Guild Wars 2

Blair.3796:

Hello! Just stopping by to make a quick inquiry.

…

So, aside from the possibly inherent toxic elements and bad eggs of the PvP community as a whole, why do some people think the actual system is “poorly designed?”

Thanks in advance for any input!

Primarily because…

A) A big portion of the player base was Guild Wars players from the first game, and GW2’s PvP is a huge downgrade in features compared to the first game. From modes, to goals, to progression, to build options, to competitiveness. And this is comparing GW2 as it stands now, to GW1 at RELEASE.

and

B) At release the features that we do have were in a horribly implemented state which led to a huge sum of the PvP player base leaving.

tanztante.6532:

you are talking about second installments constantly
…
it tanked after 6 months and they had to go f2p.

Many of those are 2nd installments, but some that are not. There are actaully many games that are on 2 year spans, those were just some of the more well known/high profile ones these days, so I thought they would be great examples. 2 years-3max is the average for new games these days.

As mentioned, sPvP’s more akin to Moba style game. We’re not talking about creating a new game in 2 years, just using their existing features in new ways.

The netcode isn’t very resource intensive and (the majority of) attacks use simple collision areas/radius for the attacks. Furthermore, we’re talking about an instanced PvP zone, so no work has to be done on the netcode at all, especially becuase it’s optimized for scaling up to WvW standards.

Not all the games I mention were single player. DS has a unique multiplayer system that would take more time than traditional systems to implement, especially with how people “phase” in to each others zones, the signs, etc. Uncharted (after the first) spent a lot of time on multiplayer development as well.

About SWToR… That game tanked for reasons other than MMO’s being hard to work on… their endgame was sorely unfinished. My whole guild came to SWToR and actually loved the game… until max level. Then it had little content, unfinished content, broken raids, a broken PvP planet, and overall nothing to do.
I will say that (most) the teams listed are large or experienced, but ANet (should) be too! They released GW1 which was a huge success, and should have all the know-how on how to create an MMO. Which is the point of my complaints – they knew how to make good PvP from GW1 but abandoned that knowledge in favor of completely new systems that were a HUGE downgrade, and have failed hardcore for the last 2 years.

as far as this whole topic goes, i don’t want to blindly defend anet, but i do want to mention, that the pvp team is apparently heavily understaffed
…
the list is long and i don’t want to go on, but i think you get my point. it is ok to be upset about the speed in which updates and changes happen, but constantly crying about it (and gw1) is not helpful.

Are you really surprised that people are upset the sequel to GW isn’t like GW? You think any other game – example: DoTA fans wouldnt be kittened if the sequel only had conquest maps and removed half the features?

GW1 to GW2 population comparisons depend on how long in to the game. Later in the life cycle you are correct, but the first 2 years of GW1 blew this game away population-wise in PvP (not including WvW). Queues used to take seconds, everything from RA to high end PvP.

Automated tournaments in GW2 at release is a bad example. It had so many problems and that’s why noone played. No incentive, no progression, long queues, premades vs pugs, and FEES to get in?… completely half kittened. Even Random Arena (lowest form of GW1 PvP) had incentive, no premades vs pugs, and maps w/ multiple modes! Once again if they stuck with what worked, instead of trying to make something new work (and implement it half kittened) we’d be better off.

I’m not sure what you mean about constantly crying about it, I wait about 6 months in between posting topics here. Complaining about it SHOULD help if they were listening to feedback. The biggest feedback since release of the game has been for the things I’m complaining about and they have done nothing but force feed the same mode instead of falling back on what worked for them.

Majority of PvP players have already quit because they are tired of dealing with this. GW had a huge amount of fans and known players, what % actually stuck with the game? That should be a lesson to everyone involved. But instead of learning from that, they have stuck to failures and not delivered on their promises.

tanztante.6532:

would you buy such a game?

You want an honest answer to that?

If I knew EXACTLY how the game was right now, I would not buy it. I’m not a PvE player, I only bought the game for the PvP, and the promises of the development in to a true successor to GW1 PvP. That’s exactly why I check in every 6 months to see if things have changed at all.

The PvP is a straight up downgrade in this “sequel”. They lied before release. They lied when they answered my questions about PvP at their panel in ComicCon in 2010-2011 (forgot which year). They have lied ever since release about what they are adding.

And most of all, they have focused on all the wrong areas of the game, attempting to make it “an eSport” “fun to watch” and “competitive”… trying to build a house from the top down… instead of building a strong foundation from the bottom up. They have a foundation from the game their named after… How about building a “fun game” first????

Exile.8160:

silvermember.8941:

Exile.8160:

mooty.4560:

I’d wager that the problem with importing PvP concepts and game modes from GW1 is that the game mechanics are very different. People ask for GvG, as it was in GW1, like once a month and the reality is that GvG would be very, very different in GW2. This game is only a “Guild Wars” installment in theme and title only.

They have to come up with new arenas that work within the foundation they currently have, not what they had in GW1… so perhaps that’s just a steep challenge and they’re undecided on it. I’m sure some additions are coming, sooner or later.

Its been 2 years, they can’t make a map in 2 years?

Well they did make maps and a lot of player complained about it. And considering they had to redesign a lot of the PvP mechanics like rewards, added custom, solo Q, etc new maps. Also your short-sighted argument fails once you realize that alot of maps are made but not all of them are successful so they have to be redesigned or dropped all of which takes a lot of time.

Its 2 years after the release so while they were making it they could have implemented GvG into their scheduled . there most be something wrong cuz I can think of 3 map after the release and those are skyhammer, spirit watch and courtyard those were the successful ones? . couryard too small for anyone to enjoy spritwatch too broken for a few classes and skyhammer don’t get me started about that. Anyways say all you want but GvG has been ask for SINCE release and instead they gave us those maps

Might I add….

People were asking for MODES since release… not MAPS.

The frustrating things are how A) This is a shadow of what they achieved years ago in GW1, and The reasons they give us that they do not add modes are counter-productive to actually fixing the PvP in this game.

So there is a problem with game mechanics making this mode a problem? Fix the game mechanics!

Don’t want to fragment the player base? Wouldn’t be a problem if there actually WAS a player base, but they have nothing fun to play!

Not fun to watch as a spectator? That sounds like the game ever since release! Build a fun strong PvP game and then specatators will come! They don’t care about how pretty everything looks if they have no investment in it! As mentioned before most the top tournament games were NOT designed for PvP and mostly look like crap (or did at first).

Downed state causing problems? Put more limitations on it! (If you recall something like this happened early on in GW1 development as well).

Is there really a problem that GW1 hasn’t already solved? Why are we even in this situation?

Helly.2597:

ZenoSpyridon.1396:

Really? Want a few examples of AAA games with 2 year development cycles?

All the Uncharted games.

Demon Souls/Dark Souls/Dark Souls 2

Bioshock 2

Both of Mass Effect’s sequels.

That’s not counting the countless FPS games, and yearly series that reguarly come out.

And now that I think of it, why don’t you look at the development of Guild Wars 1 and it’s expansions as an example…?

Not to mention the fact that the structured PvP portion of this game is just a fraction of the size of a typical game, and all the groundwork is in place, making the work on this aspect of the game more minimal than a sequel.

This isn’t really the point though…. Point is that it’s been 2 years and PvP has had very minimal changes during that time, compared to what was promised, considering it’s been 1.5 years since they said we would be getting new modes…

Just to point out, none of the games you listed are MMOs, which adds a wrinkle to the development, since it adds complexity especially when it comes to PvP.

Structured PvP is not designed as an MMO. It’s a small zone with a low population cap.

What you say would be true if it was even made anything like an outdoor zone, but it’s not. It’s a small instanced server similar to any moba or dungeon crawler game. Except those actually have MUCH higher data transfer due to all the minions etc in the game.

So actually PvP in this should be easier to implement than any outdoor dungeon in the game, and easier than a moba…

Regardless, even the outdoor/instanced/PvP areas…. look at how many more of those they added in the time frame since the game came out. Then compare that to PvP…

mooty.4560:

I’d wager that the problem with importing PvP concepts and game modes from GW1 is that the game mechanics are very different. People ask for GvG, as it was in GW1, like once a month and the reality is that GvG would be very, very different in GW2. This game is only a “Guild Wars” installment in theme and title only.

They have to come up with new arenas that work within the foundation they currently have, not what they had in GW1… so perhaps that’s just a steep challenge and they’re undecided on it. I’m sure some additions are coming, sooner or later.

Mechanics being different does not mean alternative modes don’t work. Best game that is an example of this is Smite. Log on to there and look at how many modes they have! And aside from maybe 1-2, they all have a decent player base.

That Smite example shows exactly how silly they are for worrying about “fragmenting the player base”. The player base will play what is fun, and many people just dont find conquest fun. Those that do will keep playing, but those that dont will play the other modes, and the OVERALL population will grow.

