In every game I play, pvp plays an important role for me. I’ve been playing GW2 since release and have always been playing spvp/wvw for the sake of fun, not the rewards. But the current state of pvp is an absolute disaster. Even WITH those rewards given (I really want these wings) I can’t get myself to play more than 3 games before I’ve lost my entire motivation for the current day.
When you play MMOs, at some point you will likely encounter a situation where you want a reward but the grinding towards it becomes “work” instead of fun. Which is ok, I get it. If there weren’t some obstacles, everyone would have those things and they weren’t special anymore. But if a gamemode becomes so unenjoyable that even those rewards can’t get you into playing it anymore, something went seriously wrong.
I’m not a pro player, I’m not a bad player. I play SoloQ and have 34 games won and 14 games lost. I should be happy. My class has a strong build and I win a lot more games than I lose and I should be satisfied with the result. But I’m not. Because even though I want these rewards, even though I’m succesful in pvp, I absolutely hate playing this gamemode now. And the reason is complete design failure.
1) Lack of build diversity: If you’re an elementalist, you’re forced into playing a buff/healbot for your team. If you’re a ranger, you have to play support. As a mesmer, you have to play a condition hybrid. I’m playing a tempest auramancer with staff and we’re at a point where people incorporated this way of thinking so much that they’re like “Oh staff ele? That’s not meta!” in the beginning of a game. And this way of thinking doesn’t come from nowhere.
2) Condition spam. Nothing much to say here.
3) CC spam. Seriously, who thought it would be a great idea to give almost every class access to aoe CC? You can’t even fight 4 seconds without being stunned in this game. Complete loss of control and completely messed up rotations encourage mindless spamming (because your own AoE/CC is obviously as strong as the opponent’s). I find myself just throwing around AoE’s and watching my cooldowns instead of watching the opponent and his buffbar. Because why bother? There are 10000 red circles and effects on the screen, there is no way of getting a clear view of what’s actually going on. I used to check my opponents stability before setting up CC, but now? Just throw that sh** in there and hope you don’t get stunned while casting it.
4) A completely frustrating reward system. A player who loses 10 games straight and wins 10 games straight will get 18 (or 17?19?) pips. A player who wins and loses games alternating will get nothing. Both won 50% of their games, one player is rewarded, the other player is not. What’s the result of this randomness? Players are going at each other’s throats. Never have I seen a system that causes the atmosphere in a game to be that toxic. This is something an intelligent designer would have seen coming. I’m not without sin either. I also quit games in the beginning of fights out of frustration, not because of my teammates, but because of being permastunned for half a minute. However, I understand if people quit games because of their bad teammates.
How to conclude? First of all, please note that my complains are not because of success/failure. It’s about unsatisfying gameplay and a random reward system. So what are my suggestions on how to improve pvp? Well, the current problems came with elite specs. CC spam, lack of build diversity etc. So maybe it’s time to make builds apart from elite specs stronger. Of course this must be done in a way that people can’t just add the buffed skills/traits to their existing elite spec. Which requires deep knowledge of classes/builds. Another thing might be to replace the pip system with something less random. Give players the feeling that they can work on their progress, maybe slowly, but STEADILY. This will improve the atmosphere. But now we’re in season 3 and nothing really changed so.. I’ve kind of given up hope on that.
Oh, and please don’t take the title too serious. The times when teams of 5 d/d elementalists dominated were certainly worse than this. But not much.
