Guild Wars 2

I know this is a pointless post now due to the fact that the game is just about dead from a pvp perspective but if anet ever decides to get their poop in a group and fix pvp these are (Imo from my personal experience) the big problems they need to look at and create solutions for: (Note: I’ve already given multiple solutions in other posts so this is not going to be a solutions thread, just a what needs to be addressed thread)
-Stale build creation
A lack of build diversity and class diversity, everyone fights the same builds for every class every match. It’s boring and when there’s no good way to customize a build due to limited options via amulet and specialization system people get bored and leave. Most of the present builds are cheese or just faceroll easy which isn’t engaging for players to play or fight.
-No separation between soloq and teamq.
People who want to solo should be able to solo without running into premades on ts. It’s not fun to be steamrolled. Likewise, people in 5 man premades should be expecting to fight other 5 mans, it’s more fun when there’s a higher likelihood of a competitive match
-Every build is too tanky with too much damage and too much healing (Goes for both condi and power builds)
Part of the excitement of building should be figuring out what to invest in and how to specialize the role of your build. Maybe you want to be heavy damage? Then you have to suffer the fact that things will do a ton of damage to you if you get caught off guard or not paying attention. Or if you want to be bunker, that’s cool but don’t ever expect to kill anything. Right now every build has too easy of a time getting the “Optimal” setup where they are super tanky, have tons of healing, tons of damage, and group support/res power. The game needs to force more investment from players so nobody can achieve this “Perfect build”
-Lack of meaningful changes
This is a fault of the devs plain and simple. I love you anet and I think you guys make amazing games. The GW games will always have a special place in my heart bu you really messed up with a lack of changes. People get tired of having to complain about the same thing every day for months on end because it’s never even acknowledged as an issue. Eventually, as you can obviously see, they leave and you are left with nobody to play your game which is sad honestly.
-Too much passive gameplay
It’s both a balance problem and a gameplay problem. It’s not engaging for people to fight a billion passives. It’s not fun and frankly, its frustrating. Getting cced because you timed a cc well and they got caught with it or getting one shot because you fell below 50% health and they auto’d you just doesn’t feel good for anyone.

This is my list of general stuff to look out for and fix because imo it killed pvp, feel free to leave whatever you want here because I just don’t really care to try anymore.

the answer is esports.
the game took a moba direction instead of a mmo direction.
lets hope with the removal of esports that the game will take different path.

this game should of had more combat uptime than wow , not less, it would of made fights seem epic and even produce better youtube videos to attract new people.

how are people gonna be interested in the game when they see fights lasting 5 seconds and have no idea what is happening?

also wvw could be a lot more interesting but it was all about the zerk.

gw2 should take examples from games like dragons nest if they want to make pvp mmo style in my opinion,
its not bad to steal ideas from other mmos , blizzard does it all the time.

i think arena net is a good company but unfortunately they fell to the esports trend trap.

jihm.2315:

the answer is esports.
the game took a moba direction instead of a mmo direction.
lets hope with the removal of esports that the game will take different path.

this game should of had more combat uptime than wow , not less, it would of made fights seem epic and even produce better youtube videos to attract new people.

how are people gonna be interested in the game when they see fights lasting 5 seconds and have no idea what is happening?

also wvw could be a lot more interesting but it was all about the zerk.

gw2 should take examples from games like dragons nest if they want to make pvp mmo style in my opinion,
its not bad to steal ideas from other mmos , blizzard does it all the time.

i think arena net is a good company but unfortunately they fell to the esports trend trap.

Fights do not last just 5 sec (unless you are afk) and i dont think making it even slower is the way to go. Do you even know yourself what are you writing? Just throwing around few cliche words like candy. Moba direction, mmo direction, esports trap …. Also making esports big bad wolf and now that it is gone, world is safe and everything will be alright.

In my opinion what killed PvP is that it should be more separate to the rest of the game from start, since it has different needs, with its own developer team and funding, “expansions”.

It is true that this game is unbelievably bursty. That’s something that doesn’t contribute to getting new players as new players, by definition, don’t know what they’re doing and they can be dropped in 3s by an experienced counter. If you don’t agree, you haven’t pvped long enough: walk into a full DH trapper traps’, instant death for many professions; a strong head butt + arc divider crit = +50% of you hp gone in an instant; a vault crit? 50%, 2? dead; get instantly loaded with engi’s conditions, drop 50% in the blink of an eye even as you spam your condi cleanses. There’s so many cheeses in this game it’s not even funny. And this is coming from someone who plays tanky builds and is always below 20% team deaths in ranked matches, zero or one death isn’t rare for me either. So I’m not saying this because “git gud”, it’s just the way it is.

The thing that changed between seasons 5 and 6 are the ease of accessing asc gear. -> people who played for the rewards left
The other change was the end of esports -> the people who took this game seriously left
the game also has 0 modes that promote teamplay.

The problem, as with any MMO, comes about when you add new things and fail to balance (with) the old.

A simple example of this is increased in condition damage without buffing condition removal. Seriously, there are still traits that grant one condition removed, which in PvP is pathetic considering any condi build worth its salt will instantly load you with at least five conditions. Solution? Simple: increase condition removal by 1 accross the board.

Another example would be DH’s elite: refreshes virtues. This may have been balanced when virtues were useless, but when they have a 6s block and a 4k heal with five conditions removed, while the elite itself giving 3s of invulnerability, it’s a bit too much. Think about what a DH does if he wants to stay alive: block heal, jump heal, block, invulnerable, block, jump heal, possibly block heal if off CD, all the while hitting for 5k easily in both range and melee.

