Guild Wars 2

I really did, but when I won I left instantly. When I lost, I left instantly but mad. In the old system the match would wind down, the last fights would be decided, and anyone who stuck around could have a post-fight chat. It was like Pillow Talk, but violent.

And I posted about it, and some of you made good points in its defense. Some of you made stupid points in its defense, but I ignored those… But the fact remains that the ‘Victory’ screen just sucks. It doesn’t add anything, it takes a lot away, and it just reminds me that ANet paid someone to do a good job modeling and programming an active step back in the GW2 PvP system instead of literally anything else that would have added to the game. He could have spent that time making the golden fractal weapons suck less or something.

I know I’m not the only one. I have friends who just won’t play PvP anymore, because winning feels empty and losing feels kittenty.

What’s the point? Why did they do this? No one even asked for it, and they didn’t give an explanation I could find for their thinking. Am I missing something, or is this just some executive saying “We need an insulting end-game screen like the other PvP games”?

I hope someone can offer some real game-design insight.

I have to say, if it had stats and the ability for griefing them, I would really enjoy that a lot more. Especially if it had an actual rating component like you suggest, Saiyan, because at least then you’d have a visual way of kind of crowd-shaming. The two most toxic flaming players on each team will get SLAMMED with tomatoes/salt and have to consider their actions.

I would still prefer the option of finishing fights though. That was the most fun thing about matches was that, win or lose, you’d get epic fun fights ESPECIALLY at the end! And since the game didn’t boot you, you could enjoy them fully every time. I want to stress how great that was when the game didn’t end the most intense part of the action until the players were ready.

It interrupts those super-fun end-of-match fights, and if you LOSE it’s just degrading. It’ll make salty players saltier, and smug players more smug. It’s not sportsmanlike at all, and it’s one of those things that – while small – makes a difference in how people behave. If you haven’t seen it already, just wait and watch.

And there’s nothing odd about it, it’s just like every victory screen in every game except you get to use some recycled animations and you don’t get to view any stats. I imagine this was done because they wanted to be more like other tournament games.

I really don’t think PvP needed any help being competitive. Assuming you’ve played PvP before, it should pretty clear that everyone is perfectly competitive on their own, no help needed.

The old system of matches just popping up with the victory notification and then allowing players to finish fights was INFINITELY more satisfying. If I’m having fun with the last, dramatic duel WHY would a developer not want me to get all I can out of that fight? Why suddenly, without warning, pull me out into a degrading and insulting victory screen like that?

This will NOT help the toxicity in the PvP arena, as now the game is adding insult to injury. Whereas before the games had a more fun flow, and ended with a bunch of last-minute brawls which would bring some comfort if won, now all that matters is winning because it is the ONLY source of satisfaction. You can’t lose a close match, but win the last brawl and think “kitten ! Only seconds away, that was so fun!”… You can only hit that point, have the game rip you out of the immersion and tell you “Ha, you suck, you pathetic failure!”… Does that sound like improvement? That sounds like removing a feature so they can be more like every other PvP system.

This is designed to make people angry, and it removes what I felt was a small but distinctive feature of PvP. I like that the point cap wasn’t the end of the fight, and I can’t say how many times both teams stayed in the map to chat and /dance for fun, and how much I enjoyed that, or how many times it devolved into a series of quick duels in center.

If this decision isn’t reversed I just won’t be playing PvP as much. That’s a shame, because they ‘fixed’ something that was not broken in the first place.

The open world will never be exciting and interesting with current mechanics, but it could be less frustrating and artificially slow to navigate to get to the things that ARE fun.

It’s not fun now. Any change could make it more fun… and if you do want to fight all the trash mobs, this would in no way prevent you from doing that. It just means that I don’t have to slog through mud to get from A to B, because that slog is DEFINITELY not what I logged in for.

Specifically in regards to the HoT maps, I think Map completion could use a little non-monetary umf. Frankly, completing a map isn’t super rewarding, and it doesn’t feel impactful in the overall way you play the game. Getting all the way points and hero points is essentially the only thing you need to do to get full access, anything beyond that is purely for completionist or leveling… excepting of course the Cities, which reliably drop Transmutation charges…

However, this isn’t an easy issue to solve, because increasing rewards for something to commonly done will decrease the value of whatever is dropped from map completion. I had an idea, however.

A small Quality of Life improvement: Upon completion of a map, most or all mobs will have a greatly decreased engage range, similar to how being over-leveled works. Particularly in HoT, which you can’t over-level past, this would eliminate the single biggest headache for exploring and playing in the HoT map. Without a group or stealth, getting past most mobs in the narrow and complex paths is extremely difficult and frustrating, what could be a five minute walk is often a twenty minute slog through endless trash mobs you’d happily skip if it were possible. However, long engage ranges and a wide spread make this difficult.

If, after full completion, mobs were to ignore you more/entirely, you’d feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment every time you entered the map. Your character’s assumed total understanding of an area would be directly, mechanically rewarded in a way that offers no major advantages. To get loot, you still have to fight them mobs, and event mobs and such exceptions could be coded to act normally.

The daily this and thats are, I feel, a throw-bone to the “hardcore” crowd that feel a grind is their primary reason to logging on. Making them exploration grinds will make them some sort of map completion, and without a stronger questing framework or a simply staggering variety of quests, it too will just be an even more annoying grind.

When you hear people complain, from a game design point, you want to try and think about what the mechanics they are griping about actually do and what their general feelings mean about them. In this case, it’s to add a feeling of lost progress potential that drives MMO compulsion, so that GW2 is not totally lacking in appeal to the grind-type crowd that need their MMOs packaged like meth. More critically, it also gives a default place to start when you log in so that, maybe, you’ll think of something else you actually WANT to do while doing them and then do that too, or get invited by some guildies to something fun.

I do think something like the pure role-playing MMOs would be awesome, like actual living and dynamic events that don’t run like clockwork but rather like new daily quests. But that’s an exponential amount of effort we’re talking about there.