Ironically, in their quest to avoid fragmenting their player base, all they are achieving is fragmenting it even more themselves.

Everything that works in Smite would work here as well (except maybe aram). Same as everything that works in GW1 would work here as well, actually even better due to healers not being as strong. For what reason would any of the modes in GW1 “not work” here because of the mechanics? Areanas to the death would work, flag mechanics would work, GvG would work, etc. It would open up whole new realms for the skill system, because the skill sys has so much potential but it’s wasted in conquest…

The only mention of anything here that might “ruin” it is “downed stance”… and if downed stance is so negative for the game then that is a balance problem with downed stance and not the game modes. Can you really say it’s good game design if a feature is making no other options other than conquest viable?

silvermember.8941:

Well they did make maps and a lot of player complained about it. And considering they had to redesign a lot of the PvP mechanics like rewards, added custom, solo Q, etc new maps. Also your short-sighted argument fails once you realize that alot of maps are made but not all of them are successful so they have to be redesigned or dropped all of which takes a lot of time.

Maybe if they actually did what works (and they have proven works in the past), instead of trying to come up with new ideas that will somehow trigger an eSport explosion to revitalize the game, people would stop complaining. Instead of sticking with a single game mode that was not well received for years, and removing everything “Guild Wars” from the sequel…

And designing a map for PvP here is no harder than any other PvP game, Moba, FPS, etc… It’s actually more complicated in those forms of games due to more varied mechanics and different types of characters.

tanztante.6532:

well, maybe those kickstarter sidescrolling point and click adventures.

Really? Want a few examples of AAA games with 2 year development cycles?

All the Uncharted games.

Demon Souls/Dark Souls/Dark Souls 2

Bioshock 2

Both of Mass Effect’s sequels.

That’s not counting the countless FPS games, and yearly series that reguarly come out.

And now that I think of it, why don’t you look at the development of Guild Wars 1 and it’s expansions as an example…?

Not to mention the fact that the structured PvP portion of this game is just a fraction of the size of a typical game, and all the groundwork is in place, making the work on this aspect of the game more minimal than a sequel.

This isn’t really the point though…. Point is that it’s been 2 years and PvP has had very minimal changes during that time, compared to what was promised, considering it’s been 1.5 years since they said we would be getting new modes…

Case and point:

JonathanSharp.7094:

I agree. We’ve done some of the core stuff we wanted to nail w/ the conquest format, so now we’ll start getting into different secondaries that provide new types of gameplay.

^ Over a year ago… Still hasn’t happened, and this “new PvP format” just simply is not working…

Which brings me back to topic… Why don’t we switch back to what we KNOW works, what we KNOW is successful from GW1… and just add all these new ideas and features on top of that hugely successful framework?

(Edit: Added that to topic)

tico.9814:

When it’s ready.

I’m assuming that is sarcasm… but incase it’s not….

You do know 2 years is the entire development cycle of many games out there?

I had the highest hopes for this game going in to release because of their history with GW1. I figured GW1 was (mostly) a PvP player base towards the end, and since it’s got a great pricing method, I thought I would have a new MMO home. Boy was I wrong…

I pleaded on the forums here reguarly for the first months of the game, when dev communication was actually pretty good. I wasn’t alone obviously, the huge majority of the playerbase was unhappy and taht was obvious by the decline in players week by week.

Finally after a few months one of the devs told us in the “Big PvP patch around April” (LAST year) they were FINALLY going to look in to improving PvP with new game modes, etc!

So I took an extended break to see how things happened… and sadly things BARELY changed in this whole time.

And it seems the tone has not changed. People are still begging for the same things they were a year and a half ago, and still getting the same excuses… (and yes I call them excuses, because if they were only “reasons” or “explanations” that would imply they would have gathered evidence and found a solution to work towards by now).
Now the topics going on to “how do we add objectives to the modes to make them work” and “how do we add progression through the game modes”….

Brings me to the topic here… Why doesn’t GW2 base their PvP off their successful systems they had in GW1??

There was many different modes, some of which had special objectives (and some of which that did not – ALL of them were fun regardless of this!).
There was a clear progression! Not just with moving from random arenas>competitive>HoH>GvG, but also a clear progression of unlocks/gear/skills/etc, but done in a way that NEVER felt like you were at a disadvatange.

Also the reasons given to us of imbalance and requiring healers… but this really wasn’t that big of an issue in GW1 either. In random arenas, people tend to spec completely different cahracters that are more viable for multiple roles and soloing. And that did not stop players from promoting out of random in to competitive (with theier random team) and getting more than a dozen consecutive wins! If you are in any other premade team mode, you can obvious add a variety of healers, which in this game is highly beneficial as well.

And it seems that ANet is blinded by the fact that they want to succeed as an eSport nowdays… it’s so easy to forget that GW1 found some success at this as well, when the game was not even designed for it!

You do realize, the top eSport games were NOT initially designed as an eSport… but evolved in to one over time! You need to build from the bottom up, a strong foundation and then work on making it an eSport, not the other way around. DoTA, LoL, SC – they were not worrying about what viewers would think when watching a game! So why are you worried about that when the player portion of the game is being neglected for the viewers? Viewers aren’t going to care much unless the players & gameplay could match the viewership features!

To the developers: GW1 succeeded at EVERYTHING you wanted out of GW2… WHY don’t you take advantage of this solution you have had in front of you all along??? This game is supposed to be “GUILD WARS” 2! A game with possibly the best PvP system in an MMO… and GW2… Being honest here I would say it’s one of the bottom 50% worst PvP implementations in an MMO (at least the structured portion, WvW isnt as bad).
The more we stray from the essence of the first game, the more it feels like a betrayal to the customers that have been fans of the series.
..
I beg you (still, after 2 years)… Please learn from these mistakes and go back to your games own path of success.

I have no problem if you add new features on top of it, but AT LEAST give us the modes/features we had in GW1. Until then GW2 is going to feel like upgraded graphics/combat mechanics but downgraded everything else…

Please… Stop wasting all this potential.

(Edit: Case and point:

JonathanSharp.7094:

I agree. We’ve done some of the core stuff we wanted to nail w/ the conquest format, so now we’ll start getting into different secondaries that provide new types of gameplay.

^ Over a year ago… Still hasn’t happened, and this “new PvP format” just simply is not working…

Which brings me back to topic… Why don’t we switch back to what we KNOW works, what we KNOW is successful from GW1… and just add all these new ideas and features on top of that hugely successful framework??? That will bring players, which can eventually lead to eSports, but we need the actual players first! Why make a game for spectators if noone is watching…?)

Honestly, I think the best course of action as this is a Guild Wars game, is to build this game from the ground up. If your building a house you need to start with a foundation, if your growing a tree you need to start with the seeds.

Therefore, start with the basics that GW1 launched with. Random arenas, Competitive arenas, HoH, GvG – this offered a clear progression and variety for everyone.

Random arenas forced more “jack of all trades” style builds as you never knew what team members you were going to get, Competitive helped players learn to make specialized builds that rely on each other as team members more, and this allowed them to be prepared to move in to HoH/GvG.

Not only will this give options to every player, but all your true Guild Wars fans will be more than pleased, and finally feel like GW2 is what they were promised as being a GW game.

When it comes to progression, I think you guys had it great in the first GW game as well. You can get a core build quickly, but it takes time to eventually earn more “options”. You can combine this with the discussed Moba style progression (new char types, “classes”, specialization, etc), new gear/skins, etc.

But the important thing, relative to what we have now, is we need some type of progression OUTSIDE of looks. Looks are great, but there has to be other things too. And for looks it needs to be something dramatically cool or different, and a sign of accomplishment. The current ones are just,… a grind really.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Also, as many of us have said, we want to give players enough variety such that they can change what they play from time to time, while also being sure that we don’t fracture the player-base by spreading players out to too many different game types.

Honestly, this is such a very, VERY harmful train of thought!!!!

If you have more modes, you will bring MORE PLAYERS in, and that won’t be an issue.

Also, so many other games have many game modes and it don’t hurt the game at all! Look at (every FPS in existence). Or for a more similar game, look at Smite. Smite has 9! Game modes. And no problems getting queues in any of them! It’s free, have someone from the team check out how the queues work there… or check LoL’s modes (they have quite a few now too)…

People will play the most fun ones, yes, but lets think about it for a second… Lets say the player base splits between the no-control points mode, and Conquest. If conquest ever gets to a point where there’s not enough players, that’s because the mode just plain and simply IS NOT FUN!!!

People will cycle to the modes which are most fun, which are the ones you should SUPPORT, rather than forcing people to play a single mode type.

I’ve said it a million times, GO BACK TO YOUR SUCCESSFUL BLUEPRINT FROM GW1. PvP players were very happy with the mode variety in GW1. I’ve thought about it so much and there’s no good reason that you guys wouldn’t follow a successful template… and now that Conquest has been failing for all this time, why not go with what you know works?