New things in MMOs aren’t “cool”. They present problems that are hardly even addressed because changes (or new expansions) = more money, and fixing issues costs resources. The problem comes when people get too annoyed to put up with all the nonsense and they quit, leading to a further tightening and emphasis in things that will apparently increase revenue whilst at the same time draining the population.

Emapudapus.1307:

jihm.2315:

the answer is esports.
the game took a moba direction instead of a mmo direction.
lets hope with the removal of esports that the game will take different path.

this game should of had more combat uptime than wow , not less, it would of made fights seem epic and even produce better youtube videos to attract new people.

how are people gonna be interested in the game when they see fights lasting 5 seconds and have no idea what is happening?

also wvw could be a lot more interesting but it was all about the zerk.

gw2 should take examples from games like dragons nest if they want to make pvp mmo style in my opinion,
its not bad to steal ideas from other mmos , blizzard does it all the time.

i think arena net is a good company but unfortunately they fell to the esports trend trap.

Fights do not last just 5 sec (unless you are afk) and i dont think making it even slower is the way to go. Do you even know yourself what are you writing? Just throwing around few cliche words like candy. Moba direction, mmo direction, esports trap …. Also making esports big bad wolf and now that it is gone, world is safe and everything will be alright.

In my opinion what killed PvP is that it should be more separate to the rest of the game from start, since it has different needs, with its own developer team and funding, “expansions”.

im sorry for trying to explain what i feel with words and examples next time ill send drawings

Esports kills every MMORPGs pvp. MMORPG aren’t good for esports. It won’t ever work until you completely build a new game inside your game.
If you want to go that way you need a big development team that focuses on the esports part, a separate balancing, separate skill design, etc. You don’t want an esports with “rock, paper, scissor”, you want equal chances for any class participating so player skill (not armor, class or weapons) matters.

Its not a fair game mode. It is not fair to mix solo and duo queue. It is not fair to lower your MMR because somebody else decides to go afk or simply has a dc and comes back. It is not fair to play against ppl 2 divisions above yours. It is not fair to offer a report option but never investigate or take any actions. And its not fair to just let PvP die.

did anyone mention boring? i am xtra bored of this capture the 3 points mode

Jaxom.7310:

did anyone mention boring? i am xtra bored of this capture the 3 points mode

I didn’t get bored with the 3 point mode, till after HoT. To me when you look at say Smite. Those characters and classes, look like they belong in that game mode and each have a role to perform.

Now look at GW2 with only 9 classes, and a X-Pack. That added so much power creep that at times certain classes was just kitten. Those classes also didn’t felt like they belong in this 3 point mode anymore.

DH in any other competitive PvP game in a 3 point mode, would have been banned at the selection screen. Ok now look at thief and warrior after buffs. They two would’ve been banned. Too forgiven to even attempt to allow for competitive play.

Then you had the match maker, just handing out bad match quality. Match after match after match very consistently. I honestly think that ANet set that system up to do just that. In order to get rid of all of the solo queue’ers from their game. Now look over at Smite it’s the complete opposite. Very very few bad matches even as Solo player in ranked, hell I’ll even say causal matches in Smite are 4 times better quality then in GW2’s Ranked.

Then GW2 was left with a big hole in the population, for season 5. So ANet gave out free ascended gear to bribe PvEers to put up with state of PvP. Because the gear was just given out for afking matches. Of course this caused a lot of problems. Making more PvPers leave. So ANet all but took away the ascended gear from PvP. Instead of just leaving in for winning only.

GW2’s Esports masquerade then officially died. More PvPers left for PvP supported games.

Season 6 rolls around. Rewards are trash tier. Match quality is trash tier. Trolls still aloud to run around with no fear of ban. Most of the so called “Top Tier’ed Competitive” PvPers that stayed. Started to (for the only word that should be used here) “cheat” in order to grab leader board positions. So other then for the trolls and cheaters, very few was actually having fun. More PvP and PvE players left. Now match maker can not do it’s job even if it was programmed to. Because critical mass has came and gone and nothing was done to stop it from melting down.

Now you have a laughing stock of a pseudo-competitive ladder that just throws what ever people it has at the time into matches that it can. MMR and Ratings be forsaken, for it’s more important to have bad matches and fast queues, then it is to have fun and engaging matches, with long queue times.

So only players who are looking for a ego boost by beating lower skilled players in stacked matches. Or PvEers just looking for some dailies and are desperate for ascended gear. Are the only ones left playing. Everyone else for the most part plays GW2 for it’s casual non-engaging mindless PvE, and plays PvP in PvP supported games. GW2 is not a PvP supported game. All one has to do is play both WvW and PvP game modes for a week to come to this conclusion.

And no one can tell me that it’s because of population. Because GW2 had a huge population and following up until the point. Figured up they was being ignored and unwanted by the ANet dev team. So the ones with a decent head on their shoulders left. GW2 Ranked PvP, could’ve and would’ve survived HoT. If ANet only put in the effort needed to. Since ANet didn’t, this is the results.

Actions speaks much louder then words. Just look at yalls current population crisis. It tells the whole of the story itself. You can either ignore and deny it, or accept it for what it is and continue, or you can just move on. Complaining about this joke at this point. Just makes you look like a even better joke then it.

