Why is PvP supposedly "poorly designed?"

Why is PvP supposedly "poorly designed?"

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Posted by: Blair.3796

Blair.3796

Hello! Just stopping by to make a quick inquiry.

Recently I’ve read a lot of posts, both in the PvP forums and in other topics (endgame content, etc.) in which various players have noted that to them, the PvP in this game is “poorly designed.” Not having played many other MMORPG games prior to this one, I was curious as to the reasoning behind these claims.

I am a casual PvPer. I had never tried PvP prior to the April feature pack, but once I heard about the changes I decided to give it a shot. And now I love it, it’s one of my favourite parts of the game. Just last month I earned Champion Paragon with my support/boon guardian (not particularly impressive, but a personal goal nonetheless) ankitten ow experimenting with Elementalist and Mesmer builds.

In the time I’ve played, I’ve witnessed several of the things people complain about on the forums, such as:

*AFK players resulting in 4v5 or worse
*disparaging comments among teammates
*insults and arguments between opposing team players
*players who give up and stop playing as soon as they’re losing by a decent amount, 50-100 points
*a loss is always everyone else’s fault

Sure, some of these aspects can be annoying, and when multiple games in succession contain these elements then it can certainly hurt the experience. But these seem to me to be minor flaws that will be inherent in the system no matter how PvP is actually structured.

So, aside from the possibly inherent toxic elements and bad eggs of the PvP community as a whole, why do some people think the actual system is “poorly designed?”

Thanks in advance for any input!

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Posted by: Chaith.8256

Chaith.8256

You’ve already mentioned one of the biggest ones, in my humble opinion. AFK players resulting in 4v5s in Solo Queue, (and team switchers in hotjoin) – uneven teams are a huge source of player frustration.

For Solo Queue, the Skyhammer Map which is all too commonly seen is a huge black mark on the reputation of Solo Queue gameplay. Nearly all abandon the combat system that GW2 is balanced around, and instead use the ‘insta kill people from stealth, gg, no downed state’ combat system.

Rotating properly in Solo Queue is made extremely difficult for the average player to intuitively grasp – this is because in-game communication isn’t supported with voice commands or any advanced signals so as to not rely on ‘calling numbers’ through a VOIP application. It’s a needle in a haystack to find multiple people on a team that show up where they need to be, consistently.

There are a few other relatively important issues with Hotjoin and Solo Queue, but these are my biggest ones.

Forum Lord Chaith
Twitch.tv/chaithh
New Twitter: @chaithhh

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Posted by: Liewec.2896

Liewec.2896

i think the root of the frustration is the lack of dev support/communication.

our suggestions go ignored
(the petition to remove skyhammer is now at 1,100 posts without a single dev response, appalling.)
(we all know removing team select and adding restrictions to spectator would massively improve the balance of hotjoin, and again anet refuse to change it.)

the balance speed of a narcoleptic snail
one balance patch in half a year if you’re lucky, and even that won’t touch everything,
hambow for example has been a ridiculously easy and powerful build for over 10 months, there is always a hambow in the major league matches.

left in the dark
up until the recent “skill bar” we have been left hanging for a quarter of the year (since april) with no prospect of balance, rewards, new modes or anything, transparency is seriously lacking.

lack of rewards
with the addition of the new “reward” tracks we lost our gold income from dyes, we lost the easy ability to gain skins and tomes/skill points, and even worse we have REWARD CAPS in hotjoin and custom arenas, this is unacceptable.
reward” tracks pretty much reduced the rewards right across the board unless you get extremely lucky with the RNG.

rank too, rank 80 used to be a goal that most of us would never see, but now its a goal that most of us will achieve and then have nothing else to aim for.
i play maybe 2 nights a week and only hotjoin (for multiple reasons, hatred of meta, skyhammer, queues etc) and i’m already at rank 71 playing casually.

lack of modes
i feel it might be too late to implement this,
early on there should have been more modes added,
but i feel adding more modes now would just split up an already small community.

well thats my 10 cents anyways,
dont get me wrong i still enjoy my weekly hotjoin nights, but if anet would simply listen to us for once then the game would be soooo much better,
after all, who better to know what is needed than the people who play the game?

tl:dr
lack of rewards,
lack of balance,
lack of dev support,
lack of communication,
lack of game modes.

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Posted by: METAShift.2913

METAShift.2913

i think the root of the frustration is the lack of dev support/communication.

the balance speed of a narcoleptic snail
one balance patch in half a year if you’re lucky, and even that won’t touch everything,
hambow for example has been a ridiculously easy and powerful build for over 10 months, there is always a hambow in the major league matches.

lack of rewards
with the addition of the new “reward” tracks we lost our gold income from dyes, we lost the easy ability to gain skins and tomes/skill points, and even worse we have REWARD CAPS in hotjoin and custom arenas, this is unacceptable.
reward” tracks pretty much reduced the rewards right across the board unless you get extremely lucky with the RNG.

rank too, rank 80 used to be a goal that most of us would never see, but now its a goal that most of us will achieve and then have nothing else to aim for.
i play maybe 2 nights a week and only hotjoin (for multiple reasons, hatred of meta, skyhammer, queues etc) and i’m already at rank 71 playing casually.

