Guild Wars 2

how is spvp population? good? low? rising or dying? i left the game almost 2 months ago and spvp population was low.

i already see spvp didnt get any serious update since i left the game…

Next pvp update is in 10 days.

The population is not that bad, try logging in and see it for yourself. Hopefully it will increase with the patch

Spvp population is actually low.
If the next patch doesn’t include any significant changes for spvp, then even more players
will quit the game.

It’s kinda low.

At least in hotjoin, the first 10 servers are usually filled, and the next 20 are 50% full more or less. The rest of them have maybe 30 people on them put together.

So that’s like 400 people… from all the servers (not sure if it includes EU, probably not).

tpvp I guess has like 20 teams going at it at least? and twice the amount at nights?

Anyway, random guesses aside, it’s pretty dead for a game this big. the pve /wvw crew outnumbers it by a lot. Not even 10:1 would be a fair comparison.

its pretty low, but its actually doing fine in the other “modes”. So all they need to do is give people a reason to spvp, and more people will try it out. There are plenty of people (especially in wvw) just waiting for improvementes in spvp and a reason to play it to actually start playing it regularly.

According to Google trends, the games population (popularity is a decent indicator to concurrent population) dropped about 70% from August-October, peeking in September i believe. Since then, it’s started to level out a bit, but still decreasing (less and less of a decrease over time), which is expected for a MMORPG; even WoW’s popularity has been receding ever since it peeked in December 2006.
We’re hoping the February and March updates will get the ball rolling for sPvP, if you’re on a server other than Anvil Rock (NA) or Desolation (EU), I’d recommend trying out the new guesting feature to gain access to the mist lobbies of these servers as they are still pretty much booming with active players and make the game feel a lot more populated if you play sPvP.

thing they dont seem to understand is how to make pvp accessible. on top of that theyre splitting up the pop way too much and for some irrational reason clutching onto the 8v8 hotjoin.

this game badly needs what everyone is asking for:

improved rewards
5v5 1v1 team soloqueue
5v5 paids 1v1 team queue
monthly 8 team, 5v5, 3 round tournaments

anything less than this will continue to kill spvp. anything less is simply unacceptable at this point. if 8v8 hotjoin remains and 3 round free tourneys remain, i honestly dont think anybody will give a kitten to play spvp again.

eagerly awaiting to see the spvp reveal, but deep down i know i will be disappointed.

nerva.7940:

thing they dont seem to understand is how to make pvp accessible. on top of that theyre splitting up the pop way too much and for some irrational reason clutching onto the 8v8 hotjoin.

this game badly needs what everyone is asking for:

improved rewards
5v5 1v1 team soloqueue
5v5 paids 1v1 team queue
monthly 8 team, 5v5, 3 round tournaments

anything less than this will continue to kill spvp. anything less is simply unacceptable at this point. if 8v8 hotjoin remains and 3 round free tourneys remain, i honestly dont think anybody will give a kitten to play spvp again.

eagerly awaiting to see the spvp reveal, but deep down i know i will be disappointed.

Completely agree with you, they could even just do ranked/unranked team queues and a solo queue with hidden mmr. The problem is that Peters (more so than Sharp I think), is clutching onto this idea that somehow great solo queue players will be on par with average premades; which will never happen in the games current state, terrible minimap design allows VOIP to carry games.
I’ll be writing an article on esportsgaming.net addressing some of these issues sometime this week. But it’s also worth noting that in terms of acceptability; they are making some good improvements such as changing the default builds that people start with on character creation to actual viable setups, and listening to the community and our feedback; I’m almost certain 1 or 2 pvp devs will be reading this post -HI DEVS! lol

sPVP pop is very very low. they confirmed 3 mill box sales recently; and there are 100-400 sPVP players per server, so <10K sPVP across all servers, or < 0.3% of the game pop. If that isn’t “epic fail” status, I don’t know what is.

