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If you are using marauders its better to just play medi trap. Mace is not that great without menders amulet so you might as well go with bow.
If you lose, you lose rating. The ‘rewards’ have nothing to do with pvp.
The only person acting entitled is the OP who demands that an entire online game be rolled back to year 1 to conform to your personal worldview without any regard to how that would kill the population.
At the most basic level spvp failed because GW2 is a PVE game. When you have 100+ devs working on pve and 3 working on PvP its not hard to figure out why spvp sucks and takes years to implement basic level features.
GW2 shows that you can’t throw a small portion of your resources at PvP and ‘hope’ the game will take off. A competitive game will only work if it is designed from the ground up for a primarily pvp audience (moba, RTS, FPS, fighting games).
GW1 was ahead of its time, and turned out to be a fluke. Why bother going through all the challenges of building a sport when you can easily make money through microtransactions / RMT /Cash Shop / Gems / Gold to casual pve players.
GW2 always has and always will be a PVE game.
When 100 devs are working on PVE and 3 are working on competitive pvp its not hard to understand why the game never took off competitively. Why bother trying to build an esport from the ground up when you can just sell gems to casual pvers?
Its pointless to talk about balance because under the current dev mandate of keeping skills the same across PVE and WvW its impossible to change anything without messing up other parts of the game.
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Its obvious that the only reason Anet suddenly cares about the competitive side of the game is to promote sales in Asia.
String pvpers along for two years with vague promises and poorly implemented competitive systems then finally throw them a bone when you can USE them for marketing a two year old game in a foreign market.
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Shows and tournaments = fluff atm
The game itself is massively flawed as long as `competitive` play = pre-mades farming solos for rank.
I hope people realize that spending $500 and asking 40ish people to volunteer for 6+ hours to get ~2.8k viewers is completely unsustainable.
Also later in the year when a few other big games come out all the casual 5s teams will probably dip out.
Its fun for 10 seconds, but once you have watched 100 matches its incredibly lame.
CoD conquest works better because you can’t ‘bunker’ a point or teleport your team.
Talking about major balance and design changes is moot because it has to pass with the PVE team first.
That is the core problem with sPvP – everything has to be designed in a way that ensures PVE remains balanced.
Hence we get conquest map after conquest map while none of the mechanics or classes really change.
Players are leaving? Give them a new map and call that progress.
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The recent tournies are only getting somewhat decent viewership because its new and people have been waiting for 8+ months.
Once there has been 10 or so tournamnts it will begin to die down, especially once the meager prizes dry up.
There is no way Guru or whoever is going to keep throwing 500 bucks or whatever every month for tournies that can’t even get 2000 viewers.
The whole reason why Starcraft / LoL work is because people want to learn from top players to improve their own ability to climb the ladder.
GW2 has no real ladder, just hardcore pre-mades stomping pugs all day and occasionally playing against each other.
Observer mode is really only useful for people who like to watch pretty particle effects and graphics. Its not very useful for people who want to actually learn how to play.
The main reason why the recent tournies have gotten decent viewership is because people have been waiting for this for 8 months. Once the novelty wears off we’ll see how it goes.
I doubt people will want to continue volunteering huge amounts of their time to a ship that has already sailed.
The only thing I am surprised by is that people actually believe Anet is justified to charge money for private matches.
Monetizing competitive play already killed the population.
We have already paid a full box price and waited 8+ months to play a private match. Asking for more money is a slap in the face of the few loyal players who are left.
Why do people even still want this to be an e-sport?
Its fairly obvious at this point that Anet doesn’t care based on the extremely poor development pace.
They have been charging money for competitive play previously through tickets and now through servers when no other competitive game does this. All these people trying to setup tournies and teams are just rewarding Anet for doing a poor job.
PvP cannot be balanced because PVE comes first.
Conquest is lame and its not going away.
The recent tournies are able to get a few hundred viewers, but thats largely because of the novelty. Once that wears off and its the same teams running the same builds on the same maps over and over again the viewership will drop just like it did after the first month.
The guy who streams auction house and gives away gold all day has a larger following than pretty much any of the ‘competitive’ teams.
^Exactly
They can’t buff warriors because they are already PVE gods.