Keep in mind theres a HUGE PvP player base from GW1 WISHING that you will do this, and will come back if you actually give us the modes GW1 was known for!

Sure, balance will need fixing (already does) but that’s normal, it’s more important to give us some modes that are actually fun. Conquest, in many players opinion, is the opposite of fun. It’s often more about AVOIDING players than KILLING players, which is so lame…

I hope you guys wake up and realize this is a GUILD WARS game….. Make it like Guild Wars… PLEASE

1) Required to use GW1’s PvP design as influence
2) Game Modes
3) Balance

GW1 had the PERFECT blueprint for PvP design in MMO’s… Game modes for all types of players, progression from new players in random arenas all the way through top of the leaderboards in GvG. Reward system that is easy to get one class to where you need it to compete but has enough unlocks to keep you busy for months.

Why the developers decided to throw their successful blueprint out the window is beyond me. GW1 was the most successful PvP MMO out there, already had some tournament support without even being designed for it, had a huge player base, and GW1 was really more of a PvP endgame than PvE.

Yet for some reason, all that was thrown out the window. GW2 is great for PvE, and I love how they patch so often… I just wish the PvP wasn’t in nearly the same state it was when it was released, and was more like GW1’s .

Just like how Blizzard is (finally) doing what they need to make the game a success and actually removing RMAH from their game, you guys need to seriously go back to the drawing board and make DRASTIC changes to the PvP in this game if you want it to succeed.

I guarantee if you give us GW1 style PvP – even using the same exact maps as GW1 did! Your PvP player base will return to give the game another try, as well as all the GW1 players that felt betrayed by GW2!

Seriously, the tired excuses of splitting the player base, etc, all are only a problem because there are no players BECAUSE of the current system.

Also refer to games like Smite, they have a whopping 9 different modes, and don’t have problems with a split player base.

I want GW2 to succeed, I want it to be GUILD WARS again, because everything we’ve seen from GW2 PvP is a shadow of Guild Wars.

The combat mechanics are fun, but are being held back by the mode….

Please. Bring the Guild Wars back to Guild Wars 2.

Accept that this experiment you tried with GW2 PvP has failed. Cut your losses! Go back to the drawing board to your SUCCESSFUL formula form GW1, and relaunch the PvP. That’s the only way to really fix things at this point…

(PS – Just want to mention 2 more things…

1) It’s a shame that I have been saying the same exact things as I have in this for nearly a year. And I remember you did another one of these surveys what… 9-10 months ago probably? Where I and some others had the same suggestions, and we were told after the “big PvP patch” in middle of the year you guys would start working on new modes etc. Yet it still hasnt happened.

But now, look at most of the top 3 requests, almost everyone is saying game modes, rewards or progression, and balance. Same things we’ve been begging for all along… Aside from balance, which would be far better than the current situation if there were modes other than Conq.

2) My biggest suggestion outside of adding these requests? Make a survey like this about the top 3 PROBLEMS with PvP. If you do this, you may see for yourself why I’ve said the only way to bring PvP back is to cut losses, and relaunch.)

JonathanSharp.7094:

As others have said, splitting the queue’s entirely can be bad. But it also means solo’s always play solos, and teams always play teams.

There are pro/cons to both options. We’re watching your debates/points and in the end, we will try to make the best system for the game’s health.

Before I respond I say I agree with most of what Lowell said.

But most the drawbacks of splitting them entirely are solved by the fact that we don’t have the 8-team system to worry about anymore.

I feel LoL’s version of “Solo or Duo” queue is a good solution, as long as it keeps the amount of “duo” queues on each team equal. Because in that game I honestly have played solo and duo queue just as much if not more than I’ve played full team games. The Duo option is great to be able to play with friends and not feel “lonely” even if you are doing queues without a full team.

I will have absolutely no problem waiting for a little more queue time to ensure the teams are fair.

With that said, please don’t forget that solo queue also has a big psychological aspect. Anxiety is a big problem with new players – this is apparent from not just LoL but SC2 as well. If players aren’t 100% sure that both A) they will be facing someone around their level, and they won’t be facing a premade team… This inevitably leads to anxiety for the player.

This psychological aspect is a big issue. Because without the solo queue, even if this player just gets stomped, they are going to assume it was to a premade. After once or twice they can tell themselves it was just bad luck, but if it happens for a bad streak? People will easily say “Screw this”…

Also I’d like to point at that some games that had very successful PvP at launch (SWToR for example) ended up dying off at endgame because of no solo queue. Sure, other things led to the game dying as well, but if you look at the primary reason that all the players state as the reason they quit, this was #1.

I would appreciate it if someone inquired about a solo queue for the new Ranked gameplay.

Now that 1v1 and matchmaking/rankings are coming in, I feel solo queue is the most important thing missing from making the current game mode implemented near perfectly!

It’s very important any of us who had their freinds quit, and to help players find more partners to play with!

Also it solves the problems of where some mists/servers have more or less players than the others. My server doesn’t seem to have the most active sPvP player base… Going to be harder for some servers, and solo queue would fix this problem!

Thanks

Yes I agree with what was said here.

All my PvP friends quit the game, and I’m having trouble getting them to even want to try the game again.

I’m thrilled that the paid tournaments are going to change for good. But I’m really bummed that free tournaments aren’t going to change yet.

For the Ranked system it vaguely mentions “after the match each players rankings will be adjusted”. That “sounds” like each player will have their own rating, rather than the team having a static rating. I really hope this means it can be solo queued.

Now that you don’t need 8 teams at a time, I don’t see why there would be any reason not to add solo queues now. You don’t need 40 people to queue for a specific game type, just 10.

Please solo queues! Even if it’s the same exact format with a completely separate rating, or even shared the rating if its easier to implement, I’d be more than happy!

butch.8136:

^Conquest will be here to stay. ‘cus they want it newb friendly, spectator friendly, ’easy to understand, hard to master’,etc.

Honestly? Conquest isn’t newb friendly. Newbs just want to fight and ignore the control points alltogether. The fact that its not newb friends is proven by the fact that even if you do tournaments it’s rare to see people actually avoiding the larger force, which is appropriate strategy for the mode. Most ppl just want to fight.

It’s not spectator friendly either really, considering a large amount of time is spent NOT fighting, rather than fighting. Who wants to watch people run around?

JonathanSharp.7094:

I agree. We’ve done some of the core stuff we wanted to nail w/ the conquest format, so now we’ll start getting into different secondaries that provide new types of gameplay.

Also, I think it’s ok to have some “just for fun” maps and “competitive/serious/tournament” maps. So let’s say we come up with a secondary that may appeal to more casual players, but not as much to hardcore players. I think that’s ok. It will just be known (and other games do this), that some maps are more for casual audiences, and others are for the hard core players.

Huge thank you for finally responding to this issue! I have no problem with Conquest being a strategic option, my only complaints are that it should not be the only option. Guild Wars 1 had so many great options and that was one of the best parts of the game.

For ideas, heres hoping to see GW1 style TDM, CTF, maybe even Assault, etc. Maybe HoH or GvG someday would be cool too.

I just hope the determination of what maps will be fun and which will be competitive, will be up to the players. If a certain type of mode catches on I hope it will be supported in to the future.

Now I finally feel at ease. I understand these features take time, I’m just glad that they will be added someday. It’s a good feeling to know GW1 players expectations coming in to GW2 will not be forgotten. The lack of response made me worried for awhile.

Thanks again. One more person who is a happy customer again. You won’t hear any more complaints of modes out of me.

S H A K U R AS.9536:

I think JS that u dont understand us, with 1 thing, we dont want to know DAY of the update but MONTH or if it is almost done we just want to know PART of the month (first part/sec part etc.) Because many pple quitted and it will be more easy to bring pple bck if u tell for example new map sec part of Febuary. If u do it 15 or 28 who care, but its will be mobilize u to finally make it!

For me its enough if u write:

-Ladder – end of Febuary
-Obs – first part of march
-New Map end of January
etc.

Why do u always hide for the same information, we can not be able to do it on time. WHO CARE that ull be late if this things are 6 months late… So, nobody will care if they wait 1-2 weeks longer, but then many guilds can prepare comeback, before updates!

Sec things, all new things have a tone of bugs, better is do it 2-3 weeks faster and fast fix bugs, because there are always bugs, even if u “test” it million times, so better let pple test it and fix bugs faster…

They already implied the majority of features are going in the PvP update early this year, and I’m sure they won’t make any promises other than that on a date incase problems arise.

But honestly, I don’t have a problem with them taking time. All I would like is a response to all these issues people bring up.

All these issues that myself and others have been bringing up since release have flat out not received a response at all. Which, to me, says it’s currently not a plan. And that’s what is most alarming.

