Right, I agree that queing in the mists is annoying, and needs to be looked at because it’s boring. However, I disagree with a lot of your points.
Queueing outside of Heart of the Mists is indisputably the #1 most requested (begged for) feature by the sPvP community. In fact, the requests to “bring back soloQ” pale in comparison to the requests to stop imprisoning players inside of Heart of the Mists.
Gonna need a source on this. I personally hear a lot more complaining about the MMR and team games then I do about queing in the mists.
This issue is even worse at the high end of the MMR spectrum. Newer players may be unaware of the issue entirely because they get quick matches, but once you win a couple of games, it becomes really old waiting out 20 minute queues for 7 minute matches.
What is your source for 20 minute queue times? Admittedly, I don’t think I have a very high MMR, but I’ve watched streamers like Nos and Phantaram, and they definitely don’t have 20 minute queue times. It’s probably closer to five. I really don’t think the 20 minute mark is accurate. When I personally pvp, I feel like I spend more time in matches then in the queue.
Of course, Queue times can vary based on WHEN you play. Obviously it’s much harder to find matches during non-peak hours. But generally I’ve never seen a queue time as high as 20 minutes. If it ever did get that long, I’d think the system bugged and try requeing.
1.) The sPvP community unanimously agrees (or at least by majority since there will always be trolls) we do not want to be imprisoned in Heart of the Mists.
People who don’t agree with you are trolls? Also agian, source? Even in your strawpole (which is bias’d towards forum users, I might add, and not an opinion of everyone who plays the game), there were still SOME people who disagree. Even if it’s as small a number as 10%, you can’t say that it’s unanimous.
Here are the facts:
…
2.) The only changes to Heart of the Mists since 2012 have been changes to NPC placement or removal of NPCs. It is a dark, gloomy, boring, uneventful and depressing map.
That is opinion, not fact. I can find things to do in HotM. Talk in map chat. Fight the NPCs. Practice killing Blue lord, or svanir and chieftan. Also, one positive aspect to HotM is that it is possibly one of the most social areas of the game, because people go there to wait for pvp matches. When they wait, they find things to do, such as putting down bobble head factories or playing on in game musical instruments. I’ve had a lot of fun just chilling with fellow players in the mists (Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t go there -just- for that social aspect and not because I have to. But I do think I should point out that there are things to do there, and it is fun to play).
3.) Long queue times at the top tiers of MMR are in part due to the severely reduced veteran player population queueing matches. The algorithm won’t match us with new players and it can’t find any veteran players to match us with, so have fun with a 20 minute queue time. Why are there so few veteran players queueing? Because veteran players quit the game over silly issues like this that shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Again, where is the source here? I’ve watched some twitch streamers, and queues are never that long. I like to think that pro players can be considered “veterans”. 20 minutes seems like a very big exaggeration, but you keep putting that number as if it’s fact without any sources to back it up. 20 minute as a queue time, if it exists, is most likely an anomaly.
4.) Many people who stream sPvP tab out of the game client and do something else while waiting out queues. Who wants to watch someone run around Heart of the Mists for 20 minutes? Why is ArenaNet actively deflecting people from playing the game by not allowing them to play other aspects of the game while waiting out queues?
I know I’m beating a dead horse when I say I need a source here, but. Can you put a bit more evidence in these facts? Again, you keep saying 20 minutes, when I can personally tell you I have never watched a full episode of Batman: the animated series (a 22 minute show) on my second monitor when the queue pops. And before you call me out for tabbing out during queues, I -always- have something running on my second monitor, whether I’m in open world pve trying to do AB meta events, in the queue or even in the match itself. I wouldn’t even call it tabbing out, since my keyboard/mouse’s focus is connected to gw2, and not whatever I have playing in the background.
6.) ArenaNet stated as recent as August 2015 in their blog post for raids that one of their goals with raids was to make sure players didn’t feel like they were (and this is a direct quote) “waiting to have fun.” [source] Isn’t being locked in Heart of the Mists EXACTLY what they describe as something that players shouldn’t have to endure? Why do I have to wait out 20 minute queues to play 7 minute games?
