Guild Wars 2

it’s just so disjointed from the rest of the game, your character looks different, you can’t achieve the same stats, doesnt seem to be any sort of matchmaking. you are about to win a round and you get auto balanced to the losing team, everyone plays bunker because of thieves.

as far as the pvp goes, wow and warhammer was much more fun imo

Thieves, Mesmers (to a lesser extent Elementalists and Guardians)

Say what you will about power, but that aside, too many of the builds these classes have are absolutely zero fun to face in a fight, and SPvP is flooded with them. Necros are undoubtedly one of the most powerful classes right now, yet search the SPvP, WvW, and GD boards; you still see more complaints about Thieves and Mesmers.

I and most players would rather have a fun fight we have a lesser chance of winning than a fight with an even chance where there is no possible interaction between you and your opponent, and everything just comes down to waiting for that split-second between stealth/decoy spam where you can actually fight.

The reasons I don’t SPvP have been posted already in this thread.

I just want to add that I enjoyed PvP in Rift a lot more than SPvP in this game. And that says a lot right there.

Peetee.9406:

If I wanted e-sports, I’d play a MOBA.

This really this or an RTS
I join an mmorpg to play an mmorpg not to play Esports…

But to me anything that badges a game with esports ruins said game so…don’t believe me? look at GW2 balancing…

The overall problem of PvP is that GW2 intentionally was created as a PvE-Game. Then they added some sort of PvP to sell it under purposes of E-Sports in mind and as an AAA-PVP title game. See the problem?

Most comments in this thread demonstrate how little some players know about sPvP. Complaints about stealth? Terrible class balance? Limited attributes compared to PvE?
Limited attributes are a good thing. In WvW it’s possible to reach extreme levels on some attributes such as 120% +crit damage. In PvP the maximum + crit damage is capped around 60%. The limitation reduces the role of luck and takes insane burst out of the game. Another problem is the dominance of bufffood: +40% condition duration makes a world of a difference. The additional attributes and bufffood ruin the balance in WvW. The limited attributes make sPvP the best balanced mode of the game.

The sPvP community is not visible. There’s no skill lag and no blob. Around 50.000 players on EU, probably the same number on NA, so 100.000 in total played at least 10+ tournament matches since the implementation of leaderboards. Would you call that unpopular?

I believe that sPvP started the game very much uncompleted, but it’s becoming very solid. i would like to see more game modes, and it’s good to go.

The only thing that i can agree is that there is a lack of both competitiveness and goals! Other than that it’s pretty good.

And the majority of the complains about the classes being OP clearly shows how misinformed you are about those classes. If some class builds are tougher than others? Yes they are. Diversity provides the unbalance. A lot of the unbalance players are referring, is actually a reflection of their own doing. Both choosing bad class build and not knowing how to play against certain classes.

/cheers

OP
I’m pretty sure if you Spvp as much as you have been PvEing you would see your favorite armor.

A reason why people don’t Spvp is because they are too lazy to come up with counters to their nightmares. (i.e. thieves, mesmers) I believe this reason is the most pathetic reason.

Also, if you step into Spvp now you will probably be wrecked by any seasoned PvPer which will turn any newcomer down. Maybe there should be arenas where newbies can play against each other and learn the ropes.

Spvp is a learning experience. You have access to all skills and traits. It is up to you to come up with a build that can handle many other builds in the current meta. There is no ultimate build that can destroy all other builds. (Just like in GW1, though people would argue that the RoJ monks were the ultimate build , but I say hogwash).

Spvp is a game of skill and correct gear choices. I find it similar to dota where everyone has reached max level and it all comes down to your build choice and your items. This scares people because they can’t rely on having better gear than their foe which is very pathetic.

There is no risk to Spvp. If you lose, you don’t lose anything. You actually still gain glory and rank, which is incredibly easy!

IMO hotjoin is just a mess because of 8v8 zerging. Tpvp is where you really can put your skills to the test.

Rewards are just a bribe to get people to play something that isn’t fun.

You start getting into pvp → you get face-rolled right away and you don’t understand why → you’re disgusted and decide not to do it anymore.