If they responded to all the ticket issues people brought up, announced some plans of how they were going to work from the ground up instead of the top down, and announced if they were ever going to give us GW1 style modes, you wouldn’t hear a single complaint out of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to know there is PvP improvements coming. But until I hear GW2’s PvP is actually going to be at least a little bit similar to the PvP Guild Wars was known for, I’ve lost hope. Because the more and more I play tournaments, the more and more I miss RA, HA, HoH, and GvG. That was such a great progression from the bottom up, offered various modes for every situation and every type of player. And it’s been flat out ignored for a game mode that Guild Wars was NOT known for, and that is restricting the combat system in so many ways.

I don’t know why they aren’t giving GW1 players what they want and rightfully expect when this is supposed to be a Guild Wars game. If I knew I was ever going to get that, I would be happy. Until then, I’m discouraged by any of these coming changes, because until now all these “improvements” on GW1 PvP modes have made things worse and worse.

The 1v1 team arenas is so close to being a great step… and has potential to be the most popular mode available, and could make tournaments better for the daily/weekly system. But the issue with tickets, and only having 1 game mode, would ruin it’s potential.

nerva.7940:

mjharrison.3209:

nerva.7940:

KarlaGrey.5903:

Unlike GW2, GW really was innovative,

let me stop u right there. GW2 is innovative in many ways. relating to pvp, they brought a fun, AAA ARPG combat system to the MMO. that in itself is a big feat. trust me, spvp isnt suffering due to lack of innovation. it hasnt grown due to lackluster balancing changes, a horrid lack of content, and a two-dimensional metagame.

The only thing GW2 innovated on was area combo fields, and even then, LOTRO’s group combo system should still get some of the credit.

There have been many “action rpgs” already: planetside, savage, darkfall, tera, others.

planetside – MMOFPS
DF – a clunky mess
TERA – you have to stand still while casting
Savage – not even close to AAA quality
others – please indulge me

as i said, GW2 is the only MMO that has put out a AAA ARPG combat system.

I love the GW2 combat system.

It’s just too bad it goes to waste with only 1 game mode, which is a mode that doesn’t encourage even fights, with a metagame that rewards avoiding outnumbered fights and taking advantage of fights where you outnumber opponent (roaming) and bunkering… Rather than a metagame that rewards team coordination that’s based on defeating your opponent and proving who is the better team like the majority of GW1 modes did.

Even the primary genre to offer control points modes (fps) do it in a far better fashion, the successful control points modes function like TF2’s, rather than “king of the hill point generation” style like GW2 is. The games that offer this style of control points offer it as 1 mode out of many, and it’s one of the least popular modes in comparison to others, or they have many more mechanics and players per team to make control points actually mean something (such as PS2/BF).

What’s happening here from gw1-gw2 is as if the next CoD game was released, and removed all the modes except conquest. Players would be justifiably upset. But then for the next 5 months completely ignored players requests for the game modes the series was known for. Although GW2 has patched on a monthly basis and adds much more content than CoD, which makes it even more depressing that these players been ignored so long.

Such a shame the combats so awesome but the mode dumbs every aspect of the combat down, from viable strategies in the metagame, to class selection, to viable builds for each class…

Sprawl.3891:

yup, horrible system. in a fps one skilled player can make up for team balance not so in low skill cap gw2 where 3 people who just picked up the game could easily down the most elite player in the game.

Not just that, but RPG style combat is designed from the ground up around teamwork with a full team. Which makes it completely silly that you aren’t rewarded for working with your team.

GW2 does have a low skill cap for “solo” players, but for a coordinated team has a very high skill cap, since most the mechanics are based around a team. The combo fields, the downed system, the buff system, the condition system, the AoE nature of most abilities, and the majority of special mechanics for most class, all support teamwork rather than solo and are not fully efficient without a team.

But as sad as it sounds, none of these things are rewarded in hotjoin, and you will progress much better bunkering or roaming and farming points, since things are not balanced by team and winning don’t matter.

Even if teamwork was rewarded, you would still progress better bunkering or roaming and farming points, and even without points bunkering or roaming fits the mode better. The whole system is flawed.

We dearly need more modes or else the amazing team combat of the game is never going to shine. Once again I gotta say, I give up on this game until it becomes more like GW1. This isn’t a Guild Wars PvP game yet. I hope it becomes one some day…

And that pains me to say, because I was a huge fan of GW2 leading up to release, the dev team is awesome as I’ve talked to them myself and even played the game at Comiccon before release. Got all my friends to play, who now are afraid to buy any games on my recommendation again. With as many smart designers who actually play their own game, I don’t know how things are turning out this way, there must be some business issues behind the scenes we’re not aware of that are ruining things for everyone. Especially considering noone will even respond to the loyal GW1 players who were told to expect similar things from GW2 PvP.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Splitting up my post, because it seems to have hit the character limit.

Unlike GW2, GW really was innovative, and its pvp developed way beyond Anet’s wildest expectations. But it was an instance of gradual evolution of a good basic concept, and it was evolving bottom-up – in GW2 they tried to force a top-down approach, and it fell flat, more so because the basic features coudln’t be added in time (rushed release ftl) to support their misplaced approach at game’s release.

But hey, as I said. Miracles do happen, and I do still log on once per day. But I spend more time on GW than GW2, and only really log GW2 to chat or do pvp daily (but I’m questioning the point of that too).

Does that mean the game isn’t, or cannot be fun? Absolutely not. The right people can make the worst of things at least tolerable, if not somewhat fun. But the game gives very little emphasis on (and even actively takes a step away from) the community part of the playing experience, and from community itself…and that’s just messed up.

What you said about the top down approach is so true. I’ve said it so many times myself.

I’ve really just lost faith right now due to the fact that they are ignoring the success of GW1, ignoring how it became successful, and they are forcing the conquest mode down our throats.

I don’t expect this game to be exactly like GW1, but I love the combat improvements, and the fundamental problem lies in the game modes available.

No idea why they are focusing on highly competitive aspects first. No idea why they won’t give us any more game modes when that was one of the things GW1 was known for. No idea why they are letting a great PvP combat system go to waste by making winning about anything other than actual fighting. No idea why they are limiting the amount of builds in their own game when that’s something else GW1 was known for. The trait system has so much potential but not in a game with only 1 mode.

And most of all, I don’t know why they won’t respond to anyone who shares these sentiments, since every GW1 player I know feels the same way. And we all feel betrayed by not only being left out in the design of this game, but not even getting a response as faithful followers of the series.

I’ve basically given up at this point. I keep checking back with high hopes only to be disappointed again, I used to check daily, and now today is the first time I checked in over a week, and its going to be longer next time. I won’t be happy again until I can simply log in to game, get rewarded for actually working with my team to kill the other team on even terms to prove who is better and has more skill , rather than be rewarded for avoiding outnumbered fights and taking advantage when we outnumber and being forced in to bunker or roamer roles.

That’s what I expect from a Guild Wars game after playing Guild Wars 1. My expectations are getting stomped in to the ground and leaving me feeling betrayed.

Honestly in my opinion, not just sPvP but the whole hotjoin system is a big mistake.

It encourages you to play for yourself and not care which team you are on, not care about the score or winning the game, only your own personal score.

This is even more of a problem when you factor in auto balancing. In a game with this type of combat, being down a player is a huge disadvantage. If you join a game and your team is up a player, thats a huge advantage. This is a fundamental problem of the game mode. And sure, it’s only hotjoin, you don’t lose anything if you lose the game. But that’s another fundamental problem of the game mode. It doesn’t encourage working with your team to win.

Autobalance does not really solve any of those problems I just mentioned. Sure, it “sounds” like a solution when it evens out the players on each team, but you just took a key part of synergy from the winning team and threw them on the other team, once again encouraging them to play for themselves rather than for the team. And with people leaving and joining constantly, theres always an imbalance going on each team.

Hotjoin is a mode that was designed off FPS games, but this is not a FPS game and should not be treated as one. FPS games work much better if your playing solo and not working with your team. RPG style games, it doesnt work.

Not to mention it makes it a pain to play with freinds in this type of mode, and that’s another form of imbalance. So it’s not a good thing for community play OR balance.

Ashumet.8674:

I’m certain that people will come back to gw2 pvp if a good update comes out. At least I will.

I used to be impatient, but now I realise Arenanet has just gotten a lot of constructive criticism on the tournament system as a whole. I think they were planning a major update for February anyway, so I really expect they want to do this right and not just quickly implement something that isn’t as good as we want it to be. The matchmaking which they are making, requires a lot of things to consider. (Sharp said he wanted it to be based on not only score but also damage dealt, amount healed, conditions inflicted, damage taken, etc…) I can only imagine what time it would take to balance that out over the professions so that the score that comes out is based on skill level and not profession.

And the new/modified tournament system they want to implement, heavily depends on this matchmaking. You can’t just change the way tourneys work for 2 weeks, and then implement a new patch that changes everything again. That would most likely kitten off players.