I hope this spelled it out for you people. “Who honestly” are trying to figure out. What happened, and why. You can take the words of the people who are ignoring the facts and continues to play, complain, and speculate why we lefted. Or you can take the words of a serious PvPer who used to play now no longers play Ranked PvP in GW2. But elsewhere in actual PvP supported games.

Elite specializations killed pvp. Before that pvp was “ok”. Elites specs are too strong but they were never changed to be balanced with core traits and skills. You know there is a problem when nearly every class is REQUIRED to use their elite specs to be competitive. There is a huge difference between choice and required.

jihm.2315:

the answer is esports.
the game took a moba direction instead of a mmo direction.
lets hope with the removal of esports that the game will take different path.

this game should of had more combat uptime than wow , not less, it would of made fights seem epic and even produce better youtube videos to attract new people.

how are people gonna be interested in the game when they see fights lasting 5 seconds and have no idea what is happening?

also wvw could be a lot more interesting but it was all about the zerk.

gw2 should take examples from games like dragons nest if they want to make pvp mmo style in my opinion,
its not bad to steal ideas from other mmos , blizzard does it all the time.

i think arena net is a good company but unfortunately they fell to the esports trend trap.

Which is why when the esports community got tired of the lack of communication and left PVP died?

Whether or not you supported the esports community it was only beneficial. Pro playerbases bring in more people and help retain others.

What killed PVP is the devs lack of communication and general lack of a plan.

They just did stuff with no real warning and didn’t communicate enough with the playerbase.

shagwell.1349:

Esports kills every MMORPGs pvp. MMORPG aren’t good for esports. It won’t ever work until you completely build a new game inside your game.
If you want to go that way you need a big development team that focuses on the esports part, a separate balancing, separate skill design, etc. You don’t want an esports with “rock, paper, scissor”, you want equal chances for any class participating so player skill (not armor, class or weapons) matters.

What MMO had esports besides this? Blade and Soul? Only one i can think of with a proper espoprts scene and it single handedly held it up in korea for 3 years with no new content.

e sports ruins games
even street fighter failed

Nickzor.2453:

What MMO had esports besides this? Blade and Soul? Only one i can think of with a proper espoprts scene and it single handedly held it up in korea for 3 years with no new content.

World of Warcraft.

Based on twitch numbers – people watching arena tournaments – it is still the #1 esport mmorpg. It sucks, yes. And it shouldn’t be called esport but they tried that back in 2010 or something and Blizzard still thinks it’s an esports title.

You’re actually correct I wasn’t aware blizzard had started hyping Arena esports in the last 2-3 years. I always found arena to be incredibly dull so I didn’t pay attention to it a whole lot. But by your own example esports does in no way negatively impact MMO PVP after all 30 seconds on google makes it clear that WoW PVP activity is at an all time high ( in the last 4-5 years that is.

Reads don’t matter, you can’t reliably punish whiffs for every build, with every build.

Conquest is shallow. The lack or type of map mechanics are shallow, and the time limit makes it even more shallow. (Should have taken a note from like… fractured space or something)

No PTR + no balance team = no real balance (who woulda thought?). “Ohh we internally tested! Don’t worry we asked pros!” All this matters so little to the over all state of the game and how the population recieves it.

Idr who posted that nice pyramid graph but pretty much that for why viewabity is important. The imbalances of the above from the game type, to builds; it makes the game uninteresting at worst, and a giant incoherent mess at best.. outside of 1v1s the most interesting thing you can watch in this game. But one sided matchups make that boring too.

rip PvP.

Daishi.6027:

Reads don’t matter, you can’t reliably punish whiffs for every build, with every build.

Conquest is shallow. The lack or type of map mechanics are shallow, and the time limit makes it even more shallow. (Should have taken a note from like… fractured space or something)

No PTR + no balance team = no real balance (who woulda thought?). “Ohh we internally tested! Don’t worry we asked pros!” All this matters so little to the over all state of the game and how the population recieves it.

Idr who posted that nice pyramid graph but pretty much that for why viewabity is important. The imbalances of the above from the game type, to builds; it makes the game uninteresting at worst, and a giant incoherent mess at best.. outside of 1v1s the most interesting thing you can watch in this game. But one sided matchups make that boring too.

rip PvP.

I disagree with the first point. If anything its one of the most in depth PVP modes I have ever seen in an MMO.

Deathmatch is shallow. Conquest if anything is too complicated and as a result turns players away. The amount of people I saw in legend last season who had such a flawed understanding of the concept of rotations was insane.

Your second point is spot on though IMHO. Their lack of real transparency and inability to properly test as well as engage the community in testing is largely to blame for their insane balancing extremes.

It has been 5 years and we’ve been playing the same game mode in PVP.

It has been 5 years and previously established builds have been gutted.

It has been 5 years and new builds power creep the older skills.

It has been 5 years and we are exactly where we started. 1 Mode 8 professions – Revs are dead imho. 1 build per 8 professions for the 1 mode. The exact same situation since 2012.

It has been 5 YEARS!

Nickzor.2453:

Daishi.6027:

Reads don’t matter, you can’t reliably punish whiffs for every build, with every build.

Conquest is shallow. The lack or type of map mechanics are shallow, and the time limit makes it even more shallow. (Should have taken a note from like… fractured space or something)

No PTR + no balance team = no real balance (who woulda thought?). “Ohh we internally tested! Don’t worry we asked pros!” All this matters so little to the over all state of the game and how the population recieves it.