Have to disagree here, on your first point, just because hambow is “good” doesn’t mean anything should be done. The game will always have some good builds. Hambow, however, isn’t completely dominating every pvp game – a team of 5 hambows won’t be a good idea against a team of balanced specs. Sure it’s boring and it’s easy to play, but those are also reasons that contribute to how popular it is, and not the other way around. There are other warrior builds atm(celestial axeswordbow is one I heard of) which are also very good, just not as easy to play as hambow.

As for the rewards, I think they’re decent. You get your rank points, your achievement points, your chests, exotic weapons and armor that you can pick, exp tomes and transmutations. It’s a lot better than, say, WvW, especially for small groups, as you’re actively spending money on food and gear if you want to be better.
Sure, it’s not flashy, like getting a precursor drop at the end of a reward path, it’s more like a lot of small rewards more often. I can play 5 soloq games, that takes, say, hour to an hour and a half depending on queues and whatever, and get a CoE(or whatever) weapon, or I can run 3 CoE paths to get 180 tokens, which I can only buy offhands with, in around the same time in a PUG. Plus you get tokens from the reward track as well.

When I first started playing I really wanted to do dungeons. I did them, over and over, until I could get my dungeon master title and I was really happy with it. Now I only do them for easy money, fun with guildies or just when I’m really bored. Same thing, if you feel like maxing the reward tracks and getting your dragon finisher is the end of PvP, you either keep playing it for fun(and compared to dungeons, it’s a lot less static and repetitive), or move on. There is really no way for the game to offer infinitely increasing rewards for that.

(edited by METAShift.2913)

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Posted by: Liewec.2896

Liewec.2896

As for the rewards, I think they’re decent. You get your rank points, your achievement points, your chests, exotic weapons and armor that you can pick, exp tomes and transmutations.
I can play 5 soloq games, that takes, say, hour to an hour and a half depending on queues and whatever, and get a CoE(or whatever) weapon, or I can run 3 CoE paths to get 180 tokens, which I can only buy offhands with, in around the same time in a PUG. Plus you get tokens from the reward track as well.

rank points, these only have value until you hit 80,
achievement points, far easier to get in pve for kills, recycling and more like veteran kills and gathering.
chests, the chests usually contain useless junk, a blue or green and a junk item, you could get these “rewards” from killing a mob in 5 seconds in pve.
choice of exotic weapon/armour, the stat combos are usually horrible, it’d be better to run afew dungeons to get the gold you need to buy exotics with useful stat combos off the trading post.

but this is all my preference, any char i want to use in pve is already 80 with an exotic set, and i unlocked all of the skins i wanted back when we could easily get skins in pvp. i’m not far from hitting rank 80 so the only real reward to aim for would be ascended/legendary gear (the goal of everyone in pve), but trying to get ascended/legendary gear in pvp is borderline insanity.

now if they added more pvp unique skins, or reward tracks that have some purpose (a long ascended track for example) we’d have something to aim for,
right now its just chests filled with junk and a single exotic with bad stats at the end.

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Posted by: mbh.8301

mbh.8301

Combat is difficult to read. There are:

  • Big flashes
  • Small character models
  • Summons
  • So many summons
  • Stealth
  • Like I was just casting churning earth and the other team couldn’t even see it cause of all the engi nonsense that was happening on the point

I don’t think there’s point to fixing any other problems the game has apart from being allowed to veto skyhammer.

Oh, and classes don’t have any defined roles which means that you can’t balance anything based on the effect it has in game since all classes do everything. For example: “we’re having a problem with condi classes” “like….? all of them?”

[quote=1567239;Lexie.5894:] My PVP experience is very consistent. I run around,
I fight people, sometimes they kill me, sometimes I kill them. Fun is had by all. [/quote]

(edited by mbh.8301)

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Posted by: Chicago Jack.5647

Chicago Jack.5647

My two biggest complaints (and why I really don’t play this game too much anymore) is the snail-like pace development of the pvp infrastructure. It took them about a year and a half to get decent descriptions on traits, and I’m not going to hold my breath on having them be able to develop any reasonable way to structure their pvp system when other games already have a great system right from the get-go. And, ironically, I’m tired of all the whine from players in every other game about how whatever class I choose to play is overpowered.

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Posted by: Bhawb.7408

Bhawb.7408

*AFK players resulting in 4v5 or worse
*disparaging comments among teammates
*insults and arguments between opposing team players
*players who give up and stop playing as soon as they’re losing by a decent amount, 50-100 points
*a loss is always everyone else’s fault

Sure, some of these aspects can be annoying, and when multiple games in succession contain these elements then it can certainly hurt the experience. But these seem to me to be minor flaws that will be inherent in the system no matter how PvP is actually structured.

So, aside from the possibly inherent toxic elements and bad eggs of the PvP community as a whole, why do some people think the actual system is “poorly designed?”

Thanks in advance for any input!

Basically, those are expected in any game. But well designed games actually fight them, GW2 seemingly does not.

Let’s go over to League of Legends, which I believe is the most popular game to ever exist depending on how you look at the numbers, and how they deal with these issues:
*4v5: the game will not start without a 5v5. This is done when a match is found, by making all players re-accept their involvement in the upcoming game, then by having another check during champion select. Players who simply do not accept a game have no punishment, but players who “dodge” games they have accepted get increasingly worse punishments to prevent consistent queue dodging.

