Guild Wars 2

Post Updated For This Week.

Justin ODell.9517:

BLUna.7928:

Game ended at approximately 9:18 PM Eastern, and was played on this account.

I will admit before going on that matchmaking has been better since the patch (been keeping a spreadsheet of match data) but I just queued into something that confuses me on how it was even able to pop. Details below:

• Full premade vs full solo players.
• Premade has decent comp.
• Solos (my team) have 2 mesmers and 2 thieves.
• 4v5, our team’s fifth never even loaded into the map.

Putting the 4v5 aside for the time being, why was a comp with 2 thieves and 2 mesmers even allowed to be put against a full premade? Ill provide a screenshot of the aftergame screen as soon as my stream catches up to it on the vod. Was just a bit upsetting. The worst part was everyone in the match unanimously agreed there was no point in even attempting the match. I ended up AFKing to grab a drink. :/

Hey…. you had a 5% chance of winning. Don’t blame me if you couldn’t pull it off.

In all seriousness, it probably happened due to limited availability at that end of the distribution.

As for the profession duplicates, that’s because I had to weaken that scoring because the profession dailies were stressing the system and causing bad matches when it came to MMR and party size.

Thanks for the speedy reply. I do have to agree somewhat with the other posts here. If my odds are less than 30% I would rather wait the extra time for a favorable matchup than play one I have very minimal chance to win, not sure how many in this thread agree however. Is there any thought of possibly adding a minimal percentage chance for matchups to pop?

Game ended at approximately 9:18 PM Eastern, and was played on this account.

I will admit before going on that matchmaking has been better since the patch (been keeping a spreadsheet of match data) but I just queued into something that confuses me on how it was even able to pop. Details below:

• Full premade vs full solo players.
• Premade has decent comp.
• Solos (my team) have 2 mesmers and 2 thieves.
• 4v5, our team’s fifth never even loaded into the map.

Putting the 4v5 aside for the time being, why was a comp with 2 thieves and 2 mesmers even allowed to be put against a full premade? Ill provide a screenshot of the aftergame screen as soon as my stream catches up to it on the vod. Was just a bit upsetting. The worst part was everyone in the match unanimously agreed there was no point in even attempting the match. I ended up AFKing to grab a drink. :/

It’s a hack. Here’s another video of the same person. And a Reddit Post Pretty sure I had this guy on my stream the other day too and reported him to the exploits email. Sad to see he’s still around if it is him. :/

Chukree.1756:

NA players complain about nothing relevant to the PvP scene.

Without this turning into a “EU > NA > EU” debate The problem with your request is in your request itself. It’s not relevant to you, but it is to the people on NA. They need to balance for both regions, not just one. It is just unfortunate that the metas are different between regions due to differing levels of team stability, number of competitive teams, and the general fear of innovation among those teams.

Post Updated for the week. For this week onward the finals of the Conquest tournament will be reverting to a Bo3. Formatting is screwed up on the main post, will fix that in a bit.

Lupanic.6502:

no streams available for 2vs2 tournaments? Blu42 is playing CS:GO. Jebro does not stream this. Guildwars 2 channel is empty? What should I check to see the streams ?

We don’t stream the 2v2 tournament at the moment, some players may stream their point of view however.

Post Updated

Errant Venture.9371:

Hey Blu, do you guys have any mechanism set up for experienced players looking for teams to participate in the conquest tournaments? I’d definitely be interested in filling a roster/alternate spot for teams that need a 5th. Cheers.

Nothing officially at the moment, Academy Gaming’s does have a free agent system if you are looking to do that. You do propose a good idea however, so allow me to figure out how we could work it and then Ill update if we decide to allow for free agent entries.

Bran.7425:

DIdn’t some of the smaller 3rd party 2v2 3v3 events last year ban PU mesmer and all rangers while getting advertisement on Ready Up?

That would be my organization. We run a weekly 2v2 event that bans PU mesmer and heavily discourages SA thieves. Not for the reasons discussed in the OP however. We banned those builds because their only purpose was for trolling/stalemating their opponent, which while it may work in conquest, has no place in a game mode where the objective is to actually kill your opponent.