So I only have one message for Arenanet: Take your time, but do it right and prove once again you are expectional developers.

Ashumet out.

I agree that a lot of people will come back if they do a good PvP patch.

The only issue here is that “good” is subjective. A large amount of people are waiting for them to do away with the Tournament system and add 1v1 team matchmaking, which would bring a lot of them back.

But there is also a large amount of the community, especially GW1 players, that quit the game a long time ago because GW2’s style of PvP is so different from the PvP Guild Wars was known for.

Personally I’ll be fairly satisfied with 1v1 team matchmaking, that would get me back on a regular basis as long as it didn’t have any major problems. But I can’t lie…. What I really want is that GW1 style PvP. I would be so happy if it’s just announced to be in the plans for the future somewhere.

But there are many people unlike me who won’t touch GW2 again without that style of PvP. The best possible thing to do to get players back would be to make both types of players happy.

Jest.9276:

ZenoSpyridon.1396:

Jest.9276:

Just wanted to add my voice as saying the 8v8 should be reverted back to 5v5 for Hot Join. I feel like it’s harder to learn how to improve at a specific role that you would play in a 5v5 tourney when at any given time you’re fighting against larger groups than what you’d face in a tourney.

I mean, people who came into the game with Dedicated 5 man teams who’ve been doing tourney’s since day 1 get a ton of practice and that’s great but there needs to be a way for others to learn those roles so that new teams can form and improve and become a factor.

Problem with 5v5 hotjoin is it’s HORRIBLE with the “autobalance” feature and how people could leave and join at any time. Losing a single player has a much bigger affect on the team than in 8v8.

Being 8v8 doesn’t fix that problem though. It’s not even slightly a bandaid actually because raising the numbers by 3 players doesn’t eliminate the handicap you get when people leave because they don’t leave in small numbers they leave in groups of 2 and 3.

People quitting early is a separate problem entirely.

You misunderstand what I was saying.

I don’t think 8v8 fixes the problem at all, that’s not what I was saying, I prefer they remove 8v8 tbh.

The problem is the “hotjoin” mode period. It doesnt work in 8v8. It works even worse in 5v5. The way points are rewarded doesnt work. The way people are allowed to leave at any time doesnt work. Autobalance doesnt work. The way it doesnt reward teamwork at all doesnt work. The builds that are effective there are limited and not ideal. The way winning doesnt mean a thing doesnt work.

Hotjoin is reminiscent of a Conquest FPS game – you browse and join servers the same exact way, you can join and leave and autobalance the same way. Except the game mechanics are nothing like a FPS and numbers of players mean more in a RPG-based game. Even in a FPS, conquest mode is very dependent on the game mechanics backing it up. Which GW2’s mechanics do not.

Jest.9276:

Just wanted to add my voice as saying the 8v8 should be reverted back to 5v5 for Hot Join. I feel like it’s harder to learn how to improve at a specific role that you would play in a 5v5 tourney when at any given time you’re fighting against larger groups than what you’d face in a tourney.

I mean, people who came into the game with Dedicated 5 man teams who’ve been doing tourney’s since day 1 get a ton of practice and that’s great but there needs to be a way for others to learn those roles so that new teams can form and improve and become a factor.

Problem with 5v5 hotjoin is it’s HORRIBLE with the “autobalance” feature and how people could leave and join at any time. Losing a single player has a much bigger affect on the team than in 8v8.

Vena.8436:

This development cycle is par for the course in GW history. GW1 PvP, which many of reference but don’t seem to actually remember in any light at launch, was a mess. The much flaunted GvG was completely locked off for most people behind having to farm HoH for the Sigil. HoH was gating itself off of rank and had some of the worst map designs in the game (and still does). The entirety of PvP was itself walled off from just about everyone until they farmed 100000 Ettin in NKP and CapSiging those random spawn bosses that held your elites. And all that your average nobody had to play was really RA and TA.

It took a quarter of a year to get Balth Faction added to the game, it took several months more to get the kitten thing balanced and rewarding (and you still had to grind basic PvP in order to be competitive in PvP).

…..

The popularity of GW1 PvP shot up with the first world championship. TL;DR, a (b2p being a rather helpful feature) game can become popular long after launch. Pretty sure LoL took about a year to actually get anyway too, though feel free to correct me.

That’s so not true. GW PvP was popular the entire lifetime of the game.

First off, your talking only about GvG, which yes was long term the most popular and started relatively unpopular (mostly due to a stale meta where most the team was dispellers/debuffers/etc), but the PvP did not start there.

RA and CA were by far the most popular at release. At any time of the day you could go to the PvP lobby and there would be DOZENS of districts full of players, queues would be literally instant to join a game. This was true months and months in to the game.

And that state of the game was far better than GW2’s state of the game right now. RA and CA instead of hotjoin/tournament would be a huge improvement. Then they could work on a tournament system for daily/weekly/monthlys, but having them as primary PvP content? No way, it’s too based on luck of your opponents rather than skill.

Also faction was in game for PvP from the start, hell thats how you unlocked PvP skills/weapons/runes, even in beta. Sure they patched it later on to include PvE stuff etc, but acting like it wasn’t in game at all was a lie.

And I agree, LoL took over a year before it started getting popular. But the difference is they built the game from the bottom up, not the top down like GW2 is trying to do. We SHOULD be starting at RA/CA with multiple game modes to get the players. Yet we’re starting at… conquest mode tournaments? Imagine if LoL tried to add ranked teams/tournaments/spectator/custom arenas before they even had the unranked/ranked/solo/premade matchmaking in?

That’s the biggest problem right now. Theres no stable way for players to start playing and work their way up. Hotjoin doesn’t work in this type of game and teaches nothing, and theres no way for new players to progress in to paids. Hence losing players daily.

Every day I wonder why they are ignoring their hugely successful formula from GW1…. People started RA/CA, then moved to HoH, then GvG. The game would not have succeded if they started at GvG, proven by how unpopular the mode was at the beginning, and how it raised in popularity as time went on…

Dsquaredcri.9421:

You totally wrong. There is hot join for solo random q.
How could be a tournament competitive with random solo q?
The only solo q in gw1 was Random arena, this cotain the word “random” wich is also synonimous of hot join.
Play soccer with 11 random people, yea yours idea is pretty fun guys.
I repeat go———>FPS

Thanks for giving a perfect example of GW1 having a solo queue and GW2 lacking it. You basically proved your own point as false. You are telling people to go to FPS because PvP MMO’s dont need a solo queue, yet you give examples of one of the only successful PvP MMO’s and it HAD solo queue.

And it’s in no way a synonym for hotjoin. Heres a list of reasons why:

1) Hotjoin you CAN join with a team, you just have to switch team with the little plus above the enemy team, so they are “not” only solo queue players. GW1 Random arena had ALL solo queue players, which is why it worked.

2) GW1 Random arenas always had equal numbers of players on each team. There is no form of balance between teams in hotjoin, autobalance “tried” to balance but typically needs to trigger 2-3 times per match. This not only means most of each game is unbalanced, but the person unlucky enough to get autobalanced isn’t on the winning team anymore. This results in people playing hotjoin only to farm, and not to win, therefore teaching very little about how the game works.

3) In GW1 random arenas you had to build completely different just because it was 100% solo queue. You had to build well rounded to make sure you could work with any team you faced. This means typically very different specs than you would use in competitive matches.

4) Random arenas were a completely different game mode that was based around fighting and trying to kill without dying. It don’t mean a thing if you die in hotjoin. This discourages a competitive atmosphere.

Hotjoin is in no way a solo queue, furthermore in no way comparable to random arenas. Random arenas worked far better for PvP and team gameplay (even though you queued solo it was a mode that rewarded you for working with your team). Hotjoin encourages only farming and solo kills rather than rewarding teamwork and winning.

It’s quite funny that you are telling people to play FPS but saying hotjoin is a solo queue, when hotjoin is directly reminiscent of a typical non-competitive FPS game from the ground up, from rewards based upon kills to the autobalance. Name one other MMO that used autobalance? Name one COMPETITIVE game that used autobalance? Now if you liked, half the people on this forum can name 10+ FPS games that use autobalance.

A better suggestion would be for Hotjoin players to go to a FPS game. Because that’s the only common comparison for hotjoin, except FPS games won’t be forced in to conquest mode if you don’t want to…

Vena.8436:

ZenoSpyridon.1396:

snip

Zeno, I think you misunderstood how the 1v1 is going to be implemented (or I misunderstood what you were saying). In order to test Storm for Tournament play, they are going to use it as the basis for 1v1 to test it as well. If both work, the 1v1 will be added to general PvP (and all maps) and the Storm map will be added to Tournament rotation.

Having 1v1 on one map is better than no maps, and I expect most teams to find their way there because Tournament is not only too time consuming but punishing with ticket systems. If 1v1 comes with MM… this aspect of the game might actually start crawling out of the pit its been living for a while.