I tried it, it just isn’t fun. Things that make it unfun for me:

• downed state destroys the continuity of combat and is annoying on several levels.
• secondary mechanic like khylo treb, like DS, is annoying as it requires you to break combat to deal with
• repetitive
• severe intra-class imbalances, lack of build choice

WVW is more fun because of its sandbox nature, leading to unpredictability, and WVW supports a much much greater range of playstyles. I also find the quality of 1v1s/2v2s/5v5s to be way higher in WVW.

mjharrison.3209:

sPVP pop is very very low. they confirmed 3 mill box sales recently; and there are 100-400 sPVP players per server, so <10K sPVP across all servers, or < 0.3% of the game pop. If that isn’t “epic fail” status, I don’t know what is.

I tried it, it just isn’t fun. Things that make it unfun for me:

• downed state destroys the continuity of combat and is annoying on several levels.
• secondary mechanic like khylo treb, like DS, is annoying as it requires you to break combat to deal with
• repetitive
• severe intra-class imbalances, lack of build choice

WVW is more fun because of its sandbox nature, leading to unpredictability, and WVW supports a much much greater range of playstyles. I also find the quality of 1v1s/2v2s/5v5s to be way higher in WVW.

It would be fun if they can make WvWvW on a smaller scale such as two teams having trebs, walls, etc. and a lord at the end that has to be killed. Maybe have players cap certain points along the way in order to weaken the opposing team’s lord. Throw in some NPCs along the way and we would have some awesome, dynamic battles.

The sPvP population is low, and would greatly benefit from more players. We’re all hoping the next patch sparks some interest.

There are two pools of people to attract new GW2 PvP players from:

1. People who play GW2 but don’t play sPvP. They can be lured with new content, new rewards, etc

2. People who play other PvP/competitive games but not GW2. These people can be lured with features like leagues, replays, etc

Many threads see players wanting Anet to focus on group 2, but I see group 1 as more fruitful in the short term. They already own the game, have a character they are attached to, and maybe are a bit bored of what they are doing. They are more likely to notice exciting new sPvP content Anet is releasing.

Once we get a larger percentage of GW2 players doing SOME sPvP, the population will be large enough to focus on group 2. If a player only would play PvP in GW2, and hasn’t bought the game already, they aren’t going to join unless the scene is in better shape.

The population is low because the PvP integrates more elements from fps and rts than RPGs or our beloved gw1, thus failing to appeal to its initial target audience.

Let’s take a look at the following design principles:
- fps style combat with a restricted view to make camera management and observation a skill in themselves.
- fps style combat with a very fast paced game, where kills can be achieved in matters of seconds
- minor death penalty so that players have fewer reasons to play defensively but rather are encouraged to take bold actions.
- every skill should be visually understandable
- no more team carrier like monks or lead frontliner: every character should be able to be self sufficient with some room for specialisation.

While of these look fantastic from a designer standpoint, personnally, as a (mmo)-rpg player who was a huge fan of gw1 I can’t but be frustrated with the pace and the confusion of 5v5 pvp.

I have no fun with fast encounters: killing or being killed in seconds isn’t exciting, it’s frustrating. Even at the top of tournament play, team fights rarely ever last more than 1-2 minutes.

I like kills to depend on outplaying the other team with pressure, damage and shutdown being all perfectly coordinated rather than raw damage, skills being on cool down or quickness of reaction.
I like to talk tactics and builds during the fight to gradually overcome the opponent as a team rather than focusing on my own gameplay.
I’m not a massive fan of the high micro cap. Once again, I’d rather focus on builds, tactics and strategies.

The game is very complex and allows for a high skill cap, I have no doubt about that. But:
- the gameplay is too fast paced to appeal to traditional rpg players
- the ineligibility of team fights make it worse
- the freaking steep learning curve make it worse.

So either Anet works on the last two points and hopes the player base grows once people learn the game and are used to the fast paced gameplay. Either they realise they’ve gone over the roof with the offensive combat design.

I’m pretty sure there’s some middle ground to be found between the the ultra fast and hard to read current team fight and the 8v8 stagnant fights with no deaths that plagued some of the gw1 era.

Spvp population is dead. About 100 – 200 active players NA.

Shady.3142:

Spvp population is dead. About 100 – 200 active players NA.

