Guild Wars 2

So in the last few days, i started playing more casual. I played with some top 700 ish team queue leaderboards from heart of mist, i did not know them. I though it was going to go really bad, to my surprise all of the 4 players i played are actually really skilled, they can easily be in the top 50 leaderboard, I decided to team queue with my viewers while streaming, got the exact same results. There are so many skilled players in the game who are unknown and they are all in the top 800.

From what I saw the only problem they had is they don’t know where to go and what to defend, all I did was tell them where to go, who to attack in team fights and when to defend, and we easily beat top 100 teams. these problems can be overcome with experience and playing more team queue with a team and not just random solo queues.

Why do all these skilled players never form a team?
I see maaaaaaaaany solo queue players who are good yet they have no teams.

If all these players form a team we might see 10+ teams who can compete to win in every tournament and not just 3-4 teams.

Maybe Anet needs to add more features that enables these players to form a team or something? or is the problem with the players not wanting to?

Very insightful! The first two things that come to mind that might help encourage team building are

-Bump up/add rewards in team arena and make it team only.

-Add a daily automated tournament (ala gw1).

Playing in a team is too much work for me. Real team play requires team speak and I prefer to type (I’m a writer and type really fast). I also like to play in quick succession for a couple of hours and don’t like people taking 5 minute breaks or whatever. I don’t like waiting for people to click the “Accept tourney” button and so on and so forth.

In short, I prefer to play alone – whether PvE or PvP. An MMO simply means you have lots of players interacting in a common instance. It doesn’t make teamplay essential.

i simply dont like to play in a team – or better i say with a schedule
and i dont like to play with ts – ts distract me while playing

pvp more fun with Heavy Metal and Beer^^

and i dont see a reason why i should invest soo much time in training with people for no goal

edit: oh and im to old to compete with the youngsters^^

Can give you my personal perspective:

I want to play with my friends, but it is very hard to get four of them together for more then once in a while. Most of them prefer to play with their specific friends (f.e. I only play TPvP with my girlfriend), or don’t want to play with each other. So you might find more then four interested players on your friendlist, but to manage to get them together to play is a whole different story.

It’s hard to find people sharing the same attitude towards the game and also fill the “social requirements” / are not a burden to deal with in the teamspeak.

Making or organizing a new team is time consuming.

-Gotta find people (no one uses LFG system, or actually not enough or everyone)
-Find people with similar play time
-People that don’t already hate each other
-Find people with similar playing ability or experience. No system atm to gauge this, but test them out.
-The right missing profession/role
-Get everyone to type in the right TS address
-Wait for one member to go smoke
-Repeat over again when 1 player leaves.

Sometimes I just want to jump into a match do whatever and zone out while listening to podcast/music.

I and some of the other stronger SoloQ players who I have spoken to don’t like having to rely on each other to be online at the same time etc.

I also hate all the ‘time wasting’ that happens like
‘brb phone 5 mins’
‘be back in 10 minz, waiting for pizza’
‘i got lag, gotta reset internet’

After that, you have to queue into a match where you destroy some randoms 500-0.

That’s how I feel and other people I have spoken to who SoloQ and rarely TeamQ.

kirito.4138:

Making or organizing a new team is time consuming.

-Gotta find people (no one uses LFG system, or actually not enough or everyone)
-Find people with similar play time
-People that don’t already hate each other
-Find people with similar playing ability or experience. No system atm to gauge this, but test them out.
-The right missing profession/role
-Get everyone to type in the right TS address
-Wait for one member to go smoke
-Repeat over again when 1 player leaves.

Sometimes I just want to jump into a match do whatever and zone out while listening to podcast/music.

lol

This is precisely correct and pretty much why nobody forms teams ever. It is also not rocket science so I don’t know why anet wouldn’t give us something like 2v2 or 3v3.

looks like the problem is with the players.
I agree with you, If anet make a 2v2 or 3v3 rated game modes we might actually see more teams since the 2v2 who faced each other had close match and think the other team is good they might form a team with each other eventually.

I personally like team queue more, I don’t mind who I play with, the best way is if you like team queue, just add whoever you think is good to your friendlist and just pug team queue, you never know you might end up with a strong team that can be in the top 10.

That’s exactly how Car Crash [CC] Formed. We were just a pug friends playing with each other than suddenly we had the right players and the right comp and we destroyed every team and decided to form. you never know that might happen to anyone…

Yeah I totally agree Super. I got pugged into a team recently and all they really needed was just some insight on map awareness/where to go and they did extremely well.

Team PvP is easily the most fun…I just wish my RL schedule allowed me to play for a steady amount of time during the same periods when my friends are able to do games.

even in wow they did step back and said 3v3 will be the competive mode they balancing for cause 5v5 is just to big and to hard to form a team for – and arena in wow was a big success for an MMO game (years ago atleast^^)

and now you guyz should trie this new TDM map 3v3 – its most fun i ever had in this game and i rly hope this will make it to an competive mode here in gw2

i would bet it would be more succesful than the 5v5 conquest we have – even on twitch

It’s not that easy at all. And it’s not the players fault at all. If I had a time I would dove tail this with the idea of markets. Just the fact that there are so few serious teams tells me its 100% not the players fault. Few teams tells me high barrier to entry and low rewards for doing it. Its not really that hard to understand. Right? If forming teams were so easy and rewarding everyone one would do it. Is that not simple logic really? Just because you were willing to schedule your life around a game for almost no real reward doesn’t make you the smart one. Actually the crowd ie the market is generally the smart one and they have said its not worth the effort in this game. When A-net makes it easier and provides real rewards you might see more teams. Then and only then.