Coopers.4376:

Will anyone actually bother with paids once 1 team vs 1 team maps come out? Seems to me like this is the final nail in the coffin for paid pvp.

Everyone knows paids are messed up right now, it may be best to add things to save the format rather than the limb. If they want people to spend money in the format, they need it to be alive and thriving.

I hope I misunderstood and that is really the case. That would be one less thing to worry about.

But 1v1 team queue would still need to remove the ticket requirement (or at least have it completely reworked) and would need separate solo/team queues, and rankings, to be fully functional.

In my opinion, the Tournament format should be reserved for the weekly/monthly tournaments ANet has planned, and the 1v1 team queue would be much better for general play. This system would actually be an improvement on the general ESports system that other games offer, since they dont have automated tournaments. But forcing tournaments for everyday play is risky.

Dsquaredcri.9421:

BTW if u guys wants solo q, go play FPS. You all totally wrong to play a mmorpg in solo q. Simply and painless

Every single successful non-FPS ESports game says otherwise.

5) Now I’m going to mention some of the issues that were seemingly disregarded in your response. First is all the GW1 PvP features – even commenting to the first 4 issues this was mentioned many times. Why is it that Guild Wars successful PvP system had solutions to all these problems, and it’s been made obvious that most of the PvP player base wants these feature, but these solutions are being ignored? Many PvP players feel betrayed that these features were not included, and it gets more and more discouraging that you guys seem to have no interest in bringing them back, even though it would be very positive for the game.

6) The tournament systems failings – This is actually what this topic was all about. People would love for 1v1 to replace tournaments, and the paid ticket issue has been a top problem among nearly every player. This was not really commented on, and that’s alarming to many people here.

7) Variety in game modes – Many people want something other than control points. Many people want random/competitive arenas. Many people want HoH/GvG and the modes they came with. This was not commented on either, and considering this is supposed to be a sequel to a game that included all these things, it’s another very alarming issue.

Seriously, players would REJOICE if you came to this topic and told them that your 1v1 team system wasn’t going to have serious issues that make them inferior to Tournaments (no limit on maps, etc), that 1v1 team was going to have solo/premade queues included with matchmaking/rankings, that the “ticket” issue was going to be solved, and a larger variety of modes is planned.

^ The above would satisfy close to 100% of the players here. Read through post by post and ask yourself if this would satisfy each persons concerns with the game, and you will see this is true. All the other features you guys have planned? You could put those as a lower priority until these were done, and players would thank you for it!. I’m going to go out on a limb and guarantee that these features would at least make most of the PvP players who quit the game come back and see how things have changed, with a high likelihood that many would stay.

I completely understand if you are not able to comment on these things, but please, for the success of the game, for the players, and for the “Guild Wars” in the title of this game, please discuss this internally and take this in to consideration!

Thanks for your time if you read this.

JonathanSharp.7094:

That’s all I can say for now on that stuff for now. I’ll try to jump back in this thread during the week as time allows.

Cheers,

-J

I appreciate the response, but I feel it didn’t comment on many of the questions raised by this topic. Many more questions were also raised, but I could understand why you may not be able to comment on everything yet.

But here are the concerns I thought while reading your post:

1) Custom Arenas – A large amount of people (including myself) have raised concerns about if the actual game mode would be able to be chosen in this arena. It was mentioned that people would be able to create custom tournaments, but it seems a different mode should be higher priority than that right now.

People can already do tournaments, and it would take a huge amount of players to coordinate in to a custom tournament, so this feature seems pretty redundant unless there is a way to customize the mode in here as well. I’m not sure why development time would be spent this way.

2) Ratings/Matchmaking/Leaderboard – One of the top issues brought up here was ratings and matchmakings OUTSIDE of tournaments. Many people just are not happy with the tournament system right now, especially the fact that there is no “premade” and “solo” queues. This was a major feature that GW1 had, as well as every other successful ESport game, and this feature was lost, and that’s very alarming to people. The tournament system did not solve these problems.

You also mention people jumping in and out of public matches all the time, but that’s another one of the top issues people have right now. Hotjoin is in a horrible state. People don’t take it seriously, it’s not working as intended for a way to prepare people to progress onward.

What people have really been asking for is these features for 1v1 matchmaking in addition to tournaments, which regards more to the 1v1 portion of your post, so I will comment more there.

3) New player experience – Honestly the biggest problem for new players right now is Hotjoin. It’s not like any of the other modes, it’s imbalanced, people are leaving all the time as you commented and that’s the biggest issue. Plus it’s not even casually competitive, it’s just for farming. It doesn’t really teach the player anything.

Sure, custom arenas might help a little bit, but what people “really” need to learn this game is some form of “Solo Queue”. This is another one of the key features that made GW1 successful. Without a solo queue, people have to work hard to find fair matches, not only would they have to either do hotjoin (which doesnt teach much about the real game at all) or browse custom games until they were lucky enough to find a game that’s appropriate for them to learn. This is something new players are NOT going to want to do.

A new player is just going to want to play a game without waiting. And that’s why solo queue is very important. It’s also a feature that will help not only the new players, but the experienced players would love it as well.

4) 1 team vs 1 team – Now this is a big feature everyone wants. When I first read the title of this section I was excited, but that soon fell apart.

The first problem is… Temple only? That’s a huge disappointment… Why have a variety of maps if only 1 of them is used for this mode?

If you take in to consideration what the players want, you must realize this mode has a chance to be VERY popular. It’s what the players want, it will have less queue time, and may very well be more popular than both free and paid tournaments right now. But having only 1 map basically shatters the chances of this.

Then it’s mentioned that it will “cost less” to get in to, which disregards that the cost on Paid tournaments are one of the biggest issues. This will again hurt the potential popularity of this mode.

If you want to make the “perfect” 1v1 mode, all you have to do is listen to what the people in this post want: Give it a variety of maps, get rid of the cost issue, and make separate solo and premade queues included in their matchmaking. Then you will have a very successful mode on your hands, and the only potential issue that would not be covered by this mode is some players frustration the Conquest/Control point system (which hopefully will be addressed at least a little bit by custom arenas).

(continued…)

crunchyraisin.6054:

I agree so much with the facts of this post. I hope this continues to get bumped.

Also hope that spvp will someday reach the caliber of what GW1 pvp was like. Right now it feels like an enormous downgrade.

Maybe I just loved the “build wars” part of it all that will likely never happen in this game because it has less flexibility. Maybe part of it is that…

Well, even though we choose many less skills individually, the trait system in GW2 actually gives a lot of possibilities for different builds. The problem is the current game mode is holding it back.

I would LOVE to be useful as a Guardian as specs other than bunker, but after the first month of the game they honestly fell off. Guardian spike specs, for example, are kitten fun, but they don’t have the mobility to be a roamer so they are fairly useless. And have fun trying to get a competitive team to let you come with that spec…. Same with Guardian sig specs and spirit weapons. They would all be sooo useful, if it wasn’t for the game mode… But those spec’s just don’t contribute to defending or capping control points.

I’m a “build junkie” and that’s how I felt with so many builds for every class. They are just overshadowed by the ones that do best in this game mode. It’s a shame…. People don’t even realize the potential of the trait system. And most people never will unless we get more mode variety

And once again I COMPLETELY agree with the above sentiments that GW2 PvP needs to be more like GW1. Why not stick to a successful formula and then try adding all these new features on top of it? Instead of trying a new experimental formula that hasnt been working good so far?

Imagine if the Coke and pepsi companies removed both of their flagship formulas and forced one of their random new formulas as their only option? The stocks would dive bomb…

Sure that’s not a perfect comparison and we can all go back to GW1 if we wanted, but the game is dated now and after many of the improvements of the combat system I can’t go back.

I just wish for GW2 PvP to be “Guild Wars PvP” again. The best MMO PvP in the business… From the small arenas to HoH to GvG, it had something for all players, and this gathered a huge PvP population. I don’t see why they would not want to re-create the same success here?

typingofthedead.5614:

id be fine with it if it were 1 of many types of modes, a la TOR. but as it is, it isnt a very fun mode that gets in the way of their design philosophies (ie, play whatever you want for whatever class you want).

Agreed.

At this point it seems they are a bit reluctant to do any other modes. I’m not sure why that is, maybe they have more plans for this mode or something, but there’s a good possibility that the current mode is hurting the game.

Hopefully there will be at least some variety in the future, so players can do what they like best, and the esport features could support whichever mode catches on most.

I just hope they work the PvP from the ground up – they seem to be doing the opposite and working from top to bottom with highly competitive features before we have players. It seemed as if we needed rankings very badly a month or two ago, but since then things have changed, paids did not succeed their purpose, and now there is a flat out lack of players. Highly competitive features such as ranking and the weekly/monthly tournament features are great long term, but right now the game needs to pull in more players overall.