That’s pretty much it for a lot of people I know.

GW2 is just not a good PvP game:

-Dodging allows you to dodge burst damage, and some are well designed (e.g. 100 blades, Whirling Wrath) to be telegraphed and dodgeable, then you have things that aren’t (S/D Ele, Thieves) and leaves very little counter-play (or at least, it’s a lot harder to avoid).

-There are so many flashy effects. It’s hard to tell what is going on with explosions, minions/summons, and particle effects on your screen. Again, no counter-play when you can’t even see what is going on.

-sPvP is not beginner-friendly. When I just started out and decided to mess around, there was no guide, no matchmaking, and it basically left me very confused as to what was going on, other than ‘stand in these circles to get points, and kill other people’.

-It’s terribly balanced (my opinion). And they only seem to be balancing around the highest levels of sPvP, in which case why would the remaining 90% of people play a game that is unbalanced for them?

Someone won’t go “wow if I reach a certain level of skill it will be fun”, practice for weeks to beat a Heartseeker-spamming Thief (which is very effective for how simple it is to play), then go “ah now I can have fun”.

That person will just go “oh lol that class is so easy, let’s just play it”. And that person was me! Now, even though I am still the same unskilled person, I destroy other totally unskilled people simply because of a choice at the character select screen.

I don’t really care if the Thief-support-brigade comes and says “oh but look the best players can do it so everyone can”. Guess what? If Microsoft sold a computer that only people fluent in 5 programming languages could use, they would never have gotten anywhere.

Nothing against Thieves in particular, as there are other builds that are powerful at low skill levels, but since they seem to have gotten so many complaints, it seemed like the most obvious example.

-There are a lot of dumb mechanics, like massive amounts of dodge, uncounterable stealth, and crazy sustain which may be balanced (or may not) but is very annoying to play against.

Keep in mind I don’t play sPvP very much (because WvW is more fun) so this is just based off my own experience there. And as a disclaimer I have a Thief, Ele, and Mesmer all at lv 80, so before you say “go play those classes and see how wrong you are”….

Edit: Just because something is annoying does not make it overpowered. But it can still be annoying.

Conncept.7638:

Thieves, Mesmers (to a lesser extent Elementalists and Guardians)

Say what you will about power, but that aside, too many of the builds these classes have are absolutely zero fun to face in a fight, and SPvP is flooded with them. Necros are undoubtedly one of the most powerful classes right now, yet search the SPvP, WvW, and GD boards; you still see more complaints about Thieves and Mesmers.

I and most players would rather have a fun fight we have a lesser chance of winning than a fight with an even chance where there is no possible interaction between you and your opponent, and everything just comes down to waiting for that split-second between stealth/decoy spam where you can actually fight.

Decoy has a 40 second cooldown. Mass Invisibility has a 90 second cooldown. Phantasms and shatters can be anticipated and evaded, magic bullet is countered by an evade, stun breaker or stability.

Stop trying to make Anet nerf mesmers again, they’re very easy to fight when you know what they’re capable of.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

There is no risk to Spvp. If you lose, you don’t lose anything. You actually still gain glory and rank, which is incredibly easy!

You lose time.
As you say, you have to learn how to play your class and how to counter others. It requires a lot of time.

Because point control is the most boring game mode. Take a look at WoW. What BG’s have the most instances running? On every server it’s WSG. Why? Because CTF style game modes require a lot more group coordination and strategy to be good at than point control.

Deified.7520:

I’m rather curious about this because I want to get into it, but playing with friends and people I know is something I try to do because I just have so much more fun. The only PvP i can get my friends and any guildies of a guild that has 200 people is WvW roaming. They give me some of the worst excuses I can find to not do spvp. I always give them solutions but they just make up another excuse. Maybe I’m unlucky, but the other guilds and people I interact with seldom do sPvP. I’ve only met 1 person who is a avid s/tpvper in this game and he goes offline for long periods of time.

So tell me forum, why do you guys not play sPvP? I really wish more people would play it, it is saddening that I am in contact with 200+ people and I hardly see any of them want to do spvp.