Ya, that do tournies, something like this.

More if u count hotjoins. But hotjoins are so random and useles i woudlnt count em.

Currently on the Eu there are about 50 full servers = about 700 players
Paids pop instantly most times = Must be 50 paid matches going on at a time = 500 players
Frees pop about every 5 -10 minutes = prob 5-10 going on at a time = 250 players

I reackon at any 1 time in the EU there are about 1500 players in game and many more in the mists.

Source: maths.

Hugs.1856:

The population is low because the PvP integrates more elements from fps and rts than RPGs or our beloved gw1, thus failing to appeal to its initial target audience.

Let’s take a look at the following design principles:
- fps style combat with a restricted view to make camera management and observation a skill in themselves.
- fps style combat with a very fast paced game, where kills can be achieved in matters of seconds
- minor death penalty so that players have fewer reasons to play defensively but rather are encouraged to take bold actions.
- every skill should be visually understandable
- no more team carrier like monks or lead frontliner: every character should be able to be self sufficient with some room for specialisation.

While of these look fantastic from a designer standpoint, personnally, as a (mmo)-rpg player who was a huge fan of gw1 I can’t but be frustrated with the pace and the confusion of 5v5 pvp.

I have no fun with fast encounters: killing or being killed in seconds isn’t exciting, it’s frustrating. Even at the top of tournament play, team fights rarely ever last more than 1-2 minutes.

I like kills to depend on outplaying the other team with pressure, damage and shutdown being all perfectly coordinated rather than raw damage, skills being on cool down or quickness of reaction.
I like to talk tactics and builds during the fight to gradually overcome the opponent as a team rather than focusing on my own gameplay.
I’m not a massive fan of the high micro cap. Once again, I’d rather focus on builds, tactics and strategies.

The game is very complex and allows for a high skill cap, I have no doubt about that. But:
- the gameplay is too fast paced to appeal to traditional rpg players
- the ineligibility of team fights make it worse
- the freaking steep learning curve make it worse.

So either Anet works on the last two points and hopes the player base grows once people learn the game and are used to the fast paced gameplay. Either they realise they’ve gone over the roof with the offensive combat design.

Excellent post. I was also a huge fan of GW1 pvp, played it for about 2000 hours. My favorite game modes were Guild-vs-Guild (GvG), Random Arena (RA) and Team Arena (TA). For some reasons Anet deleted TA and gave us Hero Battles (HB) and Codex Arena (CA). RA and TA were always full of people, because it was a simple hot join (without waiting) 4 vs 4 elimination match. CA was never popular due the randomly resetting skill set, which changed daily. HB was never popular people it was about capturing points. That should have given already the developers a loud message: people like killing more than capturing points.

GW2 pvp and WvWvW have many elements, which make it bad for newcomers and casual gamers:
- excessive fast burst damage compared to healing and counters
- stealth = broken & unfun (stealth is fun only for those who are using it themselves)
- teleportation (GW1 already had issues with multiple assassins using teleport to the same target and release their attack chain to down one target very fast. They fixed this by introducing a delay after the teleportation. I think GW2 should have a 1 second inactivity delay after a person teleports)
- mesmer clones / illusions are confusing for new players
- no dedicated healers, nobody is babysitting for you, meaning that bad / new players are at huge risk of being constantly killed very fast, sometimes even not seeing who killed them (stealthed opponent)
- the downed state is totally imbalanced between the professions e.g. compare downed state of thief vs engineer

To make things even more sad, the person who is responsible for pvp game balance uses the word “noob” and term “learn 2 play” in an interview. Such elitist attitude should go, otherwise GW2 pvp will never be popular.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Currently on the Eu there are about 50 full servers = about 700 players
Paids pop instantly most times = Must be 50 paid matches going on at a time = 500 players
Frees pop about every 5 -10 minutes = prob 5-10 going on at a time = 250 players

I reackon at any 1 time in the EU there are about 1500 players in game and many more in the mists.

Source: maths.

