Guild Wars 2

hello!

Been a serious WvW player for some time now and decided to finally give sPvP a try, and although for the whole I have enjoyed myself, and I have done well personally, I’ve had a less than savory first impression of the community.

Firstly, I am referring specifically to practice mode:

1. I cant believe how insulting and childish many, many people in this community are. Soooo much trash talk at times, both within ones team and against the opposing team, in a mode designed to help people learn. I’m not referring specifically to behavior aimed towards me, though I have been on the receiving end of trash talk once or twice. I have noticed this particularly involves experienced and/or ultra competitive, “veteran,” experienced players who have aggressive play-to-win mentalities. It seems as though (varies from person to person) any little thing can set them off.

In the few days I’ve been PvP’ing, I’ve heard insults for (again not referring to insults aimed at me):

playing noob builds
needing a Xv1 to win
a build being too OP therefor noob
bunkers not being able to hold points
not knowing how to play ones class
dying to frequently
etc.

…all of which have ranged reactions from ‘shrug it off and move on’ to ‘holy crap these guys are really going at each other and kinda ruining the game’

so the 2 big questions in my mind are:

1.) Why all this animosity… in a practice mode? is this what the PvP community is like?
2.) Why are ultra competitive players spending their time competing in a practice mode that will naturally be filled with new, inexperienced players?

1) anyone acting like that in yolo is obviously not a good player to begin with—even the good players understand that people will be ‘bad’ and it’s not worth their time and effort being a kitten to everyone who messes up or runs something wonky.
So to answer your question more directly: Why? I’ve never seen a game with pvp that did not have toxicity? Some people troll, others want to find ‘someone’ to blame for the loss, others are genuinely ahead with respect to understanding the format but are new to the point that they don’t understand that those actions are done in vain since there’s no real point to engaging in that sort of negative behavior.

2) They’re not. Those people probably aren’t even on the LB for -any- games played there. Not that this LB indicates much of anything, but there’s NO reason for -anyone- to do unranked unless you like sky ham, spirit watch, and CY. There’s absolutely no reason to NOT do ranked unless you’re blatantly screwing around—in which case they wouldn’t be trash-talking random team-mates.

1. There are flamers, and there are the complainers try not to be either they are both just as bad.

2. Ultra competitives are not in practice mode, the only ones I see usually are oeggs and eurantien and I’m not even sure if its eura or not but the names are usually mesmer eurantien and tinkerer eurantien. They may practice playing off class in practice mode…. or a trying out a new build. Or they may be like me first thing I do when I log on pvp is jump into practice to warm up.

Twash talk = coping mechanism to lessen pain.

1) Yes. Sadly, most PvP communities are like that. GW2 in general, is better than most MMOs I’ve seen and the WvW community tends to be better than the PvP community…which is a shame since I really just don’t dig WvW. There’s a couple reasons for this, but that’s probably a whole ‘nother topic’s worth of discussion.
2) Eh, people don’t like losing and people love to feel like they’re somehow better than other people. Practice may be designed to be less competitive, but you still get competitive people in there for numerous reasons. Some are too impatient to wait on a queue. Some want to just roll in and stomp on new people, which is harder in queued games due to matchmaking. Etc.

anyone who takes practice mode remotely seriously isn’t really part of the pvp community.

1- solo que

Alot of solo que players acted like that and because there is no solo que they complain to the ends of the earth. Force individual players to now think of a team perspective is now a bad thing. I solo qued yesterday and there were 2 thieves on my team talking crap to one another. 1 would go far to solo and the other would try to kill the beasts. Neither tried to help the players standing on the points so me and 1 and another ele were constantly getting 2 vs and 3 vs 1. Solo player mentalitys

2- Self entitled

Pvp titles,ranks,levels ahve been made easier for the casual player. Before the big pvp patch, the best players going into ranked games didnt talk any crap cause they expected to win. This is before they made the solo que as well. When you saw people with shark and pheonix finishers no one got mad if you lost. When you won though it was in mostly inspiring like yeah guys we can win this. Of course there was always a few omg your a shark rank and you suck but they were few and far.