I didn’t read the rest of this thread – I’m just giving you my opinion on this, to be sorted and tallied with everyone else’s.

If you played PvP in Guild Wars, you probably found the sPvP in GW2 to be limited, bland, uninteresting, and completely lacking in anything resembling matches like HA or GvG.

No ladder. Zzzzzzz
No announcement across the game that “Chuo’s team has won a battle in sPvP”.
No real reason to play. It’s repetitive. It’s just like RA with cap points.
I realize they’ve made some changes and improvments since launch, but I think most of the people who were looking forward to quality PvP gave up long before ArenaNet got around to it.

And it’s still lacking. The one giant, glaring omission that screams “THIS GAME WASN’T READY” is the substandard, uninteresting, unengaging sPvP.

Guild Wars was legendary for great PvP. When people think of Guild Wars 2, they think of PvE.

It’s nowhere near the level of GW1’s PvP, sorry fan boys.
And then they claimed it to be a eSport.

Because 5 vs 5 and 8 vs 8 are girly pillow fights.

Junkpile.7439:

Because 5 vs 5 and 8 vs 8 are girly pillow fights.

Daily quote from junkpile “kittening thief killed me”

As for why no one does spvp there is no rewards, no gold, no skins you can get to pve zones etc. Only reason to do spvp is daily and achievements at the moment.

I play sPvP regularly but there are a few aspects that I hate a lot.

1. It is way too long to gain levels ! Seriously, i’ve been rank deer for months now ! I’m only lvl 16 or 17. Unless you spend your days playing sPvP you will have a really hard time gaining ranks, even with the augmentation of glory.

2. The glory you get is useless ! You can spend it in chests in which you are totally not guaranteed to have what you want ! Then you can recycle what you have and use it at the mystic forge… But then again you don’t know if you are going to have what you want.

3. Even worse, the gear you can have access to is limited by your ranks ! As I said, it takes way too much time to change ranks so you’re going to have always the same stuff ( and if you’re not lucky you won’t even have all of them ) ! I’ve earned thousands of points of glory and I do not even have a full heavy armor set…

PS : I know you can buy a component that allows you to have the piece of armor you want, but as it is limited by your rank, you will have the same forever, plus you are forced to recycle some gear first to have the resources needed.

In the end, my opinion is the same as the other ( in a different way though ) : sPvP is not rewarding at all.

- no reward compared to equivalent time spent on something else
- bad balancing: anet nerfs guardian bunker (“save yourselves…” etc), but make/buff engineer and necromancer bunkers. trying to capture point when they can drop high damage on the point and you are melee is stupid…oh sure, you can avoid the point….except hthat is letting them win
- targeting is bad too for stealth rogues that keep stealthing and running through you, dropping targeting every 3-5 seconds

What We Want In GW2 PVP

- PVE skins in PVP

- More Modes like:
CTF,FFA,TDM, Attack / Defend, Random TDM/FFA, Hall of Heros(gw1), GvG

- And more game modes that require more varied play then just point capture

- Rewards that you can use anywhere in the game

- Less splitting of spvp from the rest of the game

- A Ladder Mode

- A ballencing of WvW And PVP to make them more unified and less like spvp is a whole new game.

- Fix targeting bug that untargets people, (this happends in all game types)

wolfie.7296:

- no reward compared to equivalent time spent on something else
- bad balancing: nerf guardian bunker (“save yourselves…” etc), but make engineer and necromancer bunkers. trying to capture point when they can drop high damage on the point and you are melee is stupid…oh sure, you can avoid the point….except hthat is letting them win
- targeting is bad too for stealth rogues that keep stealthing and running through you, dropping targeting every 3-5 seconds

save yourselfs is op? l2p bud, theirs HARD counters to save yourrselves and guardian bunkers arn’t even that effective, their just the most obvious bunker choice.

colesy.8490:

Conncept.7638:

Thieves, Mesmers (to a lesser extent Elementalists and Guardians)

Say what you will about power, but that aside, too many of the builds these classes have are absolutely zero fun to face in a fight, and SPvP is flooded with them. Necros are undoubtedly one of the most powerful classes right now, yet search the SPvP, WvW, and GD boards; you still see more complaints about Thieves and Mesmers.

