Guild Wars 2

Figured I’d post this on the official forums because I am an avid fan of this game and have played for 1000+ hours but am quickly losing interest. The main reason for me is because after your done with all your PVE stuff all there is to do is PVP and the PVP in this game has serious flaws, and anet has totally ignored support and updates for spvp since the beggining. I bought this game during prepurchase/beta days because of all the hype people were drumming up. That this game was going to be mostly a PVP game and that this MMO puts PVP first….

This post on reddit got alot of attention for a little while and I think its important that I bring it here so that hopefully some developers see the feedback and complaints from players, I think its very important to the future of this game and for Pvp that these issues are addressed quickly.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/151ipk/why_arent_more_people_doing_spvp_and_tpvp/

^link

Main Points from players as of why not many play SPVP anymore:

-There’s no ranking system for s/tpvp so most people don’t really see a point in playing.

-Lack of any other game mode than “capture the point”

-Lack of support for sPvP from ANet, lack of features for competitive play. People who like sPvP are discouraged to put their effort in it, considering it’s been 3+ months and compared to PvE, sPvP got nothing.

-Strict segregation of PvE and sPvP. I know it sounds pedantic, but I’d sPvP a hell of a lot more if I could simply carry over my gears appearance in PvE to sPvP. The stats should be completely seperate and set at an equal level for sPvp (as they currently are), I just dislike that ALL PvE effort for armor and weapon skins is completely wasted.
The sPvP is too far detatched from the real game and you cant bring the rewards outside of the tiny pvp-world.

-Lack or proper matchmaking. Glory is a stupid grind and is completely unrelated to skill.

-“I´m tired of sPvP since it ends in zerging everytime. Seven people running together and your own Team suicides one after another into it instead of capturing the free spots.”
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and last but not least, my opinion, so ofcourse its my favorite::::
*Lack of customization/build diversity. 90%+ of your stats come from the amulets, so theres only about 6-7 viable amulets/stat combos you can use at all. I cant diversify or customize my build or character when all my stats come from 6 cookie cutter amulets. This is absurd and is nothing like the rest of the game. Also, the “meta” (the best and only real competitive composition of professions to be on a TPVP team, you know, like every1 needs a gaurdian/mesmer/etc etc on thier team) ANET pvp developer seems to be okay and encourage this, but I feel there should be no meta and the game should be balanced enough that the top tier players could use any composition of classes/builds to win, other than bunker guardian/portal mesmer etc being absolutely needed.

i honestly really hope they do something about these problems soon, spvp seems to be dying, especially with the tournament ques what they are, and most freinds/guildmates i have that played spvp strictly have quit the game. so much lost potential in this game i hope it doesnt die like swtor and so many other mmo’s before. GW1’s pvp is what held the game up for so long, and with most players not being interested at all in current spvp, how long can PVE really hold the playerbases interest? This games pvp is nothing at all like the originals, sadly.

Slowly dying is a bit of an understatement. More like “mayday, mayday”. But I will say, good posts like this on the forums are even dying because the SPVP forums are about dead too.

You end up with the same couple people in every thread.

me- telling you the sky is falling and the game needs to fix stuff pronto
tOss- telling you it’s YOUR fault and the community needs to be patient and create this stuff ourselves
ayrehendel(sp) telling you to learn to play and that he smashes every class in every way
Jacobin – making great posts with videos to back it up on why the game is dying
Brutalistic- basically just arguing with every single person for every possible reason. i can only assume he is very angry all the time. (probably by the state of pvp but doesn’t yet know it?)
zone – good poster with a lot of warrior insight
saatarcony – basically making a bunch of random posts and then plugging his stream
Braxxus – seems legit
aydenunited – seems legit

Add a few random posters in the mix and even this side of SPVP is dead.

Since I didn’t make felivear’s list I will tell you sPvP isn’t dying… I do free tournaments with different people from my guild every night and I used to wait for a battleground que in WoW waaay longer than I have ever had to wait in a tournament que. Yes, paids are not in a great place right now but I play frees all night and rarely see the same team twice on any given night.

Not saying a lot of points you make aren’t valid but I don’t understand why there is this huge outcry that PvP is on its deathbed when it really isn’t.

Rubbers.5261:

Main Points from players as of why not many play SPVP anymore:

-There’s no ranking system for s/tpvp so most people don’t really see a point in playing.

-Lack of any other game mode than “capture the point”

-Lack of support for sPvP from ANet, lack of features for competitive play. People who like sPvP are discouraged to put their effort in it, considering it’s been 3+ months and compared to PvE, sPvP got nothing.

-Strict segregation of PvE and sPvP. I know it sounds pedantic, but I’d sPvP a hell of a lot more if I could simply carry over my gears appearance in PvE to sPvP. The stats should be completely seperate and set at an equal level for sPvp (as they currently are), I just dislike that ALL PvE effort for armor and weapon skins is completely wasted.
The sPvP is too far detatched from the real game and you cant bring the rewards outside of the tiny pvp-world.

-Lack or proper matchmaking. Glory is a stupid grind and is completely unrelated to skill.

I think those are exactly the main reasons.

