Guild Wars 2

Dear Anet…
PvP is a bit of a mess, and it has been since the begininng, because I’ve been playing since 2013, I’ve done all the tournaments, and I do not remember things ever being actually good.
Most of the reward content is pretty good, and I like the concept of the tournament, but the implementation, I feel, is not really satisfying to anybody.
Now maybe, and I certainly hope so, the incoming automated tournament will address some of this things, but since it still is a 5v5 competition, the basic problems are probably going to persist.
So here are a few suggestions I think are reasonably easy to implement, and could make a difference.

As have been said before by a lot of people, teams are too much relevant in the overall performance of a game, for them to be balanced so badly. They really make or brake you game, independently of one’s individual ability, which is really frustrating, of course assuming the player is not a complete punching bag.
Are you teammates mostly good? You win. Are they really good? You win 500-100 or less. And the reverse is true if they are bad. Yes, in some cases a good player can carry a team, but mostly that isn’t the case.
And it is not the point of what PvP should be about. Playing a roulette is not a measure of ability. Is just a measure of luck.

- Make good player play among themselves, and the same for noob or bad players.
Give every account a numerical ranking system that endures even after a single tournament has ended, and that depends not only on their victories/losses, but also on them playing PvP consistently when tournaments are not on, of course doing all the tournaments and so on.
Losing ranked tournament games because of some new or inexperienced player, that plays completely off the meta, and doesn’t know where and when to move about the map is not enjoyable or rewarding for anyone.
Vets get salty, noobs get insulted, everybody gets nervous and dissatisfied.

- I’ve noticed that the amount of points rewarded/subtracted for win/losses diminishes with time. I guess this was intended as a way of reducing sudden fluctuations in player’s ranks. But it also means that games at the end of a season has less relevance than those at the beginning, and that the first 10 placement games are a game changer… That can be very frustrating.
Why, instead, after having implemented an account ranking (as pointed above), you don’t then implement a system that takes into consideration for reward/subtraction of points for win/losses the average ranking of the two teams, and their respective performance in the single game?

For example: team A (x average ranking), team B (y average ranking) with x>y.
Points rewarded/subtracted increase as x and y approach each other, and decreases if they are further apart.
If they are too much apart, don’t make the two teams fight each other of reshuffle the players.

Game 1: A 500 – B 440, team B put up a good fight even if they are overall weaker, subtract just a small amount to B, and A gets standard amount of points.

Game 2: A 440 – B 500, team B won against the odds, team A, despite being stronger, lost but not by much, A loses more than B in game 1, and B is rewarded with more points than A in game 1.

Game 3: A 500 – B 100, team A, as expected, has won, and by a lot, so something was not right in team B, team A receives a little bump (the game was easy) and team B is subtracted more than usual but not something too dramatic.
Game 4: A 100 – B 500, team A got steamrolled, even though they are stronger, so they lose a LOT of points, and conversely team B gains a lot.

Since the winning score is 500, and around 300 is an average expected score for the losing team, the effective amount of points to be rewarded/subtracted could be calculated starting from 300 for the expected losing team, and from 500 for the expected winning team.
(e. g. +/- 10p per 50 score delta, +/- modifiers coming from respective team ranking).

- I understand you want to make PvP attractive to people, but I don’t think that high rewards for everyone is the way to go. In fact, given the current way MM works, it floods ranked with inexperienced players attracted by the “shinies” and… see point 1.
Why instead you don’t make the reward chests (cerulean-amaranth-byzantium and so on) available as repeatable reward tracks, with higher tier ones available only once the player manage to reach a certain rank, so that everybody gets something (even the legendary backpack eventually) but skill is just rewarded more, which is kinda the point of PvP?

- Please make MM more precise, even if it takes longer, good games are better than fast games.
Max 2 of the same profession in every team, and that only if the other team also has 2 of the same.

- Condi are kinda of out of control. Either we need more cleansing capability in most of the classes or condi have to be nerfed. Cannot have 6-8 different condies, 5-10 stack each, in just a couple of seconds, and be able to cleanse just 2-4. Interrupt, stuns and unblockable are especially out of control, since they completely remove the possibility for a good player to counteract them, and having 4-6 of them in a row is just too much. I’m watching myself dye, instead of playing.

- And, for the love of God, don’t make me play with people I have blocked, since it is obvious that we are not going to get along, and team performance will be diminished by it.

I hope this may be of some use in making things better!

I understand that it would take some effort, but the PvP comunity, thanks also to the free to play move, has become worse in time. A lot. There should at least be a section in the forum where people could flag theese people, providing reasonable evidence via screenshots; or an option in game, like the block of the chat, to prevent the matchmaking to ever let me play with such players again. That would be something and even if not perfect, it would be better than what can be done at the moment. Nothing.

The fact that GW2 simply lacks the option is staggering. I’m here to have fun, and I play pvp because I’m looking for some challenge. That doesn’t entails having to do with people that lose on purpose on any team. Today (and I’m writing here since there’s no option to report) we were winning a game when 2 necros on our team just stopped playing. I called for them in chat, I pinged their position and they couldn’t give a kitten about a game that they willingly joined and now were willingly losing. This was ranked pvp and, at least here, this should be unacceptable. One player was Jaadajada-neoD, the other I forgot. Arenanet has to do something about this, otherwise the already not so good pvp comunity will degenerate very quickly.

Here’s a pic of the chat. We were winning for 10 points a minute before but they took both the beasts and 2 points soon after.

I couldn’t disagree more.

The whole system is really built to frustrate. Aside from the HUGE balance issues with classes and specializations that have been talked about to death (with little improvement over the months), there’s the big problem of evaluating player ability on win/defeat ratio, or league ranking (which is mostly the same thing), and then have MM balanced so that you average around a 50% w/l. This basically compresses all players ability in a very narrow span and let the rest of MM be decided by things that are not really indicative of ability: everybody can get to lvl80 pvp in time, everybody can play thousands of pvp games over the years, everybody can get to sapphire or ruby if he/she plays enough. And this last one really shouldn’t happen.

Not to talk about the fact that, as a solo player, is nigh impossible to get to diamond or legendary, because of this MM. This results, among other things, on well done pre-made teams being able to steam-roll basically anything with little challenge.

I understand the player-base is little and that makes it difficult, but, as things stands as of now, it’s only going to get worse. Yes, rewards and calls of the mists can entice casual players, but for experienced or mid level players, especially if they go solo, it’s a really frustrating experience.
And that because you don’t really feel like you’re losing or winning based on your merit and ability. There’s an “invisible hand” that after a couple wins drags you down into an almost certain loss, and after a couple losses makes you play against inexperienced players for an almost assured win.
Not funny, not for me at least. Just frustrating. I’ve lost count of games lost or won 500/50-100.