Guild Wars 2

Storms Fury.9307:

Because you can’t lose Tiers in Amber, Emerald, or Sapphire that means that bad players will eventually make it to Ruby because they will just grind.

I’m halfway through Ruby so its frustrating when players on my team clearly don’t deserve to be there and drag your team down.

The only way they got there is by luck and enough grinding.

If you remove no tier loss from Amber, Emerald, and Sapphire they will never make it there unless they actually are skillful enough.

This will make players across all skill levels have less volatile matches and more likely to play other people in their relative skill range.

Everything you point out was points out by myself and others the first week League play began. Some of us were evening pointing this out before it began when they outlined how it would work…. The best I can figure, the tier lock-in for Amber-Sapphire exist to give the solo queue lovers a place to grind into Ruby. They will need skill and a great deal of luck to get there but with enough time it can be achieved… Your average PvE focused player enjoys grind. Some to a small extend, some love it a great deal (or will tolerate it) for the rewards. They are accustom to “play more = reward”.

Well, those of us who do PvP in other games and focus on PvP in general know player more does not equal reward in PvP. You play to get good. Then you keep working on your game, but you’ll get to a point where you’re facing other players who are right at your level or just a little above. When you get there then you’ve capped out. GW2’s PvP system has to be designed to keep the PvE players happy too and that’s what Amber-Sapphire are about. It’s a progression path in PvP where “play more = reward” happens.

Then you get to Ruby and things change. Without tier lock-in you may find you just can’t win enough to progress to Diamond. You will have reached your cap.

They should keep the tier lock-in a solo queue thing or remove it altogether.

online.1278:

check attached screenshot.
It just cannot be esports game anymore.

We have realized and learned from anet that there shouldn’t be any buy2win Stuffs for esports game, which should be equalized and balanced and have diversity, but, this is the result since the game become buy2win.

Wow such a huge drop. Before Hot, around this time of holiday, gw2 normally had 1500+ viewers but now..

Even kittening Mario 64 pwned gw2.
This is kinda serious as esports game (viewer number is the most important for esports games), anet really need to do something at this rate to re-vitalize their game.

Hope they will!

MMOs don’t do well on Twitch. Of the GW2’s streamers who are popular, PvP streamers are the most popular and unfortunately 90% of that time is spent streaming waiting in queue in Heart of the Mist…. If PvP in GW2 had a stand alone client and if there were entertaining things to do/watch while waiting. It would shoot up in the charts. If it were well balanced and the meta made more entertaining and we had a stand alone client, I believe we would see it in the top 5 on Twitch.

It’s frustrating because the PvP in this game has so much potential and it’s blocked by several things from reaching that potential.

When you solo queue ranked you enter into a scenario where you are playing a team sport with people you’ve often never met… Everyone has pips on the line so you immediately have a trust problem when someone tries to coordinate the team. You’ll have at least one team member go against plan (usually more). Most will be annoyed you’re trying to call team strategy with a complete “pug” group.

So while yes, it is often a team coordination problem that cost you the match (we’re going to assume MMR ranking are worth something even if imperfect). You need to touch base with reality of how unnatural solo queue is for Conquest and that most groups want nothing to do with working together on strategy… You’re taking too seriously for 95% of the people who PvP in GW2. That is the state of things.

In solo queue, the team with the better strategy (even if that strategy is as simple as holding mid and home and staying in pairs) will win most of the time.

Great tips for premades, but 90% of what you’re recommending is team strategy . If you have a team that wants to go do their own thing (most of the time when solo queuing) this won’t work…. You need luck on your side to get good teams to solo queue to Diamond much less Legendary.

online.1278:

Why MMO need to be esports game?

I just don’t understand since there are already tons of esports game offering higher money pool than this game already.

Tell me the reasons with rationale plz

The reason some players want it to go e-sport:

• GW2 unique action-oriented, third-person play mechanic is the best combat out there and we would love to see it taken seriously and present with balance and respectable features found in the best PvP games (LoL, DOTA2, etc..)

The reason ArenaNet (presumably) wants it to go e-sport:

• Marketing and the lure of new players to this side of the game

They know they have something special, they just don’t realize it needs to be spinned off from the MMO or it will never be taken seriously. It will never get the chance it deserves. It needs a lot of work before it gets there, regardless.

MithranArkanere.8957:

No. There’s no such thing as “PvP-focused players vs PvE-focused players”.

There’s “honorable players who want balanced gameplay vs scum who think anything goes if it gets you the win”. Either can be PvE, PvP, WvW or PvX. One is the kind of people that would stop a conflict with diplomacy or a duel between champions, the second is the kind of people that would turn the Eath into a desolate wasteland with nukes to ‘win’ the conflict, even though by doing that everyone loses.

When something is broken, the first group will rightfully complain, while the second will lie through their teeth in an effort to keep broken things around.

When something broken is addressed, the first group will say either nothing or acknowledge it, the second will whine about losing their unfair advantages with more blatant lies.

The point of my post was that the game developer will tend to the needs of it’s primary audience first… If you think players who do nothing but PvP have the same mentality and approach to PvP as the majority PvE players in the game you’re wrong. I’ve outlined the differences I’ve noticed in general way…. I think universally we all want balance and a better meta but the differences really stop there.

Good list. Spectator mode needs to enable us to watch all the past ESL matches in-game client, and also record specific matches of our own to watch for team review. Streaming gives one perspective or even worse some high level perspective that’s just a fireworks show… Being able to switch perspectives on demand in game client playback is a whole different thing… We had this back with GW1.

hotcarl.8621:

I was under the impression that going afk, rage quitting, or throwing matches on purpose would be a punishable/bannable offense, but I still see people doing it all the time. I believe that by making an example of the worst or most flagrant offenders, Anet could send a message to the rest of the sPvP community that this behavior is not ok.

Anyone else frustrated by all the quitters who give up when the other team takes the lead?

Can any staff members comment on this?

EU ESL Pro GW2 player Leeto was doing it on his Twitch feed the other day. Cursing the game whle drinking a lot of beer…. Don’t think he’s banned and it would be a double standard to treat players any differently. If you get kicked for going AFK or rage quit you will suffer the usual dishonor penality but I don’t think you’ll get hit with anything else. Sometimes dishonor is worth taking… As I’ve said before, I think the dishonor is on the game itself and not the players at this point.

Julian.2971:

All the struggling, all the suffering, all the pain, the rage and the frustration. Trying to maintain a positive w/l ratio to slowly climb in the division, at the end you just got a jewel on your name and your inventory full of crap, and the godd sensation of accomplish something after countless hours of bad times.

Is it worth to try hard in the pvp legues that anet have implemented?