I fail to see how sPvP is dying, I can log on every day, see loads of full servers in the sPvP browser, get instant queues in free tourneys, (plenty of new players there I might add) under 10 minute queues if I want to do a paid tourney, and see many new players coming over from PvE in the mists to ask noobie questions every day.

I appreciate the vocal forum members we have advocating changes as soon as possible, and I won’ t disagree with them as I too would like to see many new features implemented, but I’ m going to say I would prefer a SOLID cornerstone of a game which gradually builds into the masterpiece which we can all say we were a part of since the start.

Sure there are plenty of problems now, (glaring ones which many of you know and I won’ t reiterate) but I would rather Arena Net take their time to make sure everything is polished and works well instead of throwing together a bunch of crap which ends up going horribly. Yes there are bugs and new bugs with every patch, but no one could name a game out there without bugs (and the game breaking ones are fixed in a few days).

All I know is this game is not going to disappear so as long as there are people like me who care about it and can bear through the baby phases as it develops, it will become great.

tPvP queues are longer and longer, the format is dying quite fast. Soon all the lower ranks will give up due to constantly being farmed by R40/50+ guilds in free tourneys (paid only pop one hour a day anyway). No newbies in = too long wait timers = everyone will give up = death of tPvP.

Also, a bit unrelated but: why not have separate ranks for tourneys and for hot join?

MindlessRuff.1948:

I fail to see how sPvP is dying, I can log on every day, see loads of full servers in the sPvP browser, get instant queues in free tourneys, (plenty of new players there I might add) under 10 minute queues if I want to do a paid tourney, and see many new players coming over from PvE in the mists to ask noobie questions every day.

Loads of full servers? Please, I would love a screenshot or video of over 15% of the servers being played. I’ve checked at prime time and only found around 30 of the 300+ servers even being played.

Quote from the reddit page:
“I hate so much having to choose between trying to win or getting glory. There are few feelings as bad as starting a match and seeing everyone at the same close capping point.”
This times a thousand. ArenaNET: please fix this and make the spvp games use matchmaking based on your visible rating. A hundred times better system than glory/rank farming.

Slowly dying..? It’s already completely dead.

EDIT: I’d love to carry the skins over to PvE. This already would give a lot of content and fun Also PvP-players would have to invest into transmutation stones.

PVP will die unless things are changed, this was a page long but I deleted it all and am going with these upgrades to the pvp world ideas. Keep in mind that you developers still need to work on the class balancing issues along with these new issues.

1. Add more pvp maps.

2. Incorporate pvp and pve. Really you cant beat it, its so much fun!

3. All the same gear pvp is a good idea, but there needs to be rewards for long time players, and everyone loves gear upgrades. Have 2 pvp choices incorparating all servers, first the basic all the same lvl gear option, and second the upgradable “free for all” different gear lvls pvp option. I would like to see both of these options if possible.

Thats all TY.

@BanderSnatch 1 & 2 are coming but I wouldn’t hold your breath on number 3. That would further segregate the PvP community which already has enough issues in that department. Well with number 2 I am not completely certain what extent it is coming with but they did say there will be glory related things that apply to PvE and WvW.

I don’t see how people justify thinking the PvP is dead when you go to play and there are still lots of other people playing. The community isn’t a large as LoL or many other games by any means but it is far from dead. Plus you see GW2 winning awards and if they come through with their huge patches early next year you are going to see the overall population of GW2 grow and with more PvP features that will grow with it.

What is dead may never die, seriously PvP isn’t dieing it’s dead, even Age of Empires 1, the one released in 1997 has more viewers on twitch.tv .

You aren’t a Greyjoy… twitch.tv wasn’t out in 1997

quit spreading your alarmist propaganda about sPvP

free tourney queues are still good, so i think the spvp community has sort of leveled off. but expect a huge influx once ratings and custom arenas are out. GW2 would be money if it had team DM format.

Thirsty.2875:

twitch.tv wasn’t out in 1997

I wasn’t speaking about 1997 but about today, just check out the list.

Man what i would give to be able to bring my hard (=grind,time) earned pvp gear appearance into pve.

I love pvp BUT I hate bunker and you almost have to be a bunker. I wish they add some more kill other player type of maps. At this point it’s more important to add FUN to pvp than balance imo. A perfectly balanced game with no one in it is not where you want to end up.

The top three articles on the gw2 reddit right now are, and I’m not joking:

1) picture of “Adorable” minis
2) baby quaggans
3) snowball fights

The game has morphed from expectations of a great PvP experience, to My Little Pony™. Sadly…

DeeTooDee.3972:

3) snowball fights

but…but..but that is pvp right? Actually I would love if they just added an NPC to que for it in the heart of the mists and let us play as our characters instead of their pre built classes and we would have a fun CTF PvP game. … heads over to suggestion forum

Nice list Felivear =)

Competitive tpvp is dead as the game stands right now. Paids are unplayable due to the rarity of finding 40 players who all want to play at the same time, and the fact that newer teams are just throwing away time and money spent getting tickets. Most players have no reason to be anything more than extremely casual at this point.

