Guild Wars 2

Hello!

So I wanted to weigh in with my perspective on the state of affairs with sPvP and tPvP. To give background: I played gw2 for about 4-6 months straight from early release and quit until about 3 weeks ago. I originally played gw1 and loved the hell out of that game, esp the extensive PvP that was offered. I play nearly everything in the game, but the ratio from PvE/PvP is 20/80.

The reason I quit GW2 was because of the sPvP (or lack thereof). I planned on coming back after a couple months when the pvp has some fresh new game modes.. But, as you may expect, there was nothing notable in the news to bring me back. Around the same time I left the game many of friends and guild mates slowed their play or quit all together because of similar reasons as me. Then after months and MONTHS of waiting for some pvp diversity, my friend posted something from your FB that stated “New pvp mode.. courtyard (essentially tdm)”; I couldn’t be happier.. I joined up soon after I heard the news, and have been playing every day since, without regret. So with that introduction, here’s my perspective about the good, bad, and … well ideas of future updates.

Love:

• sPvP incentives, trash loot? Sometimes sure, but to me there’s something gratifying about opening up a bag at the end of a match.. A sort of “I EARNED THIS” mentality.

• Reward scaling. Your magic find system is awesome. Many argue that it doesn’t actually effect drops. I strongly disagree by experience, but regardless, seeing the higher numbers. gives me a sense of accomplishment, and gives trash loot purpose. Great job!

• sPvP Rank track. Dude! AMAZING. I have to say I was skeptical and weirded out about the idea of making dungeon loot also a PvP drop, you guys implemented it great! Its difficult, but rewarding, exactly what you would ask for in a PvP accomplishment. Probably one of my favorite changes.

• WvW Ranking. I realize this is sPvP, but I just wanted to give a shout out to the people who made this happen.. Giving scale to WvW gives purpose to play it every now and then, and introduces many noobies to the idea of PvP. Noobies, consequently, that I train my new builds on.

• Courtyard. My favorite addition since the game started. Is it perfect? Kittens no. But its the biggest step I’ve seen in sPvP history taken, the move away from mindless cap matches. The formation of the map is awesome because its really simple. From my perspective, simple is best. While places like skyhammer is an example of over complexity, and its negatives(balancing, difficulty for new players), Courtyard is a great example of simplicity.

• PvP skins. I hated it at first, but I gotta say, adding PvE skins to PvP has converted a friend of mine over to play PvP a bit more, and adds some diversity in the look of people.

Hate:

• Bad Rank Chests. Whats up with that? Give me a couple rares, a minipet, and call it a day, I’m not asking for much, just better than what we get.

• Bad Tournament Maps. Some maps are awful for SingleQ tournament, Skyhammer is the most quotable one, and rightfully so. I doubt you guys would want people to have to change their build depending on the map ever time because KD is better at x, or stability is better at y, its a pain to do and it takes 0 skill.
• Community attention. Real talk, I think it needs some work. Send out weekly questionnaires, get some focus groups running (see Eve Online)! There is no need for this huge animosity towards the PvP devs because of the perception of you guys being uncaring.. You guys say you care about what the community wants, but I’m curious to how many people believe that. If you add in focus groups and questionnaires this’ll add labor with no additional costs, help you pump out content faster, and REALLY help your public image.

• Game modes. Okay we’re at 2… Seriously, keep it coming.

PT2 in comments (hopefully it’ll let me)

I love the pure irony of a Condi complaining that an Ele is OP..

Dude.. if you’re specing 100% into ANYTHING you’re going to have a hard time killing certain builds.. You need to diversify your build and make it more variable.. If you can’t do 2k damage before condi spikes.. Seriously rethink your current build..

Aside from that.. The underpowered Ele class finally has a couple changes to make us viable.. Please don’t take this away from me =(

EDIT: I’ve noticed this argument is used alot.. a 100% ANYTHING should not be able to beat everything. A-Net does NOT want that, I would put serious money on that (at least $4.50)

Why don’t people like skyhammer? Knockbacks or Hammer? I hate both.. but the map is pretty nice at the same time (My favorite point B location of all maps)

Can’t speak for other classes but I either pop (as an ele) mist or arcane shield. Avoiding CC isn’t difficult, esp if you know exactly what skill they are going to do and when they will do it.