If you have a full premade and you are willing to run this kitten meta yes. Otherwise you need to understand your skill at the games will have very little impact on you rank in the end and take the light hearted attitude they expect.

Attitude they expect:
“Oh look we got paired with a full premade guild team…. Oh well, let’s suck it up and do our best. Let’s all remember this is just for fun”

Instead of getting upset for the fight being unfair, the free win to the other team ,etc… Essentially they assume you’re a PvE focused player who just enjoys some PvP on the side, since you are the type that would spend months grinding away for a Legendary they assume you love the game enough that five minutes of your life in a match you have very little chance of winning is going to be just dandy.

Dahkeus.8243:

Honestly, there’s so many players that both PvE and PvP that it’s generally a false dichotomy to analyze the game from a PvEer vs PvPer perspective.

I agree that many players PvE and PvP, but since most of those players put their focus on PvE or WvW and not sPvP it is a valid dichotomy. When I say “PvP focused” I’m talking about those who sped 90% or more of their time in sPvP. That is very small percentage of the GW2 community and the game is clearly not designed for them, but in trying to take it E-Sport there is a certain seriousness and balance required that is very counter to the tong-in-cheek, devil may care attitude that persist in every other aspect of the game.

We have this very small player base devoted to sPvP and yet it’s frustrating because we also have the best play mechanics in GW2. The PvP in this game deserves to be something much more than it currently is but it’s held back to cater to the desires of the majority.

LastHope.8127:

You want the direct opposite of what this game was ment to be, and the reason most players play it.

I am well aware that the overwelming majority of the GW2 player base is PvE focused and that the PvP side of the game is a side show act. Look at the top streamers for PvE in this game and the top content creators! Watch the official content ANet creates like Guild Chat. No on is taking any aspect of the game seriously. The problem is when you have that mentality, balance goes out the window. These things are all secondary. The game studio’s stance becomes “well our players are signing in for the social aspect anyway, so it doesn’t matter if some things are broken”.

The problem is ArenaNet made a bold move to try and take the PvP side of the game E-sport. That’s what got my attention and made me come back. I guess the joke is on those of us who should have known PvP would have been executed in a way to always serve the MMO, PvE focused crowd over anyone else.

My recommendation would be for ArenaNet to build a seperate game client for PvP or just make a new game using the same weapon/utility skill “build” mechanics and GW2 engine just focus it on PvP and make it a very lightweight download, PvP feature rich, no-holds-bared serious PvP game. I honestly think that is the only solution that will ever cater to the PvP focused players.

TL;DR: It comes down to very different attitudes about PvP. Every player I know who loves Skyhammer or loved Raid on the Capricorn, loved it because they felt the map was fun and interesting. PvE focused player find the fun in the novelity of the experience, the PvP focused player finds the fun in playing and winning on a balanced playing field, they want to walk away knowing they won or lost a fair fight. PvP focused player never wants fun and novelty over balanced playing field. PvP focused player never wants to achieve rank simply by playing enough matches to get to higher divisions. They want the divisions to mean something…. By nature a take-it-serious attitude is a more mature stance and a devil-may-care attitude is more immature. I think that is the dividing line between the PvE and PvE crowd. They both want very different things out of GW2 PvP

I think one of the challenges ArenaNet faces when managing and updating PvP is how to cater to their base (MMO PvE focused players) while also luring in those who just want to PvP. As gamers we are their customers and the PvP side of the game has to take care of the desires of what the majority want.

I know there are competent people at ArenaNet who see what’s going on with LoL, DOTA2, etc.. and they know their game mechanics are much better. Perhaps there are even those who want to do PvP right inside GW2, but I think this delima of serving the PvE crowd is what is holding them back.

What do you think the average PvE focused player wants when they come to PvP? These bullet list are not all encompassing, but I would bet most want the following

• A getaway from their PvE or WvW grind
• Play mechanics and progression that focus on the individual and not the team
• Progression/Rank path with rewards that anyone can achieve with enough grind
• A PvP culture that doesn’t take itself too seriously
• Use of PvE gear (PvE players love gear progression. If you worked 3 months on obtaining that Legendary Greatsword and four months on your Ascended Armor set wouldn’t you want to be able to have it help you kill some less equipt player?)

What does the average PvP focused player want?

• Play mechanics that relay on team strategy for the win, with rarely one or two individual contributions being the deciding factor
• Solo queue split from premade queue for when they don’t want to take it too serious
• Rank/Progression for premade queue that reflects team effort and skill
• Rank/Progression for solo queue that accurately reflects individual contribution
• Rank/Progression that reflects true placement among piers, not something that can just be obtained though grind.
• Ability to watch previous matches of top teams inside the game client, selecting perspective of any player on either team (e.g. what we can do today in Spectate mode for hot-join, just for previous matches)
• Ability to record and replay our matches inside game client and review with team what we we got right/wrong.
• Ability to deselect the sometimes fun to play, but yet unbalanced time waster maps (e.g. Skyhammer) when queuing.
• No gear progression for stats (For PvP players it’s all about balance, not prestige for your PvE grind) but more unique skins exclusively available as awards.

It’s a very different mentality and the game has to cater to one or the other. ArenaNet tried to give both type of players something with HoT

PvE focused crowd got:

• Guild Hall PvP Arena (where PvE gear can be used in PvP)
• League divisions with lock-in up to Ruby (allowing a player to solo queue grind though several divisions)
• Ability to queue up for ranked matches solo (in absence of a solo queue)
• Legendary backpiece made obtainable over several seasons of play, so PvE crowd can eventually have their cookie too.

PvP focused crowd got

• Guild team option and guild team missions
• Guild Challenge Leaderboards
• Diamond and Legendary divisions without tier lock-in (so skill is required not just grind to take you forward in the top divisions)
• Stronghold. MOBA style map for those who want to take team strategy a bit further.

Seems like a win-win on paper, but it wasn’t because they mixed it all together and had opposing ideas. There was also an agenda to push the game to ESL Pro League. In spite of the existing core game classes taking years to properly balance, someone thought that the Elite Specs would not have a major impact on the PvP season. This decision was made knowing the Elite Specs were designed to be OP to push HoT sells. I imagine someone rationalized this with “what better way to get our PvP focused players to upgrade than to realize without the expanshion they can no longer compete”. I fall into the camp that believes they knew what they were doing with the Elite Specs being OP and they planned it that way.