Free tournies are still kind of decent, but they do not really count because its pre-mades vs pugs and again most people just see it as a casual diversion. Its not anything better than what we see in games like SWTOR, WoW, and Rift, in fact its a lot worse due to things like lack of maps, lack of stat tracking, lack of rating, lack of solo queue that is not the hot join garbage.

The OP hits all the primary points that we have been demanding for quite some time now.

I have really just come to accept that sPvP in GW2 was a side project. The primary focus of the game was innovating the theme-park pve MMO formula, the only pvp design innovation from GW1 that was retained is instant pvp.

This is why we keep seeing holiday events that last a week while for example capricorn has supposedly been in beta and untouched for 4+ months.

Anet would rather steal WoW subscribers then compete with LoL for pvp. Its probably the safer gamble for them in the long run.

felivear.1536:

Slowly dying is a bit of an understatement. More like “mayday, mayday”. But I will say, good posts like this on the forums are even dying because the SPVP forums are about dead too.

You end up with the same couple people in every thread.

me- telling you the sky is falling and the game needs to fix stuff pronto
tOss- telling you it’s YOUR fault and the community needs to be patient and create this stuff ourselves
ayrehendel(sp) telling you to learn to play and that he smashes every class in every way
Jacobin – making great posts with videos to back it up on why the game is dying
Brutalistic- basically just arguing with every single person for every possible reason. i can only assume he is very angry all the time. (probably by the state of pvp but doesn’t yet know it?)
zone – good poster with a lot of warrior insight
saatarcony – basically making a bunch of random posts and then plugging his stream
Braxxus – seems legit
aydenunited – seems legit

Add a few random posters in the mix and even this side of SPVP is dead.

Ha. Nice list there. I really mean the best. I too feel that Anet can do a lot more, I’m not necessarily saying it’s your fault I’m only saying we could do better as far as keeping things going as PvP grows. Not really sure why I’m writing this though, because I already know what responses I’ll get from this.

Rezz.8019:

Soon all the lower ranks will give up due to constantly being farmed by R40/50+ guilds in free tourneys (paid only pop one hour a day anyway). No newbies in = too long wait timers = everyone will give up = death of tPvP.

This is a bit too alarmist for me, but the danger is real. There is a limited window of opportunity for any PvP game to attract new players. If too much time passes without new players joining, the skill difference between new and experienced becomes too great and the population cannot increase. I’m not sure how close GW2 is getting to that line, but it is real.

The game is definitely divided into two parts, with little to no overlap between the two except perhaps skill names and general cooldowns. The issue thus really is. . . does the parts that will make sPvP and tPvP truly come alive come before the majority of the players that would play PvP frequently actually leave?

I feel that they will eventually get all the parts in place, the question will really be, will it be in time to not lose players to some other PvP game? Players for PvP that are hardcore about it cry the need for PvP to sustain the game, and players for PvE that are hardcore cry the need for more content. The game really won’t be sustained by either group, though you do need them in the game, and probably the PvPers more than the PvEers. The reason for this is simply that when PvE content is done it’s simply done, when PvP content is done it can be done again and again, players will stick around to test themselves against everyone over and over again, not really so for PvE players.

I think PvP might die before it’s saved by the developers. . . but it’s fairly easy to reinvigorate it with some cash tournaments held by the developing company, so we will see.

It will get worse if they keeping pushing out ludicrous changes like shattered strength

nerva.7940:

It will get worse if they keeping pushing out ludicrous changes like shattered strength

This was, in fact, a very strange change to me.

Rezz.8019:

tPvP queues are longer and longer, the format is dying quite fast. Soon all the lower ranks will give up due to constantly being farmed by R40/50+ guilds in free tourneys (paid only pop one hour a day anyway). No newbies in = too long wait timers = everyone will give up = death of tPvP.

Also, a bit unrelated but: why not have separate ranks for tourneys and for hot join?

Not that I WANT TPvP to die mind you:
I know there are many people that will disagree with me, most likely vehemently, but more important than the health of TPvP at this moment (and perhaps in general) is the health of SPvP and even free tourneys. I know I know, “E-SPORT!” and all but the truth is that the game needs to keep that healthy population of John Q. Public playing and interested in the game because they are the foundation that all other success is built upon.

Again, I don’t want TPvP to die. I’m simply saying that if it gets put on lifesupport for a bit with a focus on what the majority of the player-base is actually participating in (and I include WvW here as it is STILL PvP when we remove the elitism blinders and gets people having fun with pvp in the game and potentially further interested in the more competitive side) it will be better for the game overall. An E-Sport will practically build itself if the foundation is good.

Heartseeker, Quickness, and Bunkers are what killed tPVP. Past tense, cause there was nothing slow about it. tPvP went from instant Qs all day every day to nonsense Qs even in prime time. It already done died.

You can’t match tardeasy class options with highly complex class options and then reward the tardeasy options with every single ounce of rewarding play experience. (not just literal rewards for those too boxed-in to understand)

Some people spend hours and hours exploring mastery of their chosen classes only to be farmed relentlessly by Quickness cooldowns and Gap Closing Max Damage Finishers with no Cooldown…