Copying Over my post from reddit on this one:

This whole article is complaining about something that ArenaNet have already confirmed won’t be staying. The new LB are only there while they transition to Leagues, they’ve gone on record saying this multiple times now.

The real focus should have been on the matchmaking, because that will be staying, and I can’t play the game right now because of it. Anyone with even a remotely high rating is literally forced to play with a premade group or get stomped by one, or play a troll build like turret engi or tank ele and hope to god you can stall opponents long enough for your team mates to actually do something. Even worse is the timing of this patch. They released this extremely experimental system which was tested using only internal and normal unit testing methods (This patch once again should glorify the absolute necessity for a public test server), and then took a 2-3 week vacation, leaving the game in a virtually unplayable state for any solo players with a remotely decent MMR that doesn’t play turret Engi.

9/10 top NA players won’t even play the game unless you have a premade now, everyone is either playing CS:GO or Smite.

The problem comes again from comparing this game to how a MOBA deals with stuff. I definitely agree with the concept, but if you ban 1 champ/hero from competitive play in a MOBA there are 100+ other options (or at least a decent amount more that can fit that same role). If you ban Ele mainhand dagger he has 2 other options. If it was something like a utility I would be more inclined to agree whole heartedly with this considering there would be other options.

Post updated for the week.

Just to clarify, a few months back we (MP) recently changed the format of our events. The teams that finish in the top of the ESL weekly (the cash prize one) are no longer allowed to play in the MP weekly, which allowed lower tier teams to have a much better spot. We had this rule in place along with the making the choice to no longer stream the event, but unfortunately we did not see a big increase in participation. We recently started streaming the event again, but the top finishing teams from ESL are still barred from playing. Were also looking into allowing free agent signups like the academy gaming weekly as well, just need to figure out some of the logistics behind it.

Happy new Year folks

Post updated, conquest cup is missing for now but will be added later tonight. Sorry for the late update.

> Claims Power Necro isn’t viable
> Complains about Lich Form being the reason

Bruh I think I found your problem, you need to press more than your 1 key.

In regards to tournament coverage, I’ve been trying to get more of it, but they don’t have many, and due to times and other restrictions it isnt easy to bring coverage to those events unfortunately.

For the other stuff KZ handles it on the Chinese GW2 portal, as the Chinese players don’t really use this website.

Updated for this week, please note the conquest cup for this week is cancelled due to the Holiday.

This post will be used for incidental announcements.

LINKS

• Tournament Portal
• Event Stream
• AspectGG Twitter (Updates on events can be found here)

GENERAL INFO

This post contains all necessary information and links for AspectGG’s North American Weekly 2v2 and Conquest tournaments. These cups are hosted on a weekly basis (2v2 on Tuesdays, Conq on Thursdays) and are open for anyone to sign up. Our Conquest cup specifically is aimed at new/amateur level teams, and we highly encourage them to sign up to try out competing in events. These events also have a stream covering the event which can be found here every thursday at 8:30PM ET / 5:30PM PT. More information on each event specifically can be found on their respective pages. There are no fees to participate in these events, and both tournaments feature gem prizes! (details below)

1. Players who qualified for cash prizing in any tournament in the
previous 7 days are not allowed to participate in the Conquest cup.

STREAM INFORMATION

The Conquest cup will have an official stream with commentated coverage. The stream will begin Every Thursday @ 8:30PM EST / 5:30PM PST / 02 CET and coverage will be provided by members of the AspectGG stream team. Viewers can watch the stream on this twitch channel.

GENERAL TOURNAMENT INFO

2V2

• Game Mode: Arena
• Format: Double Elimination
• MAX Teams: 16
• Prize Pool: 5600 Gems (4000 to 1st, 1600 to 2nd)
• Maps: Legacy (Graveyard Point)
• Time/Date: Tuesdays @ 8:30PM EST / 5:30PM PST
• TOs: BLUna.7928, OlrunTheBlade.1486, Kat.2054
• Signup Link / More Information

If any information in this thread is incorrect/out of date please notify the OP.