I and most players would rather have a fun fight we have a lesser chance of winning than a fight with an even chance where there is no possible interaction between you and your opponent, and everything just comes down to waiting for that split-second between stealth/decoy spam where you can actually fight.

Decoy has a 40 second cooldown. Mass Invisibility has a 90 second cooldown. Phantasms and shatters can be anticipated and evaded, magic bullet is countered by an evade, stun breaker or stability.

Stop trying to make Anet nerf mesmers again, they’re very easy to fight when you know what they’re capable of.

Not decoy the ability, decoy as in ‘A Decoy’, the dictionary definition, specifically speaking of the mesmer clones. Second, I brought up mesmers and thieves, what makes you think I was talking about mesmers when I spoke of stealth spam?

And I don’t want ANet to nerf anbody and I even said so, I want them to make mesmers and thieves fun to fight against so they’ll stop pushing people out of PvP and so ANet will stop having to nerf them.

I hotjoined a pvp match yesterday, for the sole purpose of acquiring the glory I would need to salvage the duplicate items dusting up my inventory (from the AP chests).

My experience? Those players spend far more time chatting than fighting. I kept my mouth shut and found it was boringly simple to simply keep a teammate nearby and slice the disorganized enemy to bits…

Now, the positive side: There were a few people in the lobby who were extremely nice and helpful with my noobie questions. They also recommended I look into the ranked matchup system for more serious play.

I think there are two requirements to get PvE players into PvP:
1. bored of PvE/WvW and watch a bigger challange
2. direction that is more of the storyline type than reading text boxes of documentation masquerading as lore.

Now that I’ve achieved my first goal of cleaning my inventory, I might peek around from time to time. Unfortunately, the “wealth bug” of PvE has me considering what I will miss out on by being in PvP vs. building wealth for the next Legendary (etc) in PvE.

Blissified.8369:

save yourselfs is op? l2p bud, theirs HARD counters to save yourrselves and guardian bunkers arn’t even that effective, their just the most obvious bunker choice.

no. i wasn’t clear… it was nerfed by anet already specifically for spvp and shouldn’t have been. i know they are not effective which is odd considering other classes are better at being a guardian.. it’s stupid ‘balancing’. no one can even call it that.

Because PvE doesn’t work the same way as PvP. PvE is dumbed down hard.

PvP requires more than two dodges.

Deified.7520:

I’m rather curious about this because I want to get into it, but playing with friends and people I know is something I try to do because I just have so much more fun. The only PvP i can get my friends and any guildies of a guild that has 200 people is WvW roaming. They give me some of the worst excuses I can find to not do spvp. I always give them solutions but they just make up another excuse. Maybe I’m unlucky, but the other guilds and people I interact with seldom do sPvP. I’ve only met 1 person who is a avid s/tpvper in this game and he goes offline for long periods of time.

So tell me forum, why do you guys not play sPvP? I really wish more people would play it, it is saddening that I am in contact with 200+ people and I hardly see any of them want to do spvp.

I think a big part of it is that the rewards are not very big at all for anything outside if spvp itself. A big reason I, personally, don’t do spvp, though, is simply because I find it very confusing. The whole way everything is set up is much different than normal pve or WvW. I suppose I could try and figure it out, but honestly, again why should I? I just don’t see the point. I suppose once I get bored with the rest of the game I might try it out, but there’s plenty to keep me entertained until then. Does this answer your question? I hope I helped!

Viking Jorun.5413:

Slow rank progression, large risk, virtually no reward.. The list could go on. Literally the only point to go past rank 20 is for essentially free 18-slot bags (20-slot at ranks 50+)

What risk?

Junkpile.7439:

Because 5 vs 5 and 8 vs 8 are girly pillow fights.

8v8 was standard in gw1.

the only time spvp attracted me, is when spvp rewards u “bugged” 10 laurels months ago! (either unforeseen bug or intentional bug to attract peeps doin spvp lol). naw if anet decides to bug it again, i’ll jump in again

It’s boring because it’s way to much about standing in circles.
It’s boring because there are sieges which hit’s for over 50% of my hp. It’s so stupid. It takes no skill to man a treb at all. Some maps also have mobs which give you points if you kill it. And because of the downed system which gives noobish 3v1 players an even bigger advantage.

