Guild Wars 2

nicknamenick.2437:

Lol just take it and get a Cleric’s amulet for fun..
Stand still against the warrior or guardian whatever.. only use shield stance for there burst sometime and they cant kill ya :-P funny (not the same as a real person but still nice..)

Running healing signet now in pvp with longbow/s+shield.. works great! (berserker amulet)

Just tried in spvp hotjoin, healing signet passive heal the same as before (heal 270 with cleric)

I don’t think arena 3v3 5v5 etc is good for gw2 because of the game mechanism. You know, gw2 don’t have role concept such as healer like gw1.

Arena team-death-match style with no re-spawn will just end up with focusing fire, zerging or facerolling since most of the healing skill are for self only and the amount of heal is low (at least for any non-bunker build you can’t out heal any 2 enemies, or even one enemy), which makes focus fire tactics extremely efficient.

So if gw2 really wants to introduce team death match arena 3v3, 5v5, etc, I think we need a big change of all damaging and healing skill, and redesign the cc skill to prevent excessively long cc-chain duration.

EoNxBoNx.9213:

If they don’t lower the amount of increase the tournament amount(again) they should give us more sources to get more glory other than glory boosters, or even buff glory boosters themselves.

As I tested long time ago, glory booster will not affect rank point, which is the actual exp used to increase the rank.

Rieselle.5079:

I guess if we pretend that it was like this from the beginning (ie. right from the first beta, you received XP and Karma from PvP), what bad effects would it have? What would make you complain that it should be removed? I can’t think of any negatives for this. (well, maybe increased amount of misguided balance complaints from carebears on the forums?)

I think Anet want to totally separate spvp from pve, thats why spvp didn’t reward any useful for pve now (except bag).

Aragiel.6132:

IDarko.4709:

I have only done two paid tournies so far (my team is rank 22-32 and we do not consider ourselves “pro”). Both times we faced r40+ teams and lost. Having that said, we didn’t do bad the last time but the experience/skill level was just too big. Playing tournies really is a pain without a ladder. Because in free tournies we are actually winning a lot. So our team is kinda inbetween atm.. It’s weird and annoying.

There is actually more guild in “between”. They all want to fight organized premades, but they can´t because of the limited access and skill gap.

Thats direct result of paid being so expensive / not enough rewarding tickets wise. maybe 15-20% of teams can play PAID while majority is forced to play FREE.
ANd once again – i have nothing against it i will be gladly playing FREE as long as im not fighing newcomers or not organized groups. And thats the case righ now.. i can fight in PAID but mostly i have to go to free and stomp newcommers + unorganized teams. Thats not fun for me. Most games in FREE im winning with 300+ point difference sometimes even 500:0. Not nice..

Thats why ranked/rating matchmaking with free entry fee can solve it. Decent player matched with decent player, newcomer matched with newcomer. I think there is no need to have 2 different tournament, free and paid, just 1 matchmaking system is enough to solve many problem, and for all kind of player(except for those who want easy win).

What? they are planning for price tournament? I am very sure no one will play it. Please don’t waste time on it.

IDarko.4709:

I have only done two paid tournies so far (my team is rank 22-32 and we do not consider ourselves “pro”). Both times we faced r40+ teams and lost. Having that said, we didn’t do bad the last time but the experience/skill level was just too big. Playing tournies really is a pain without a ladder. Because in free tournies we are actually winning a lot. So our team is kinda inbetween atm.. It’s weird and annoying.

They also made it a lot easyer to get tickets now so most teams can do atleast 1/2 paids a week if they want (7 dailies + 3 free tournie wins). I’m expecting that as my team progresses, we do a bit more paids and get some wins eventually awell. It’s just that the “progress” has a gap between decent and hardcore players. Like i said, a ladder would fix this!!!

The only thing i haven’t noticed in those two paid tournies was a long queue. We had one pop up in 10 mins and the other in 2 minutes. This was during prime time ofc.

Would you mind telling me when you queue last time (in PST if possible)? I never successfully queue any paid tournament.

Aragiel.6132:

IF entry fee and rewards are more coresponing = then as a direct result more premades will move from FREE to PAID. Which would also make casual players easier life as they will not fight PREMADEs almost every game.