Eles are clothy, and squishy.. This seems like an odd thing to complain about considering condi right now..

Dodge, if you get hit water and heal (if you’re not using passive heal). Counter with dps. I think Mes has needed a nerf for a long time, but 2k damage is not a lot.. People that are hitting that much are sacrificing their own DPS for their clones DPS.

Dahkeus.8243:

Hmm…so the argument is that TDM isn’t viable because it’s so obvious that it’s imbalanced.

…but no one can agree on how it’s imbalanced.

Something doesn’t add up, lol. But, I guess that’s what happens when you have people arguing about a “dominating meta” 2 days after a balance patch.

Capture point, and TDM is imba.. People want to complain.. Sucks because we finally have variety, now a bunch of kittens (censored myself) decide that NOTHING SHOULD EVER CHANGE! I’ve been waiting for variety since a month after game release. These people need to shut the kittens(did it again!) up.

EverythingEnds.4261:

I still get thrown into stuff like 10 vs. 10 custom arenas when I klick “play now”.
But i wanna play 5 vs. 5 …but all servers are full

People need to kick start some custom.. I’ve had my server up from the beginning with courtyard.. Yet no one plays on it (because there’s no players that second lol)

Uhtameit.2413:

And now you wish to close the thread? why is that, I wonder…

It was dumb from the get go.

He realized he was wrong and that this is unproductive =P Let him leave lol No need to demand retribution.

Garrisyl.7402:

I know whining and feeling disadvantaged is natural behavior for many pvp-’ers, but gimme a break.

Those people that are complaining are not PvPers, they’re people that decided to join up and PvP because they heard that you can get stuff quicker and easier.. And learned that’s not true..

I would take a new map type over 1000 ectos any day.. Money is a nice extra, but I PvP for the competition and the act of making someone rage half way across the world (or NA..).. Sense of progression is sweet, makes me feel better.. But there aren’t many tpvpers that were complaining about how ‘they don’t get enough money from matches’

I don’t agree with your generalization.

EverythingEnds.4261:

Eve.1580:

Although, this way if you don’t want to do said dungeon you don’t have to.. but it wouldn’t make much sense to make PvP a replacement for PvE, and I don’t think that’s their intentions. I hope they make it hard as hell to get PvE armor through PvP. It makes the ride more fun.

1. They made PvP a replacement for PvE within the moment, the unified the skins. If you have to wear “PvE” items in PvP, it there should be similar effective ways to get the stuff via PvP.
2. Wtf is PvE armor for you? The DELETED PvP armors, so basicly every armor is PvE. And why would sth be more fun, just because of you make it more grindy.

I also don’t know how long it took to design those reward tracks, but in my opinion, they aren’t well thought at all.
Arah and CoF show, that it makes no sense to make the progess in all reward tracks similar fast.
Nobody who owns a pve char will probably ever do the CoF track, as the time it consumes is a multiple of the time it takes to get the same stuff via a dungeon.

Dude… Ever played GW1? Its the exact same system (not the tracks the armors for pvp) they give you a VERY SMALL amount of armors.. And if you want to look pretty, pve for a short amount of time. I don’t believe it has ever been expected before GW2 to look prettier by PvPing. They’re going down the normal path. Want to look pretty, go PvE! Want to just PvP? We’re not stopping you! Go for it! Want to look pretty and PvP? Awesome! Use the money you get (which is alot) from PvPing and buy some skins.

I don’t get why the hell all of you guys are complaining about something so trivial?

Okay I get it.. They’re not awarding you infinite lives, a magic flute that’ll get you to zhitan, or a tank when you press certain buttons .. But a game is about the journey, if you don’t want to work for accomplishments, MMORPGs are not for you. Getting rewarded for PvPing, is an extra thing to reward the PvPers for doing what they were going to do anyways, kill people.. Virtually speaking.