There is something wrong with the scoreboard when u get points for killing mobs and standing in circles.

Woo, I thought I was the only one for a hot minute.

I was a big big fan of GW1 PvP, GvG or HOH, both were fantastic IMHO

I just got GW2 last week, game has some very nice features, but when I tried PvP I was left thinking afterwards… What the f was that!

I could care less what my character looks like, so that’s not an issue. It was the lack of balance and methods used. I am left feeling like PvP was not a priority in this game, while in the first GW PvP started as the main focus, and was hella fun before the addition of the expansions.

This PvP seems like a bad version of the random areas, in a bad game mode. I really can’t get into the WvW either, not my cup of tea. I miss the good ol fashion GvG slugging it out till one team is down for the count or the ruthless 2-6 team brawls in the Hall of Heroes and that sweet journey to get to the final map, then holding it or trying your hardest because you know it’s a long journey back.

I’m not a big PvE fan in online games, that’s what single player games are made for, predictable AI over and over isn’t fun IMO.

It’s not often I find the original better than its successor, but in this case, GW1 PvP blows the doors off GW2.

ophidic.1279:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Slow rank progression, large risk, virtually no reward.. The list could go on. Literally the only point to go past rank 20 is for essentially free 18-slot bags (20-slot at ranks 50+)

What risk?

The fact that you aren’t getting rewarded for a large portion of time spent compared to what you could be doing to earn real rewards in PvE or WvW.

sPvP is boring. I don’t like the capture-and-hold mode. I don’t like the chaos of 8v8 and have no inclination to try to form a team for 5v5. It’s not even about rewards. They could give a free Precursor at some point and it still wouldn’t be worth it to me to play.

Blaine Tog.8304:

sPvP is boring. I don’t like the capture-and-hold mode. I don’t like the chaos of 8v8 and have no inclination to try to form a team for 5v5. It’s not even about rewards. They could give a free Precursor at some point and it still wouldn’t be worth it to me to play.

I would agree, but i have to say that the last map added is particularly fun on this mode. (5v5 always). But we need more gaming modes! For sure!

I think it’s not really popular mainly for three reasons:
1) because it offers poor rewards and that doesn’t cope well with a Skritt playerbase.
2) because it’s not beginner-friendly
3) because people think that 8 vs 8 hotjoins are the meat of SPvP, when in reality it’s tournaments.

The only thing sPvP is moderately good at is getting your dailies done quickly and cheaply if you only care about the laurel.

No reward, no alternate game types. meta game is terribly boring. Bunkers vs bunkerbusters.

It’s not even fun to watch, which throws the whole esports idea out the window. Every time I see these esports posts about “pro” teams in tournaments and whatever, I just cringe. I honestly feel sorry for the people trying to commentate spvp matches because it’s just so boring, tedious and so few of the abilities are visually significant enough to tell wtf is going on. (Same problem in pve, btw)

I’ve started doing sPvP for a bit each day for the rewards.

4 easy Achievement points every day. Also you can make dyes, open them then sell them. I know a few of my guild that do this to make money.

However I’ve always thought the issue was the link between sPvP and the rest of the world.

My fix would be to make some new sets of armor

Rabbit, Dear, Dolyak, Shark etc. That are earned in PvP but can be converted to PvE in the same way skins can be converted the other way.

Then remove all Dungeon Skins from the PvP rewards (people that already have them could keep them) But you can no longer get them from the mystic forge or PvP reward chests. Then allow you to buy PvP skins for your dungeon tokens.

In other words you can then show off your good at PvP in the real world with your unique PvP skins, in the same way you can show off you do Dungeons or Fractals. Suddenly getting up to Shark level is something you want to do as you can get your Shark skins to run around WvW with. But also in PvP you could show you do Dungeons, by your full Dungeon sets.

In a game that is largely costmetic, having PvP granting you unique cosmetics that you can use in the rest of the game would be the draw.