Idr who posted that nice pyramid graph but pretty much that for why viewabity is important. The imbalances of the above from the game type, to builds; it makes the game uninteresting at worst, and a giant incoherent mess at best.. outside of 1v1s the most interesting thing you can watch in this game. But one sided matchups make that boring too.

rip PvP.

I disagree with the first point. If anything its one of the most in depth PVP modes I have ever seen in an MMO.

Deathmatch is shallow. Conquest if anything is too complicated and as a result turns players away. The amount of people I saw in legend last season who had such a flawed understanding of the concept of rotations was insane.

Your second point is spot on though IMHO. Their lack of real transparency and inability to properly test as well as engage the community in testing is largely to blame for their insane balancing extremes.

Well if conquest is “too complicated” then I’d hate to see you try Smite, LoL, DoTA, any of the other actual PvP games. The tactics, counter play, and on the fly adaptation, needed to play those in just their casual matches makes GW2’s version of Ranked conquest. Just looks like some brain dead child who don’t even realize, it even exist.

GW2 conquest is just interesting, because you can play with characters “YOU MADE”. If not for that. I bet no one would even give it a second thought. Sorry I always have a good laugh when people say GW2’s conquest is “complicated”. It’s one of the most simple forms of PvP outside of team death match in other games. It’s one dimensional, all you do is just worry about siting on a point. You don’t even have to worry about counter building mid match, or gold/min, or getting out leveled, having to farm to catch up in levels or gold, defending your towers while pushing the enemy’s towers.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Nickzor.2453:

Daishi.6027:

Reads don’t matter, you can’t reliably punish whiffs for every build, with every build.

Conquest is shallow. The lack or type of map mechanics are shallow, and the time limit makes it even more shallow. (Should have taken a note from like… fractured space or something)

No PTR + no balance team = no real balance (who woulda thought?). “Ohh we internally tested! Don’t worry we asked pros!” All this matters so little to the over all state of the game and how the population recieves it.

Idr who posted that nice pyramid graph but pretty much that for why viewabity is important. The imbalances of the above from the game type, to builds; it makes the game uninteresting at worst, and a giant incoherent mess at best.. outside of 1v1s the most interesting thing you can watch in this game. But one sided matchups make that boring too.

rip PvP.

I disagree with the first point. If anything its one of the most in depth PVP modes I have ever seen in an MMO.

Deathmatch is shallow. Conquest if anything is too complicated and as a result turns players away. The amount of people I saw in legend last season who had such a flawed understanding of the concept of rotations was insane.

Your second point is spot on though IMHO. Their lack of real transparency and inability to properly test as well as engage the community in testing is largely to blame for their insane balancing extremes.

Well if conquest is “too complicated” then I’d hate to see you try Smite, LoL, DoTA, any of the other actual PvP games. The tactics, counter play, and on the fly adaptation, needed to play those in just their casual matches makes GW2’s version of Ranked conquest. Just looks like some brain dead child who don’t even realize, it even exist.

GW2 conquest is just interesting, because you can play with characters “YOU MADE”. If not for that. I bet no one would even give it a second thought. Sorry I always have a good laugh when people say GW2’s conquest is “complicated”. It’s one of the most simple forms of PvP outside of team death match in other games. It’s one dimensional, all you do is just worry about siting on a point. You don’t even have to worry about counter building mid match, or gold/min, or getting out leveled, having to farm to catch up in levels or gold, defending your towers while pushing the enemy’s towers.

This is what’s called a biased response. LOL is just the toned downed version of DOTA 2 (im aware which came first don’t worry) They share the same source material but DOTA 2 is generally agreed to be the more competitive option. (this is an opinion I personally agree with but its just that)

That being said I played a large amount of DOTA 2 and while I never made it to top 100 mr MMR was generally around 5000 range depending on how many classes I felt like taking.

Judging by your assessment of GW2 you have only served to hinder your own point. “It’s one dimensional, all you do is just worry about siting on a point.” This level of understanding is exactly what I was talking about. Unlike DOTA 2 which is a very basic game in terms of raw concepts and mechanics its got growing depth the further you get in to the game and rank. GW2 doesn’t have that baby step level of play unless you count simply sitting on point. Which I suppose is part of the issue. The expanded level of depth is only viewable with coordinated teams due to anets poor handling of the PVP community. That being said… simply because all you see is a 3 points doesn’t mean thats all there is.

I never once used the term complicated and this was never a competition to which game had more depth but in the same way the depth of MOBAs comes from the way players chose to interact with each other based upon the limits of the game the same is true with GW2.

I mean…. if you look at a MOBA at its base level is one of the most simple minded game modes humanly possible. Simplicity generally speaking lends for more room for depth. Conquest and MOBAs both have a lose set of rules and a simple objective neither are inherently complex its the players that create real complexity with the evolving levels of skill, game knowledge and changes within the meta

Nickzor.2453:

Daishi.6027:

Reads don’t matter, you can’t reliably punish whiffs for every build, with every build.

Conquest is shallow. The lack or type of map mechanics are shallow, and the time limit makes it even more shallow. (Should have taken a note from like… fractured space or something)

No PTR + no balance team = no real balance (who woulda thought?). “Ohh we internally tested! Don’t worry we asked pros!” All this matters so little to the over all state of the game and how the population recieves it.