JPSnow.8296:

Just cause you have a high rank means nothing…. I’m only level 14 and can usually go thru a match and next to never die and probably get most points for the team. I’ve solo/small group roam in wvw since beta I get how PvP works. Lol. I actually had a guy try to blame our loss on me because I was lowest rank when I challenged him to come to a empty Map and fight me he had every excuse in the book why not to. Just like in another thread some guy crying because he was with someone lower rank them him. Unless you followed him the whole time how do you even know how good/ bad they are? In fact if they are bad just give them tips and move on is it really that bad to lose every now then? Pvp needs more people to get good. More people equals more Dev focus. Please stop with these elitest attitude s and just play the game. Rant over

This post makes me feel like you’re just wanting to brag about how awesome you are. The conversation ’I’m better because I have higher rank’ is rarely ever made. In fact, I have NEVER ONCE heard someone say they’re better because they have higher rank. Ever.

Laylie.5703:

This is pretty BS reward. I have a legendary and a hammer that matches I don’t need weapons for arah weapons that tbh look like trash. It should be the other way around or more tokens instead of weapons.

Why is free ectos a BS reward?

Larynx.2453:

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hey everyone,

This is a wording bug not a content issue. The design behind the dungeon tracks was that players would need to run the track multiple times to get the entire set of weapons and armor.

19 – weapons
18 – pieces of armor (6 light, 6 medium, and 6 heavy)

Upon completing a track you will get 3 weapons and 1 piece of armor all your choice including stat combo. Upon running the track multiple times you are able to either save tokens for legendary or use tokens to speed the process up of getting the full weapons/armor set you are working towards.

The fact the text says “set” is a mistake that we are going to update soon. Any other questions just let me know.

Is it intended to take anywhere from 40-70 hours to get a full set of the armor, especially when comparing it with the relative ease of acquiring it in PvE?

Assuming 10-20 minute runs, it takes only about 5-6 hours in PvE to acquire the set using the daily reward bonus.

.. Ever pugged arah before? 10-20min run would be a dream.

Although, this way if you don’t want to do said dungeon you don’t have to.. but it wouldn’t make much sense to make PvP a replacement for PvE, and I don’t think that’s their intentions. I hope they make it hard as hell to get PvE armor through PvP. It makes the ride more fun.

OneManArmy.9732:

As titles says. this kind of items must show your skill/time spend @ pvp. Like FotM skins that you can only obtain in fractals.

While it tradable you can just buy it, this totally devaluate its value.

I agree, but it doesn’t have much ‘achievement’ value to begin with. It takes a couple days max.

Chase.8415:

Predator.9214:

I can confirm that this system is flawed.
Just now I disconnected from a match that we were winning, & minute after, came back with the de – buff.
So I can understand the frustration if you are really not the type of guy to leave if losing.
As far as I am concerned, I am happy that the system is in the game, but it needs to find, if possible, a way to separate disconnects from Alt + F4-ers.

They can’t, it will be abused.

If they made it so that way only people who close the game get penalized, people would start turning their firewall to block all connections or pull network cable to abuse it.

Only rated PvP has this issue you can still play hot joins if you want

Honestly, the reason why this is an issue to some people is that you NEED tourneys to progress past 2 tracks in spvp. The end all solution to this would be to add a non-ranked spvp system. Then there would be nothing to complain about..

cough devs cough

felivear.1536:

I don’t know the answer to your question, but i have one of my own:

What do you mean by, “I was the top player” ?

NUMBER 1 PLAYER! ALL DAY!

He means top scorer, he probably assumed your xp is determined solely on that. Its just a daily limit.

azuzephyr.7280:

style.6173:

azuzephyr.7280:

style.6173:

azuzephyr.7280:

Phadde.7362:

You’ll be dead face down in the mud if you’re running such cheesy builds.

Is that why there are so few thieves and warriors in the meta right now?