How it played out:

• Solo queue teams (casuals) pitted against full guild team premades, feeding undeserved wins to premades and undeserved losses to solo queue players
• Players realizing quickly they can tank MMR at a new tier lock to increase their chance of winning the five in a row needed to progress.
• The Elite Specs dominate the meta, forcing everyone who plays PvP to give up their favorite build (and in some cases favorite class) in order to be competitive
• Pro players finding the greatest utility in the Elite Specs and the meta reduced down to only four classes and four builds (effectively bringing back “build wars” as we’ve never seen it before in GW2)
• ESL Pro team members publicly trashing the league system and new meta in their private streams
• ESL Pro teams rage quitting early match
• ESL Pro team members attempting to solo queue ranked and publicly resorting to tactics others get banned for (purposely going AFK on steam to lower MMR)

It’s a huge mess. What I would like is for ArenaNet to own it’s failure on this. They should shut the ranked season down altogether, but they won’t do that because that would be putting the integrity of PvP in game over the fun and novelity of PvP (remember their main revenue stream comes from the PvE focused crowd who value fun and novelty over tack-it-serious play).

So how would you fix it? What would you like to see ArenaNet do?

Deio.4182:

I think that our pvp community is falling apart.. I see lot of “great player” that go afk as they die once or twice. Or that if they dislike the team, they stay near spawn, insulting players of their teams. Although this, i still have hope to see a good pvp community; but what can I do for this afk during the matches? Report for something?

It is. From my perspective it has. It’s made me hate the game and leave the game in terms of any organized play. I sign in at this point and solo queue. Sometimes I get angry, most of the time I just don’t care. I’ve rage quit my guild over it. Was a complete kitten to people I’ve played with and was taking it out on certain individuals for not understanding when I was having a very bad night. But it comes back to this game being broken. It’s been a difficult end to 2015 for me for personal reasons. Loosing a close family member and with my work and location I don’t make a lot of time for friends out of game.

Being able to escape it all and sign in and play for a few hours running though matches with in game friends was a great escape. But after the HoT imbalance several quit playing because they could no longer play on the classes they wanted. The few that were still trying I ended up lashing out at enraged by how horrible things has become in game …. There is no reason to handle it with kid gloves, it’s garbage.

You’ll have people try to tell you why you’re wrong or why I’m wrong, etc.. It doesn’t matter. We’ve been playing long enough to know this is a real thing. We know how bad it is. You will always have those who are the forever optimist who don’t know when it’s time to take the kid gloves off and consider where things stand.

Although I’m finding it hard to be optimistic, I have hope they will fix things. I’m angry at ArenaNet because to me this was more than just a game, it was my escape during a difficult time. I don’t really care if people think that’s wrong, sad, pathetic or whatever. It worked for me in that way and unlike so many I know who refuse to play the game sober, I kind of like the game be my drug of choice.

Some days I think it’s for the best that ArenaNet destroyed it all, but the truth is it was a controlled thing and it was something I invested a lot of time in. The truth is the PvP side of the game being destroyed (not just talking about League mechanics and problems in general , but this horrible post-HoT meta), the truth is it’s just another thing that has been taken from me this year.

Thank you ArenaNet for not considering how your play base would feel when you completed ripped apart the PvP side of the game.

The answer is that GW2 is an MMO and the sPvP side of the game has always been a side-line feature. By design, it’s something for the PvE crowd or WvW crowd to come and do when they get bored. That may be sound harsh, but it’s absolute true. The crowd that loves popular PvP games like LoL or DOTA2, they aren’t likely to commit to a 30+GB download for the GW2 client only to PvP. So we get new features sprinkled in but sPvP in GW2 is always designed around catering to it’s biggest audience which is the PvE and WvW crowd who approach PvP more casually than most.

So…

Having said that the play mechanics of GW2 lends itself to be the best action oriented third-person PvP available. It’s worthy of it’s own title. I hope ArenaNet is looking at LoL and DOTA2 and how much money these games are making, how popular they are on Twitch and that they take the GW2 combat engine, combine it with a some other new things and let it be reborn as a much smaller client positioned exclusively for PvP play. If they did that you would see a lot of interest. In fact I would wager if done correctly and we get proper balance of the skills, a few new death match maps, a few new MOBA style maps, solo and premade queue split, League still progression all the time with some special “in season” ranking and tournaments, ability to replay past matches in client… If they match feature for feature where the bar currently is at and just take it a bit above that they would have a phenomenal success. A PvP game that could easily transition the new flagship product for ArenaNet.

Until we get a separate client for PvP it will never get the love and respect it deserves. PvP is a huge market. It’s what everyone on Twitch is watching. But you’re not going to get there when gamers have to download a huge MMO client just to get to the PvP in your game. They are going to assume the game studio’s focus is PvE (and they’re right to assume that). A client devoted to PvP paired with a team of resources who listen to community and fix a lot of these problems prior to go-live would be a huge financial win for ArenaNet and NCSoft. It would boost popularity around the world.

In Conquest you have three capture points and secondary mechanics that have to be strategically utilized for the win. You have 5 team mates. While it seems some players envision themselves envision themselves some sort of in game god who can be all places at once, the reality is you are one person on a five man team and you can only cap/decap one point at a time.

The only scenario in which you can “carry the team” is if the opposing team is as bad as yours and they are not running some form of team strategy. Things have to line up to enable you to carry a team regardless of your skill level.

And just because you have the most points on the scoreboard at the end doesn’t mean you carried the team.

zorokai.1486:

Right just had a Pvp ranked game 500-445 (defeat) Due to a player who Deliberately Tanked – how I know? simple, this ranger ran naked, left points which was ours to be capped by other team did nothing to support or assist the team, just died conveniently to allow the other team to Rally off his/her useless self.

2 confirmed people reported this player, but worst of all, my team lost Pip(s) for this? Total BS, feel bad for my team as we did well as a 4 man pug/duo and a person trying to make us lose.

More than happy to Pm people the players name and account details ingame (if they want to know)

You can run naked in this game and it’s no different than wearing armor. You will be buffed to max stats. This misconception has gotten me reported before, but it’s ignorance on the players reporting for not knowing that a character with no armor has the same “armor” stats as one with max.

Phaeton.9582:

Can I suggest you put this thread forward as ‘constructive’ to the forum manager…

The cooldowns on almost all the new weapon skills/utilities, particularly the defensive ones, are too short across the elite specs. They need to be raised.

Much like the (year late) shave of HS, I’m afraid the solution to this is fairly obvious here.

It’s likely nobody will comment on this thread. They’d all rather argue with a pve dude about legendary skins. But you, you hawk-eyed forum volunteer. Please flag this post as constructive feedback.

At least I can say I tried.

The Elite Specializations are OP. This was revealed in sPvP weeks before ranked play began. A decision was made to allow ranked season and include Elite Specs even with the known issues. The agenda or motivation behind this decision is unclear, but most assume it was made to drive HoT sales even if it meant sacrificing the integrity of the PvP side of the game to fullfill that goal.