3- The new groups coming in

Alot of my old pvp friends dont play after the big pvp patch since there was nothing left for them to do. They were 65+ level and everyone was just handed a dragon finisher and a legendary title. So the old teams who would of keep the new people in check. Your getting new people coming into pvp with some success now thinking they call the shots. Let me also mention these semi competitive groups who think they know it all. For instance i solo que and this group of 4 was queing and they would tell me to sit on home. So i did to be a nice player. They lost the fight at mid i left home to go to far and they got mad cause i left. We lost badly next game im teamed with them again. There comments to me before the match is dont lose it for us.

The pvp community died for me when they made it easy for everyone to get the dragon finisher cause everyone one of these new people coming in watching utube,twitch, and son for there builds think they no it all cause they watch some of the better players use these builds. People use rank in these forums to saying im level 40 why am i fighting level 80s when the truth is those level 80s would probaly be level 50 if they didnt change the pvp system.

Im sorry you had to walk into the now hold the hands of the baby pvp’s in the heart of the mist

You would hear this in WvW too if communication between realms was allowed.

Coulter.2315:

You would hear this in WvW too if communication between realms was allowed.

Yup. You’d have 3 map blobs worth of it :p

Anet’s removed two whole WvW forums now because of it? GG.

Contrary to what kdaddy claims above, there has been trash talking in spvp since day one. There tends to be less in unranked and ranked than in “practice” mode (similarly there was less in solo and team than in hotjoin before the recent spvp structure changes).

My advice is to play unranked or ranked and skip “practice” altogether. You will still get trash talk, but probably won’t be so bad. Also if you get a team together obviously you should have few problems with people mouthing off. Plus “practice” mode is broken in various ways so better to just keep out of that cesspit.

I was actually surprised like the OP at the amount of trash talk in gw2 spvp compared to games like Rift and WoW where I didn’t see anything like this. But I see the same (or worse) trash talk in moba like Smite etc.

I suggest using practice-mode as rarely as possible.

It has a lot of flaws with the uneven matches due to the missing MMR:

There are still a lot of toxic players around in unranked/ranked, even tho I feel it’s better there.

Practice mode is pure anarchy. Most of the time the fights are very one-sided and I cannot imagine anyone getting any kind of practice either way.

The game mode is there just for

1. trolling noobs,
2. getting your dailies done quickly by team swapping, and
3. custom arenas.

Frankly, I would like to see this game mode removed completely, or at least any rewards whatsoever removed from it, and then shorten the warmup time of Unranked (queue should become a lot quicker if Practice was removed).

Second option would be to remove the possibility to choose your team. Team swapping would only be possible by autobalance volunteering.

I find it amusing when bad players are clueless to how bad they are and blame it on the rank 80 on the team.

Yes! A bad impression – Flamed for being a Noob – Did we all start with divine abilities in knowing map lay outs- Over all I was enjoying the learning and the playing of the events in pvp- Not so sure now- Since the recent changes it seems we have no option as to explore and participate – Well I have been a gamer for years and sadly to say pvp and other aspects of this game are becoming quiet boring – For the flamers go join the Best of the Best or learn to LEAD – Your name calling is Weakness to You – Go pat yourself on the back and call out your obscenities – You are the gamer who rides on the back of other peoples glory -

You shouldn’t let this bother you and should mostly ignore them/block them/report them.

They are a bit very similar to those angry drivers calling you [colourful name] and sounding their horn constantly when you’re driving a bit slowly in front of them for whatever reason.

Personally, I rarely talk/answer to anything in PvP – except for the odd “well played” when I felt the game could just have been won by the opponent as much as us.
Everyone gets upset now and then, usually it’s time to take a break. People in this state are just ready to take it out on someone else.
You can call them out if you want though, I’ve had entire teams telling some guy to stop. Usually they leave in the next 10s because we’re “bad anyway lol!1!!!” and their ego can’t take it.

If that helps at all keeping your cool, keep this in mind:
These people will probably end up worse than you in terms of skill as they are blaming it on others instead of themselves, and so won’t seek to improve and find what they are doing wrong.