Do you even play TDM? The meta is currently AOE condi spam. If everyone in a thread disagrees with you, you might want to ask yourself why.

Not really, in fact that’s a very stupid thing to say but I had fun at your expense none the less so thank you.

It’s ok. It just takes some people longer to learn than others. You’ll understand eventually. As others have said though, if you don’t enjoy the game mode, don’t play it. At least that way, you can go post on a thread where you know more about the topic.

What in your adequate view makes you believe that you know anything about this topic?

I’d like to know before I make judgments on who should be able to comment on pvp matters, particularly given the quality of people brought in since the patch

Okay guys.. Calm down, I’m sure we’d all prefer that you guys take your kitten contest to another forum. This is an important thread to some people (like myself) that would like to discuss the pros and cons to new map types, and specifically courtyard.

Plus my kitten is biggest.

EDIT: apparently it was censored.. e-kitten.. Fill in the blanks lol

Liean.2395:

dunno how it works, its first time ive ever seen this.

Dude I’ve dc’d a couple of times (weeks apart) and I didn’t get the dishonorable buff.. You have to DC a couple of times for you to get to debuff, and if you DO get it, fix your internet for when you can come back and just do some Hotjoins.

It sucks, I can empathize.. but also realize that when you DC.. you just cost your team the game 9 times out of 10.

StRaWberryCrEaM.4875:

I hate them with all my heart a net should make a certain ranked cap for unlocking tourneys

You sound like a mean person, I don’t really like you much. But I agree with the flood of newer players into tournaments. The problem is the fact that newer players are forced to go into it if they still want to go down the rank track, past the daily limit.. If A-Net stops the limit we wouldn’t have a flood of newer players in Tournaments.

I swear if you people ruin TDM for me, I’m going to be kittened. So many people have quit because of the lack of diversity in PvP (myself included) and now that they’re testing it, all of the people who have never played PvP in their life (and some that have) are saying that it doesn’t work because their side gets camped.

There’s a couple small changes they should make, then the system would be perfect.

1. If in tournament, make it a TDM tournament with a couple more maps. It doesn’t mesh well with Cap based builds.

2. Tweak the respawn timer and type, although in tournament this wont be as much an issue.. Fix the respawn for team, instead of individual (custom arenas) and make it a little bit longer.

3. Change time/point limit based on the static player size of the map. 10v10 matches should take twice the points required as 5v5.

As far as saying they’d have to change the entire way all classes function to make TDM work is complete BS. The players would change the way they play.. The Devs don’t have to force the change. If you’re a warrior, bring a banner. If you’re a squishy thief.. Learn to not rush in the middle of a zeg fight. If you’re an Ele, consider playing a staff build.

I’ve had far more fun times in the short lived (so far) TDM as I have in Point Cap. And the fact that All of the TDM maps are maxed out shows its popularity. It works, and people love it.

Auesis.7301:

I bought a starter kit for a custom arena today to practise with guildies. It was working just fine for a while, until a few hours ago. I’ve messed with the settings as much as possible, but even with Starting Players: 1, no reserved slots, no restrictions of any kind, we CANNOT get a match to start with just the 2 of us.

I don’t particularly feel happy with my 1600 gems being wasted with every passing day until this get fixed.

Anyone else have a solution to this problem or did the patch just break the whole thing completely?

Oh dude! I had the same issue as you back in the day.

Try switching up the map and force restarting the match. It fixed the problem for me. You can switch it back immediately afterwords.

Justin ODell.9517:

Weapon rarity has no affect on stats in structured PvP.

The newer sPvPers have been extremely confused on the new updates. Ya’ll should add in a few tutorials (like a quest-line or a cutscene to show the new stuff)

Justin ODell.9517:

Nabbo.2845:

Justin ODell.9517:

Nabbo.2845:

But courtyard is excluded from that?

Correct. Courtyard is not part of the standard custom arena configuration.

May I ask why?

TDM is not a supported game mode, at least not yet. We are watching the how community responds to the format, and then we’ll go from there.