I believe this is a chain effect.
Reward not attractive enough, or entry fee too expensive => fewer team queue paid tournament => player know that queuing paid tournament is hard plus reward not coresponing to entry fee, so they choose free tournament instead => Paid tournament have fewer and fewer population => Now.

Phira.3970:

It doesn’t just affect the server, guilds representing an entire server surely is a way to distinguish and express power. Or think of a politics system that affects WvW from sPvP where these representative guild leaders gain access to to make strategical positioning with other servers.

I agree this is some kind of “good” reward. Just to make sure that the spvp is still a small team battle which different from WvW. While spvp is not called WvW, so I think we better avoid server based reward. Otherwise it will be so confuse of the difference between spvp and WvW.

Your proposed system is fun, I don’t mean its bad. Just need to careful of the accessibility of different kind of player (player have less flexible time vs player has tons of free time, different timezone, etc), and the impact to other community.

A system which is convenient and have fun easily is always “good”, while a system can only serve super hardcore player with tons of free time is definitely “not the best” system.

Aragiel.6132:

Therefore i think we should also think about how to improve current state of the game. And in current state as you pointed out its hard to get 8 team of similar lever inside one tournament.

But is that true? I still see lot of people in mists, lot of people in hot-joins. Free tournaments are poping in like 2 mins. Main issue is PAID where the queue is long like 15-20 mins. And to be honest noone want to spend time by waiting.

Yes, as I said before if you read it carefully hot-join still have enough people, and I have no complain of the free tournament queue time, but only paid tournament.

Getting 8 team of similar skill level is not as easy as you think. If there is ranking/rating in matchmaking system there will be some calculation, result in some overhead when matching different team. For fair matching, the formula usually will be more complicated than you think, and now you need to match 8 team, not 2 team, while a team may consist of members with various ranking/rating, result in more complicated calculation.

Anyway, this is Anet’s job to think about, not me:) As long as the queue time is acceptable (probably <5min), I am fine for any kind of changes.

Aragiel.6132:

3) Free tournaments will be almost (yea almost) only for solo / casual players. Therefore queue times here will probably increase but still casuals players will have easier life because they will have option to go tournament and dont get roflstomped by premade group

Isn’t hot-join already doing that? There are some room dedicated for 5v5 (except no tournament reward :p).

Aragiel.6132:

4) hot-joins will probably have less activity. Players will move to Free tournaments instead as they will feel the FREE TOURNAMENTS will be now more PUG / CASUAL friendly.

You say the point. This change will probably ruin hot-join. So whats the meaning of hot-join now?

In the original design from Anet, hot-join are for pug/casual, thats why u can never queue in premade. Free tournament are for non-competitve premade, but pug are also welcome. Paid tournament should be for competitive premade. Correct me if I am wrong.

However, why competitive premade team still queuing free tournament? You mentioned that there is some player like easy victory, and the reward and entry fee. And yes I agree.

So, if there is a ranking/rating system, they will never have any easy victory, provided that the matchmaking system is fair enough. Adjusting the entry fee and reward would probably making competitive premade team willing to play paid tournament, and focus less in free tournament.

Anyway, as long as the queue time is acceptable, I am fine for all design.

Phira.3970:

Yeah.. maybe was feasible until step 3. lol But the main idea is to give a stronger incentive to sPvP by extending influence towards WvW just as pve does through meta changing elements as a form of reward besides just skins.

As long as the reward is not too overpower, it should be ok.
However, I know that many of the spvp team are not full team of same server (many reason behind this, but not main focus here), thats should be a problem coz you are basically transferring spvp to a smaller WvW, which violate the original concept of spvp. For me, WvW should stay WvW, spvp should stay spvp, unless there is really no other solution. We should try not to make spvp another WvW, but they can still affect each other, just not in this way.

Moreover, there is always a big problem of that large tournament, due to timezone of various player. For example, if the top team of server A was Canadian while the top team of server B was Korean, when should be the final match hold? I think its always not possible to hold this kind of large tournament while various region of player are playing this game, and should always avoid this kind of idea.(I mean in-game event, not reality tournament)

For reward of spvp, I agree it need better reward so that spvper are more willing to spend time on, and fight for. Now spvp didn’t have anything worth for semi-competitive player to fight for (Qp leaderboard? are you kidding?).