Idr who posted that nice pyramid graph but pretty much that for why viewabity is important. The imbalances of the above from the game type, to builds; it makes the game uninteresting at worst, and a giant incoherent mess at best.. outside of 1v1s the most interesting thing you can watch in this game. But one sided matchups make that boring too.

rip PvP.

I disagree with the first point. If anything its one of the most in depth PVP modes I have ever seen in an MMO.

Deathmatch is shallow. Conquest if anything is too complicated and as a result turns players away. The amount of people I saw in legend last season who had such a flawed understanding of the concept of rotations was insane.

I dunno BnS has strong read play, and punishing whiffs feels good. I’d say the depth there wins out over GW2.

Maybe it’s just personal opinion, but I feel WoW, or even old korean MMOs like Ragnarok were better for reads and punishing whiffs. Both being less action oriented than GW2 but reads and punishes is important for a competitive game. Especially one that had aspirations of being an E-sport.

As to death match I agree entirely, however I’m not sure if I’d call gw2 conquest “complicated”? It does have depth in terms of rotations, team fights, and when to hold, ect, but I find that very shallow when the combat is so unbalanced, since that broken balance dictates every option of play a team has, and those limited options is what makes it feel so shallow to me. Also because we have massively dominating builds that don’t reliably get punished for being out played it stagnates the rotations since the map presence doesn’t consequently change.

The side objectives are meant to shake it up, but it’s always either over bearing, or an after thought. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But if it doesn’t shake up the fights nothing changes, or if it drastically changes the flow of the map, it still hinders the list of viable options.

I shouldn’t write off conquest so easily since we haven’t seen it with truly good balance, but I feel even with proper balance the view ability is still pretty low, and as such think it’s a better idea to move away form it and actively balance around another mode, or set of conditions.

You know.. With a PTR of course.

Nickzor.2453:

You’re actually correct I wasn’t aware blizzard had started hyping Arena esports in the last 2-3 years. I always found arena to be incredibly dull so I didn’t pay attention to it a whole lot. But by your own example esports does in no way negatively impact MMO PVP after all 30 seconds on google makes it clear that WoW PVP activity is at an all time high ( in the last 4-5 years that is.

Balancing wise it has. It gave Blizzard a reason to say “We balance pvp on 3v3 Arena”. In fact they tried that but it made pvp so much worse than it was before.
You mostly had a “rock, paper, scissors” balancing in WoW before esports was a thing. You killed rogues on your warrior and got countered by mages while mages were countered by rogues, etc.
With esports and focus on balancing 3v3 there were some classes on top which had gread synergies in teams and all the others classes had no place in arena – so even a player with high skill couldn’t end up in the top 50 when he played a “bad class”.
This balancing went up and down over the years but it is still worse than anything Anet has thrown at us – even after WoW started balancing stuff differently in pve and pvp and normalized stats and got rid of pvp gear.

It’s a pure kittenfest now.

And as I said before: To make an mmorpg a good esports title you have to total separate the two parts of the game. Anet did it right at least on this part. My guess is that they don’t have enough people to follow that plan to the end.

Muy.3170:

It has been 5 years and we’ve been playing the same game mode in PVP.

It has been 5 years and previously established builds have been gutted.

It has been 5 years and new builds power creep the older skills.

It has been 5 years and we are exactly where we started. 1 Mode 8 professions – Revs are dead imho. 1 build per 8 professions for the 1 mode. The exact same situation since 2012.

It has been 5 YEARS!

dunno bout most of your points, but all on board w/ 5 years an 1 mode. lik i sayd earlier, it just gets dull.

now i playing for honor (i kno, bad matchmaking, connectivity, p2win, its not an mmo, its only been out a month, etc etc) and so far as pvp goes, if i’m playing dominion (their ver of conquest) and i feel lik i’m on a bad streak, or i just not having fun, i can swap over to 2v2 or a different mode, get some fresh matchmaking, and enjoy it for a bit, until i get tired of it, and go back to another mode.

having multiple game modes really increases the drive to keep playing and helps it from getting dull

In my opinion there is only one thing that killed spvp. The game now is pretty balance. The real problem is the completely lack of build diversity. Hot meta builds are too strong and you are forced to play them… you can change some details but the playstyle is imposed by Anet . ( I had a lot of fun with P/P or rifle engi for example , but now they are badly subpar to scrapper ) . So people get bored after 7 seasons playing the same thing in the same way … .and give up. At the end, after a lot of pvp matches now i have more fun in pve or wvw …. i don’t love them but at least i do something new for me…

Lmfao to all the people who are still “speculating” why we left. When in fact in multiple threads and posts. We broke it down to why we left.

But I guess some people like to just flat out replace facts with their own illusions. So meh. The meta was fine and balanced. The match quality was worst then most of the P2W games on the market. Now think about that, sec. Or you can go back to your lala land of falsehood.

It could be worse, out of all the MMOs – especially the big ones – GW2 still has the best PVP model/skill ceiling.

Couple thoughts:

Amulets:
They’ve been all over the place. They’re in a better place than they were before but are still limiting build diversity. I would like to see amulets overhauled into a new form where you choose the basic balance of stats you want (2-4 stats, more concentrated or more spread out) and then custom pick the types of those stats. As a Thief main, I’m especially limited by the predefined amulet choices and something like this would go a long way.

E-sports:
Failed e-sports pushes can kill a game’s PvP scene, particularly if it was niche to begin with. If you’re going to pursue big-time e-sports aspirations, don’t forget to put in a mode or two for people who want a more casual experience.