Its awesome. Now gimme.

EDIT: Actually, I have some advice if you wouldn’t mind.. You need to scale the matches a bit. In a 10v10 the matches end REALLY fast and give what you’d expect as reward. In 5v5, the matches take a significantly longer time, yet the same rewards. If you scale the time limit/score limit according to the players involved.. The system would work a lot better.

I LOVE the new PvP, it is the reason why myself and 2 of my friends (and 3 of my guildies) came back to the game the second you announced it. The rank system was an awesome surprise. Seriously props. I hope you guys actually listen to the community here, and give the people what they want. More match types! More match types!

EDIT2: Oh Oh! And force the respawn to be team based, not individual. People streaming into battles isn’t making it fun on the noobs.

Well considering how everyone has to pay for transmutations in pvp now.. They will still have a net gain after adding in the bank.

Morsus.5106:

So does hotjoin have a cap, or just custom arenas? (So if I’m playing on an ArenaNet server but I’m not in an arena am I still capped?)

I was last night.. I’m guessing he’s saying that you need to be in tournament in order to still get the benefits.

ronpierce.2760:

Gotta love how truth revealing those theories are.

The truth us: People would never be happy with how it looks because the way the situation was handled sucked the epic was out of achieving it. The chocolate just isn’t sweet anymore, so it’s perceived as bitter. That’s my truthful theory.

Well I think thats why there is such a backlash, here’s it for FREE! Now you can sPvP with no goals!

Aside from that… The dragon emote truly is awful and underwhelming

alemfi.5107:

cyyrix.6105:

Eve.1580:

HeadCrowned.6834:

I haven’t noticed any improvements on the thieves/warriors yet. And Necro’s got too much of a buff? Which ones lol.

Warriors and thieves have always had an advantage in sPvP. But have you played the new map? Necros ALL DAY. Wells are wiping entire teams without skill necessary. They just need to be balanced on this new map. That and their new heal ability, buddy told me he’s nearly invincible in groups now. Then again, that was WvW

Losing to wells in a team death match setting is probably a l2p issue.

Speaking as a well necro, this is true; Considering that you don’t need to stay in a conveniently drawn circle for well placement. Regardless I had fun reaping the spoils on —- less experienced players.

Wells in conjunction to everything else.. I feel like you guys are painting a picture of a 1v1 fight, where a warrior is standing still for 10 mins in a well. No. When a teammate goes down, drop all your wells and marks on whoever starts to res, someone pushes a choke, drop all your wells and marks in the middle to prevent escape, someone stuck in animation drop all your wells and marks.

Wells and marks have initial condition ticks right? All it takes is dropping it on them initially, then wait 2 seconds and wait for them to fall over from condi damage.

I’m ignorant to necros, I’ve just noticed a HUGE increase in necros playing and a huge increase to their damage on teams, and teams wiping the second the wells start popping on them.

Krittz.6013:

I like how there are so many complaints yet I’ve seen more s/tPvPers since the patch… even people from my PvE guild is playing s/tPvP. :P

These people came back to gw2 see if the first new game type is good.. I am one of those people.

yiishing.9057:

let me put it this way.
imagine you’re a some hardcore pvper, rank 70 before the patch and you would have to put in at least half a year of hardcore pvping to get this finisher.
it’s quite good for that it came for free.

The end goal shouldn’t be ‘easy’ in fact it should be near to impossible.. If I was a high rank (I’m only r35) I would be REALLY mad that they decided to just jump me up to the end, and that’s it.

thehipone.6812:

Eve.1580:

HeadCrowned.6834:

I haven’t noticed any improvements on the thieves/warriors yet. And Necro’s got too much of a buff? Which ones lol.

Warriors and thieves have always had an advantage in sPvP. But have you played the new map? Necros ALL DAY. Wells are wiping entire teams without skill necessary. They just need to be balanced on this new map. That and their new heal ability, buddy told me he’s nearly invincible in groups now. Then again, that was WvW

May I suggest that you communicate to your team that it could, possibly, sorta, be a bad idea for all of you to stand in the wells at the same time?