One of many signs we’ve been given that if you take the game too seriously (even in PvP, apparently) you’re doing it wrong according to ArenaNet.

I understand business decisions sometimes don’t align well with the community, but have to wonder if they considered the damage to the brand that would come from these mistakes.

Agemnon.4608:

I would like to offer potential solutions to the above mentioned problems:

MMR manipulation at each tier giving incentive for players to give up early in matches or purposely loss matches

Tie league to MMR.

Solo queue mixed with pre-made queue.

Solo would be solo whereas to potentially solve queue time problems mix duos and triples with full premades.

Matchmaking that does not take into consideration number of Elite Spec and meta builds when balancing

Ban people who don’t have HoT from ranked and only have them able to do 10 unranked games per day.

People who have years of experience playing on alt accounts to get a free ride to Ruby
Extensive use of teleport and other hacks

Such hacks need better monitoring. Since Guild Wars 2 is a very light game (I can get 40-60 fps with just a GTX 670 at 4k resolution) such software running to check for hacks shouldn’t add too much of a burden.

As for alt account experience if you really have that level of expertise don’t you belong in ruby to begin with? What if their “alt” account is actually their main and need a PvP tag on that account so no one mistakes him for a pure PvE’r? Badges say, or should say, “I PvP and this is where my skill level is at.” Showing a tag is much better than being on an alt with no tag (therefore no way to separate yourself from pure PvE’rs who’ll simply say if you’re such a PvP expert where’s your tag?"

Skilled in higher divisions taking gold to pair up with lower division players

I honestly foresaw this happening but not the tanking. All this would achieve is division inflation and should be regulated as such. Then in the higher division they’ll get experience playing better players and will eventually develop the skill to belong there. Still, it’s a morally gray area leaning towards the dark side.

Some nice ideas here mixed with some I’m not so sure about, but I’ll toss my solution recommendations. How I would fix these problems.

Fixing PvP in this game is actually a pretty short bullet list

• Add ability to go do other things while waiting in queue. This take care of players who are going to have to wait longer when they solo queue and it’s also going to make premade players happy. No one likes sitting around Heart of the Mist. In fact most of us hate it. No one likes watching other players sit around Heart of the Mist on Twitch so it’s killing the opportunity for streaming to help market the product.

• Add solo queue. Solo queue players should have the option to queue with full premades but not be forced to. The current queue. After solo queue is added, the current queue system becomes the premade queue. Solo, Duo queue members who choose who enter premade queue know that they are be paired with 3-4 other’s who are on team together…. Meanwhile to solo queue you can’t be in a party at all and when you solo queue you know 100% you will be paired against another solo queue team

• Split League divisions by solo and premade queue. Amber-Ruby should be given to solo queue and tier lock-in left in tact. Solo queue players know their team composition is going to be largely luck of the draw so keep tier lock-in up to Ruby then add two higher divisions for them (e.g. Onyx and Peral) without tier lock-in in place of Diamond and Legendary

• For premade queue, nix Amber-Ruby. leave Diamond and Legendary as is but add two lower divisions (Topaz and Opal) that each have 15 pips and no 5 tier-lock (that’s right, don’t give premade queue any tier lock-in… it’s win and a pip loose a pip all the way through from the very start).

• For solo queue players- Add routines to match making so that it is aware of current meta builds and near meta builds. Make it so you never have one solo team composed of all Elite Spec metas against a team that’s running mostly outdated builds. Or at least when these matches happen pip distribution at end of match considers the leverage Elite Spec heavy team had.

• Be up front with the game community about current hacks. Anyone can type “GW2 hacks” into Google and find these things so why not respect the community enough to make everyone aware of what’s going on so the this can be better reported?!? The only reason I can think of a company wouldn’t do this is if they knew the hacks were out of control and that they couldn’t do much about it because of limited resources or effort required to patch…. ESL play requires anti-hack background app to run, they know they have their pro matches covered. Pro players are complaining about how the anti-hack ESL app impacts ping, etc… ArenaNet has probably weighed that outside pro play, it’s better to allow hackers than to implement something that will slow the game down for everyone (otherwise why wouldn’t we all be running this anti-hack software?). I guess they figure it’s best to try and cover it up.

….

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

Divisions should definitely equate to MMR. If they aren’t doing that, what use are they, other than a mechanic to abuse for a cool backpiece?

Unfortunately as implemented, “a mechanic to abuse for a cool back piece” is exactly what they currently are. How can there be any integrity in the division icon beside a character name when you have

• MMR manipulation at each tier giving incentive for players to give up early in matches or purposely loss matches
• Solo queue mixed with pre-made queue,
• Matchmaking that does not take into consideration number of Elite Spec and meta builds when balancing
• People who have years of experience playing on alt accounts to get a free ride to Ruby
• Extensive use of teleport and other hacks
• Skilled in higher divisions taking gold to pair up with lower division players

Even if we didn’t have all these things going on mucking up the integrity of League Divisions you also have the tier lock-in. Given enough play time, eventually a player will get the five pips needed to lock in to the next tier. The elite progression from Amber to Ruby seems to be designed for those who don’t take PvP seriously (I suspect it was designed for the PvE crowd who occasionally do PvP, this is what you get when great PvP is trapped in a PvE focused MMO). The tier-lock in means one can grind into Ruby. Luck is going to be just as much a factor as skill when solo queuing.

For the full pre-mades it’s a different story. If you’re a great pre-made many of the problems in the bullet list will not impact your team. It comes down to Diamond and Legendary being the only two divisions with prestige. But even when I see a Diamond I wonder if they used MMR manipulation tactics, alt accounts or hacks to get there. So there is no respect for it.

Ithilwen.1529:

This “organized play” thing is destroying a lot of fun in the game. Here’s a Diamond ( I think ) level player openly asking for an Amber to join them as a duo.

Yes, ANET, mmr tanking is happening.. it’s happening constantly.

-edit- I’ve had a long hard night, the majority of the matches over the past 9 hours or so have been losses, many of them by blowout. I really don’t appreciate the cheating.

Report them. If you know what to look for then you’ll realize this is happening all the time. I would say 1 out of 5 matches, perhaps even more. Observe what others are doing. When they are running around in circles, not contributing to combat and not capping points you know they are purposely tanking the match. Often times they just don’t give it their all and loose that way. Impossible to spot for solo queue players but easier with duos..

Laserbolt.6731:

Just wondering if there are any people trying to do the ranked league by exclusively playing Stronghold.

Does it seem any more “fair” that the Conquest games you previously tried in league play?