*toxic chat: simple, the game records every single word that is said between teammates, and then at the end of the game you report them. If a player receives enough reports they get some kind of a ban, a system that they have shown to actually be incredibly effective, with something like 75% of players never getting a repeat ban, and those who do receive more significant punishment until it is obvious they will not reform, and are permanently banned

*giving up: again, a report system that will track negative behaviors like this and eventually punish you for it

*difficulty in communication: League has instituted a smart-ping system, a step above their normal ping system, which allows you to communicate extremely well what needs to happen. In fact it isn’t unreasonable to go entire games in League at a high level without saying another word to your allies because it is unnecessary, everything can be communicated quickly.

*leaderboards: lets face it, GW2’s leaderboards are awful. League has a great ranked system, you get placed based on your first 10 games and your past rating, up to a maximum of Platinum 1, at which point you then have to climb the rankings. There are checks in place to make sure you don’t jump very far per game played, but also systems so that if you are obviously better than your ranking you can jump a little. And the highest, most prestigious ranks on the leaderboard are simply unattainable without at least 100+ games played.

GW2 on the other hand doesn’t seem to respond to reports very well, as high level players who are known to be toxic simply go on being toxic. The queue system in GW2 is also sub par, with no real punishment for leaving/afking, and also no way to avoid a match before it starts when it is obvious you cannot complete it or the team environment isn’t good. And finally GW2 not only has an awful ping system, it also refuses to allow you to use simple chat macros to make the communication that is necessary to play the game possible. This is why you end up having people like “Guardian Cruuk” as Blu’s stream was affectionately called them, who literally just do one thing all game every game (in this case rush far every single time they were alive) because doing anything that requires coordination is impossible.

TL;DR all games have the same innate problems or similar ones to GW2. Great games however actively make changes to alleviate these issues, whereas GW2 doesn’t appear to have done this.

But of Corpse – Watch us on YouTube
My PvP Minion Build

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Posted by: Sarrs.4831

Sarrs.4831

I think there are two big problems with PvP as it stands.

1. Narrow scope, particularly with game modes. Compare it to a traditional FPS, for example, because I am very lazy and I couldn’t be bothered going deeper into the comparison. Let’s go with… Say, Halo 2, because everyone on the planet agrees that that is the best game ever.

Halo 2: Bomb, CTF, Domination, King of the Hill, TDM, Oddball
GW2: Domination

That seems to be a problem. And yeah, developer resources are split across several game modes, and they have to also take care of class roles/balance as well, but I think it’s a big part of it.

2. Hotjoin is completely degenerate. How do you win at solo queue? Know when to force an autobalance and join the winning team, or volunteer when autobalance happens, and you will win every game.

Nalhadia – Kaineng

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Posted by: Eiland.1405

Eiland.1405

tl;dr for the whole post no money goes to PVP

GW2 decided long ago it’s a PVE game (with few options to casually pvp)
Guessing it’s because there are much more PVE’ers and they love shopping for colorful skins

Dry Leaves

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Posted by: Otaking.4675

Otaking.4675

I’ve PVP’d in most every major MMO and the PVP here is the best, mainly due to the physics and counter mechanics. Here even with a good build you still need skills to pilot it, even in case of very passive builds such as PU mesmer, Turret engi etc. and they also tend to have a lower skill ceiling (while a low skill floor as well) even though I will rage against them in mapchat for lulz.

In EVERY mmo there is imbalance but here just for a random example hambow warriors have an easy counter of a competent thief spamming blind. You will never escape imbalance but this game has the rock paper scissors concept down the best IMO.

The major flaw is the brain dead stupid queue system that sucks afk players in and gives them dishonorable ban for being alt tabbed, screwing up rank matches with 4v5s and generating player ire.

However other than that it’s great! You have multiple S modes, multiple WVW etc which is rare and hard to implement in MMOs properly in the first place.

I don’t mind Skyhammer either because it’s just another environment placing the favor on CC instead of the typical bunkers and decaps. They would probably be best to add another more traditional fighting map and lessen Skyhammer in the rotation that way than get rid of Skyhammer. Or at least make the hammer room larger and less prone to gimmick kills is all.

I would hope they add some maps where the focus is a bit less on point domination and tone down eles a bit since they can do the job of every class in one would be my only balance related suggestions.

Team fortress has a good example with the cart push mechanic of a non domination PVP mode.

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Posted by: Benjamin.7893

Benjamin.7893

Because you’ve only been playing pvp casually. Many bought this game for the esports they promised before release.

Do you see esports somewhere? I certainly don’t.

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Posted by: Otaking.4675

Otaking.4675

Because you’ve only been playing pvp casually. Many bought this game for the esports they promised before release.

Do you see esports somewhere? I certainly don’t.

That’s true, I could care less about esports.

You’re better off with the MoBAs if that’s what you’re looking for since they’re 100% focused on that and GW2 has this giant PVE game and scope attached to it.

For large scope MMO PVP this game is still the best though. Dev teams can only be stretched so thin.

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Posted by: Yasha.5963

Yasha.5963

OP I think there have been some great answers to your question. Personally, I love the way combat works in this game, and like Otaking think it is probably the best pvp among the numerous mmos that I have played (although I haven’t played GW1). For the first few months I thought it was the bomb too.

However, it’s the wasted potential and lack of development that is really frustrating.

