Guild Wars 2

Get out of 8v8 and play some 5v5. Things get much more manageable.

People are too intimidated by it I think, and there’s really no reason to be. Free tourneys aren’t that competitive. Most of the time you face pugs. Although there’s still a good portion of the time when you’ll face a guild, they’re almost never top guilds or main teams. When they are, they’re usually running crazy comps and/or getting experience on different classes. Due to all that, I can only think of one guild who regularly do free tourneys that I haven’t beaten with a pug at some point.

Get good at bunker guardian and run to mid every game, you’ll carry most random pugs to a win. Even if you lose, the better you get at it, the more likely you are to be noticed and headhunted by teams, and then you can play what you like as long as you can play the role they recruited you for when needed.

If you don’t wanna bunker (or like me, are terrible at it), get yourself a voice server or skype, 4 random strangers, watch some streams to understand the basic strategies on each map, and that will carry you to quite a few wins too.

Also, don’t be a dick. Yesterday I was pugging and met a nice guy, was playing with a few friends later and invited him as we had a spot, won a couple gold boxes. He was rank 9. Rank doesn’t equal skill, but rank 9 doesn’t indicate a whole lot of experience either. Nonetheless we beat a decent guild on map 3 in one run. When pugging, keep track of people who you get along with who you think can handle a few losses in order to learn from them. Shoot them a friend request and play some games.

You’ll lose a few while you’re getting the hang of it of course, but it costs you nothing, so what’s the big deal?

Can you be my friend?

Sorry I’m too e-awesome.

Other then the intimidation factor, a lot of people avoid Free tournies because if you don’t win, you get literally nothing to show for it. You get a lower overall score then 8v8 due to less kills and more back capping, and if you lose in tourney you’ll get maybe 50-200 points depending how badly you got stomped and no other reward. Where as in 8v8 even if your team sucks kitten you can run around and backcap and still break 250 with ease.

Glory is nothing too. Unless you like playing dress ups. 5v5 is just more fun. That’s what I get from it anyway.

Mammoth.1975:

Glory is nothing too. Unless you like playing dress ups. 5v5 is just more fun. That’s what I get from it anyway.

Don’t be like that…don’t belittle peoples enjoyment of making their character looking cool or the hard work ANet put into the entire system by calling it “dress up”

You just sound like a jerk at that point.

Fair enough, I apologise

The point I was failing to get across is that there’s nothing tangible to be gained either way.

Having to arrange teams when you’re just starting is too daunting for new players. Even somewhat experienced players don’t necessarily want to have to gather people up and organize a plan.

In GW1, this is what Random Arenas was for. You just walked in, press “Enter Battle” and the game would randomly throw you in with other people who did the same thing. No objectives other than to survive. If you managed to win successively, your team, who had proven themselves ten times by that point and understood what one another was doing, were then pitted against an actually organized team in Team Arenas, automatically.

It was a very smart system obviously created by a team of intelligent people. It taught new players the game, it was fun and it automatically transitioned success into more competitive areas. The 8v8 sPvP hotmatching in GW2 achieves nothing at all in comparison, failing to ease new players in, failing to teach the mechanics of the organized version of team play, and also failing to reward success in the same way RA did. (When your team lost in RA, that was it; the whole team was disbanded and you had to enter battle with a completely different randomized group of players. This also helped you make friends [or enemies] in the process.)

I feel like I keep harping on this with everyone else, but the GW2 development team really needs to step back and look at what GW1 did correctly, because they have a lot to learn from that game. It really amazes me they have taken so many steps backwards from PvP in that game. It doesn’t have to be the same game, obviously, but when something works very well, you improve on it; you don’t throw it in the trash and haughtily decide to reinvent the wheel.

Plague.5329:

Having to arrange teams when you’re just starting is too daunting for new players. Even somewhat experienced players don’t necessarily want to have to gather people up and organize a plan.

In GW1, this is what Random Arenas was for. You just walked in, press “Enter Battle” and the game would randomly throw you in with other people who did the same thing. No objectives other than to survive. If you managed to win successively, your team, who had proven themselves ten times by that point and understood what one another was doing, were then pitted against an actually organized team in Team Arenas, automatically.

It was a very smart system obviously created by a team of intelligent people. It taught new players the game, it was fun and it automatically transitioned success into more competitive areas. The 8v8 sPvP hotmatching in GW2 achieves nothing at all in comparison, failing to ease new players in, failing to teach the mechanics of the organized version of team play, and also failing to reward success in the same way RA did. (When your team lost in RA, that was it; the whole team was disbanded and you had to enter battle with a completely different randomized group of players. This also helped you make friends [or enemies] in the process.)

I feel like I keep harping on this with everyone else, but the GW2 development team really needs to step back and look at what GW1 did correctly, because they have a lot to learn from that game. It really amazes me they have taken so many steps backwards from PvP in that game. It doesn’t have to be the same game, obviously, but when something works very well, you improve on it; you don’t throw it in the trash and haughtily decide to reinvent the wheel.

Shh, don’t remind me of the awesomeness that was GW1 PvP, you’re making me depressed.

Plague I understand that is a barrier for a lot of people, but I did mention some other options there for those who find that kind of thing difficult.