Stronghold relies on more team strategy than individual skill to win. So if you’re running a full premade on voice coms, Stronghold rules/mechanics will give you a strong advantage if you take advantage of your ability to communicate with you team. Likewise, PUG/solo queue players can have a huge disadvantage in Stronghold. Assuming equal skill (MMR is suppose to at least get us in the ballpark with match making), even if the opposing team has a duo that’s communicating and your team is 100% solo queue, the opposing team has a a big advantage because of the importance of team strategy. In Conquest there is strategy, it’s just usually the same strategy. Hold mid and home and then go after the map bonuses/secondary mechanics based on the map and what the other team is doing.

TL;DR: Because match making will pair premades to solo queue team, Stronghold is more likely to give an advantage to premades. Solo queue players don’t really have any advantages in League play, but at least in Conquest you don’t have the huge disadvantage when the opposing premade is on voice coms running strategic plays.

RoseofGilead.8907:

That was an image Daniel Dociu submitted for Into The Pixel. It’s not related to GW2 at all. :p And I definitely don’t see Anet going in that direction for any part of the game, honestly.

Thanks for the info! Why is it copyright to ArenaNet if it was just submitted to The Pixel? Maybe a direction they started down and abandoned so the image was property of ANet but he was given permission to use it?

Was browsing NCSoft/ArenaNet art director Daniel Dociu’s portfolio site and I came across this piece of art that bears ArenaNet copyright for 2013 (this would have been after the core game released)

This image is incredible. If it is Cantha it is a very contemporary city with technology beyond and architecture that much closer to modern day human civilization than anything we’ve seen in game… We already have a race that’s very advanced and guns are already a weapon type. Could we see more modern weapons added?!? Kind of mind blowing to imagine a elder dragon flying over a very modern interpretation of Cantha.

Thoughts?

If the image doesn’t come though, it can be found here.
http://danieldociu.weebly.com

Nick.7621:

Previous metas require some mechanical skill, this meta is just spam AOE, everything is bunker (even if you run Marauders), 1v1s take forever, nothing dies, many passives and invulns.

Thus the reason why GW2 PvP is utter kittene in its current state, boring to play and boring to watch. Would much rather power meta we had post HoT 100/10.

There is an element of skill involved, it’s just a small set of builds that are relevant and the game reduces to constant interrupt/condi stack. Following their “rage quit” this past Monday, ESL Pro GW2 team Zero Counterplay had this to say

“at this point, it legitimately is just so hard to care about the game in its current state. If you need to, go back and see Game 1 of the series; 3 nodes contested something like 12 minutes into the game, with the score something like 30-0? Look at that, and then look back at me and tell me that we should be expected to sit and mash buttons hopelessly for 15 minutes. "

Leagues are also reduced to a game of luck since you have
*Solo queue and premade queue mixed.
*People tanking their MMR on new tier lock-ins

Add the horrible meta into the mix and people continuing to run outdated builds and the whole thing is just too far gone to take seriously. If you want to have fun in PvP I suggest you stop any efforts to take it serious. Solo queue exclusively and don’t get too bent out of shape when luck doesn’t play out your way. Think of it like a trip to the casino every time you queue up and hope the next season will be better.

Eagelseye.6312:

Guys and specially veterans, is there any dedicated PvP guild which does PvP premades in both Unranked and Ranked plus any particular server which is predominantly known to have PvP players?

Since I joined a few months back till date have not seen any dedicated PvP guild. Of course there are Premade teams but how about guild itself?

Or is SoloQ predominantly the basis of PvP in this game?

Spent a lot of time chatting with the leader of [LFG] and almost joined them. Really like their leader and his direction. I suggest contacting Trevor Boyer.6524 in game for more info if you’re looking for a competent leader with years of experience doing PvP in this game who is trying to help newcomers. Lots of respect Trevor.

If you’re looking for a casual PvP guild there is no such thing in this game or at least I have not found it. I suspect too many PvP players have been burned by recruiting PvP players who then spend a lot of time repping their PvE, PvX or WvW guild. Most people don’t install an MMO and then exclusively play PvP in that MMO. The goal of a PvP focused guild is to find those players and they end up being exclusive and very selective requiring a certain level of commitment (think “hardcore”).

It will continue to be this way as long GW2 sPvP exist as a side feature of the MMO base game. If they ever give the sPvP side of the game its own client things could get very interesting. If they were to go down that path it would make sense to launch an entirely new PvP focused game that uses the GW2 engine and mechanics. Would love to see that.

It’s possible, but will be very difficult. Think about it. Luck will have to be on your side so that the pug teams you’re paired with on the journey execute better team coordination, have more skill and are running relevant builds to be effective. Even if you didn’t have to face this imbalanced meta and full premade teams with strategy, even if you didn’t have that you would still need to get lucky on top of being a very good player.

But since there is no separation of premade and solo queue and the meta is kittened, you will face everything from duos to full premade guild teams on voice comms. Some will be horrible, some will be great. Again, it’s going to take a lot of hours and a lot of luck to make it though Ruby just solo queuing.

If you are experienced and really want to make it to Diamond solo queuing, you’re best bet is to buy an additional Heart of Thorns license (second/alt account) and start on that account. You’ll have base level MMR and will cruise your way into Ruby.

To my knowing, ArenaNet has no policy against a player having multiple accounts and simply working your way though the divisions on both accounts.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

So if I’m understanding this right.
Weren’t you the one who made a thread that everyone was just going to stack Rev, Druid, and Tempest?

And now you’re mad that someone stacked reapers and DHs?

At any rate, were the 3 Reapers on a team together? If so, the only thing they can do about that is, well. Nothing in your case. Because pretty much everyone agrees trio-queue should be forced into “Team Queue”.

To your original question, No. That wasn’t me. To your second question: The 3 Reapers and 2 Dragon Hunters were all solo queued together. The match making algorithm put both teams together. This was the whole point of referencing the ANet article on matchmaking.

So there’s this

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/finding-the-perfect-match/

From ArenaNet’s article:
“… tired of seeing matches with five ham-bow warriors? So are we!
We’ll also spice up competition by matching you up with your closest ladder rivals.”

Couldn’t help but think of this when our trio encountered encountered a team of 3 Reapers + 2 DH who were running in pairs. Of course we were destroyed with a 500 to 140 outcome in our disfavor. Our queue time was only about four minutes, we could have waited longer to get a fair ranked right. It’s clear ArenaNet has made changes. They clearly do not care if your team encounters Herald x3, Scrapper x3, etc…

Sorel.4870:

You make it sound like Anet has something against warriors. While I agree that most elite specs but warrior’s were overtuned, let’s not forget that warrior was the overlord of the meta several times in the history of the game.

Ah, so you contend that Warriors were OP all along and perhaps just often played by mediocre players . Now that they are on even ground they can’t hold their own? Interesting theory. IMO they were OP pre-HoT. I’ve advised every Warrior to transition to Revenant.

aspry.6975:

gg wp no re

/kittens

I hope you didn’t hold back on the sarcasm in map chat throughout.