As Lukin noted above, the core elements of the game are awesome- quite a skill-based combat system melded with a level playing field.
But:
1) there is still only one game mode-huge fail/waste of potential.
2) Asura- fail
3) Skyhammer- fail
4) Current hotjoin meta game of swap teams to win- fail
5) 4vs5 issue in tourney
6) Questionable leaderboard system (which took forever to implement)

There are some other issues like hambow warrior and some other builds left OP for too long (sorry but competent hambow will easily beat a blind spam thief- blind spam only counters very inexperienced warriors that haven’t learnt about f1 on the bow), extremely powerful and easy to land aoe, and lack of competitive infrastructure seen in other skill-based pvp games.

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Posted by: DanyK.3842

DanyK.3842

I quit the game 3 months ago, but since there’s been no changes since, I can tell you the reason why PvP in this game is not on par with top PvP games.

  1. PvP (conquest) is not based on actual PvP combat – this could have been fixed ages ago by doing something as simple as replacing the current capture points with altars that a single person can channel to get hold of. This way players either have to kill all other players in order to capture a point or chain-cc all enemy players while 1 person channels. Either method requires more skill.
  2. Lack of dev communication – when I left it was a week when no red threads appeared in the PvP forums at all. Compare it with any other top PvP game (Dota2, LoL, Hearthstone, etc…).
  3. Lack of updates – with a once-a-year PvP update I am seriously surprised how some people still play this game mode.
  4. Terrible interface – things like leaderboard rankings, 4v5s, afks and so on can be solved by having a better PvP interface…
  5. Lack of game modes – I put this last as I would still be playing conquest after 2 years if it was up to my standards.

Source: ~3000 hours in PvP, former top50 team and top25 solo.

Sir Dany | Twitch
110k WvW kills | Champion Legionnaire, Paragon |

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Posted by: Distaste.4801

Distaste.4801

1. SPvP was disjointed and you couldn’t really progress your overall character in it. A lot of people play MMO’s to progress their characters and having them play what is essentially a clone without all their gear makes them not want to play it. It was done of course for ESports, which failed.

2. Mechanics, class balance, and depth. ArenaNet went for a streamlined simplistic system for esports and balanced around fast action. The problem of course is that fast action doesn’t leave tons of room for strategic or skilled play. Their continued class balance is absolutely laughable and when PvP players see that a dev can’t handle the most obvious of class balance changes quickly, they leave. The game just lacks a lot of depth that provides for counter-play. The slower caster times and casting knockback in say WoW allowed for some good counter play. The tons of different skills and mechanics in LoL provide lots of depth and the casting times/animations for lots of skills provide enough time for decent counter play.

3. Game modes. Capture the flag, death match, murderball, Anything really. It’s completely un-acceptable that we don’t have these things. Again they did this for esports balance.

A huge reason that SPvP is a failure is because they tried to force it to be an esport without thinking about making PvP good first. Pretty much any Esport doesn’t focus to be an esport before the game launches. League of Legends wasn’t in a big tournament until a year after launch and RIOT didn’t have their own event until closer to two years. A game has to have good gameplay and then it becomes an esport, you can’t try to be an esport and then put in good gameplay.

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Posted by: MithranArkanere.8957

MithranArkanere.8957

Uneven matches happen too often.

They should not happen at all.

If you get into a 4v4 match, and hit the join, you should be pout in queue, and “sit out” until someone else attempts to join the other side.
Then both join at the same time.

If someone in one side leaves or goes AFK, someone in the other side has to sit out until someone else joins again and the game will ask for a volunteer and give some extra points at the end of the match to whoever volunteers.


New modes not based on spamming AoEs and conditions, pushes and pulls all the time would help too.
——

There’s a lack of autobalance measures.

Without autobalance measures, you have to balance the skills very often, as switching values just jumbles things. Some combination of skills allows people to have lots of CC? Reduce the overall CCs in that combination, you hit hard combinations that uses less of those CCs.

No, put a layer or autobalance that makes the target resistant to CC if you spam too many CCs on them, and get a stun break and immunity to CCs for 1 or 2 seconds if you spam waaay too many, and the excessive build with too many CC is hit without hitting all the builds that used individual parts of it.

SUGGEST-A-TRON says:
PAY—ONCE—UNLOCKS—ARE—ALWAYS—BETTER.
No exceptions!

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Posted by: hackks.3687

hackks.3687

PvP has been plagued by a lack of vision from the very beginning. Even at launch it was clear that ANet weren’t sure what to do with PvP as they only had Hotjoins and Free Tournaments – which for those of you who weren’t around at that time were an 8 team tournament with 3 rounds. After a month or so they added their “end game” PvP by introducing the Paid Tournament which quickly fell on it’s face for a variety reasons. Since then it’s been a constant re-hashing of the content, culminating in the removal of virtually every aspect of PvP since launch and ultimately pushing towards this new “PvE friendly” version that has all but pushed out the competitive players.

What we have now is:

- inappropriate rewards – players are given “rewards” simply for showing up to the match. not for improving, or playing thoughtfully/skillfully.

- misleading score boards and vague map information – there’s literally no way to discern any kind of relevant strategy assign value to secondary objectives for each map based on the “rules” and info they provide at the start of the match. the scoreboard at the end of the match is even more misleading as it shows little to no relevant information to a players contribution to the team making it night impossible to understand where and how you should improve as a player.

- poor queuing structure – rank 80 veterans with thousands of matches played are playing with new players in their very first match resulting in both players experience being less than ideal or enjoyable.