I want to apologize about the way these people act. They give a bad name to the whole community.

I never said there wasnt trash talking but there was less of it. Let me explain, practice mode is you being put into a certain arena where as before you got to pick which one. Also with it use to be mostly 8 vs 8, ranked tourneys and then paid ranked tourneys the set up was very different for everyone. The builds for everyone was different, the problem became farming glory. Before you can into toxic player guess what you can pick and switch to a different server where there are lots of people and 8 vs 7 there wasnt a huge problem in score like 4 vs 3. The other points are in my original post.

Also i think the trash talking is the same as wow, if you dont think so then you probably werent into it as much as the other people cause open world dueling and the ability for you to take over towns and turn new players or players you dont like into sheep was a point of interest for many. Also game like champions online people didnt share alot of builds so you had alot of you stole my build and you suck at it type of conversations.

I think the ability for new players to join a map that they dont choose is a problem. Me and my friends tested builds all the time but now you need to buy a custom arena for it. Forcing unknowing players entering the game about pvp into negative situations.

kdaddy.5431:

I never said there wasnt trash talking but there was less of it. Let me explain, practice mode is you being put into a certain arena where as before you got to pick which one. Also with it use to be mostly 8 vs 8, ranked tourneys and then paid ranked tourneys the set up was very different for everyone. The builds for everyone was different, the problem became farming glory. Before you can into toxic player guess what you can pick and switch to a different server where there are lots of people and 8 vs 7 there wasnt a huge problem in score like 4 vs 3. The other points are in my original post.

Also i think the trash talking is the same as wow, if you dont think so then you probably werent into it as much as the other people cause open world dueling and the ability for you to take over towns and turn new players or players you dont like into sheep was a point of interest for many. Also game like champions online people didnt share alot of builds so you had alot of you stole my build and you suck at it type of conversations.

I think the ability for new players to join a map that they dont choose is a problem. Me and my friends tested builds all the time but now you need to buy a custom arena for it. Forcing unknowing players entering the game about pvp into negative situations.

You can still pick and switch different servers, just press the “game browser” button . If anything I notice less trash talk now than around launch, probably because there is less people.

With WoW I was only talking about BGs, I never even heard the word “newb” before I played GW2 even though I mainly played BGs in other mmos. When I went back to play Rift for a while I was shocked at how friendly everyone was in battlegrounds.

really? Never heard the word noob? Ive played everquest,ff11 online, diablo2,champions online and a few others and that is a the universal word. Soured of like soft in basketball or green in fighting.

Also of course the community overall isnt horrible but there are some very toxic players and they kind of get to go around whispering and ranting the worst things ever. Ive noticed a huge difference after pvp patch and thats just for me. Having been playing since pre. The Pvp community was so fun with people talking about different builds and what not. Obviously theres been a ton of change since people have found the meta builds, cheese builds, and the 1 person in a group builds. Just for me,the flood gates came down on that patch.

There was this mean and nasty ranger I encountered not long ago. We were in a 2v2 by a point fight when I downed and stomped him. I guess my awesome deer finisher isn’t as cool to him as his tiger finisher

Instead of helping his team capture points, he went on to hunt me. On the second encounter, I downed and stomped him again. But this time, I sat and danced on his body bec he was saying racist remarks.

But I’m not mad coz I have so much love to share

wow thanks everyone for all the thoughtful responses, wasn’t expecting so many to be honest. Ive read them all and its good to know that others have noticed this and can relate.

I am a pacifist by nature, and it bothers me to see others being flamed so regularly, especially new or inexperienced players. It also bothers me that this mode has resulted in unintended consequences and is in fact not a great way to learn PvP. It is not my style to “call people out” on their behavior either, as I feel Im often just adding fuel to the fire.

I also hope they do something about the uneven battle system in this mode, and perhaps make a change to their philosophy about open communication. There is a reason why you cannot /s in WvW, and it baffles me that its allowed in such a similar competitive environment.

I will put some thought to all your responses thanks again ^^