Ele’s remained OP for so long because nerfing them would make them worse in PVE where they are already not that good.
The pet buffs are obviously directed at improving ranger viability in PVE.
This game will not be an esport because its a PVE game. The updates / balancing / player population are all pve focused.
Why would Anet bother going through the hassle of designing a good competitive pvp game when they can keep adding a gear grind and selling gems.
The fact that private servers will have a cost when games like LoL and Starcraft allow you to host private matches for free automatically reduces the number of people who will even access the game.
Paid tournaments already killed the competitive population. Paid private matches certainly won’t revive it.
People love talking about how LoL took 2 years to become an esport. That happened because RIOT pumped ASTRONOMICAL amounts of money into events and the game always had high stream viewership.
Anet has no viewership and no pvp money, it has its hands full managing a PVE game. They can’t even balance pvp because that would mess up the entire PVE side.
If the devs don’t want to support their own competitive PvP, then its a waste of time for players to waste what little time and resources they have on it.
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Focusing on single tournament events would probably be a better idea to gauge turnout and viewership levels.
I tend to agree that as long as conquest remains the only format every team is going to run nearly the same comp (bunkers). Watching near mirror matches over and over again is lame, as is constantly pointed out in Starcraft.
Also, spectator mode may be in, but as far as I know stats tracking is not so the information available to a viewer or commentator is extremely limited.
Its safe to say with the implementation of these leaderboards, which are even more pointless than the QP boards, that the whole Esport idea was a complete lie invented by the marketing dept then propagated further by the spvp devs who were no doubt following the orders of their PR masters.
Its the perfect example of a company promising everything under the sun then failing to deliver. Anet is just lucky that PVE caught on which has hidden this gigantic failure.
Why did spvp fail?
8 Team queue for 5-6 months
No private servers
No rating / elo
No true solo queue
Zerg/farm join
Lame bunker or burst meta / teleport mesmer
Conquest sucks
The list goes on and on and not a single one of the issues has been fixed since launch.
Adding laurels just makes tournaments even more casual than before.
All it does is gives the pre-mades more people to farm rank on which further destroys what little competitiveness is left.
Lord is absolutely correct about any sort of ladder in the present format is a total JOKE at this point, and it sad to see hardly anyone in this thread seems recognizes that.
If we had teams and soloers in separate queues then I would support the laurel change, otherwise all it is doing is making spvp casual daily farmer mode where people are just playing to farm gear.
What competition? Farming PVE players looking for laurels? spvp = pre-mades vs pugs
I am sure there are builds that are good that people don’t really use, but are no teams around testing them.
Meta = the builds happen to beat the other 1-3 other teams that play. If you can beat them there is no reason to risk trying anything else.
Personally I don’t think there ever were any good teams. The main reason why some stand out is because all the other ones left.
Beating 2-3 other teams a whole bunch of times =/=competitive.
MMR and rating have zero meaning when its Pre-mades versus PUGs so who even cares if it doesn’t work.
Unfortunately GW2 does not have enough teams to give them their own queue so the result is to bring spvp back to teams mindlessly PUG stomping noobs in order to keep queue times low.
Yep linksville = Anets nice way of killing threads
The anger is legitimate.
Pretending everything is fine is actually a disservice to new players since trying to play this game competitively is a complete waste of their time at the moment.
Its pretty delusional to think that somehow a playerbase is going to develop out of thin air which will then compel Anet to take action.
Anet needs to fix the game to attract players, not the other way around. If Anet is unwilling or unable to do this then the hate should flow because they misled their customers.
Agree with OP.
The combat engine is great and it is the main reason why people are still following the game’s development and are hopeful that changes will happen.
Conquest mode is lame at this point.
We already know about an alternate gamemode that works and isn’t TDM. Its called GvG and ArenaNet INVENTED it.
2 basses, win by killing the enemy Guild lord. It was like the MMO version of a MOBA game.
Charging for features that should have been in on day 1 at this point would kill any chance for spvp to catch on.
If the point is to get people who had teams to come back once the needed features are added, then asking them for more money is actually insulting.