ReaperJr.5967:

Looks like the competitive community is the same across all the games. Dota 2, LoL, CS:GO, HoN, HotS, Gw2.. you name it. Everyone just blames the game, the matchmaking system, their team mates but not themselves. I’m not saying the meta or the matchmaking system is perfect but this is ridiculous.

In every game, there will be an ‘elo hell’. Dota 2, LoL, CS:GO, whatever. And everyone stuck in this ‘elo hell’ will just keep complaining about everything under the sun, and claim that people who got past it was just by luck. I mean, that’s a given right? People will hit 8k mmr in dota 2, challenger in LoL and GE in CS:GO only by luck and grinding right?

This is the exact thing happening to leagues in Gw2. Except anet screwed up by not implementing mmr reset and calibration. Otherwise, there’s really no issue except for the current state of the meta since mmr tanking only works till sapphire.

To an extent of course, but the MMR reset is a small part of the problem. Unbalanced meta in GW2 is a completely failure. So horrible that the absolute best players in the game have made some very negative comments about it and one Pro team even wrote an open letter to the community not apologizing for their actions after his group rage quit. Things are actually quit different in GW2 than those other games you mentioned. Those games are well respected by players and spectators. For example LoL has 90k viewers right now. GW2 has about 500? GW2 PvP is the laughingstock of Twitch because of the horrible camera problems, the over use of skill fx, bad announcing for pro league play. The list goes on. The viewership numbers don’t lie.

The need to put some real love into fixing the product. If they really cared they could do many things. They could put out a post to the community here apologizing for the (as Chaith of The Abjured called it) “ridiculous meta” and make it so Elite Specializations aren’t available for ranked/League PvP play also block use of the new mods. We’re almost mid season now so it’s pointless, but they could have done this as soon as the first week of ESL Pro League matches hit and it became very clear how bad the meta was due to imbalance. They had choices. They still have choices. They choose to address the problems through minor skill balance.

There are powers that be who want to pretend certain problems aren’t as bad as they really are. When someone has that tunnel vision there really isn’t much you can do. The community as whole is just going to suffer and in the end the game itself suffers. Games don’t age well at all. Once you’ve lost a customers interest they are usually gone for it.

With these insanely long queue times it’s ridiculous to give the same dishonor punishment for not accepting queue up when match is ready and for when a player chooses to abandon a match mid-game.

As designed, it is the same amount of penalty.

Was in queue for over 10 minutes. Doorbell rang and I didn’t want to abandon queue so I got the door and quickly returned only to find dishonor and an angry team all punished the same. To be blunt, what ignoramus thought this up? Seems there are multiple failures here. but namely the design team who approved this and the test team as well. Is the name calling too strong? IDK does this seem like a fair punishment I anwer a doorbell on a 10 minute queue and get the same penalty as a player who rage quits mid match.

How to fix this in 2-steps

• Give us an auto-match accept option when entering queue. This would prevent people from being penalized for stepping away just long enough to miss the accept match confirm button. If you have a deserter who’s AFK when match begins deal with them accordingly. There’s already code in place to kick people who are AFK, etc…

• Balance dishonor. Dishonor for queue “abandonment” should not be the same penalty as leaving mid matc… After 10-40 minute waits, I think the queue kind of abandoned the party and the game should get dishonor. Oh, wait it already seems to have that, doesn’t it

TheDevice.2751:

I’ve been playing on my Reaper for a little while and I noticed how unbeleiveably slow reapers are compared to a diamond skin ele who can heal faster, deal more damage, take less damage, and attack a million times faster.

Why do they even try. Why does Anet pretend they are serious about esports like at all? They clearly ride ele’s sausage factory all day long and just throw tons of damage, healing, and infinite amounts of utility in their class.

Just reminding myself that this game is never going to be a real esport lol.

Could be one of the best e-sports around if they added

• Better Balance to the classes
• PvP side of GW2 it’s own client (small download)
• Split out solo and premade queues
• Provides more queue options (e.g. checkbox for Deathmatch/court yard)
• Added at least two more MOBA maps and fixed the one they have now (e.g. what exactly are archers good for?)
• Added optional dueling in Heart of the Mist
• Added PvP (PvPvE) Adventure instances with leaderboards
• Gave us an in-game client spectate mode for past matches
• Better in game tutorials (pick a map and run a simulated game with NPCs)
• Simulated scenarios (e.g. select “Clock Tower capture Hard” and you’re placed immediately in a private instance where you are facing current meta scenarios)

Better tools to group players. Some ideas:

• Auto-team function… Click a button and the algorithm would grab similar players in Heart of the Mist and group you. Should be able to do this for 2-4 players. You can review the group and decide to kick someone or queue up.
• Ability to add categories/group by feature to friends list
• Allow players to share their stats, build, etc… easily with other players
• Build edit/save/load features
• Leaderboards by division
• Improve match making algorithm to consider when teams are running meta and near-meta builds.
• Allow any match to be recorded and played back later (can monetize this feature if need be)
• Division bsed In game spectatable auto-tournaments held monthly for top 8 premade teams in Sapphire (Tues),Ruby (Wed), Diamond (Thurs) and Legendary (Fri). Outside League play ranked system, it would just take the top 8 guilds for the month.

So that would be a start.

This tends to happen a lot.

Spartacus.3192:

Ensign.2189:

It’s not really a ranking system though, and it’s not really a progression system. It’s frustrating because it’s a little bit of both.

Amber division, for instance, is purely a progression system. Amber doesn’t tell you anything about a player’s ability, only that they haven’t played very much.

Emerald and Sapphire are this kind of hybrid system, where the division ratchet allows everyone to progress eventually. Weaker players will progress through these divisions slowly (the win one, lose one drag) while stronger players will blast through faster, but the rub is that everyone will eventually grind through it. Also, it gets easier to move through these divisions over time, as better / more regular players move into the higher divisions and Emerald / Sapphire are filled only with casuals. Hence, the first week or so Emerald and (particularly) Sapphire are meaningful ratings, but as time goes on they are closer to Amber grind divisions.

Ruby is the first real rating division. You can only progress through Ruby if you are performing, hence your position in Ruby is actually saying something about your ability. The problem is that the bottom of Ruby is the end point of the grind divisions – anyone, with enough time and dedication, will eventually hit Ruby. Hence, by the end of the season in January, Ruby will no longer be a meaningful rating division, but will be a big mix of ‘I am pretty good at this game but do not play a ton’ and ‘I am bronze tier MMR but grinded the hell out of this game’; it’s the serious about PvP badge but doesn’t indicate any amount of skill.