Not relevant. You said it yourself, that’s a goal for raids. No mention of pvp in that blog. And, on that topic. Name one pvp game that doesn’t have a queue, and has even teams at the start of a match. While I’m sure there are -some-, most games I have played have a queue. Even league of legends, the most popular video game of all time (http://www.statista.com/statistics/251222/most-played-pc-games/), which is a pure pvp experience, has a queue time. Sorry, queues are unavoidable.
imgur.com/5q7URQr.jpg]There is absolutely no reason this should happen.[/url]
7.) The closest I’ve gotten to getting a response from ArenaNet employees about this issue was in game from Grouch in December 2014. I asked why we have to wait in Heart of the Mists to queue. He replied “It’s a 20s timer for queue accept, load times are longer than that. If you are loading when a queue pops, you’d get dishonor.” [source] I have no idea why we keep hearing about this “dishonor” system that is not and has never been, implemented in the game.
Oh wow, a source for the 20 minute queue times. I’ll be kitten ed! …Though I still think that’s the exception, not the rule. Even that screenshot puts the average at <3 minutes.
2.) “People take a long time to load maps.”
- There is no way people take over a minute (the current time before a sPvP match starts when a queue has popped) to load the very low-resource-demanding sPvP maps. If anything increase the time before a match begins or start the timer only after all players have loaded into the map.
I don’t know. I’ve had some pretty long load times, and I’m running this game on an SSD with a pretty powerful computer. I can believe that some systems will take over a minute to load the maps. I can probably recall a game or two where someone didn’t load in until after the first minute and a half prep time was over.
4.) “People doing other things while waiting in queues will cancel their queue to finish what they’re doing and further prolong queue times.”
- Nobody queueing on a team is going to do this because they will be yelled at by their team.
- People solo queueing won’t do this because ArenaNet have deincentivized the biggest instanced content in the game (dungeons) and no one cares about leaving uninstanced content like map completion and low priority content like activities. Even then I highly doubt anyone is going to start something important knowing they’re waiting on a queue to pop.
This is where your argument falls flat on it’s face, IMO.
I agree with the bit about queues. There is social pressure to hit that accept button.
But NO ONE will do dungeons while in a pvp queue. Why? Because you can’t queue for pvp and be in a party and not have everyone in a party queued for pvp, unless there is some bug that I am unaware of (you aren’t supposed to). Closest thing that I can think of for this is you can invite someone to your party during a match, but that doesn’t throw them into a queue, and at that point you’re already pvping. The idea that people would be doing dungeons while in a pvp queue is ludicrous.
Also, again, there is no source for people not leaving uninstanced content. How do I know this? Because the data can’t exist due to the fact that the system hasn’t been implemented post-HoT. HoT has a lot of high-value meta events. I personally know that if a queue popped while I was doing the AB meta event, I’d probably cancel it.
Lastly, I just wanna say, have you read those posts? Cus. None of them mention a queue time of 20 minutes. In fact one of them is complaining about a 3-5 minute queue time. Another one says that he hit 17 minutes, but that was an all time high for him, beating out his old longest wait time of 13 minutes. So I do think these cases are the anomoly.
Also many of these people don’t want open world content, but instead want to queue in either guild halls, or add something else to do in HoTM (such as crafting tables), which are very good solutions IMO. However, the problem with adding queues to guild halls is that HotM might become unpopulated, or the same problem will just arrive in guild halls. And the problem with crafting tables is that they might de-populate crafting tables in major cities, and they completely de-value captains airship pass or the pass for that one place in DR.
Also, can I just point out, again, that forum users are a bias’d group. They are a vocal minority, and my experience is that the trend MMO forums are generally either playful banter or complaints about the game. You won’t often find “I’m okay with queue times” on a forum because there’s not really much of a discussion involved.
In general I do agree that something should be done, despite all that I nitpicked about your post. But I actually would rather see an expansion on HotM rather then being able to queue in the open world. I do like the sense of community that I get when I go into HotM. If I have a question about pvp, I can enter the pvp lobby and ask map chat there.
Those are my $0.02. Enjoy!