I believe most competitive player only care of themselves, rather than their server (for those care their server should already having fun in WvW). So this can be fixed easily I think, adding ranking/rating system, while gaining access to some special outfit or other feature (not overpower stuff, but mainly for show off) exclusive for top team should be enough for competitive player keep fighting for (the awesome gladiator dragon in WoW is a good example). Competitive player, most of them, just want something can distinguish themselves from non-decent player only.

Paid tournament currently can’t do that coz many non-decent player can just join and lose the first battle, getting the reward chest, and eventually wearing the same gear of the winner in paid tournament.

For casual pvper, I think adding more game mode is enough to keep them having fun.

I think ticket is quite easy to get. You can also get it from chest, and the chance is not low.

However, the queue of tournament is one of the biggest problem for me. I can’t even play any paid tournament. I queue for half day still not getting enough of team.

So if you say paid tournaments = epic fail, I agree. Nothing is fun when you can’t even play it.

Just hope there is no ranked tournament, I am quite sure it will take 10x times to queue compare to paid tournament (since you need to match the other 7 team with similar rank, which is absolutely take time).

Alright, just make sure the raking/rating system in the future (I hope it has one) not gonna to be something like in-game Qp Leaderboard, I hope you understand what I mean.

I think WoW pvp is more suitable to you. If you haven’t played it just go have a try. There are tons of cc, and most of them last longer than 3s, and you can easily chain cc until your enemy die even with DR. Honestly I never played a game that my character out of control most of the time until dead, WoW is the first one. May be you love this kind of gameplay, but I can say having my character out of control most of the time is not fun.

Syeria.4812:

Adding new game modes is likely not a good solution at this point in time because it dilutes an already meager population, which will increase queue times for everything.

Adding new game mode to tournament (or other competitive matchmaking in the future) and making separate queue for each mode may have problem for already meager population now since competitive player always not so many. But my main focus on adding new game mode right now are just for casual pvp, which we don’t need to take the new funny game mode balancing super serious since its not gonna to have ranking/rating, those are just for fun.

I think its OK to add new game mode to hot join, since it still have enough player to create many room of full nowadays. Moreover, adding game mode will dilutes an already meager population is true only if the population still remain unchanged with those new features introduced, which I think its unlikely gonna happen.

Anyway, I am just talking about adding new fun game mode to casual pvp section(hot join), and I think the population of casual pvp is still high, so that is not a big problem, and would probably a big help to add more fun.

For competitive pvp, its fine to have only one game mode right now, since competitive pvper demand a fair, balancing environment for competitive more than having more not balanced game mode.

Phira.3970:

That’s the point. To unite the PvE and PvP community together because they affect each other.

I think not all player like that if they affect each other greatly, we should be careful of what they can affect.

Phira.3970:

And the buffs aren’t going to make that much of a difference. if people want to pve, they can still pve. This is more of a feature for semi-hardcore players to hard-core players who would do extra extra work for the boosts which is why this is mainly sPvP feature since most hardcore players are into sPvP rather than PvE or Wvw.

If the buffs aren’t make that much of difference, its should be fine for all kind of player. However, if its about unlocking dungeon which contain exciting reward, something like that, that gonna hurt pure pve community.

I just remember some problem of spvp rank, so I would like to talk about it, too.

Problem of rank in spvp(not the competitive one)
As you know, many of you feel the rank take toooo long to be increased. Its fine to take long time. However look at the reward for every single rank, just chest which similar to those we can buy with glory in glory vendor, and you should be able to buy many chest when your rank is increased since it need quite a lot of glory.

The reward in the chest only change every 10th level of rank. That means the reward is only meaningful for every 10th level of rank. That makes people feel like the ranking progression is meaningless, except for every 10th level of rank, plus the stupidly long time needed to increase the rank after 29, or even 19 for some more casual player, making the rank progression not rewarding enough.