- poor queuing structure – ANet’s captiulation to the vocal minority/s demand for a solo q was one of the biggest mistakes they’ve made in regards to PvP as it simply created a toxic breeding ground for bad play and bad attitudes that subvert the “team” oriented play that GW2 is built around. at the very least solo q should not be ranked and should not have corresponding leaderboards. ranked matches should belong to team play only.

- stagnant meta’s and slow balancing – ANet’s stance all along has been to allow the players to evolve the meta on their own seeking out counters and counter-counters through build/composition diversity, but they have never provided the tools to allow players to facilitate that. build templates have been requested since launch, and since launch we’ve been told “it’s in the pipeline”.

- lack of a PvP progression – the ranks are essentially worthless now, which is probably why the devs intended to delete them before the forum outcry convinced them not to. There’s nothing about PvP that says “I’m moving forward, I’m getting better, this is my goal and I can see how to get there”.

It’s a shame really because the combat is amazing and fun. Unfortunately it’s not enough to make a quality game.

Hackkz/Riggamaroll
I’ve stayed at this party entirely too long

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Posted by: scerevisiae.1972

scerevisiae.1972

For me it’s poorly-designed because the game mode just isn’t very fun.

The things that kill fun for me:

  • downed state/rally mechanics. Not appropriate for a PVP game.
  • standing in circles being more important than winning fights

2. Mechanics, class balance, and depth. ArenaNet went for a streamlined simplistic system for esports and balanced around fast action. The problem of course is that fast action doesn’t leave tons of room for strategic or skilled play. Their continued class balance is absolutely laughable and when PvP players see that a dev can’t handle the most obvious of class balance changes quickly, they leave. The game just lacks a lot of depth that provides for counter-play. The slower caster times and casting knockback in say WoW allowed for some good counter play. The tons of different skills and mechanics in LoL provide lots of depth and the casting times/animations for lots of skills provide enough time for decent counter play.

and this ^ — a general lack of any kind of cerebral depth to the combat, spamming abilities outperforms build-crafting and careful use of abilities, no real counterplay, very few real build alternatives.

What disappoints me most about this game is that GW1 had build and tactical options in spades and the combat & build system had a real cerebral depth and quality to it that this game just doesn’t.

downed state is bad for PVP

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Posted by: Swagg.9236

Swagg.9236

MMOs are poorly designed for skill-based game-play because of latency. The world isn’t physically going to get any smaller so MMO combat will always be bad for a very long time if not forever.

MMORPGs are the attempt of people to make TRPGs into an active event without breaks or turns. The only problem is that the MMOs which commercially succeeded in the gaming industry kept the (broken) mechanics which worked out in a turn-based encounter, more or less just slapped them over an non-turn-based system and then expected everything to play out fine.

So now in today’s world of MMOs, not only does the player forgo a lot of aiming, timing and general positioning with respect to other enemies or allies, but then we also have hard-counters everywhere that trivialize player choice and forge stagnant, narrow metagame character set-ups that dominate everything.

Playing a contemporary MMO is in effect trying to play Magic: The Gathering and not adhering to a turn-based system. Little kids throw cards everywhere and one of them ends up winning because he stocked his deck with cards that counter some other kid’s deck because chance favored him before the competition even began. MMO PvP (especially GW2 PvP) is a single game of rock-paper-scissors stretched out over a period of 10-20 minutes.

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Posted by: Swagg.9236

Swagg.9236

Also forgot to mention that the highest level of pvp that seeks to replicate a “competitive” environment in GW2 is equivalent to joining a pub server in a Source engine FPS.

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Posted by: displacedTitan.6897

displacedTitan.6897

MMOs are poorly designed for skill-based game-play because of latency. The world isn’t physically going to get any smaller so MMO combat will always be bad for a very long time if not forever.

MMORPGs are the attempt of people to make TRPGs into an active event without breaks or turns. The only problem is that the MMOs which commercially succeeded in the gaming industry kept the (broken) mechanics which worked out in a turn-based encounter, more or less just slapped them over an non-turn-based system and then expected everything to play out fine.

So now in today’s world of MMOs, not only does the player forgo a lot of aiming, timing and general positioning with respect to other enemies or allies, but then we also have hard-counters everywhere that trivialize player choice and forge stagnant, narrow metagame character set-ups that dominate everything.

Playing a contemporary MMO is in effect trying to play Magic: The Gathering and not adhering to a turn-based system. Little kids throw cards everywhere and one of them ends up winning because he stocked his deck with cards that counter some other kid’s deck because chance favored him before the competition even began. MMO PvP (especially GW2 PvP) is a single game of rock-paper-scissors stretched out over a period of 10-20 minutes.

I am unsure how you can say that GW2 is rock-paper-scissors. To me and many others the problems in PvP in this game stem from a lack of back-end services and organization more so than a lack of good gameplay. I agree that other MMO’s are very much designed that way due to a lack of active gameplay elements, GW2 has many opportunities to outplay an opponent outside of just pressing skills at the right time. Positioning is a thing in this game, unlike in say, WoW where the only thing that matters is how well you can run around a pillar to LOS someone.

Wanting an MMO PvP environment to be an esport in the same way as a MOBA is never going to happen. There are too many skills on each class and its far far too hard to properly balance due to all the variables BUT ANet can do a much better job than they currently do.