European Players: Please see ESL for European versions of these events.

For anyone that was in the chat room for the entirety of yesterday it was a lot more than just making fun of players. In general people were being incredibly toxic toward each other to a point where it was almost kittening me off. Everyone knows Twitch chats during large events can be bad, but the only time I have seen Twitch chats get that incredibly toxic toward each other was during other GW2 events. It’s even worse considering some high tier players are the ones instigating it in certain cases. At this point I’m just considering flicking the sub mode switch on during those events.

Chaith.8256:

Lowest Animal.8014:

Blu Oeggs has given his blessing, give us the belly dancing video

Pretty sure that Ramon Domke has it, not Blu. Haha. I could be mistaken though.

I have one, Denshee has one as well. Mine doesn’t have sound though, so I would prefer Denshee does it lmao.

Zoso.8279:

wow watching the last match of the finals TCG should have won temple. Once the buff came up rotation went to kitten. Still epic finals.

Yeah the rotation on Bot buff was a bit mind boggling to me, it happened so late I just didnt understand why they would do it then and not earlier. It was a bit unfortunate that they had to play that map for map 4 though, that was easily going to be their weakest map when you consider the comps. Bunker guard vs non Bunker guard comps on that map have given a victory to non Bunker guard comps more times than naught.

Nah you’re fine lol

Sunshine.5014:

Do we have a youtube link of the matches? If not please put them on YouTube. Thanks!

Boop

The subforum was deleted as a part of their forum reorganization.

Elxdark.9702:

I can’t stand Backpack, he’s so disgusting to see.

btw who the hell has enough time to make this lmao.

Acandis

We recorded an official English cast from the venue without a stream. I have it on my macbook hard drive now. Im currently still flying home from China but Ill be sending it to ArenaNet as soon as I get home and then they should be able to upload it to the GW2 youtube channel.

There is a locally recorded VoD that we did from the venue. It will be uploaded to youtube sometime soon.

This Thread Needs Some Additional Hype:

https://twitter.com/Dr_BLU/status/540415765124358144

laquito.5269:

BLUna.7928:

Edit: Deleted my opinion on the debate. It’s somewhat pointless. Gr8 b8 m8s.

Actually, I’d really like to hear your opinion on this, being one of the more influential and known persons around here. I wouldn’t mind receiving a pm if you don’t want to say it openly.

The original post I made talked more about esports in general. Unfortunately there’s so many factors that can impede with the “whos best at esports” question (some games are ignored in some regions, smaller games vs larger games, etc) that I think it’s virtually impossible to answer.

When it comes to Guild Wars, it depends on how you look at it. Based on my observations, NA has better individual players, while EU seems to have better “team-play.” A lot of this is due to the builds and metas on each region however, so this could change as the meta shifts.

If we look at it from a purely factual standpoint, EU is currently 2-0 at major LANs, which arguably would make them the top region. However, many people like to contest those LANs stating the NA reps from those LANs were not the best. If EU is to loose WTS S1 I imagine a similar claim will surface given current rumors about the state of TCG. The OP here has even mentioned that Abjured isn’t necessarily a legitimate claim to the might of North America. It’s incredibly hard to look at which region is the best when the respective communities disown their teams whenever it’s convenient for them.

tichorum.2415:

CSGO, an outdated FPS

300k+ people watched DHW about 6 hours ago.

tichorum.2415:

with graphics from 1999 (literally, from the original CS).

Rebuttal 1: uhhhhhh
Rebuttal 2: Graphics = Quality of Game Argument. Pls no.

I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with you, but please don’t use selective sampling to your advantage. “I don’t care about this game” isn’t valid reasoning to exclude it from the debate. If that was the case I would never talk about League. Also If we’re going by the graphics logic with CS then HS is a 10 year old game since it uses assets from WoW, and League/DOTA2 are about 11 years old since it’s inspired by the WC3 mod.

Tl;DR: Selective Sampling is bad.

Edit: Deleted my opinion on the debate. It’s somewhat pointless. Gr8 b8 m8s.

Chaith.8256:

Magic is for the dishonorable.