Diamond and Legendary tiers are the only actual rating tiers. Those are the ones that, at the end of the season, will indicate real ability at the game. At least in theory – this is getting diluted by the matchmaking problems of queuing with Amber accounts, meaning that Diamond, at least for season 1, is going to be more indicative of knowing how to game the matchmaking system than of performance. Still, you need to perform well above average for that trick to work, so Diamond and above show some real rating.

TL;DR – divisions are not a rating system, but a hybrid rating / grind system. Amber means you tried sPvP; Emerald means you showed up, while Sapphire and Ruby are indicators that you’ve spent some time grinding out ranks. Only Diamond and Legendary tiers are real indicators of performance.

Pretty much hit that nail on the head. Well written.

And the reason why? I believe it all leads back to ArenaNet making sure their PvP design caters to their PvE crowd. They never forget sPvP in GW2 is a side-line aspect of the bigger MMO. If they made it so right after Amber your skill level at PvP was really made so apparent so quickly (no tier lock-in starting in emerald) the PvE crowd would probably be very, very unhappy.

Many who PvE in GW2 like to come over to PvP for the occasional match. Sure they should just do unranked, but if you’re going to put a League system in the game you have to make sure it offers something to your primary base. Is this fair to those who just PvP in GW2?

No. But it’s what you deal with when your favorite PvP is imprisoned in an MMO. Imagine if ArenaNet gave us a PvP game separate form GW2 that utilized the play mechanics, with balance entirely around PvP. New maps, Old maps, New PvP mini-games, multiple progression paths, etc….. I think if they really did it right and put work into properly polishing and balancing it would dominate the Twitch charts…. I can dream.

sanctuary.1068:

“The reality of league divisions” are SO wrong. The fact that people face their own mmr in the leagues makes it harder or easier for different mmr groups to raise their division. Only people that matter rly to look at where they stand is top tier aka high mmr players. In every mmr besides top tier, is a joke where they can get to ruby without an effort. If i actually continued with this league kittenz id be in ruby with just enough grind >.>

Thats why not many of us can take this thing serious. If the leagues had started with mmr reset people would actually take it seriously + if soloq was implemented.

I can’t argue with what you said. All true. Best advice I can give is really stop giving a kitten about your League division. Solo or duo queue exclusively and every time you enter a match think of it like a trip to the casino. Play your best but don’t take the outcome any more serious than you would loosing a hand of black jack. This mentality will let you keep the game from sucking you in and deflect all the negativity in the community right now.

Chaba.5410:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

GW2 MMR system is polluted by the followng

• Solo and premade queue mixed. Yes it is a problem. No it’s not as big of a problem as some people make you think it is.
• The tier lock-in for Amber-Ruby divisions giving players who reach a new tier incentive to loose on purpose to manipulate MMR
• A very unbalanced meta that is giving huge advantage in a random way to teams not running full premades. (e.g. oh look match making gave the opposing team two condi mallyx Herald’s and we got a Warrior and a burn Gurdian)

I agree with you on the meaning of divisions, but wouldn’t you agree that the tier locking is somewhat of a safeguard against these flaws?

For non full premades that queue (i.e. most of those doing ranked PvP in GW2) it could work both ways. The bottom line is these three factors come into play along with the old luck wildcard and it makes so it’s often impossible to determine how much your skill and the skill of your team really contributed to the win or the loss.

When you get the Ruby the stakes are higher, tier-lock in is gone. The three corruption factors listed are still in play, but most will form a full premade at this point. Once running a full premade at the higher divisions most of these problems go away and it’s just a matter of skill that’s being measured. This sport (Ruby-Diamond) is where things get interesting and where we really should have a better break down of rank (maybe one or two subdivisions for Ruby, but of course without adding any tier lock-in to Ruby) to enhance progression.

There seems to be an ongoing misconception that when playing PvP ranked you are entitled to move up to a new League division just by playing more often. Can’t count the number of post that say “lost a pip, gained a pip, lost three pips, gained two pips” or" won 10 in a row then lost 10 in a row", etc…

This isn’t suppose to be a PvE-like XP grind

In a system with good balance and working MMR, regardless of how many games you played, you would reach a point where you capped at your level of skill. At this threshold your wins/losses would balance out to about 50/50 and it would become very, very hard to progress. That’s horrible design I can hear some of your screaming. But really, it isn’t. In real world sports, not everyone who plays high school football makes it to a college team. Not everyone who players at college level gets drafted into the NFL. The league divisions separate skill level. There comes to a point where you cap out and improving becomes very slow. Then eventually you will arrive at your threshold of skill and progression stops altogether. Congratulate yourself, you made it as far as you could. This system is working now, it’s just got some major problems which have largely invalided it to the point that it can’t be taken seriously. GW2 MMR system is polluted by the followng

• Solo and premade queue mixed. Yes it is a problem. No it’s not as big of a problem as some people make you think it is.
• The tier lock-in for Amber-Ruby divisions giving players who reach a new tier incentive to loose on purpose to manipulate MMR
• A very unbalanced meta that is giving huge advantage in a random way to teams not running full premades. (e.g. oh look match making gave the opposing team two condi mallyx Herald’s and we got a Warrior and a burn Gurdian)

Which leads to the next point

Unfortunately they kind of made ranked PvP like a PvE XP grind
The tier lock-in system enables players who would have otherwise reached their cap in league divisions to progress further. Once a tier is locked-in then a player needs five more wins to secure the next. Given the always present luck-factor and also the three bullet points above factor in random chance of leverage, a player who should be locked in a lower division could climb all the way to Ruby though luck and game unbalance giving them wins they don’t deserve.

Once you get to Ruby and can no longer lock in tiers then the real challenge begins. Luck isn’t really going to lean heavy one way or the other, it comes down to skill.

The reality of League divisions

• Diamond and Legendary – for the best premades who take it seriously
• Ruby – last stop for good teams that just aren’t good enough for Diamond
• Amber-Sapphire – Exist to give the players who need to improve a lot (or play a lot more) a feeling of progression,.

Most of us just want to know where we stand. The current system makes that impossible until you reach Ruby. Then there is nothing between Ruby and Diamond.

Magira.6390:

Funny to see how some people who have secured a nice domain name, all make a fool. ^^

The listing there has no meaning, the Chrono has, for example, only two reviews, one of which is from the Admin itself.

Unpleasant reviews are deleted, as happened to my.

On the side is nothing transparent. Self-assessment of admins are the rule, user ratings are extremely rare.

Everything monkey business!

A few things 1.) Metabattle.com is endorsed by ArenaNet. Like it, love it, hate it, whatever it is the source for what is considered meta and what is not. 2.) These builds rise up through the ranks mostly (if not entirely) based on what we’re seeing on Twitch and meta generally comes from the most common (not exclusive, but most common) builds played by the Pros.