There is a lot of basic things that should have been implemented years ago.

Why there isnt skill templates like in gw1? I have no patience anymore to change skills and traits every game

Why there is so much passive stuff in this game, there are a few builds that its just super annoying to play against, and those builds carry bad players very hard

Why there isnt a diferent que just for solo players? If u win while duoing , then u should be in a diferent lederboard

Verbal abuse ingame should be punished, if u report some one ingame, there should be something in place to look into it

Lack of comunication from anet, they just dont tell us anything, about of what they are doing , or want to do

Lack of updates, this is just crazy, that they take months and months to release updates

Etc etc etc, the list goes on and on…. i just can even be bothered to play anymore, i used to be one, if not the most active player in gw2, and atm i play a game every 5 days or so.

Im not happy with the game anymore.

Despond.2174:

It could be worse, out of all the MMOs – especially the big ones – GW2 still has the best PVP model/skill ceiling.

That’s just like saying. Well could be worse, out of all the crap tier’ed stuff people just don’t want to play – especially the big ones – John still has the best PvP model/skill ceiling.

And even that is false. Because BnS PvP model/skill ceiling is much better then GW2. Oh wait they balance more then 3 months and have more then 1 mode to PvP. And they don’t balance PvP around PvE they do it like ESO and balance PvE around PvP.

Speaking of ESO, I guess we’ll get to see. If ZOS can do better then ANet, here next month. Would be interesting to see with the new 4v4v4 Battlegrounds. Oh and right BGs are going to release with more then just one PvP mode.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Lmfao to all the people who are still “speculating” why we left. When in fact in multiple threads and posts. We broke it down to why we left.

But I guess some people like to just flat out replace facts with their own illusions. So meh. The meta was fine and balanced. The match quality was worst then most of the P2W games on the market. Now think about that, sec. Or you can go back to your lala land of falsehood.

My post wasn’t speculation. I left for the reasons I listed and instead of using it as a complaint I formed it into a list of stuff to fix.
Everyone has their own reasons for leaving, doesn’t make it a “falsehood”.

And bone to pick: Fine and balanced meta? Yeah no, the meta since HoT has been a fustercluck of spam and unblanaced garbage that only begins to look somewhat balanced due to the fact that everyone else has their own set of overpowered spam to dish out. If everything is overpowered, then it’s all overpowered. There’s no magic balance that comes out of that.

- absolute lack of attention and any kind of rewards for pvp in first years after launch <—- main reason, honestly.
- abysmally bad class balance, got really bad with HoT (as expected). No separation between pvp and pve never worked out, in any game. The whole power creep for the sake of sales is just……. i don’t have a single good word i could leave to comment this…decision.
- lack of tourneys to keep people interested in team play/improving thus playing more games etc. as well as pvp specific skill based shinies (at the end we all want to be best ever and only way to prove it is to win tourneys or have something meaningful to show off with)
- too much fiddling with pvp system that didn’t bring any good results even after so many years (e.g. current system still heavily punishes higher rated players by forcing them to carry low ranks for huge rank loss or abysmal rank gains. I am actually motivated by the system NOT to pvp). For some reason they still attempt to re-invent the wheel. On that note, i do want to say thank you to whoever was working on system last 2 seasons – it is still biggest improvement so far and best system we had in comparison to everything else but the issues are still too big and force players to quit. Couple tweaks (change MM to quality instead of quantity (get 10 ppl of similar MMR, then build teams instead of 2,2,2,4,5 vs 8,8,8,5), i would rather sit in 1 hour queue for one good match than waste that same hour on really bad and imbalanced matches; rank gains should be based on avg MMR of both teams and not personal MMR) and it would be nearly perfect.

I disagree that conquest is much of issue. I actually love this mode and i feel it enforces teamplay more than anything. That being said we really need (or needed, now it is sinking ship) to be able to duel other players anywhere in Tyria (see wow example) and we need 3v3 deathmatch mode on clean map.

I didn’t join gw2 right at the launch due to NCSOFT being the publisher. I have seen same pattern with other games. Now i am a sad customer watching yet another great game being wasted (pvp wise)

Cynz.9437:

- absolute lack of attention and any kind of rewards for pvp in first years after launch <—- main reason, honestly.

I didn’t join gw2 right at the launch due to NCSOFT being the publisher. I have seen same pattern with other games. Now i am a sad customer watching yet another great game being wasted (pvp wise)

Oh i see …so the Ferbouary/Martch tournament with the 10k Gems prize does not count ?
In the first 6 months , your kind where begging the company to create a real money tounaments , so big streamers and their viewers to join GW2
….and the other 6 to motivae the PvE ppl to participate in PvP and boost the ingame population…

Why do you thing Drybear(streamer in Smite>Dev in Paragon) left GW2 in Novembers 2012 ?
a) Lack or viewers ?
b) Luck of money ?
c) UNNERFED HASTE (100%) +UNNERFED HEARTSTRIKE (4-5K crit) while the SPECIFIC COMMUNTIY + SPECIFIC PERSON claimed along with the Backstab spec …that Thief wont see the light of the competive scene and they are just noobstompers?
(which YOUR KIND got it wrong from Martch 2013 till now ?)
And later on …your kind claimed that the damage is justified , because tanky specs as the Valk Ele (Phantaram) exist ?