You know player always demand goal to fight for, no one will fight for a goal that take near infinite time. So that discourage many of player from ranking up.
Possible solution can be:
1. Making reward more meaningful for every single rank, not only every 10th. Can be unlocking something, or new icon, new title for showing off, your job to think Arenanet or,
2. Reducing the rank point needed for each rank, or for rank before 50, something like that, making the rank progression feel like possible, not “dream”.
3. Make the rank character based, instead of account based, thus allowing faster rank progression. So the more you play with that character, the more choice or cooler outfit you get for that character, which is make sense, right?

Aragiel.6132:

Rythgar.2896:

Sprawl.3891:

match making should be #1 priority. Finish that so at least people have fun balanced matches then go from there. Private servers isn’t going to bring any casuals back to pvp.

Problem is, with the current tournament system it is not gonna work. You think people complain about the queues now? Wait until they implement a match making system that tries to find 8 equally ranked teams…

then rating and matchmaking should be combination of both systems. Like in GW1 – you had the otpion to play “ladder games” with small ELO gain or you had the option to play “tournament” with longer waiting times but higher ELO rewards.. in fact i remember we offten combined both in evenings.. so it was fine

But hey.. matchmaking please.. its important.. otherwise casuals will not come back.. and we all need them..

Ya, matchmaking is so important. Nothing is fun when we cant even start a game like paid tournament forever queuing right now lol.

Phira.3970:

I’ll just copy paste from another thread for a way of repopularizing sPvP and a new rewarding system:

Along with a ranking system, I think reintroducing the “favor of the gods” system will be a good way to re-popularize sPvP. For those who aren’t familiar with the favor of the gods system, here is the wiki about it from GW1:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Favor_of_the_Gods

Basically, it was a system where players earn the server certain features such as access to certain areas from accomplishing some form of ‘heroic deed.’

How this might look in GW2 is having ranked matches of top teams
(hopefully spectator mode is implemented too at this time as this will garner lots of publicity)
fighting against the top teams of another server. The team that wins earns some the favor of the gods for the server.

As for what shape or form this favor of the gods will take, I’m thinking perhaps:

-Certain unique PvE and/or WvW buff similar to the orb in WvW.

-Players being able to buy items at a discount. Or perhaps bonus magic find buff. This would mean a lot as players on the server have a slight monetary advantage and stronger presence over the Trading Post which means serious business and giving all the more reason to send top players of the server to server vs. server tournament games.

-Having access to some locked dungeon that have amazing drops only available exclusively when players have favor of the gods.

-Implement a politic system in game and winning favor of the gods give advantage in politics

This would probably also mean locking free server transfers but I think its worth it and would give players of sPvP a new form of spirit that could possibly transform the entire sPvP community.

This is a good system, but this is basically another form of WvW, so I think it better move to WvWvW section. For now spvp team is not server (world) limited, and i think this is where spvp different from WvW (besides game type of coz). Otherwise GW2 has only pve and WvW, but no spvp.
Besides, for those pve only player this may hurt them quite hard, thus making them jumping to server which is good at that (unlike WvWvW now since the bonus are minor, not so hurt in pve), making the population of servers more extreme.
Anyway this may help since some player may like that, but I prefer solution without having pvp affecting pve or reverse, virtually forcing players play what they not really enjoy.

I am not sure if spvp dying, but it really need some adjustment.
Its a long thread so I have grouped all passage with sub title for easier reading.

Lets begin with competitive pvp first.
Now, tournament queuing time is getting longer and longer, both free and paid. But no matter what reasons behind this, I think Arenanet shouldn’t take tournament as a main focus of competitive matchmaking.

Why current tournament is not good enough:
1.Right now tournament require 8 teams to start, while these 8 team are not chosen based on skill level, which is due to lack of ranking system in gw2. So player will sometimes forced to face the team which skill level are much higher, vice-versa.

2. Require 7 other teams to queue at the same time may be hard in non-peak hour. I never played paid tournament not because I don’t want to play, instead I queue for over 6 hour still couldn’t get enough of team (Sorry I am Asian, so may be its because of my timezone). Nothing is fun when a game cant even started, you know?