(edited by displacedTitan.6897)

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Posted by: Khang.6743

Khang.6743

I think it simply comes down to lack of support.

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Posted by: ryston.7640

ryston.7640

Oh.

Well, there was once this game called Guild Wars 1. It head tremendous depth of strategy. Selecting the abilities your player brought to game was sort of like constructing a magic the gathering deck. We looked forward to a future in which we could have that game, but with a z-axis.

So it’s sequel, guild wars 2, replaced strategy with button combos, simplified the teamwork and positioning elements, and completely gutted the abstract and potentially creative skill system with something simplistic, containing only a couple of viable options.

So compared to MMO PvP overal, it was alright. Had a few things going for it.

Compared to Guild Wars 1, it was a terrible discgraceful shame.

A lot of us sort of lump it in with the other big dissapointments of the time period: Starwars episodes 1,2,3. EverQuest 2, Diablo 3, I even think Tribes Vengeance was in on that one.

Mayge GW2 PvP isn’t so bad, but it sure is a dissapointment after GW1. So much so that it often fealt like the devs weren’t even honestly trying.

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Posted by: ryston.7640

ryston.7640

The PvP is unfun to a lot of the GW1 fans because of the type of skill involved (and yes there’s a lot of skill in gw2.)

In GW1, carefully selecting the abilities each player would bring played a significant role in determining the victor. Next to that came team coordination and good sound judgement calls.

In GW2, there’s a stronger emphasis on button combos, muscle memory and twitch reflexes. These can all be a lot of fun and some great games center almost entirely around such elements.

I think the reason I personally don’t find GW2 to be very much fun is that it isn’t really delivering either of these ‘flavors’ of fun. It doesn’t have the sort of abstractions in the skills and traits that made gw1 skill selection similar in spirit to building a magic deck. It does have a bit of the team coordination, but the difference between 5v5 and 8v8 feels almost exponential in this regard. Careful decision making… doesn’t really go hand in hand with all these gap closers and teleports.

So if it is to be a twitch gaming experience, where the kitten is my crosshair? I mean I can almost get into the whole rolling thing but seriously, if you want a fun twitch reflex game this is not it. It’s a tiny portion of the way there.

It takes skill, it can be fun for some I guess, but it wasn’t what we were promised, and while it meshes two genres of gameplay not often combined it does so really rather poorly.

(edited by Moderator)

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Posted by: Lukin.4061

Lukin.4061

Dam, just got my post infracted for pointing out what is lacking in gw2 pvp infrastructure : I

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Posted by: ArrDee.2573

ArrDee.2573

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Skyhammer exists even though an overwhelming majority of people absolutely hate that map! Hate it hate it hate it hate it! Vee Wee personally does not play solo q anymore because of this map! Vee Wee knows many other people who do not play solo q or even quit because of this map!

There is only one game mode! Arenanet only balances with this one game mode in mind! Therefore the game will be even worse if they introduce something like ctf or arenas!

Patches come waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too infrequently! There should be at least some biweekly shavings! Maybe at least once every month! C’mon now! But nope! Once every half freaking year! A tiny change to a class or ability can have profound effects in game! But not changing anything means nothing is changed! Logic!

Not only do patches come too infrequently, they never tell us what’s in store for us in these biyearly updates! Evan’s always coming in and saying, “Hello frands! Evan Lesh here! We have some really cool updates in store for you guys! For some reason we can’t tell you what they are though!” Then one year later nothing happens! Then amazingly people post thanking him! Oh Evan Lesh thanks for posting so we see your red name! Even though you gave us nothing of substance or value thank you thank you! Tho thilly!

There is no way to communicate with your team! When Vee Wee plays Counter Strikes, Vee Wee presses the radio hotkey and then scrolls through a number of chat commands! How hard can that be to implement in the game! Are you going to type in the middle of a teamfight to tell your team a thief is about to backcap home! No! That’s just abthurd!

There’s no pause feature! Last week I think Vee Wee was watching some tournament on Blu’s stream and someone on the blue team disconnected! The casters were like, “Hey red team! Have someone idle in spawn!” That’s just thuper hilarious! Have you ever seen anything as ghetto as this!

There’s more that Vee Wee doesn’t like but Vee Wee is done typing about this! It’s just making Vee Wee mad!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

#1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!
#1 Frandliest person NA!
http://www.twitch.tv/Livskis <-It’s back!

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Posted by: Mindtrick.5190

Mindtrick.5190

This is a great thread maybe something good can come out of it.

PJSalt

Got Ninja?
https://www.twitch.tv/mindtrick714
<3 and Hugs no Hate I Just Point Out Fail.

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Posted by: Blair.3796

Blair.3796

Thanks to everyone who posted! I feel like I have a much better understanding of some of the problems with the current PvP system. There are some great observations and suggestions that have been posted.

I especially like the suggestion of alternate game modes. It seems Anet did attempt to add some variation via a few of the different map traits. For example, Spirit Watch has the orb, and Legacy of the Foefire has “bases” that can be conquered. However, due to the low number of points many of these features award, it’s typically more efficient to simply capture and hold points as usual. It’s almost more common for players to ignore unique map features than make use of them (except for Skyhammer, but Skyhammer tends to annoy everyone).

I think Temple of the Silent Storm is my favorite map because it does have unique features that are worth utilizing. Any of the team buffs can easily tip the balance, which makes fights to control them important.