This post was just weird. Truly, this game has the best PvP ever and that’s why it is a thriving SPVP community where 1000s of active players fight nightly and 3 round tournaments pop without waiting.
The only problem is the community and the naysayers and we need to do more. I’m not sure what more we need to do, maybe QT wants us to do some programming code for ladders, visible ranks, custom servers, spectator mode, etc. and then send our lines of code in a submission in a private message to the DEVs. Clearly, the game is in a great shape and we’re just whiny brats. 7 Months is not enough time to get features in to support the game mode. I don’t care that other games have them in during beta. THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVA!!
QFT
Devs don’t need special treatment, they took our money and delivered an incomplete product.
The lack of Anet cheerleaders in the spvp community isn’t the problem.
Everybody has their own opinion, and let them be entitled to it.
A ton of people feel like they have been mislead and then strung along month after month resulting in wasted time and money.
WoW and LoL have the most toxic communities imaginable, but millions still stick around and play because the developers are able to meet the expectations of large numbers of players.
If the game is unable to attract players then it doesn’t matter how friendly the 5 wannabe pro’s are. Its not like a few nice words from a streamer are going to get a noob to start playing 30+ hours a week, especially in a system where they will get farmed for a long time.
Pretending spvp is the best game ever is actually a dis-service to people interested in competitive play. Expecting people to pay money to beta test a game way past its prime for another 6+ months isn’t working.
If a PVE game claims to be an esport run the other way.
Its even worse because spvp was essentially rolled back 5+ months by going back to free tournaments only.
In reality the only good change apart from the 2 new maps has been 1 team vs 1 team matches which practically every other competitive game in history uses.
Lord is exactly correct. The fact that there are people here who don’t seem to understand how incredibly bad this MMR is for a game that is supposed to be ‘competitive’ is shocking.
That would work, but I don’t see then going beyond specific coefficient tweaks like for confusion and retaliation and skill durations like the guardian shout save yourselves.
I doubt they would completely change the function and effects of entire skills for spvp only. They would practically be designing an entirely different game which I think is necessary, but doubt Anet has the will and resources to do that.
I agree with the sentiments above about how its fairly pointless to go on and on about balance.
The reality is that GW2 has to also balance for PVE and WvW which have a completely different gearing stats system and mechanics. They also have WAY more players so sPvP is always going to take a BACKSEAT when it comes to class development.
As much as people are unhappy with the warrior in spvp, it is probably the strongest PVE class so giving it buffs will just make it even more broken in PVE.
If tens of thousands of PVE players are happy with warrior (most popular class) and only a few dozen sPvP players are unhappy, then who do you think takes priority?
This effect is the same across all spvp development. I think more of us just need to accept that a competitive game / esport can’t really happen in an environment when it has to take a backseat to PVE and WvW.
It seemed to be implied there there is not enough population to support separate queues. If that is the case then sPvP is pretty much finished as a potential Esport.
There is more than enough population to support a PuG-only queue. It’s the teams that there are not. ArenaNet can’t accept that all their hard work would be for naught if team queuing died.
Instead, they mix PuGs with teams so PuGs are the bait to keep teams playing.
Sadly I think this is true. Allowing teams to feel like they are good because they can farm PUGs most of the time and only occasionally play other good teams is the pinnacle of sPvP.
This is pretty much how month 1 and 2 went with free tournaments which is when the majority of teams that bought GW2 primarily for spvp left the game due to lack of competition.
Throwing a leader-board onto a system like this is even worse than the QP leader-board because at least those were gained by only fighting full teams.
As long as teams and solos are in the same queue then this cannot be considered a competitive game.
If a team can build rating against PUGs or in a 4v5, then rating and leader-board ranks are completely meaningless.
It seemed to be implied there there is not enough population to support separate queues. If that is the case then sPvP is pretty much finished as a potential Esport.
Well done Grouch. Ignore the naysayers, what you do for this community alongside high level players is far and above what anyone else is doing.
To Arena-net, thankyou for taking the time out of your busy schedules to do these SOTG discussions, this is also far and above what you are required to do as game developers and in my experience over many MMO’s, you are the only dev team to consistently interact with the community in this way outside of forum posts and should be commended for it.
