do you balance around? Do you balance around conquest, which can provide deeper play where small imbalances are overshadowed by better map-level play? Or do you balance around team deathmatch which lacks that depth and where small imbalances matter? The one that you don’t choose just gets worse.

You have to keep in mind that ultimately the decisions regarding PvP are implemented by an isolated group – the replies we receive in the forums are not of people who actually work on these changes, they merely discuss them with players and I guess (?) they refer them to specific teams.

Having said this, you should also take a look at the April Feature patch for PvP to get a sense of the distance between what is needed for the game to thrive and what the developers believe is the right way. The population in PvP dwindles (dies) and they attempt to refresh it by giving us PvE rewards, a few trait changes, a locker and a mega server? And it’s considered GW2’s first major feature patch? wat

These are great changes and the meta will shift but at the end of the day it’s still the same kitten thing we’ve been playing for 2 years and it will be this way for more months to come. I play PvP because I enjoy being pitted against other teams of comparable skill in various game modes; all the peripherals don’t mean much for PvPers.

Don’t be fooled, our words won’t affect any real outcome of the game in spite of the hundreds of quality threads addressing its various flaws.

As this guy put it earlier:

My point is two past years A.Net put too much time on “Girls’ stuff”.
We play online games because we wanna fight to/with each other communicate with each other and the core is Human Interaction
We wanted more challenge,competition,passion that make us feel like a MAN !

Exedore.6320:

SNIP…

Really solid explanation overall, nice to see someone post it.

However, the problem with downed state is that it hinders the focus on active defenses thiis game was supposed to have.

Classes like DPS guardian (incredibly squishy, but with excellent active defenses) can down you, but then they have to stand still for some seconds to kill you.

In a group fight, that means that they can’t actually stomp. Or ress. Unless they want to die aswell. One reason more not to roll a high risk/high reward build, and instead use hambow warrior, one of the highlords of downed state (stability+crowd control).

Having no downed state would actually give more of a chance of defeating enemies while outnumbered, and some fights wouldn’t be decided by class comp (example: a 2v2 between 2 hambows and 1 med guard and 1 ele, the warriors might win just because they will be able to ress each other).

It’s also one of the reason why stability is so important.

Serdoc.7261:

Exedore.6320:

SNIP…

Really solid explanation overall, nice to see someone post it.

No, it is absolutely not.

Bringing a new type of game in sPvP is bringing a new type of Meta.

There is no such thing as “one balance to rule them all”.

It’s like comparing WvW and sPvP balance (jewel excluded). It is a different type of format, different objectives, difference scale, different experience. Fortunatlely, having a new sPvP gameplay will still have a balance in the number. BUT, you will see different builds, maybe different team composition as well.

Peace

redslion.9675:

However, the problem with downed state is that it hinders the focus on active defenses thiis game was supposed to have.

Classes like DPS guardian (incredibly squishy, but with excellent active defenses) can down you, but then they have to stand still for some seconds to kill you.

In a group fight, that means that they can’t actually stomp. Or ress. Unless they want to die aswell. One reason more not to roll a high risk/high reward build, and instead use hambow warrior, one of the highlords of downed state (stability+crowd control).

Having no downed state would actually give more of a chance of defeating enemies while outnumbered, and some fights wouldn’t be decided by class comp (example: a 2v2 between 2 hambows and 1 med guard and 1 ele, the warriors might win just because they will be able to ress each other).

It’s also one of the reason why stability is so important.

Is it really a bad thing to have builds that are better for taking down players and builds that are better for stomping? That’s the very first step to having roles for team combat and not just 5 solo players.

Proven.2854:

redslion.9675:

However, the problem with downed state is that it hinders the focus on active defenses thiis game was supposed to have.

Classes like DPS guardian (incredibly squishy, but with excellent active defenses) can down you, but then they have to stand still for some seconds to kill you.

In a group fight, that means that they can’t actually stomp. Or ress. Unless they want to die aswell. One reason more not to roll a high risk/high reward build, and instead use hambow warrior, one of the highlords of downed state (stability+crowd control).

Having no downed state would actually give more of a chance of defeating enemies while outnumbered, and some fights wouldn’t be decided by class comp (example: a 2v2 between 2 hambows and 1 med guard and 1 ele, the warriors might win just because they will be able to ress each other).

It’s also one of the reason why stability is so important.

Is it really a bad thing to have builds that are better for taking down players and builds that are better for stomping? That’s the very first step to having roles for team combat and not just 5 solo players.

Yes, it is, because stompers have also the chance to down the enemy. Thanks to passive defense.

And that means that number superiority most certainly leads to victory.