I would love to see some suggestions about possible effective ways to implement different game modes and match categories, if anyone has any ideas!

Also, for those who believe there are balancing issues that should be fixed: what exactly do you find unbalanced, and what would you propose as a solution for the issue?

Awesome discussion all, let’s keep it going!

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Posted by: alemfi.5107

alemfi.5107

IMO what GW2 needs are:

- New modes ( can be simple objectives, CTF, kill the lord, etc. )
- An unrated queue for these modes, so that they can still prioritize balance for conquest e-sports.
- A queue filter to queue into specific modes or maps. If you are more selective the queue will take longer. When matching players, it will be able to randomly select from the pool of acceptable modes/map, however it should never place a player into a mode or map they chose to filter out.

This queue filter would be really important/useful, as with this anet can get actual diagnostics for how many people are actually okay with skyhammer/ vehemently opposed to it, what modes are popular etc.

They could also convert soloq into this unrated queue, as it doesn’t really serve a useful purpose as there are SO many factors that come into play in soloq, that as an indicator of personal skill, the leaderboards are pretty much worthless.

When ground-targetted bone minion explosions become a thing, I will change this signature.- 2013
http://twitch.tv/alemfi/

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Posted by: ellesee.8297

ellesee.8297

You’ve already mentioned one of the biggest ones, in my humble opinion. AFK players resulting in 4v5s in Solo Queue, (and team switchers in hotjoin) – uneven teams are a huge source of player frustration.

For Solo Queue, the Skyhammer Map which is all too commonly seen is a huge black mark on the reputation of Solo Queue gameplay. Nearly all abandon the combat system that GW2 is balanced around, and instead use the ‘insta kill people from stealth, gg, no downed state’ combat system.

Rotating properly in Solo Queue is made extremely difficult for the average player to intuitively grasp – this is because in-game communication isn’t supported with voice commands or any advanced signals so as to not rely on ‘calling numbers’ through a VOIP application. It’s a needle in a haystack to find multiple people on a team that show up where they need to be, consistently.

There are a few other relatively important issues with Hotjoin and Solo Queue, but these are my biggest ones.

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

Skyhammer exists even though an overwhelming majority of people absolutely hate that map! Hate it hate it hate it hate it! Vee Wee personally does not play solo q anymore because of this map! Vee Wee knows many other people who do not play solo q or even quit because of this map!

There is only one game mode! Arenanet only balances with this one game mode in mind! Therefore the game will be even worse if they introduce something like ctf or arenas!

Patches come waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too infrequently! There should be at least some biweekly shavings! Maybe at least once every month! C’mon now! But nope! Once every half freaking year! A tiny change to a class or ability can have profound effects in game! But not changing anything means nothing is changed! Logic!

Not only do patches come too infrequently, they never tell us what’s in store for us in these biyearly updates! Evan’s always coming in and saying, “Hello frands! Evan Lesh here! We have some really cool updates in store for you guys! For some reason we can’t tell you what they are though!” Then one year later nothing happens! Then amazingly people post thanking him! Oh Evan Lesh thanks for posting so we see your red name! Even though you gave us nothing of substance or value thank you thank you! Tho thilly!

There is no way to communicate with your team! When Vee Wee plays Counter Strikes, Vee Wee presses the radio hotkey and then scrolls through a number of chat commands! How hard can that be to implement in the game! Are you going to type in the middle of a teamfight to tell your team a thief is about to backcap home! No! That’s just abthurd!

There’s no pause feature! Last week I think Vee Wee was watching some tournament on Blu’s stream and someone on the blue team disconnected! The casters were like, “Hey red team! Have someone idle in spawn!” That’s just thuper hilarious! Have you ever seen anything as ghetto as this!

There’s more that Vee Wee doesn’t like but Vee Wee is done typing about this! It’s just making Vee Wee mad!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

all this
#1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!
#1 Frandliest person NA!
http://www.twitch.tv/Livskis

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Posted by: Chicago Jack.5647

Chicago Jack.5647

all this

You’re not fooling anyone vee wee…

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Posted by: ryston.7640

ryston.7640

Still not having a pause feature 2 years after launch, when the game was marketed as a AAA Esport… (remember we waited like a year for match making and spectating)

Basically GW2 PvP isn’t fun because the devs didn’t commit the resources to it that they promised. They just lied and got us to preorder their game so they could have our monies.

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Posted by: Archaon.9524

Archaon.9524

Gw2 pvp it’s not poorly designed…it’s just poorly developed and fixed…probably way more than just “poorly” …. saying that “They don’t give a kitten to pvp” would probably be more correct..

Ark 2nd Account

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Posted by: scerevisiae.1972

scerevisiae.1972

Oh.

Well, there was once this game called Guild Wars 1. It head tremendous depth of strategy. Selecting the abilities your player brought to game was sort of like constructing a magic the gathering deck. We looked forward to a future in which we could have that game, but with a z-axis.

So it’s sequel, guild wars 2, replaced strategy with button combos, simplified the teamwork and positioning elements, and completely gutted the abstract and potentially creative skill system with something simplistic, containing only a couple of viable options.

So compared to MMO PvP overal, it was alright. Had a few things going for it.

Compared to Guild Wars 1, it was a terrible discgraceful shame.