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Cynz.9437:

- absolute lack of attention and any kind of rewards for pvp in first years after launch <—- main reason, honestly.

I didn’t join gw2 right at the launch due to NCSOFT being the publisher. I have seen same pattern with other games. Now i am a sad customer watching yet another great game being wasted (pvp wise)

Oh i see …so the Ferbouary/Martch tournament with the 10k Gems prize does not count ?
In the first 6 months , your kind where begging the company to create a real money tounaments , so big streamers and their viewers to join GW2
….and the other 6 to motivae the PvE ppl to participate in PvP and boost the ingame population…

Why do you thing Drybear(streamer in Smite>Dev in Paragon) left GW2 in Novembers 2012 ?
a) Lack or viewers ?
b) Luck of money ?
c) UNNERFED HASTE (100%) +UNNERFED HEARTSTRIKE (4-5K crit) while the SPECIFIC COMMUNTIY + SPECIFIC PERSON claimed along with the Backstab spec …that Thief wont see the light of the competive scene and they are just noobstompers?
(which YOUR KIND got it wrong from Martch 2013 till now ?)
And later on …your kind claimed that the damage is justified , because tanky specs as the Valk Ele (Phantaram) exist ?

- there was no pvp ladder/seasons for long time
- there was no rewards from pvp as far as gold/items go beside dyes and skins for long time

Forgot those two? Tourneys organized once in ages won’t sustain population, simple as it is. The game mode needs to offer more than that to keep players interested. Same applies to anything really. Imagine pve would be only about killing couple NPCs in open world and that is. No quests, no LS, no dungeons, no raids, no skin collections – people would get bored and quit. This is what happened to pvp – there wasn’t much to do at begin besides doing couple matches for few dyes.

I am not even going to start on things like build template, terrible tutorials etc.

My kind? What are you implying here? Please don’t assume things regarding my person and stay by facts and the topic, thank you.

I agree with most of what Reaper posted. the reward system was flawed in season 5 – too easy to get ascended and rewards just for playing not winning. But the anet compounded the error by retroactively Fink is hung the rewards that players had already earned. That kittened off a lot of people and led to even lower turn out.

the game must make casual players feel like they belong to pvp,
a skilled player should prevail ofc
but casuals that try to pvp and get 3 shotted eventually quit the game,
the game is not enjoyable with all this damage,

i kill people and i dont enjoy it, i feel like have tricked them instead of outplaying them. dont also forget that some people have higher latency or bad computers and that means instant destruction .

they shall give combat more uptime more character to classes and stop caring about capture point balance.
a win or loose comes from mmr anyway.

Y’all can complain about ANet and balance all you want, but it was the rampant match manipulation last season that killed PvP.

The reward nerf for this season certainly hurt things for everybody, but why should anyone give a kitten about the leaderboards, titles, or badges when a good number of players at the top are throwing games, queue-dodging each other, and even sharing their accounts?

There’s just literally nothing to play for, and there’s zero incentive to get invested when the casual players aren’t there to fill out the matchmaker and the hardcore players are intentionally face-planting the game mode out of some bizarre sense of entitlement and ego over imaginary points.

This game could’ve been something great, and season five could’ve been the turnaround Guild Wars 2 needed to sustain player numbers into the next expansion release later this year.

Instead I’ve dumped 100+ hours into Playunknown’s Battlegrounds the past six weeks and I just log into this game for Living Story content. It’s a real shame. I want to care about PvP in this game but it’s pretty clear nobody else does. Casuals hate the rewards, and the hardcore players hate each other.

This is a perfect instance where you can blame the players, not the game.

If I was ArenaNet I wouldn’t put much effort to maintain this community either.

It doesn’t deserve the attention.

Jaxom.7310:

Muy.3170:

It has been 5 years and we’ve been playing the same game mode in PVP.

It has been 5 years and previously established builds have been gutted.

It has been 5 years and new builds power creep the older skills.

It has been 5 years and we are exactly where we started. 1 Mode 8 professions – Revs are dead imho. 1 build per 8 professions for the 1 mode. The exact same situation since 2012.

It has been 5 YEARS!

dunno bout most of your points, but all on board w/ 5 years an 1 mode. lik i sayd earlier, it just gets dull.

now i playing for honor (i kno, bad matchmaking, connectivity, p2win, its not an mmo, its only been out a month, etc etc) and so far as pvp goes, if i’m playing dominion (their ver of conquest) and i feel lik i’m on a bad streak, or i just not having fun, i can swap over to 2v2 or a different mode, get some fresh matchmaking, and enjoy it for a bit, until i get tired of it, and go back to another mode.

having multiple game modes really increases the drive to keep playing and helps it from getting dull

Surprised you’re the only person who mentioned it.

New pvp content, new maps would really be nice.

pve classes design and balance team killed pvp game modes.

pvp devs were trying to do miracles with tied hands…..

Muy.3170:

It has been 5 years and we’ve been playing the same game mode in PVP.

It has been 5 years and previously established builds have been gutted.

It has been 5 years and new builds power creep the older skills.

It has been 5 years and we are exactly where we started. 1 Mode 8 professions – Revs are dead imho. 1 build per 8 professions for the 1 mode. The exact same situation since 2012.

It has been 5 YEARS!