That’s side stepping the issue. If both sides are running tanky builds, then other differences in stomp ability and downing ability show up. What you’re really saying is that builds that are better for stomping are too good at downing as well, at least against the builds that are supposed to be good at downing. That’s a balance issue, not an issue with the downed state.

Removing the downed state wouldn’t really stop people from playing tanky builds.

They don’t care at all, they are too busy milking and plundering babys.
every kittening time i check this forum, all i see is pvp community population is low. can you believe that? come on you guys are smart enough, you do not believe on those kind of shlt.

Stop asking how many Teams are there, instead start questioning How many Guilds are in there(totally forgot what name is this game) and remove the borderline spread the game, bring the world stage and start competing for something.

Shen.4206:

A.Net put too much time on “Girls’ stuff”.

This thread has a number of points I believe to be right on which is nice to see. Generally they encompass the direction I would take a competitive game if I were to design one (I am an ergonomist myself so I deal a lot with design). However really when it comes to Gw2 it is not about finding that one issue that if solved will fix everything. Gw2 Pvp is really a conglomerate of separate issues that ultimately sum up to create an experience that just isn’t fun for the majority of players. Just different people find different issues more prominent.

Even take the issues of balance, rewards and the difficulty finding players out of the equation and it is still not fun. The game is lacking meaningful interaction between players. There is just not enough depth compared to the complexity of the system. Gw2 has a lot of information being thrown around but often that information is designed in such a way it is irrelevant to how a person plays. Either animations are improperly scaled either by cast time, visually, or both, precision of information is lacking such as in icds, or skill design creates lose-lose situations such as choosing to stand in an AoE or avoid it and lose the point or the prevalence of setup skills which either consume defensive resources or lead perfectly into a burst. Then there is also limited interaction with your own team. There is little form in the combat in terms of a front line vs back line which is a scenario that exists when players are put at honest risk based on where they choose to stand. A lot of the risk comes from a team being able to support each other within a limited range among well a number of other pretty self-explanatory reasons. But Gw2 has nearly no support outside of point blank which often falls into a lose-lose situation with all the aoe.

Now in terms of game mode I would agree, if I was designing a new game mode it would be a progression based push/pull mode. Not quite the general interpretation of a moba, more akin to natural selection with more dynamic zone control. One intention of this would be to keep things dynamic as the game progresses so there are moments where a team should group for a fight or split up for smaller skirmishes. This allows commentators to focus more on either map wide tactics or combat execution depending on the phase.

Though I also wouldn’t write off conquest. It is mostly Anet’s execution that holds it back. Generally the points are set way too small and how classes are designed interacts poorly with conquest. Conquest places a high reward on defense which in terms of Gw2’s customization can be taken to the extreme and a viable defensive extreme is almost never fun. For larger points to work in Gw2 some tweaks so bunkers repeatedly running at a point would not work. Simple enough, add conditions targeted more against bunkers so they are not nearly as self-sufficient and give kills more incentive.

Fourth.1567:

Huehue

I believe Pvp in this game called Structured Pvp, so yes those Cannons, Treb, Champions, Lord, Broken glasses and structure is definitely involve. its just people called pro’Pvp now adays don’t bother to understand and put some effort to know what to do and whats not in a structural competitive scene. its not all about class composition bear in mind that Strategy exist in structural way. Throw some 8-10 or more people on those structured map you’ll see what im talking about .

Please stop comparing this game to those filthy MOBA, those 5v5 things is ruining this potential MMORPG esport

Proven.2854:

That’s side stepping the issue. If both sides are running tanky builds, then other differences in stomp ability and downing ability show up. What you’re really saying is that builds that are better for stomping are too good at downing as well, at least against the builds that are supposed to be good at downing. That’s a balance issue, not an issue with the downed state.

Removing the downed state wouldn’t really stop people from playing tanky builds.

Well, I’m not so sure about that: builds specialized into downed managing would be boring and feel contrived. That’s why they’ll always go with good damage/support potential.

And downed state is too fast: most of the time it’s luck that decides between a stomp and a ress.

And the game would be a bit less forgiving: you have to watch your health, and number superiority won’t help you as much.

Chapell.1346:

Fourth.1567:

Huehue

I believe Pvp in this game called Structured Pvp, so yes those Cannons, Treb, Champions, Lord, Broken glasses and structure is definitely involve. its just people called pro’Pvp now adays don’t bother to understand and put some effort to know what to do and whats not in a structural competitive scene. its not all about class composition bear in mind that Strategy exist in structural way. Throw some 8-10 or more people on those structured map you’ll see what im talking about .

Please stop comparing this game to those filthy MOBA, those 5v5 things is ruining this potential MMORPG esport

Or those pros put enough time to know how easy it is to exploit them.

This esport is ruined by itself. We should instead learn something from the pacing of a moba.