You said that right.

Ill go ahead and grab my seat early.

Dustin.2793:

I got dibs on Grouch

Fresh Lesh is mine.

If you go to a HotM portal in any major city it unlocks it immediately. The leveling up isnt required. It’s placed there so players done immediately attempt to jump into PvP and become overwhelmed by the whole experience. By level 22 they should have a decent grasp of how to play the game and thusly shouldn’t have too much trouble adjusting to the up-scaling.

Not sure if anything like this is already planned or in the works but I just wanted to voice a suggestion for a way that these new features could be implemented into CAs to improve tournament play experience.

Ready Checks: The new ready check before games start is great and could also be utilized in my opinion in CAs. This could be accessible via a new server command (/readycheck or something similar) and would bring up the same pop up to remind tournament participants that games are ready to start and they should ready up. I’ve noticed that players often forget to hit the button in it’s current implementation, so I think this could be a good way to “poke” the players to get games rolling.

Map Picks: I’ve always like the idea of teams being able to decide the order of maps in a tournament setting, but unfortunately with the current way CAs work it’s extremely clunky and the whole set of maps needs to be determined before the first game begins. I think if an option was added to CAs to allow maps to be picked via this new voting system at the end of the current game, I think that could add another bit of a dynamic to the way a tournament set progresses, as certain teams play much better on specific maps. This would also allow TAs to set rules for how the maps are decided between rounds.

As an example, a vote could be done at the beginning of the set with the captain of each team submitting one vote for the map they want first, and from that point forward the loosing team could just have themselves vote for the next map, or they can have a higher number of players vote for the map they want next (That’s just an example of a format TAs could use and dictate on their own, copy+pasting the map vote system into CAs would suffice without changing it’s mechanics).

Brian.1025:

I wish the pvp tracks offered pvp exclusive items, i think that would be a compromise to the rewards.

And top 20…how many people pvp?

Glorious and Balthazar Tracks offer exactly this. The glorious hero’s armor is akin to a Gladiator Mount in WoW, it’s supposed to be a hyper-exclusive reward by design.

Marcos.3690:

We waited for almost a year to get solo arena and now it’s merged into team arena one more time? And we should be excited about that?

The problem with pvp in this game is that every new addition removes something that was done before.

Game launched and we waited for paid tournaments to get released.
After some months they made paid tournaments 1 round.
Later they completely removed paid tournaments.
Free tournaments were also removed.

Then they removed glory and added another reward system (that is no better).

Another patch removed jewels, underwater combat, raid of the capricorn and underwater weapons.

And now solo arena is being merged with team arena one more time.

They keep working on features that will disappear, and meanwhile the pvp lacks basic features. The irony: they will remove everything but skyhammer.

Btw: give some titles as season rewards. They are easy to design and way cooler than some random gear.

The way I interpreted it is Solo Arena isnt being removed. It’s being merged. If the system works as it’s being described there, it will try to match you with solo players before it forces you to play with groups of 2, 3, etc. The same goes for team groups.

When you buy the arena and activate it, it will get added to a menu where you will be able to change all that. You can actually see that menu before purchasing an arena. Just go to your pvp tab and check the last menu on that window.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Ayrilana.1396:

Is that a soda can on the bottom left of the picture?

I cannot quite tell what kind of beverage that is, can someone inform me? This is really intrigueing

Don’t worry. I’ve cracked the code!

11/10

Edit: Here’s the Illuminati Edition

It’s a valid complaint and I hear it a lot. TTK is much higher in this game, and the combat in general is much more different from the ever so popular MOBA style. I think the mistake you may be making however (Im assuming you recently started checking out games, if Im wrong feel free to correct me) is taking the combat in the game as the main (and possibly only) element which contributes to the game’s outcome. I feel like a lot of casters, including myself, have contributed to that thought pattern, which is actually fairly wrong. What’s really important to look at are the macro elements of the game. Things such as positioning, who is fighting who, the strategy the team is playing, rotations, etc. can often contribute much more to the outcome of a game than the actual combat itself. I’ve spectated plenty of games before where a team was getting wrecked the entire match in fights but because their opponent wasn’t watching their points correctly they would still constantly be in an opponent controlled 2 cap scenario.

