Guild Wars 2

The vast majority of tPvP matches I’ve played have been solo queue. I’ve noticed a rather sad problem that ruins quite a few matches: Players leaving.

Often it happens if the enemy team ninja’s Chieftan or Svanir, or even if the opposing team name is that of a guild instead of a character. They’ll decide that their team is doomed and leave rather than playing it out to see.

By doing this, they’ve decided the outcome of the match, and it sucks for both teams involved. The only team that can win a 4v5 would be an organised group, and that sort of group wouldn’t have problems with quitters anyway.

I’ve noticed vs. several guild groups one of their players will drop shortly afterwards (presumably voluntarily because they know they’ll win either way and want to be nice), but obviously this still kinda sucks. It sucks both to lose because you have 1 less person, and to have an easy, boring and effortless win because the other team is down 1 member.

I’d like to propose that there is some kind of penalty for abandoning your group before the conclusion of a match.

If you aren’t in the tournament group and in the PvP map instance by the time the match ends, then you should be unable to queue for tPvP again for a while. The duration you are barred from tPvP should increase each subsequent time you are an early quitter.

To anyone who is quitting early – You’re doing yourself a disservice as well as others. I’ve been in several pug groups that have managed to win against guild groups, even in some cases where the guild group got off to an early lead. Don’t judge the game’s outcome by the first few minutes.

Seems lately the dominant team will just spawn camp the other side. Once that starts, I’m out.

Why would a solo player want to waste time in a game where odds are not 50/50? When I play a tournament it’s because I want to play a game where it matters to me to win or lose. I’m not gonna waste my time feeding premades and pretend to have fun doing it because it’s not anywhere near fun. This flawed design is extremely unfair to solo players. I barely do any free tournaments anymore because pugs always hit a premade at some round or another.

The sad thing is that the developers don’t play tournaments with the actual players, they always know better because of that. Why should a pug group have to play a pre-made in free tournaments. Anet failing to implement a ranking system so that you don’t play people that have been winning and playing organized for a while over a new player is why out of my 300 members in my guild 4 people play tournaments. They can just farm pugs all day and benefit from it while new players get owned and don’t want to play.

This is the sad thing about most game developers they make the game for themselves and their beliefs and not for the actual people buying and playing their game. There is a reason why stuff all people do tournaments and spvp in general. After all we are not the developers of the game just the people that buy and play with the rest, so who are we to say what is right and wrong? May as well not release the game to the public if you want to be selfish and ignorant and not make the game for the actual players.

I don’t think the answer is to make it so pugs can’t vs premades – The best team is supposed to win the tournament. Splitting the queue into pug groups and premades won’t solve any problems other than making queue times longer, and there will still be partially premade groups that have an advantage over the 100% pug groups.

In tPvP your team is relying on you. Unlike sPvP, every person on the team needs to be there and giving their all. I queue solo with the understanding that the team I end up on will likely be the underdog and lose horribly, but it is satisfying to be part of a group of players who have never met before, but manage to overcome the odds and win anyway. I consider loyalty to the team to be important.

Think about it for a while. If the developers split the free tournament queue into premades and pugs, then what would happen?

1. The queue times would get much much longer
2. Semi-premade groups would stomp the pug queue, or fail horribly in the premade queue (depending on how its handled)

I don’t think it will solve more problems than it would create.

Pug groups who work together can be competitive in tPvP. Players who solo queue and aren’t prepared to coordinate (at the very least decide on what to do beforehand, and either call incoming or ping the map) should probably consider sticking to sPvP.

Game developers have to strike a balance to keep players happy. Some players want hard to get cosmetic items like legendaries, while others want easy to get stuff so they can look cool. Some want PvP to have gear that has more stats at higher levels, while others hate the very concept. Ultimately choices have to be made that some players inevitably won’t like.

I don’t enjoy getting stomped in tPvP, but I would rather have it that way then only ever vs. solo queuers and having the feeling that I got automatically placed in the tournament for “bad puggers”. You learn more from losing than winning anyway.

I don’t know how many concurrent tourney teams are queueing at any given time, but maybe a method which tries to fit together groups with similar win ratios or glory levels into a tournament together and expands its bracket over time might be a usable idea.