A lot of us sort of lump it in with the other big dissapointments of the time period: Starwars episodes 1,2,3. EverQuest 2, Diablo 3, I even think Tribes Vengeance was in on that one.

Maybe GW2 PvP isn’t so bad, but it sure is a dissapointment after GW1. So much so that it often fealt like the devs weren’t even honestly trying.

Quoting for truth; exactly how i feel.

downed state is bad for PVP

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Posted by: agam.8075

agam.8075

In the time I’ve played, I’ve witnessed several of the things people complain about on the forums, such as:

*AFK players resulting in 4v5 or worse
*disparaging comments among teammates
*insults and arguments between opposing team players
*players who give up and stop playing as soon as they’re losing by a decent amount, 50-100 points
*a loss is always everyone else’s fault

Only first point can be somewhat fixed by anet. Currently, when queuing for s/tpvp match, upon prompt, you have over a minute before match start — a time during which if person is still afk, it autosends him into match anyway, which then, ends up into bad start for a team that has that player. But even that won’t stop people from leaving match out of frustration (or any other emotional reason), which brings me to my next point.

All other problems are caused by human nature. Neither Anet, nor Riot (that was brought up in earlier example from Bhawb.7408) can fix that. In fact, it will never get fixed, no matter how hard we try. In my opinion, it should never get fixed because that is a byproduct of competition; that is the player versus player game mode. You raise stakes in the game by putting your emotions on the line. Of course losing will cause frustration, quitting, name calling, etc.; while victories bring joy and happy feelings. After all, not everyone is a victor, but if everyone is, what is the point of winning?

As per what pvp needs to be “better designed”? Few things:
- More and better maps for conquest, with rubbish ones being removed.
Conquest isn’t a bad game mode, it’s just too easy to abuse it.

- More modes. I think Capture the Flag would work well with gw2 combat system. Maybe devs can conjure up something brand new.

- Better, faster and, perhaps, riskier balance updates. That includes broadening the tools of play at players disposal, as well as rethinking the one they already have.

Every game has a meta. The healthier the game, the more evolving and fluid the meta, with counterplays developing as more matches occur — an arms race of sorts. In such situation, a developer is its moderator, giving minimal input when needed. This situation is not in gw2’s case, which is still fixable

As per rewards for finishing matches, I don’t think they are that important. They are just icing on a cake and should never, in any way or form, be the main reason for playing a game mode.

Manliest guardian on™
TC Mag FA YB

(edited by agam.8075)

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Posted by: Pinkcomet.2975

Pinkcomet.2975

so funny when Anet promote everyone to dragon.
I was Tiger move to Bear in one night.

It was funny more than happy.
This is like Anet didnt care about hardcore pvp player at all.
They throw highest reward to hardcore player face and say
‘?Here.. your Dragon now if you dont have any goal… just play other game ok?’

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Posted by: DanzelOPP.5068

DanzelOPP.5068

I wouldn’t say pvp I poorly designed, there are a lot of things about pvp that I like and I think are good all around. That being said there is a lot of work to be done.
First, skyhammer needs to be removed from arena rotation and placed into hotjoin where it belongs. The bugs, poor camera views, and the troll builds it creates are unacceptable for a ranked match.
Secondly, the lack of any kind of goals. Once they bumped everyone up in rank they pretty much took away any goal that you could have for pvp. Rank was a bigger deal because it showed at one point how much dedication you had to the game and your time and effort. ( yes, rank farmers ruined this too). Reward tracks are pretty much anything but rewarding. The amount of money you make from pvp is laughable considering it can be done in pve in about 5 mins.
Third, kind of goes along with goals a bit. But there is no way for you to stand out at all. If someone wins a tourney, I am sure getting a legendary for free is great, but lots of people have legendaries…there needs to be more titles, unique weapon and armor skins, and or finishers for the elite while still adding things for the more casual players to build towards.
Lastly, the lack of communication and updates for pvp in general. If you didn’t know any better you would think these guys are running for political office in the way they can speak for 10 minutes without saying a single thing. The amount of I don’t knows and we can’t say anything about that is very frustrating. If you can’t say anything or have no information why even bring it up or why even take the interview???
With the recent crapstorm that came from gamescon I can understand a lot of the anger. Anet had 2 debs talking about things they don’t work on or have any idea about. Even the interview with Evan was very disappointing. Honestly, if history tells us anything, none of this will change…sadly

B O I N K

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Posted by: Michaeas Magister.1589

Michaeas Magister.1589

all this

You’re not fooling anyone vee wee…

LOL!

Create an account to post with, then another one to promote just how awesome the original was. PR politics at its best!

Thanks.

It’s as I have always said,
“You can get more results with a kind word and a big stick,
than you can with merely a kind word.”

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Posted by: ZenoSpyridon.1396

ZenoSpyridon.1396

Hello! Just stopping by to make a quick inquiry.

So, aside from the possibly inherent toxic elements and bad eggs of the PvP community as a whole, why do some people think the actual system is “poorly designed?”

Thanks in advance for any input!

Primarily because…

A) A big portion of the player base was Guild Wars players from the first game, and GW2’s PvP is a huge downgrade in features compared to the first game. From modes, to goals, to progression, to build options, to competitiveness. And this is comparing GW2 as it stands now, to GW1 at RELEASE.

and

B) At release the features that we do have were in a horribly implemented state which led to a huge sum of the PvP player base leaving.