LHound.8964:

Blaine Tog.8304:

sPvP is boring. I don’t like the capture-and-hold mode. I don’t like the chaos of 8v8 and have no inclination to try to form a team for 5v5. It’s not even about rewards. They could give a free Precursor at some point and it still wouldn’t be worth it to me to play.

I would agree, but i have to say that the last map added is particularly fun on this mode. (5v5 always). But we need more gaming modes! For sure!

I tried it out. It’s ok. You still spend too much time sitting in a circle waiting to get jumped.

after read all this comment i cant believe nobody mention:
-the ridiculous “auto balancing” method have Spvp.
After you spend like 10 minute in a group and almost winning somehow you get trolled and swamped to the loosing team. Is just another WTF moment.

It dulls in comparison to GW1’s RA’s.

1) No sense of progression (can’t even get exp to level up my character while doing spvp)
2) Capture and hold is boring (encourages bunker builds)
3) No build diversity

For me doesn´t make sense this is just PUGs talk here but all I do is run around capturing points wondering if we will win. Unlike lol I still haven´t figured the parameters that secure the victory. OMG capture points and win n00b ZOMG. Well doesn´t work all the time.

tpvp is fine. Hotjoin is just a gloryfarm zergfest; people cap points in groups of 5 so no one misses the 20 point glory reward.

That is what’s wrong with spvp.

All of you claiming not enough rewards in sPVP; tell me something…

If they rewarded you a precursor of your choice after every game win or lose; what percentage of the population do you think would continue playing sPVP after they got the item they wanted?

They could give you every Legendary in the game after 1 match and players would just play 1 game and never go back again.

wolfie.7296:

Blissified.8369:

save yourselfs is op? l2p bud, theirs HARD counters to save yourrselves and guardian bunkers arn’t even that effective, their just the most obvious bunker choice.

no. i wasn’t clear… it was nerfed by anet already specifically for spvp and shouldn’t have been. i know they are not effective which is odd considering other classes are better at being a guardian.. it’s stupid ‘balancing’. no one can even call it that.

my bad u should really edit that post, it seems that you actually ment the opposite of what i got out of it.

Lack of Class Balance.. and they want to go E sport with this. hahah too funny.

Fernling.1729:

My problem is the single game mode. I am not a fan of conquest. If there was a single queue and different game modes, I would be all over it.

I would like to see more game modes and larger match ups than 5v5 (like 10v10 minimum). Personally, I would love to see teams of 40 vs 40 on a proper battleground map and the right game mode. Guild vs Guild would be great too.

Spvp is a small amount of players doing only one single game mode(conquest). There needs to be more- conquest alone is just not enough.

I’ve always wanted to see a proper castle siege mode battleground- one team/one guild defends a castle against an attacking team/guild. I’ve been suggesting it for a long time https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/one-Map-one-Castle-two-guilds-fighting-over-the-castle/first#post1690934

I still haven’t found a reason why I would PvP in a MMO game when there are actual games in the market that are built bottom-up to be PvP games, such as League of Legends or various shooter games. Think outside the box, people!

I used to enjoy PvP, but every time I have to fight some stealth, teleport and/or evade spamming scrub I walk away kitten ed off (even when I win) because it’s not fun. At all. Not even a little bit, and those cheese builds make up over half of the people you fight every match.

I hope they eventually add a class blacklist to custom arenas. I would be all over a game without mesmer, thief and ranger. The other classes have their balance issues, but at least they require some skill to play.

Sunflowers.1729:

GW2 is just not a good PvP game:

-Dodging allows you to dodge burst damage, and some are well designed (e.g. 100 blades, Whirling Wrath) to be telegraphed and dodgeable, then you have things that aren’t (S/D Ele, Thieves) and leaves very little counter-play (or at least, it’s a lot harder to avoid).

Wouldn’t this be a reason why dodging is awesome in sPvP? Those burst skills don’t have that long of a CD on them, so it’s not like you’re screwed if you are dodged, you just have to figure out something in the meantime while CDs finish (<— also known as skillz). Keeps people from relying on glass cannon builds IMO.