I agree completely.. You can learn rotations in a couple of sessions if one guys knows his stuff… There are plenty of players mechanically capable enough to compete in tournaments

I take solo Q more seriously than I take Team Q.

The reason for that is because solo Q is a far more accurate representation of how well you are improving.

Disclaimer: It is NOT an accurate representation of how you compare to the other players on the board, make no mistake there.

But in Solo Q you are the only constant. You will get 4v5s, and you will get noob teams. But so does everyone else. So it’s fair to assume that it is balanced in that regard (law of averages).

So over the course of 100 games, you are more likely to see yourself improve in rating if you are doing well. You will see yourself slide if you are not doing well.

Team Q adds many other constants. You could be improving very well, but your team could be quite weak. A single teammate may be quite weak. You have no way of knowing. So your personal rating in tPvP means less.

My $0.02

Romek.4201:

even in wow they did step back and said 3v3 will be the competive mode they balancing for cause 5v5 is just to big and to hard to form a team for – and arena in wow was a big success for an MMO game (years ago atleast^^)

and now you guyz should trie this new TDM map 3v3 – its most fun i ever had in this game and i rly hope this will make it to an competive mode here in gw2

i would bet it would be more succesful than the 5v5 conquest we have – even on twitch

I talk about this with friends everytime i play pvp. It would be rly fun and definitely worth a try. It seems the community wants it too. Add a queue system and ticket system for respawns. would be epic!
I don’t play in a regular team but pug with whoever is online from my tiny guild. sometimes we have 5 but mostly its 2 or 3. An arena mode for 2/3 player teams would be great (i think 3 vs 3 would be most fun in terms of gameplay).

I can see many great ideas here, Maybe we can make it constructive and give some feedback so that Anet “MAYBE JUST MAYBE” listen and improve team queue or other stuff to allow more teams to form? The only reason I stopped hardcore gw2 is because the amount of “top” teams is so small you can count them with 1 hand

The only feedback I can give at the moment is make reward better and not give us random pve drops, make daily tournaments and monthly tournaments. Make the legend tournament monthly instead of once every 3-4 months or w/e have been planned.

Create team charters with team rankings and only allow full teams in. Make solo queue with solo rankings and have an unranked queue where fewer than full teams can join.

Pyriall.5027:

Create team charters with team rankings and only allow full teams in. Make solo queue with solo rankings and have an unranked queue where fewer than full teams can join.

I don’t like excluding pugs from team queue. Not enough population either for that full team queue to pop much.

Lack of incentive, lack of competitive infrastructure.

PeepMeDown.5017:

Pyriall.5027:

Create team charters with team rankings and only allow full teams in. Make solo queue with solo rankings and have an unranked queue where fewer than full teams can join.

I don’t like excluding pugs from team queue. Not enough population either for that full team queue to pop much.

It promotes people forming teams. Pugs can join in unranked queues.

ANet could do something like they did with RA in Guild Wars.

Give teams the option to keep playing together in solo queue. Perhaps for up to 3 matches, regardless of result.

If people choose to keep playing together their match counter starts going. Unless only 1 person wishes to continue.

If anyone doesnt choose to not continue with a team then they pop out into the heart of the mists.

Then after 1 person has continued playing with a team 3 games in a row give the whole team the option to go into Team Queue.

Anyone that accepts is queued for Team Queue, any open spots are filled by the existing system.

Anyone that declines returns to the heart of the mists and can jump back I to solo queue.

This would at least start to get people playing together, and allow time for some initial chemistry to form. Players that feel the work well together will likely friend up, or team up, which will help facilitate interactions hopefully leading to more teams being made.

Super.2749:

looks like the problem is with the players.
I agree with you, If anet make a 2v2 or 3v3 rated game modes we might actually see more teams since the 2v2 who faced each other had close match and think the other team is good they might form a team with each other eventually.

I personally like team queue more, I don’t mind who I play with, the best way is if you like team queue, just add whoever you think is good to your friendlist and just pug team queue, you never know you might end up with a strong team that can be in the top 10.

That’s exactly how Car Crash [CC] Formed. We were just a pug friends playing with each other than suddenly we had the right players and the right comp and we destroyed every team and decided to form. you never know that might happen to anyone…

I don’t think it’s a players issue.

The real problem is there’s no point in forming a team cuz:

1. there’s no incentive to stay on top: rewards are more of a grind, there’re no rewards/visibility for being top 100-200 and staying so.

2. leaderboards areeasily abusable: you get no bonus for playing against equally skilled opponents ( 1 win is enough to keep your rating from decaying, even if you play on dead hours against rank 1 baddies), decay is not permanent so you can easily avoid the game for 2 weeks then playing again 1 match to see you effectively CLIMBING the leaderboard instead of going down.