Choke points, most players don’t know how to react and considering how it is an extremely small map, its very common to get into a terrible situation. Plus first tick.. Several people with several wells. You can argue it is not currently an issue, but you can’t argue it cannot be an issue, simply because you can move out of it.

HeadCrowned.6834:

I haven’t noticed any improvements on the thieves/warriors yet. And Necro’s got too much of a buff? Which ones lol.

Warriors and thieves have always had an advantage in sPvP. But have you played the new map? Necros ALL DAY. Wells are wiping entire teams without skill necessary. They just need to be balanced on this new map. That and their new heal ability, buddy told me he’s nearly invincible in groups now. Then again, that was WvW

AcidicVision.5498:

Seeing as how there were people in the mists screaming about this “bug” within an hour of the patch going live, I am fairly sure it is working as intended.

The first thing a certain style of players did was jump into custom arenas with their guild mates and trade wins to boost the tracks.

I don’t see any reason to have a legitimate complaint about this at all unless your intention was to boost rewards, which is borderline exploitative. Team Arenas and Solo Queue are both more rewarding and uncapped.

Then don’t allow rewards for locked arenas & arenas with low pop. Also, if this is seriously a concern why don’t they block all rank gain after an hour.

Evan Lesh.3295:

There is a reward track progression cap in custom arenas, but none in solo or team arena. Unfortunately this isn’t clearly messaged. We’re discussing ways to resolve the confusion.

Ya’ll should be fair then. Make a cap for PvE.. They’re only allowed to do 1 heart in each area a day.. Then you have to move on to another area. Or WvW.. once you kill 10 people, you cannot get drops anymore on that map.

The problem isn’t that the message isn’t clear, its that the message exists. A-Net I love you, seriously, but why would you want to restrict sPvP even more when we barely have any content as it is.

ronpierce.2760:

There is a flaw with letting “pros” balance the game. You could forget about build diversity. In the eyes of the pros what works already is all that exists. We saw that a bit with Grouch (no offense). Balance this patch (so far) doesn’t seem that bad, with the exception of maybe Condi Necros. Nothing else has stood out as entirely game breaking… Unless your OP build got nerfed and thus you need to adapt. If that’s the case, that’s in you. Don’t yell at Anet for that.

Thief/warrior changes were great. The sigil changes were nice, runes too. (Lyssa) everyone got some nerfs on their op stuff. MM got a little 1v1 trim, good stuff there. Ele aren’t chew toys now, so that’s fun. AR isn’t the most awful thing in an MMO anymore. That’s a plus.

What are your BIG huge issues? Yes do dies could use some trim. That’s nothing new to this patch. Balance wise, overall, I prefer this patch to the last. Maybe next patch will combat condi necro and (engineer? I heard they can be problematic but haven’t had any issues yet) a bit more.

Sky isn’t falling and no, this isn’t as bad as June 2013.

I think necros got too much of a buff, personally, but I don’t see anything game breaking.

I would say that if you have pro players play test, and when they find the best meta.. That’s when you nerf.. If it’s meta, its typically unbalanced. There’s loads of other balancing you still need to do.. but this is a strategy I think they should explore.

Devs.. PLEEEASSE don’t let this be an official thing.. The new sPvP system (tdm & reward track) is the reason why I came back to this game, the limit would just kill the fun.. I love to just go on binges and pvp all day..

Anet.. I love you guys, but you’re insane. I’ve never seen an MMO make ‘maxing’ easier.. We are gamers, we need the carrot on the stick.

And no.. Not random loot chests with typical gear (although I love the track, don’t get me wrong), but end game.

This whole thread sounds like an excuse to stand in wells.. Condi staking against your team is completely avoidable, use tactics.. Condi people have it hard enough as it is, any more of a nerf and the would be completely unviable in pve.

Unbiased, by the way, I’m a power ele and ptv warrior.