To draw a somewhat loose comparison; it’s kind of like the draft in DOTA. The opening picks in a game of DOTA are so crucial to the outcome of the game, but you only see if for the first few minutes. Those elements decide advantages in lanes, and can in some cases give a team a huge advantage in the match. It translates pretty nicely to GW2, but there are two key differences in the fact that those mechanics aren’t really explained too well to the player and often are lost to newer or unfamiliar viewers and that that “macro” phase of the game constantly can shift and fluctuate throughout the entire match.

The fact that a game can change so suddenly due to one player being mispositioned or someone loosing what would seem like an inconsequential 1v1 is an incredibly fascinating thing to me, and is one of the reasons I am so enthralled by this game and it’s combat. Conquest seems incredibly simplistic and boring on the surface (and it is), but in my own opinion it is an incredibly in-depth game mode to those who know it well enough, but it takes a lot to really know how the game is played and truly appreciate a well executed strategy. This hidden mechanic as it were may be one of the things that’s holding the game back from a spectator standpoint. Im kind of hoping future spectator mode improvements can help with this, but we’ll have to see. I’m always trying to improve my casting as well to explain this better, but it’s often hard kitten much happens so quickly, and you often aren’t left with adequate time to explain plays and movements.

Since we’re being about as blunt as a freshly sharpened dagger, Mr. C needs to brush up on current events, as the Mistpedia weeklies haven’t enforced a rule on this in coming up on 3 weeks now.

ESL has never had a rule on this because they’re an established company and they can support themselves without any issues. Mistpedia not so much. We have administrators that put in 4-6+ hours a week running the weeklies. They have also put in hundreds of hours in the past, with a lot of these hours being on the weekend, to run events like the ToL and ToG. One of our admins even nullified his right to play in one of these large events to ensure that the tournament could actually be run. What do these admins get for all this time and effort? Absolutely nothing. I don’t like this, and I want it to change. The only way for this to happen however, is to get our brand to a point where we can warrant the receipt of funding, from sponsors or other inlets. This funding could also be used to increase production value of streams, and even offer greater prizing to participants. The way I have tried to accomplish this in the past is by only allowing previously approved individuals (such as myself or bear the time he did it) to stream the events. If this, and wanting to pay my volunteers is considered egotistical or greedy, then call me Scrooge. While this is the main reason I originally used this rule, there are other minor ones too.

Allowing participants to stream has liabilities attached to it. By streamed our events, said player is representing our brand, and if said individual is doing/saying things on his or her stream which our user-base or any potential partner does not approve that, well that causes issues for us. There’s also the potential risk (although it is highly unlikely) that some players may be accused of ghosting through the use of these streams. While highly unlikely, it is possible, and is again another reason why I have disallowed player streams in the past for the most part.

Regardless of this however, we recently stopped providing coverage for our weeklies, and in turn abandoned this rule. I made a blog post on my personal site if you wish to read more about why we made this change, but to sum it up: players were being abused by those watching our stream, as we often had newer teams participating in the event that were highlighted on the live stream. This is completely unacceptable, so with the re-branding of our cups to cater to low-mid tier teams we also abandoned the streaming rule. It may still be present on our rule sheet due to clerical errors, but make no mistake, we are no longer enforcing it.

If you honestly feel this rule was put in place due to some egotistical or avaricious agenda on my part, then you are seriously misguided. I only want to see this game grow, and in turn wish to make sure everyone who is helping to contribute to the scene is compensated fairly for their efforts.

TL;DR: Mistpedia (the party being accused here) admins have put in countless hours to make these tournaments happen and do their work for free. I don’t like this and want it to change, but we need to grow to a point where this is possible. We restricted streaming rights in the past because I want this to happen faster. Among other reason, they really dont matter anymore, because were no longer enforcing this rule anyway.