And there is 7k+ people (at any given time) just watching, others play Dota 2 on twitch. And from 100k -250k people playing at any given time. This from a game that is still in closed beta.

daydream.2938:

Shady.3142:

Spvp population is dead. About 100 – 200 active players NA.

Ya, that do tournies, something like this.

More if u count hotjoins. But hotjoins are so random and useles i woudlnt count em.

Realistically, 500 people – not everyone is on at once and it can span frees/paids/hotjoins/people sitting in HOTM.

Deniara Devious.3948:

CA was never popular due the randomly resetting skill set, which changed daily. HB was never popular people it was about capturing points. That should have given already the developers a loud message: people like killing more than capturing points.

Not at all :
- HB was popular because it required only 2 players to have a match, and it still had an active playerbase( normal and monthly tournament, plus active ladder)
- CA wasn’t popular because it required 8 players, nothing improved from Team Arenas( which already had a low player base before)
- Alliance battles required too many players to be played on an active base

It was all a question of number of players required there, not at all with capping. You probably played costume brawl mini game, and saw how active and appreciated by players it was.

I’d love Arenanet to publish some real data on population but I suspect they fear it would be embarrassing. SPVP population seems pretty low. There are approx 300 people in my guild, but at any one time its rare for more than 1 – 2 of them to be in the Mists.

Pickmansmodel.1298:

I’d love Arenanet to publish some real data on population but I suspect they fear it would be embarrassing. SPVP population seems pretty low. There are approx 300 people in my guild, but at any one time its rare for more than 1 – 2 of them to be in the Mists.

you need to join a pvp guild.
Theres like 7 people in my guild, its rare for 1 or 2 NOT to be in the mists.

I think population is low for 2 main reasons

1) There isn’t an easy, good way to battle

*only one mode
*only 5 man tournaments (voip required)
*spvp zerg
*no ladder
*no duels

Conquest is just hapless scoring unless you’re in voip. It doesn’t facilitate pugs, or any solo que, but rather supports constant, uneven numbers in battle (and extreme builds).

Got a five-man coherent team where people give and take orders smoothly to complete objectives? You get to be competitive: not working well

2) Class balance

Let me just give one example of imbalance here: stealth

Mesmers and thieves got it extensively. Now, mesmers pop out 3 A.I. that track and strike opponents as hard as another player, while thieves have the highest spike damage and great mobility; but they both have builds that can constantly drop target through stealth. This takes very little skill, and ruins combat. They leave their opponents to swing at the air or scorch the earth better than an invisible person can land attacks and heal.

Today I fought a thief with my ranger. Now Axe/Dagger+Longbow only has 2 aoes, and I’m not a trap ranger (so I suppose all other builds are obsolete because of this one tactic.) My opponent popped stealth about every 5 seconds, and simply dodged when he was targetable. I had to constantly tab target and redirect my pet to attack every time. The window of opportunity to strike with a non-aoe was about 1 out of every 5 seconds, and he knew it, simply dodging the majority of what little I could even aim at him… this is frustrating as hell, and mesmers simply blow your kitten off the map while they’re doing it. You’ve got to bring alot of strong aoe to even fight back. People who can’t spam aoe get tired of busting their kitten just to keep up with these gimmicks, only to be invisibly stomped. It’s not fun or competitive.

These 2 points are relative because conquest has created the “glass cannon that strikes and runs away” or “bunker that sits on point” mentality, and it seems the classes will be balanced around objectives. I don’t think pvp can or will be fixed any time soon.

Master Charles.7093:

I think population is low for 2 main reasons

1) There isn’t an easy, good way to battle

*only one mode
*only 5 man tournaments (voip required)
*spvp zerg
*no ladder
*no duels

Conquest is just hapless scoring unless you’re in voip. It doesn’t facilitate pugs, or any solo que, but rather supports constant, uneven numbers in battle (and extreme builds).

Got a five-man coherent team where people give and take orders smoothly to complete objectives? You get to be competitive: not working well

2) Class balance

Let me just give one example of imbalance here: stealth

Mesmers and thieves got it extensively. Now, mesmers pop out 3 A.I. that track and strike opponents as hard as another player, while thieves have the highest spike damage and great mobility; but they both have builds that can constantly drop target through stealth. This takes very little skill, and ruins combat. They leave their opponents to swing at the air or scorch the earth better than an invisible person can land attacks and heal.