While what you said is true. Saying rev is dead is kinda false when 3/10 players in top 10 on NA are Rev mains. One of them is even in top 3. I think “Rev is one of the only two class that still require some brain and skills” would be more accurate

The other being Mesmer. And before I get jump on by salty Bronzes and silvers it is a widely agreed assessment from all the top tier players that Condi mesmer require the most skill follow by Rev. Both have super high skill floor and require lot of personal skills to do well on

Haven’t played for a few seasons. What exactly happened to pvp?

Aza.2105:

Elite specializations killed pvp. Before that pvp was “ok”. Elites specs are too strong but they were never changed to be balanced with core traits and skills. You know there is a problem when nearly every class is REQUIRED to use their elite specs to be competitive. There is a huge difference between choice and required.

Absolutely correct.

JTGuevara.9018:

Aza.2105:

Elite specializations killed pvp. Before that pvp was “ok”. Elites specs are too strong but they were never changed to be balanced with core traits and skills. You know there is a problem when nearly every class is REQUIRED to use their elite specs to be competitive. There is a huge difference between choice and required.

Absolutely correct.

Going to start off by saying GW2’s PvP could’ve and would’ve survive the Elite Specs. They was a minor problem. Many many of the people was getting used to them, and adapting.

On the other hand we watched the quality of the matches dropped sharply. Between having players who are infamous at large by the community for throwing matches or trolling rank with absolutely no recourse. Ruining the PvP experience for many of the competitive up and coming PvPers. They left the game.

Another thing was being forced into purposely imbalanced match ups. Then losing 3 games worth of matches at times for losing these matches you had no shot at winning from the door. Players got tried of being rated 1v5 instead of 5v5. So these players also left the game.

ANet lost ESL support. So most of their pro players looked elsewhere. This single incident might of been biggest contributer to the fall. It lifted all illusion from many eyes. How much of a joke PvP actually was. Many of the competitive PvP lefted at this point.

ANet cut PvEers support from PvP but making rewards lack lustering. While at the same time not fix match quality. The problem started at the bronze level with bronze players being fed to higher division per mades. Many players who was having fun farming solo bronze players told them to leave or shut up. This also caused alot of disenfranchised players to leave PvP. Meaning as long as these problems was not getting fixed. The next skilled group of players had to deal with this. Upper Tier’ed players having fun farming matches that shouldn’t even have been happening told these players the same thing. They listened to their superiors. This problem in the quality of matches kept erasing and boiling higher thru the ranks. Till guess what guys.

Now even Upper Tier’ed players are completely feeling the effects that the lower tier’ed players used to feel. But now their are soo few players playing. That at anytime unless you are just god like and can 1v4 and win. You are also a player in the cross hairs no matter what division you are in.

Now hilariously these players are now scrambling and crying about population issues. And people not wanting to play a system that does the complete opposite of it’s purpose. Funny how this all happened right?

what killed pvp is bright and clear its the poor combat system.
if people dont enjoy something they will stop doing it,
by the way the games selling point is pve and armor skins now so i dont expect them to give much attention to pvp and i dont blame them they are a company and companies want profit.

jihm.2315:

what killed pvp is bright and clear its the poor combat system.
if people dont enjoy something they will stop doing it,
by the way the games selling point is pve and armor skins now so i dont expect them to give much attention to pvp and i dont blame them they are a company and companies want profit.

I think GW2 combat system is good, its really fun. I always felt pvp could use more indicators….like casting bars. Which Anet refused to add. Overall it has a lot of good things going and bad. But so does every combat system.

Aza.2105:

jihm.2315:

what killed pvp is bright and clear its the poor combat system.
if people dont enjoy something they will stop doing it,
by the way the games selling point is pve and armor skins now so i dont expect them to give much attention to pvp and i dont blame them they are a company and companies want profit.

I think GW2 combat system is good, its really fun. I always felt pvp could use more indicators….like casting bars. Which Anet refused to add. Overall it has a lot of good things going and bad. But so does every combat system.

its too fast ,too spammy ,too much damage, cant stand still for a second and the aoe hurts like hell.
i can deal with it to an average level but i see why a lot people dont like to play.
also i was born in 1982 my processor is getting old for this kind of tension ,2-3 pvps a day and im done its just not relaxing at all.
pvp should not mean move and spam all the time.
the game is nice but that pvp just isnt.

Horrible balance decisions, time between “balance updates” is too long, overall neglect till the boat had already sunk, lack of Design goal, gamemode has been in perpetual Beta mode since 2013.

Take your pick.

jihm.2315:

Aza.2105:

jihm.2315:

what killed pvp is bright and clear its the poor combat system.
if people dont enjoy something they will stop doing it,
by the way the games selling point is pve and armor skins now so i dont expect them to give much attention to pvp and i dont blame them they are a company and companies want profit.

I think GW2 combat system is good, its really fun. I always felt pvp could use more indicators….like casting bars. Which Anet refused to add. Overall it has a lot of good things going and bad. But so does every combat system.

its too fast ,too spammy ,too much damage, cant stand still for a second and the aoe hurts like hell.
i can deal with it to an average level but i see why a lot people dont like to play.
also i was born in 1982 my processor is getting old for this kind of tension ,2-3 pvps a day and im done its just not relaxing at all.
pvp should not mean move and spam all the time.
the game is nice but that pvp just isnt.

1982…same here. Stop it man, it making me feel old! hah. I feel what you are saying though.

Matchmaking abuse, glad I dodged S5 an S6. Might dodge 7 too. I feel like ever since this system was added in S1 it’s been nothing but Match making abuse.