Mistpedia has been around for a fairly long time and I try to keep it up to date as best I can unfortunately however I’m literally the only one that updates tournament information on it. Anyone is allowed to update stuff on it so long as they make an account. If I could get some other people to help out and pitch in it could be a fairly reliable resource but with just me it’s hard to keep up. :/

Were working on a revamp on the site which should launch soon. Kind of hoping that kicks up traffic again and encourages some people to jump in. This revamp should also make it easier for people to edit stuff if they don’t know the code needed to edit wiki articles.

Video and Audio VoDs now available.

Heyo! META: The PvP Podcast is returning tonight at 8PM EST, 5PM PST, 02 CET! Heres the information on tonight’s show:

• Host: BLU
• Guests: CM.Blackjack, RIP.Five Gauge, Caed
• Topics:
  • ESL Go4 Series
    • News of the announcement
    • Current Monthly Standings
    • Results of Cup 01
  • WTS
    • Qualifier Outcomes
    • Expectations for Finals
  • Welcome Back CM
  • NA vs EU Meta (tentative topic )

Stream
Audio VoD
Video VoD

As an added note, we may revisit streaming the cups in the future, but at the moment one of the key complaints we get when talking to teams was that they did not want to be streamed, which is the main reason why we made this change.

Hey there guys, I wanted to bring some visibility to changes we decided to make last week to the Mistpedia Weekly rules to accomodate for newer/amateur teams and players in the interest of creating a middle-tier tournament series. Starting this week we’re doing two new things differently:

• The cups will no longer be streamed
• Teams that placed in the top two in the previous Sunday’s ESL Go4GW2 cup will not be allowed to participate in the conquest weekly.

The main reason we have decided to make these changes is we wanted to make our tournaments more accessible to lower tier teams and not have to deal with getting thrown up against squads such as The Abjured in their first tournament they ever play in. We hope that with these changes in place, more teams will have an interest in signing up.

If you are interested in playing in the weeklies you can find signup information HERE.

I also talked a lot more about why exactly we made these changes, if you are interested in reading I made a blog post about it HERE

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

Booms.2594:

how will the money be split if you dont mind?

updated main post with info

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-and-esl-partner-on-cash-prize-pvp-tournament/

http://www.eslgaming.com/article/guild-wars-2-joins-esl%E2%80%99s-go4-25000-competition

• Weekly Conquest Tournament
• 500 USD Prizepool in NA, 500 Euro Prizepool in EU.
  • 1st: 400
  • 2nd: 100
• NA: Sundays @ 4PM ET / 1PM PT
• EU: Sundays @ 16 CET (10AM ET / 7AM PT)
• No region or age restrictions.
• Monthly Invitational Grand Final with 1500 USD (NA) and 1500 Euro (EU) Prizepool
• Should last for the next 3-6 months (check total prize pool of 25,000 USD in ESL blog post)

I want to point out that I feel Grouch made the best calls tonight given the information, resources, and time he had available. Obviously this was an extremely unfortunate occurrence as I personally expected all play to be fair, but alas this was a mistake as we cannot control the actions of outside individuals who look to stunt the growth of the competitive scene, and there was very little that could have been done to prevent this given that it had not been an issue in the past.

This was a new experience for all players in the scene, and I think it is important for large events in the future for players to fortify themselves against DDoS attacks. In future events I am more than sure that players will be assisted with fortifying their connections to hopefully minimize the chance of this happening again. With that said however, no preparation is full proof, and if ever before there was not enough evidence to rationalize the implementation of a pause functionality, tonight should hopefully shatter those claims.

The most important thing at this point is for us to look to the future in Beijing. This is a completely new issue for our small scene, and something that ArenaNet could not have controlled. Hampering on the issues tonight, as unfortunate as it was, will only give the individual(s) responsible the attention and self-satisfaction that he/she/they was/were looking for in the first place, and to attach ourselves to the events tonight will only encourage him, her, or them to perform such actions in the future. The big event itself is still on, and we have some excellent matches to look forward to, as well as two more awesome seasons to come in future months.

Congratulations to The Abjured, The Civilized Gentlemen, PRIME, and Team SALA for qualifying, and I wish all twenty of you the best of luck in the main event, just one short month away.