The solution for that is do what GW1 did. Have random/competitive arenas to get people learning, then have a higher variety of modes for them to progress too after that. Then would be a perfect time to progress to HoH-style modes, tournaments, etc.

But supporting highly competitive features like tournaments right now…. the game just is not ready for that. There’s no way for your average player to have fun, learn the game, and have a clear route of progression to highly competitive gameplay.

Nor are there the numbers… even rankings and matchmaking don’t work well without enough people. They won’t be accurate ranks, matchmaking won’t be able to find others your rank as easily, and matchmaking queues will be far too long.

This is supposed to be Guild Wars. We need to follow the path that was laid out by that game and expand it here. We know that path works. This new path was tried and is losing players… Please get us back on track and try adding these new experimental features and mode once we have an established Guild Wars style PvP game!

Vicariuz.1605:

It’s really cute for OP to be infracted. I don’t know why they just haven’t made HoH/HA from GW1 along with GvG (this would even justify the name you put on this game). It’s fairly obvious what needed to be done since release, and only now is anet supposedly stumbling upon the answers we will have to wait to hear/see.

I remember the first time I was in a group in HoH and held it, literally one of my most memorable moments from any game, and when I finally got /tiger, another most memorable moment from ANY game. Also, when the guild I LOVED playing with got silver trim, and later gold, or having to learn all the different maps/modes for HoH/GvG. Pure un-adulterated love for the game (GW1), there is none of any of that in this game, sometimes I wonder if the same company made it.

Yeah, I made a post the other day about how I wish for GW1 style PvP.

But as mentioned before, you need to build a house from the ground up, and HoH/GvG was not where it started. Most players progressed through Random and Competitive arenas before they got there.

And those arenas are a more realistic expectation right now. Not only would it require a minimal amount of development work to create, but it would work fine on the majority of the maps that are in game atm without any tweaking whatsoever aside from removing NPC’s/buffs/special mechanics.

I completely agree with this post, but the problem goes deeper.

I’m just a bit worried by the direction of what’s announced.

Most of the features are supporting paid tournaments etc, which is great for high-end play.

But you need to build a house from the ground up. You need the game stable outside of a highly competitive aspect before you can get the competitive aspect working nicely.

We simply don’t have the amount of PvP players for a good competitive ladder right now. The PvP needs to be catered to being fun for everyone and get the player base up and then the competitive features would be ideal to add. And to address that, we need to address the modes being offered to the players.

Even what this post is asking for isnt going to get more people playing tournaments, we need appropriate methods for players to learn the game and move up the skill curve before they can be comfortable doing tournaments. Hot join is a horrible failure.

GW1 already provided solutions for this problem… This is supposed to be Guild Wars! We need to bring the GW1 PvP features back and THEN work on paid tournaments and all these other competitive features once you have the players back!

Going again with that example, Guardians would have so many good builds if the game was about “fighting” instead. Spirit weapons would be amazing, since they don’t take damage. I’ve even experimented once with a spike build completely based around ranged DPS and kiting, which would have AMAZING potential, if it was a fight to the death. Their signet builds would be much stronger too. And one of their biggest changes, their area denial would open up many strategies that aren’t viable atm. Now area denial is best to keep them off the control point, but think if it was a GW1 arena with those moves? Think of a condition based team spec and the damage you can do while they are locked out? Think of an targeted AoE team spec and trapping them inside it? You can try to build for these right now, but they would be kitten since you still need to focus your team on winning the control point battle. The only time you can win when it’s not a control point battle is if you zerg around as one group and the enemies are dumb enough to run in to you over and over.

Basically, all the problems you named would be much less of a problem if we had GW1 style modes. It’s just not obvious right now because people aren’t building to win a fight, they are building to control points.

Seis.4091:

But you have to understand that GW 2 will get closer to GW1, because the basics mechanics are not the same ( trinity, teamplay, buildwars..). Adding modes like RA/GvG/Ha wont change anything.

I disagree.

The removal of trinity will make things different, but not necessarily worse. Biggest change obviously is no monks, but people are more self sufficient now, which will switch up the metagame a bit, but not neccessarily mean worse fights. The combat itself would/does need some more balancing, but in no way do I see it as the weak part of the game. Some of this will be an improvement as well. For example, many people are upset about downed state, but downed state has positives such as not forcing nearly evereyone to bring a res with them. Problem is this tactic has a strange place in the game when you are not necessarily focusing on killing the other player, but instead winning the control points, this makes silly scenarios where it’s better to leave them alive if possible and just toss an AoE under them unless someone is able to res them.

The metagame and strategy would be way different in a “to the death” game mode, the current mode is just holding the combat of the game back from its potential by focusing everyone on a handful of roles, rather than letting us come up with OUR OWN roles the way GW1’s PvP modes did. That’s why the metagame is so stale, and it will be for the forseeable future, since even with perfect skill balance, these handful of roles symbolize what the control points mode is about, which is NOT necessarily combat. We need a combat focused game mode if we want to be able to fully judge the combat for PvP.

Teamplay I feel would be a lot more obvious in another game mode. It’s just not too apparent in the current capture point mode, because this mode simply is not a “fight”. Teamplay in this mode means constantly evaluating the battlefield, avoiding the outnumbered fights, constantly moving to the weaker control points, etc. As you can tell from the majority of games, most players would prefer to fight and don’t want to run around capping points or avoiding the larger group all game. Also the ways you could contribute to the game are restricted right now. You could bunker, you could roam, you could build to counter bunkers or roamers, you could build stability to finish or res, but that’s it if you really want to contribute the most to your team in this game mode.

Take this example. Lets say the balance was different. Even if bunkers were weaker and spikes were stronger, it would still not be ideal to have a fight, it would be more ideal to have a fight at a contested control point. Lets say you win a fight, it would be more beneficial to both hold this point and try to take another point. This means some form of defensive/bunker spec will be best to try to hold it, and a roamer would still be best to at least scout the map and initiate a fight at a new location. These things will not change. The only difference would be is the spike builds would become the roamers and they can best gain points for their team by finding a fight where they outnumber the opponent, spiking the enemy down, and taking the control point.

And Buildwars… The skill system is new and does need some work, but this is another issue that is being held back by the game mode. I’ve played with so many builds, played every class in gw2, and there are so many great builds that just don’t work (again) because of the mode. You can’t build up to “fight” right now. You can only build to try to contribute to the control point mode (which means settling in to one of the roles mentioned already) or you can build to try to counter the prominent builds. Aside from that, you aren’t really contributing to your team. And as time goes by and more people have switched to these style builds, the amount of viable builds have went down. Near release a Guardian Spike build was one of the best builds in the game, but nowdays those builds don’t work. You aren’t going to be able to spike down anyone who is bunker spec. You aren’t mobile enough to be a very good roamer. You would be better off doing what the class is good at in the game mode….

(continued…)

Rahar.9872:

You aren’t alone. I, too, am disappointed with the current system, and find myself missing GW1 PvP more and more. Random arenas was great. Equal teams and no capture points to distract from the pure combat experience. I have many, many fond memories of going in there, and the GW2 system of sitting around at nodes capping them feels very lacking.

Drop the stupid tournament system already. It’s killing your game’s PvP, Anet.

Well, I wouldn’t have a problem with the tournament system if it was alongside the original GW1 system…

But in it’s current form, it attempts to be a replacement for the GW1 system, and it honestly is not working anywhere near as well as the original system did.

I like the idea of being able to do tournaments, and it will be nice once the tournaments have some ranking for competitive reasons. But in my opinion, they should be for “premade teams only” (randoms just dont work good in there), and long-term once the ESports features and rankings are added they could be a better place to go after they progress through competitive arenas.

But they really shouldn’t be a “replacement” of the random and competitive arenas. Those GW1 features were an amazing baseline for PvP. Tournaments could be AWESOME beside them for the ranked competitive gameplay. We need the base PvP experience to be fun before competitive PvP could be successful though!

I just hope they heard us pleading for the original GW1 PvP. Give us the GW1 PvP experience that was so awesome and then let the ranked tournaments ENHANCE the experience!

GW1 PvP was considered the best MMO PvP out there by so many people for a reason!

atheria.2837:

Why can’t we have both the GW1 and the GW2 styles in the same game?

I agree with this.

I’m not sure if I gave the impression that I would prefer GW1 PvP instead of the current style, but if so I apologize.

I have no problem with having the current mode as an option, I just hope that GW1 style will also be an option someday.

It really is a shame that GW2 is lacking the style of PvP that GW1 was known for, when that is what so many of us bought the game for and expected with the game being a sequel. I feel slightly betrayed as a fan of GW1, but still have hope due to how much work they are putting in post-release!

Please don’t forget about your core PvP audience from the first game in the series!

Having this mode as an option is probably my biggest wish for the game right now! I just hope it’s not too late with tournaments being so focused on control point mode atm.