Today I fought a thief with my ranger. Now Axe/Dagger+Longbow only has 2 aoes, and I’m not a trap ranger (so I suppose all other builds are obsolete because of this one tactic.) My opponent popped stealth about every 5 seconds, and simply dodged when he was targetable. I had to constantly tab target and redirect my pet to attack every time. The window of opportunity to strike with a non-aoe was about 1 out of every 5 seconds, and he knew it, simply dodging the majority of what little I could even aim at him… this is frustrating as hell, and mesmers simply blow your kitten off the map while they’re doing it. You’ve got to bring alot of strong aoe to even fight back. People who can’t spam aoe get tired of busting their kitten just to keep up with these gimmicks, only to be invisibly stomped. It’s not fun or competitive.

These 2 points are relative because conquest has created the “glass cannon that strikes and runs away” or “bunker that sits on point” mentality, and it seems the classes will be balanced around objectives. I don’t think pvp can or will be fixed any time soon.

Neither of these reasons contribute to why the pop is so low

Also if you think thiefs and mesmers are the top of the power ladder, that just shows how ill informed you are.

Mesmers are strong at least, but thiefs are pretty middle of the pack in terms of balance.

possante.8310:

how is spvp population? good? low? rising or dying? i left the game almost 2 months ago and spvp population was low.

i already see spvp didnt get any serious update since i left the game…

It’s still in a decline.

Main issues is for the competitive players:
1) Althought the current 1v1 5man tpvp system is better than the previous, but still lacks as the population is low thus making any rating system kinda pointless as eventually you will get paired against ppl who are much higher than you.
2) No custom arena, stops the competitive players from creating and managing their own tournaments which would drive veiwership and bring in new players who may want to get in on that kind of competition (EGL, ESL, GB, FN, Joyst, ETC)
3) Minor issues with balance concerning Ele’s and Rangers and the current issues revolving around melee.

Main Issues for the casual players:
1) Not enough map types or simplistic enough thus why they’ve added two new maps.
2) No Dueling (This means almost nothing but some ppl want it mainly to kill time between ques)
3) Again tying back to custom arena, there is very little room for new players to practice and even with a new ranking system, the pool is too small thus new players will still get paired up against vets and get stomped leading to them losing interest in the game.

To make this more clear, think about it as in Starcraft 2 terms. If you only have say 20 groups of 5man at max during peek (top 100 QP for example) you will get paired unfairly even with a ranking system because if lets say your 0 QP or lower than the latter on QP you will get paired up against ppl with MUCH more experience/play than you simply because ranking won’t fix a low pop. Even with the thousands of players on SC2 in 1v1’s and 2v2’s gold players still run into diamond and bronze still run into plat players. All this focus on ranking is going to do for Anet and GW2 PvP pop is make more of a commotion of how it doesn’t work with such a low population.

In Short This is a horrible move by the people working on pvp for Anet and a horrible move in trying to recover the pvp scene.

Custom Arena however and allowing monetizing of GW2 vids on Youtube would significantly increase viewership/interest in the game and the competitive/pvp scene.

It is honestly sad on Anet’s part that they have ignored two very blaring items that could of stop the decline in population or even revitalized it compared to BWE’s and Launch.

Their policy of “when it’s finished” is hurting them at this point. Even if Custom Arena with an Obs mode and monetizing of GW2 vids were to come out in the next month. I doubt half of the pvp popluation would come back. You would probably only see maybe 1/3 of the original pop come back and that’s if the functions aren’t buggy and Anet works with some of the outside leagues to promote competition.

Hugs.1856:

The population is low because the PvP integrates more elements from fps and rts than RPGs or our beloved gw1, thus failing to appeal to its initial target audience.