To players wanting to put the developers under siege or over the coals so to speak, remember this, they don’t have to do a SOTG at all and Xeph has it right, it’s a nicety and a way to build a relationship with the players, not a medium to rage or put the hard word on them.
Sorry but devs appearing on a show like this is not some form of charity that players should be thankful for.
We want to know where the game is going in order to determine whether or not we should bother to continue to playing it.
Its the DEVS who should be thankful that anyone is even willing to listen to them at all at this point when none of the features that people want work correctly or are even in the game after 8 months and millions of box sales.
Taking people’s money and then stringing them along with a copy and pasted promise list month after month is not exactly a great way to build consumer confidence.
People just want to know if / when key features will be in the game. If Anet just dodges those questions, talks about unrelated topics, or just flat out deny that issues like low population exist then there is no point in having them talk about the ‘state of the game’.
True MOBAs and MMORPGs are two different animals, but spvp was sold as a stand-alone competitive pvp mode. A lot of people bought the game with no intention of playing PVE or WvW.
We thought Anet actually knew what they were doing based on GW1 which was a brilliant competitive pvp game, instead we get a game that is nearing 8 months out and it is still nothing close to what a company 1/5th of their size has been able to produce despite selling millions of boxes.
PvP in MMOs can go 2 ways:
1) GW1 or even WoW where people play it because it has systems that support actual competition and skill
2) SWTOR or Aion where pvp is not competitive and just another way to get pve rewards and grind gear
GW2 spvp fails completely in both areas which is why barely anyone plays it.
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It pretty much died when nothing happened in January and then February was just a roll back to free tournaments, yet another conquest map, and a useless MMR system.
Solo queue is the most highly demanded thing at the moment because most people have completely given up on the idea running and maintaining teams in a system that doesn’t support competitive play.
It is not unreasonable to expect a pug full of people with high MMR to be able to play well against a premade since they should all know the map, tactics, and counters without someone telling them what to do over voip.
Therein lies the debate.
I don’t think it is even possible to get a high MMR as a solo player, nor do I believe it is possible to consistently carry a PUG team versus a pre-made team.
‘Carrying’ a team has little meaning at all in this game because it doesn’t involve snowballing.
A situation where 5 solo people who all have a high MMR due to playing with a 5 man team isn’t likely to be very common this system.
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Obviously this isn’t completely back to square one, but it might as well be in practice.
What you are saying is solo players need to go lose 50 matches vs premades, then they wight get MMR. If they start to win then will once again face pre-mades until they are knocked back down.
Sorry, but this isn’t the type of gameplay that motivates people to stick around.
We are back to month 1-2 with premades farming pugs all days.
For every person that complains about fighting a premade in 1 game there are like 20 other games played vs non premades. Think about it. How many people play solo vs premades… huge difference. So no, were not back to month 1-2. We actually have an invisible rating that will match us better the more we play.
Good players will win more than they loose.
Bad players will loose more than they win.Its that simple. If you can’t handle loosing just don’t play :-)
Clearly you have no concept of ‘competitive’ play. Pre-mades building rank vs pugs is not competitive for either side. If you think GW2 is a game where a solo player with no planning or coordination can carry a PUG team vs full pre-mades consistently, you don’t understand the game.
If I can’t get a consistent competitive match as a solo player then don’t worry, I won’t play. Nobody else will either.
Like I said, it already exists. You can Q with 4 people and get 1 as a pug, this has always existed in free tournaments, and now all tournaments are free, therefore it exists in all tournaments.
The " new " MMR system adjusts for it as well, but the reason people are crying and saying they’re playing premades is becuase the MMR is brand new and fresh, the system hasn’t adjusted to your skill level yet, so obviously you’re going to play people with skewed results.
Patience.
^This
I have said it before and got flamed a lot. 5 high MMR solo queurs VS 5 high MMR pre-mades does not mean instant lose. Yes, premades will use TS/skype and can choose the 5 classes to play with. But in this meta the change that u get a solid team (talking about classes (not 5 bunker) is like 100%. Splitting it could be a little bit better, but its nothing game breaking.
What happens is anyone joining solo needs to lose for a while until their rank is so low that they are less likely to face premade.