That brings me to my next problem: Hotjoin PvP is in a very bad state. In GW1 the random arenas were awesome and one of my favorite parts of the game. It had a huge playerbase, pretty much instant queue times. Teams always had equal amounts of players. And if you did great and got 10 consecutive wins it threw you in to competitive areans. Some of my fondest memories were being with random PvP teams and racking up dozens of wins in competitive arena, and making new friends I PvPed with reguarly in to the future. The closest thing here is free tournaments, but that’s nowhere near as much enjoyment, and with just 3 matches that’s not enough of a “bond” to want to stay in touch long. And even with successful free tournament players that you try queuing up with again, I haven’t had continued success in multiple tournaments in a row due to no matching.

Hotjoin in comparison is a nightmare. The 8v8 focus makes zergs so prominent – if you want to do good you need to spend more time avoiding the zerg and ninja’ing than you do fighting. Team balance is a nightmare – most of the time teams are not equal with people joining and leaving, with autobalance further messing things up. It’s also frustrating to try to play with friends in this mode, having to switch teams to be on the same team and then getting autobalanced back to the other. Plus the loss of points used to unlock skills/gear for alternative classes makes progression lacking in comparison to GW1 (especailly when the free tournament gear looks better than the majority of rank gear).

Next on to free tournaments, these are in a bad state as well. On the bright side at least the teams have equal numbers of players like GW1 arenas, but without separating “random” from “competitive” arenas like GW1, you find many more imbalanced games. And the earlier mentioned build issues have problems – you run in to nearly all bunkers or roamers. Progression is again another issue here – without the points to unlock skills/gear it doesn’t feel like you are really earning anything. This might sound like a minor issue, but it’s huge. It’s one of the big things that kept GW1 players playing, as well as other genres. FPS’s, LoL, etc… earning points for unlocks it’s one of the big things that keeps players playing. And the ranked gear system here doesn’t cut it.

And paid tournaments… honestly I can’t comment on them too much. Because the hugest problem is the player base. Noone plays them. All my PvP friends quit the game, the mists is pretty slow on my server, and the only players that I’ve grouped with from guilds tended to be new players trying to make things work who have gave up soon after.

All these things really make me miss GW1 PvP. And the sad part is they are all pretty basic features that could be easily implemented. GW1 arenas weren’t very complex and basic in mechanics, but solved so many of the problems that GW2 is having right now.

Right now I feel like I’m in a position where I can’t go back to GW1 because the combat system here is so improved and GW1 feels limiting in that aspect, but GW2 is in a completely different direction that’s nowhere near as enjoyable.

To sum things up…. Every time I’ve played lately it keeps going through my mind that “I just wish I could have a real fight with the enemy team, with equal numbers of players on each team, and prove who the better players with the most well thought out builds and better fighters are”. That was the theme of GW1, but in GW2 that’s not possible right now. Now you could be the best fighters in the game with an amazing combative focused build, but it’s more about defending points, coordinating on multiple fronts, splitting up to attack multiple fronts, and avoiding outnumbered skirmishes. To me, that’s more of a “sport” than a “fight”. GW1 was a fight. That’s what I miss.

I hope to see GW1 style PvP in the future… That was my one expectation and hope going in to the game from my experience with GW1, and is still my one wish going in to the future of this game… I’m pretty sure I’m not alone…

I’ve given GW2 the benefit of the doubt for awhile and gave sPvP here a fair chance before commenting on things, but lately I find myself missing GW1 style PvP more and more.

You guys set the bar with GW1, and because of that I really feel that as a customer, it was obviously part of our expectations to see some form of GW1 style PvP with some improvements if anything. But I’m pretty disappointed that PvP is going in a completely different direction leaving GW1 players out of luck.

Let me get one thing out of the way – I LOVE the combat of GW2, I have fun on every class. But I feel the current features for PvP are overshadowing the combat at the moment. I honestly think if you took the exact arena system from GW1 and put it in to this game, even if you just straight copy and pasted the old arenas, and kept the classes exactly the same as they are in GW2 right now, PvP would be in a far better place than it is right now.

My first problem: The amount of viable builds is severely limited by the game mode. I’ve watched the developer interviews etc, and I know Jon knows the game well (that’s one reason I have faith in GW2 going in to the future – you can tell he actually plays the game and knows the game well) but due to the nature of the mode, bunkers and roamers will always be a very important part of the metagame, and this naturally restricts build variety since you have to make sure you build around those requirements. This seems to be intended, and that’s the part that makes me worried.

I understand the game design theory from a competitive viewpoint where there is more mechanics the team has to cover to make it skill based. Since I seen Jon give a LoL example in one of the discussions on youtube so I’m going to give a similar example – warding is a good example of a similar game mechanic that players need to take advantage or fall behind the skill curve. But the difference is that warding does not limit the skill/ability builds of players, while having to include bunkers/roamers on your team does. Imagine you had to give up a number of abilities in order to build your team to be able to ward or else you lose? That’s the currrent state we’re in at the moment…

As a player I personally spend just as much (probably more time) researching builds and trying to optimize builds – the first thing I did at max level was unlock 3 char slots so I could have a character of EVERY class to experiement on builds – but I feel very limited at the moment. For some classes it’s downright frustrating, both when coming up with a full team build or a solo build for hotjoin/free. And it’s not just the skill balance, it’s due to the above discussed issues with the mode. Even with perfect skill/ability balance you will still need to avoid outnumbered fights as a roamer, and defending the control points will be integral to the game, and that’s restrictive.

I really hope when custom arenas are added, we at least have an “option” of a mode without control points. Just test the waters and see how it goes. I’m pretty confident it will be far more popular than control points if you give it a fair chance. Even if you do it on these same maps (or restrict a few that may cause probs, such as capricorn). I really think it would be for the best of the game.

(to be continued…)

Nyx.8193:

Nope, but they are useless if ur computer is good enough, they are quite useful on much older rigs.

Well I’m still running a dual-core, and with quads becoming more necessary for gaming it definitely helps this system. Recently PS2 is unplayable without it but playable with, so the program does help =)

But my question is more referring to the on screen GUI/screen recording feature.

Caedmon.6798:

No,you can use it,it doesnt touch the gw2 client in any way at all.It puts your PC in a “boost” state..simply deactivating unnecessary background processes,nothing more.

It also can record screen, and I believe has a GUI on screen for FPS/etc similar to Fraps.

The reason I ask is because in a post I’ve read somewhere here on the forums, someone mentioned it was one of the Steam-type apps which recording causing a ban (forgot which), where someone from ANet responded that they can not be responsible for problems with 3rd party programs.

Is there any way to be sure?

I’m interested in trying Razer Game Booster – http://www.razerzone.com/gamebooster – as it is intended to close background processes to improve performance and includes recording software, but I want to make sure that it’s not against rules?

The software should not be against rules imo, but I seen a post on here indicating one of the 3rd party chat programs that included recording software got someone banned for it. So I want to be safe.

Yeah, the dungeon and fight were fun. But our group was disappointed by the rewards (only a 10 slot bag? lol). Wish we didnt miss the chest….

But will you be affected by diminishing returns if you did not loot it the first time?

The group I was with did not know that a chest spawned at the end of the mad king fight and we left after the reward popped up at the end.

Not until checking the forum did we know about a chest.

Some people are saying the quest is repeatable, some saying it isnt, some are saying they didnt get loot every time, a lot of conflicting information.

If we did not use the chest will we be able to run the dungeon again and use it without being penalized?

I have to say, it’s pretty lame that you try to convince others that they are not good players unless they give up a weapon type that has a glitch involved.

I have no idea how to do the glitch, who do you think you are telling me “the it was an accident excuse doesnt work anymore”? Who are you to tell me I’m not good when you know absolutely nothing about me but what weapon fits one of my builds best?

As if any of this is another players fault anyway, its the development teams responsibility to do something about the problem. If the people abusing the glitch are cheating that’s for them to decide and do something about. Not you, and it doesn’t make any player less skilled just because they use a mace.

You talk about others self worth like you are the one to judge and you are better than them…. In response to your implied accusations I say if you were half as good as you think you are you wouldn’t need to come to the forums with a ridiculous superiority complex.

I don’t expect all players to refrain from making posts where they think they are superior. Only the good ones.

Seriously, if your getting “instagibbed”, either your build is glass cannon (which you should not be using without a team designed around protecting you) or you do not know how to control your character in PvP correctly. Likely both.

Ironic that you are attempting to build to instagib people while complaining about it.

You mentioned your Ele gets hit for over 20k and that’s more than your health, but even the 2 classes with the lowest health in the game can get to that point fairly easily.

There’s a reason most serious ele’s invest in to the earth tree. My ele would be able to survive that burst, because it has more HP (and likely more armor) than you. If you build to play a high risk game where you can be instagibbed, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Not to mention your description of your fights with Thieves show that you are playing right in to their game. That’s why they are frustrating, you are doing exactly what they want. You are your own worst enemy.