Introducing another kind of matchmaking system
I think tournament is a good idea for special event/festival, but shouldn’t be the main matchmaking system for usual day. I believe there are many pvper already asked for normal skill based matchmaking (2 team), instead of 8 team tournament. Using WoW arena as example, its matchmaking (not the game type) is just so good, fast and convenient which is the best mmorpg pvp matchmaking system I ever meet.
Why this is better:
1. Faster, of course.
2. Skill based, player are always against enemy with similar skill level.
3. Since it is skill based, its more easy to be implemented with ranking, which many of us are asking for, too.( But not QP leaderboard, its not ranking. It just a record who is spending the most time on paid tournament)

From the blog and response so far I believe Arena.net is still happy with tournament. Its fine, but we need a faster matchmaking, instead of waiting for unknown time never know if there are enough team queuing.

Can tournament be implemented with ranking?
Its not impossible, but its hard to have 8 team with similar skill level together at the same time. So I still believe normal matchmaking (2 teams) is still better for ranking/competitive system.

I am afraid in the future we will have more kind of tournament if I didn’t open this thread, which splitting the whole pvp community, making the queuing longer and harder. So please, instead of adding new tournament in the future, I prefer adding a new matchmaking system like I mentioned above, or making the tournament smaller for easier matchmaking if you really want to keep tournament. Larger tournament should be reserved for special event.

Ranking and reward
And again, we don’t need QP leaderboard, we need actual ranking system for competitive. Right now the tournament reward aren’t attractive enough for competitive player. I believe competitive decent player want something that can distinguish themselves from non-decent player, like special gear, or ranking which is visible to other (skill based, not time based), for showing off mainly.

Casual pvp:
So how about casual pvp (hot join)? I believe adding more game mode should be a big help already. In gw2, we have seen some funny activity, like the one in norn main city, and those from Halloween. Since hot join designed for casual or non-competitive I believe, adding more game mode similar to those activity should be welcome.

Make use of the activities which already implemented in game
Take Halo as a example (I think many of you played it before), besides traditional team slayer and objective mode, there are also action snack, infection, racing, etc which people enjoy them very much. I think GW2 hot join can learn from it.

Now the activity in norn main city(sorry forget the name) are local server based, so it always lack of player. If those activity can be implemented as cross server, plus rewarding glory, and let us queue in heart of mist, I believe heart of mist (or spvp) population should be considerably increased. Why make them rewarding glory? I suppose the rank (not the competitive ranking I mentioned before) in spvp is not for showing off your skill level, right? So it should be OK to reward glory for those “funny” game mode.

Special event for promotion
Also Arenanet you may consider having double glory weekend something like that, every week, which promote a specific game type. Those special event would probably help attracting people who are not pvp oriented.

That is it, thanks for reading, sorry for some grammatically mistake Please feel free to share your opinion, especially for tournament matchmaking issue and new game mode/type.

Rythgar.2896:

Lord Drakoz.4702:

Gilgamesh.2561:

Delete hot-join.

Make free 5v5 tournaments PuG vs PuG, team vs team. (no PuG vs team)

Problem solved.

Interesting suggestion – any others….Im sure ANET wants to hear more

How about: “delete the horrible tournament system and implement a ranked match system with ladders!”. The way it should have been done.

Tournaments should not be the “go to playstyle” in any PvP game. It should be the game type you pick for bigger, competitive events. You know, like every other game out there
With a ranked match system we would not get the queues. The match making system would just need to find one team around your skill, and pitch you against each other. Now, the tournament system needs to find 8 (!!) teams to be able to start a “match”. Of course the queues will be longer, especially at off-peak hours.

Feels like a no brainer too me

Yes, currently tournament style matchmaking is just time consuming. I prefer just find one team with similar skill level and play together, of course with ranking/rating system.

This kind of matchmaking not only fast but also competitive, making the whole spvp “rewarding”(You get rank/rating boost after wining, which feel satisfied for many pvper). You know, pvper always ask for the matchmaking system like that, instead of spending 15-30min waiting for the other 7 team without similar skill level.

Also, this kind of matchmaking system isn’t bad for casual player since there is no gear chasing like WOW arena. So….in short, why not?