3. You can’t effectively know who is bad or good, there’re no parameters to define how skilled you are: in this game rotations are way more important then being mechanically good.

You can be extremely good mechanically but you may suck hard with rotations, actually being a burden for your team.

This issue becomes almost impossible to overcome when “pugs” play togheter, especially if there’s no one really good with rotations ( and even if there’s, other players will hardly listen to him cuz why "should he be right instead of me ? ")

Altough i find 1-2 to be more important, 3 is also a big deterrent for players in order to form a team, mostly cause you usually can’t understand what was wrong with “dat guy dying on far errytime”, so it’s also to hard to correct them.

Personally i started pugging in team q as soon as i understood solo q was a joke.

I mostly go solo still i’ve managed to be top 100 ( currently around 300).

This is of course wrong on so many levels, and screams loud about how important a GOOD tutorial to learn the basic of conquest + rewards for playing on top AND playing against the top are needed.

Just my 2 cents

I think the biggest thing is there isn’t much incentive to do so. The upcoming tournament kind of helps, but where is an actual quality working ladder? Where are pvp seasons that stretch weeks that require dedicated, consistent team play for unique season rewards?

There are none, and with leaderboards being relatively meaningless there isn’t much reason to do anything other than queue in solo or with a friend when one is around.

Aside from that, the actual act of forming a team is difficult. I’ve tried myself recently. It’s hard to find people with similar play times and skill level with similar pvp goals that get along well. Even if you do, half the time they will fade out without dedicating any time to a team, and the other half flat out don’t respond to you if you’re not some known top 10 LB player.

No incentive. Being at the “top” doesn’t mean anything.
PvPers don’t care about legendaries.
The only reason would be “self esteem”. But who cares about that, really? Even if one cared, the “visibility” of being at the top is close to non-existant. Maybe something REALLY exclusive that EVERYONE in the game could see? I would say a title, but there are so many titles in this game people wouldn’t probably understand what it means.

If the tournaments were rewarding TRUE prizes (and not in-game prizes), then it would be different. Good players already have all they need – “playing to get item X” is not something a GOOD player will do. That is for casuals.

As with GW1 (GvG), the hardest part about playing with a team is getting everyone on at the same time. Since I don’t have a reliable schedule, I just prefer solo arena.

From my point of view, the “problem” is to get five people together at the same time.

Today at the evening (in our time zone) was the ESL Weekly Cup we always try to participate since we learn something even if we loose. At the beginning of the week, I asked our main pvp players who’d be interested and how his or her schedule was. Unfortunatly we ended up being three and couldn’t take part with our guild.

Therefor I find the idea of 3vs3 tPvP arenas very appealing, since three is a nice amount of people you almost get together at any time. In the regular tPvP I don’t care about prizes, I want to play better, faster and work with my team so play more effective.

Unfortunatly the amount of challenging matches is pretty low. Normal tPvP is pretty slow if you compare it to some games at the ESL cups. We’re by far not even close to that kind of game play but we don’t improve much, when our enemy team is “standart”.

That being said I think a kind of team ladder system would be nice. Every team can register and put their name on it and other teams can request a match against them. The matches would be best of three with FoN, LoF and BoK so we don’t have to deal with skyhammer or chasing buffs. Wins make you go up and looses make you go down in the ranking. But that way, little and “unexperienced” teams could challenge better teams and learn from them. They even can communicate over the map-chat. So yep, I would like that.

The reason for not forming a team is the game design and game mode.

If anybody is going to ask me what was wrong with guild wars 2 in regards to competitive team pvp in a few years, I will respond:

One strong player did not make enough of a difference and one weak player made it impossible to succeed.

That’s the basic issue I have realized in almost two years of GW2.

Super.2749:

So in the last few days, i started playing more casual. I played with some top 700 ish team queue leaderboards from heart of mist, i did not know them. I though it was going to go really bad, to my surprise all of the 4 players i played are actually really skilled, they can easily be in the top 50 leaderboard, I decided to team queue with my viewers while streaming, got the exact same results. There are so many skilled players in the game who are unknown and they are all in the top 800.

From what I saw the only problem they had is they don’t know where to go and what to defend, all I did was tell them where to go, who to attack in team fights and when to defend, and we easily beat top 100 teams. these problems can be overcome with experience and playing more team queue with a team and not just random solo queues.

Why do all these skilled players never form a team?
I see maaaaaaaaany solo queue players who are good yet they have no teams.

If all these players form a team we might see 10+ teams who can compete to win in every tournament and not just 3-4 teams.

Maybe Anet needs to add more features that enables these players to form a team or something? or is the problem with the players not wanting to?

This revelation came to you a little late, but yes there are a lot of players in solo/yolo q who are incredibly good that don’t take the current PvP seriously to make a team. But the main reason it’s because there’s no reward for being a hardcore Pvper in this game. Making a team takes time, first you need people who play at the same time as you. And most of the times that’s imposible…. So people rather play just for fun. Also the current LB are a joke and you get absolutely nothing from being on the top. There’s no incentive…..