Let’s take a look at the following design principles:
- fps style combat with a restricted view to make camera management and observation a skill in themselves.
- fps style combat with a very fast paced game, where kills can be achieved in matters of seconds
- minor death penalty so that players have fewer reasons to play defensively but rather are encouraged to take bold actions.
- every skill should be visually understandable
- no more team carrier like monks or lead frontliner: every character should be able to be self sufficient with some room for specialisation.

While of these look fantastic from a designer standpoint, personnally, as a (mmo)-rpg player who was a huge fan of gw1 I can’t but be frustrated with the pace and the confusion of 5v5 pvp.

I have no fun with fast encounters: killing or being killed in seconds isn’t exciting, it’s frustrating. Even at the top of tournament play, team fights rarely ever last more than 1-2 minutes.

I like kills to depend on outplaying the other team with pressure, damage and shutdown being all perfectly coordinated rather than raw damage, skills being on cool down or quickness of reaction.
I like to talk tactics and builds during the fight to gradually overcome the opponent as a team rather than focusing on my own gameplay.
I’m not a massive fan of the high micro cap. Once again, I’d rather focus on builds, tactics and strategies.

The game is very complex and allows for a high skill cap, I have no doubt about that. But:
- the gameplay is too fast paced to appeal to traditional rpg players
- the ineligibility of team fights make it worse
- the freaking steep learning curve make it worse.

So either Anet works on the last two points and hopes the player base grows once people learn the game and are used to the fast paced gameplay. Either they realise they’ve gone over the roof with the offensive combat design.

I’m pretty sure there’s some middle ground to be found between the the ultra fast and hard to read current team fight and the 8v8 stagnant fights with no deaths that plagued some of the gw1 era.

I think Anet made it very clear that they weren’t targeting GW1 players hince why GW1 still has it’s dedicated core of players.

5v5 format is strong.

As far as compared to GvG that will probably still come out, but the issue right now that plagues the game the hardest is a low Population in competitive pvp. Complaining how Spvp is not GvG is NOT going to solve that.

I wonder how much money they are currently making GW1 to GW2 purely based on microtransactions

daydream.2938:

Pickmansmodel.1298:

I’d love Arenanet to publish some real data on population but I suspect they fear it would be embarrassing. SPVP population seems pretty low. There are approx 300 people in my guild, but at any one time its rare for more than 1 – 2 of them to be in the Mists.

you need to join a pvp guild.
Theres like 7 people in my guild, its rare for 1 or 2 NOT to be in the mists.

I think that illustrates the unhealthy division that has developed between SPVP and the rest of the game. Most guilds are just guilds – their members do WVW, dungeons, exploration, jumping puzzles, PVE events and crafting, but don’t do SPVP.

I came to GW2 because I liked battles and pvp, but I find Spvp to be an unwelcome area of the game for me. I spend all my time in WvW as a commander, which involves me in a community, with planning, objectives and interesting battles.

I think one of the problems is the professions. I`m a staff ele, so if I go into spvp I`m a dead man, basically, but in wvw I function much better and have purpose with my aoe and support role. Spvp is the realm of classes like the thief and the Mesmer and they are so good at what they do that there really isn’t any point in anyone else coming to the party.

To be honest, I don’t think people are asking for a GvG 1.2. That Gw2 is a totally different game is fine in itself.

To explain the lack of enthusiasm regarding the current sPvP, I’m just wondering if there isn’t a mismatch between the initial target audience (MMO/rpgs/gw1 players) and the sPvP gameplay that incorporates (too) many FPS elements.

I do think the game is solid in its own category, but because it’s so much faster than any rpg, it may just not be what the majority of players is after.

Assuming the above holds some truth, you can then try to help players learn the game by mastering the fast pace and the combat mechanics or you can try to tone down the damage/defense numbers to leave some room for analysis, shutdown and team coordination.

To help players learn the game, you need to make team fights much easier to read, get some streams/obs mode going, improve the matchmaking system – as you learn best in balanced matches with the occasional fight against a better team- and foster a competitive environment through ladders and tournaments so that players always want to improve.

I still believe that the learning curve isn’t the only issue with the gameplay though. The game is very very fast paced and although it is a jewel design-wise, it may be just too action-intense for the core audience of gw2 -at least in competitive PvP.