Do you really think that people want to play in mode where they need to lose like 50 times in order to have a CHANCE at getting a competitive match?
Also the population is so low that the only way to keep queue times at any reasonable level is to match pre-mades vs pugs. That is going to happen no matter how much time the MMR takes to settle.
We are back to month 1-2 with premades farming pugs all days.
I have to agree on all points.
The time to implement this stuff is the main issue.
Here is my version of let’s play GW2 solo MMR
Siric is absolutely correct.
I fail to see how this is an improvement over the single team paid matches format.
Solo queuers will be gone in a few weeks since they will never have anything more than a ‘reasonable shot at beating a low tier team’ in terms of competitive matches.
Pre-made teams are back to month 1 and 2 where actual matches between 2 equally skilled teams are a rare occurrence since most of the time they will be play a pug-premade mix to keep queue time low.
I think now is the point where we have to accept that the population is simply to low to sustain any sort of legitimate competitive format.
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So as people play more games they’ll start to settle again.
Basically it sounds like Anet is saying let the premade teams destroy your rating until you are so low that you will be less likely to face them.
Solo queue = low rated players without teams. If at any point you start to win you will again be matched against pre-mades until you are knocked back down.
Its IMPOSSIBLE to achieve a high rank as a solo player, which defeats the entire point of having rating for solo players in the first place.
— Can a game become an e-sport so far after release with such a small player-base?
Not it can’t because the competitive community has continually shrunk to the current very low stagnant levels. People like to point out that LoL took while to become esports, but it was continually growing over that early period.
— If the game became perfect tomorrow, how would you give the game enough life to become an e-sport?
Unfortunately conquest mode is not interesting enough, especially with this meta, to attract a large following. The actual combat is good, but the flow of matches is not. Conquest mode is played out, so even if the ladder and MMR is perfect, the actual game mode is boring.
— What percentage of gw2 population has even set foot in the heart of the mists?
There were tons of people who were initially interested in spvp and bout the game mainly for that reason. Most left simply because there was no ladder and it was hard to find competitive matches. There was nothing in between farming pugs or getting rolled by the few hardcore teams.
Its kind of funny to me that teams like TP and PZ are constantly trying to white knight for Anet and ‘help’ the community when it was those very people that made the game too expensive to learn in terms of losing tickets for most people.
Removing tickets now is pretty much to late.
— Is pvp viewer friendly?
The answer has to be a resounding no, based on the viewership numbers. There are only a few people who can even get 100 viewers these days.
It seems people would rather watch that guy who plays the auction house and gives away gold most of time time.
— sponsors
lol
It seems to me the best way to get solos to play together is to make them face pre-mades and get slaughtered for while until the solo people have such a low rating that they are more likely to face each other.
From my understanding the MMR system will allow full premade teams to build rating when facing solo or random pug teams.
Doesn’t this mean there is little incentive for full premades to actually fight each other?
The best time to play is when none of the good teams are queuing so that a team can farm rating against pugs where they clearly have advantages such as ideal team comp, and coordination through VOIP.
If a ranking ladder is released under these conditions, it would be possible for a team who plays in off hours or dodges good teams to achieve very high rank even though they never actually win consistently against the best teams.
At least paids ensured only pre-made teams were fighting each other. Now that rank can be farmed by facing pugs, I can’t see how it has any value at all.
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Agree Ayra.
Also Lord is right, mixing solos in with premades makes any sort of ranking or MMR pointless.
Sure 5 high rated solo players might have a similar combined rating to a full premade, but if they get 3 engineers and 2 warriors and are not using VOIP it cannot be considered a competitive match.
The same few 5 man hardcore premades that for some reason still play will run the broken comps and roll over everyone most of the time.
I could even see the system being abused in that there is little incentive for 2 hardcore teams to keep queuing against each other when 1 could just stop and give the other a better chance of getting matched against soloers or a mixed solo-premade team and farm rating in uneven matches.
Very sobering timeline.
The only good thing about this patch was the removal of tickets and qualifier points.
Unfortunately throwing everybody back into frees results in pre-made hardcore teams stomping everybody, just like month 1-2. The MMR doesn’t really work when mixing solos with pre-mades and with a low overall population.