Most builds can have slight variations in mods and sometimes utility skills. Two players can run slightly different versions of the same “meta” build. I just switched Viper’s amulet for Wanderer’s on my Herald because I prefer a more tanks build.

Expected…

1.) Condi Mallyx – Herald
2.) Marauder’s Hammer – Scrapper
3.) Auramancer – Tempest

Expect it to reduce to just three builds… If you thought this past Monday’s ESL Pro matches were boring. You haven’t seen anything yet…

Agemnon.4608:

Why was druid pushed out? I find myself winning duels on the celestial avatar build (but modified for longbow and staff instead and traits are the same except I put in the pet skill causes weakness ability since I don’t use a greatsword except on guardian occasionally and he’s strictly PvE…for now) and can last awhile so long as I’m not focused and interrupted all the time.

Because outside pro play, most teams don’t run full meta teams. The Abjured even had a DareDevil in the mix this past Monday and they still won. The build’s listed as “great” are still viable. As long as you have a few party members running meta builds you’ll be fine.

HandsomeGentleman.9576:

It’s the hard truth.

Classes/Builds are not balanced to encourage skilled play.

The community constantly gives feedback but most is ignored by the dev team.

Every balance overcompensates nerfs or significantly changes sigils, skills, runes, until they are either way too powerful or way too weak.

To be honest, whoever is leading the balance/pvp push should be fired. I’ve heard a lot about the resource strain over at Anet studios but this doesn’t even make sense. What the hell are they dedicating resources to? They have had years to make this work and they are throwing WvW and PvP down the toilet. WvW is one of the most unique game modes in mmos at moment and had huge potential for revenue. PvP if done right could have had the best action based esports type feel to it.

Good job Anet, you’ve kitten on your own players for 3 years. 3 YEARS. Most of us have given you feedback for years in hopes we would be listened to but it’s starting to get old. I’m sure many of us are on the verge of just giving up.

We had a good meta prior to HoT. I think sPvP side of the game deserves to be a separate download from the main game to attracted more of the pure PvP crowd. Maybe have an entire team devoted to it instead of what appears to be a handful of people. It needs to be marketed to be positioned to compete with Heros of the Storm, Hearthstone, League, etc… But it never has been. It’s kind of a separate game imprisoned inside the GW2 MMO. The PvE side has a lot more players so it always gets more priority.

Kevin.4209:

…and I’m inclined to say good riddance. As a mesmer player, it was pure torture to spend the entire game at far 1v1ing another mesmer, druid, or ele for 10 minutes straight with only occasional action from a +1. That game play was utterly miserable. Thanks for the fix!

However, I’d like to point out, that well of precog is now a bit of a troll ability. Players can use it to cause their own team to lose a point fairly easily. Hopefully people just stop playing it completely, so I don’t have to actively avoid precog wells to prevent a decap.

Careful with those Mesmer party invites. If you end up with one looking to pull some shenanigans to lower their MMR, they now have a skill to help with that… Just lovely.

Looks like Druid has been downgraded.

Two months ago I left this message in the PvP forums stating my concerns pre ranked season. I was not the only one asking ArenaNet to consider the consequences of allowing the Elite Spec’s in ranked without further balance. If only they had listened to us.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/ArenaNet-please-respond-to-this-question/first#post5574630

It’s now clear their answer to my question was: No.

MadVisions.4529:

- this meta bridges the difference between a good player and a mediocre player.
- specs with unmatched sustain and top damage output are flawed and bad design, not to mention that most of them now are paired with over decent mobility.
- specs with ridiculous damage should never have high enough healing coefficent to fully heal self after getting close to death with tiny cooldowns.
- players while unable to take damage should NOT deal damage also.
- the ability to have more invulnerable uptime than vulnerable is bad design and should never happen in any game.
- the protection and boon uptime paired with never seen healing tossed around is bad design and not healthy for gw2pvp
- passive activated traits and abilitys are bad design and are unhelthy for skillful play in any shapes.
- defensive abilitys should NEVER have bigger damage coefficents than offensive ones.
- getting back up a downed ally should NEWER be easyer then for the opponent to finish.
- high risk builds should have ANY reward if not even high.
- Noone should EVER think on any serious competition on ANY company without PvP balance separated from the rest gamemodes.
- if the majority of the playerbase is unsatisfied and the frustration is tactile, then inmediate communication is required and rather fast changes.
- list goes on…

i’ve been never been praying so hard for NCSoft selling the game.

“Quit” last week myself. No longer taking leagues or rank serious for the numerous reasons (you did a good job listing several). Still sign in and play a few matches a day, but as far as really giving a kitten and spending hours trying to get a string of wins… Nope. Not worth it this season. Probably won’t next either.

I also have some hopes for what NCSoft might do with ArenaNet.

Ara.4569:

I also blame the so-called “pro” players for not protesting during an official stream, not even on interviews!

Not fair. Most of them have said negative comments. A sampling of things they’ve said in their own streams

Chaith/Five Gauge The Abjured “… don’t blame us for this ridiculous meta”

Phantaram The Abjured “.. I don’t know where to begin with the list of things that need to be fix… We just work with what we got”

Lord Helseth The Civilized Gentlemen “This [League system] is garbage”

I could go on.

The Football analogy from the OP is valid. You could make others. The bottom line is the players in this game respect and love the PvP side of the game. I’m not sure that the game studio behind cares about it nearly as much.

Nebulizer.3276:

Just curious as most have seen in the higher ranks of ruby/diamond, lots of pros are Q’ing with emeralds and ambers to speed up Q and pretty much nab free wins. Is Anet ok with this, I know its in the game design, but it feels like another abuse of the rank system.

Ran into O-eggs doing this today rather not throw up the screenshot, but it just feels dirty they are already good players why must they abuse the MM system.

This is the problem with having mixed solo and premade queues. Because ANet has designed the queue to be mixed, there is nothing against the rules for a diamond or even legendary to pair up with an emerald. The matchmaking is “designed to take care of that”. I think the matchmaking in general is lacking, so I don’t agree that match making is doing a good job at anything in rank the MMR is just being fed by wins and losses based on all these other factors (people tossing games on purpose, opposing team comp way OP, team members with outdated builds or who just do not pay attention to map ping or team chat). It’s luck more than skill in solo queue and you end up with an MMR that’s in larger part reflection of your luck.

Are the pro team’s creating alt accounts just to help with queue times? Are they exploiting the system some other way? It’s probably all innocent…. We’ll never know, but what we can say for certain is that if solo and premade queues were separate this would not be an issue.

Covis.6037:

Can we have that bunker mesmer and condition revenant nerf already?

Run this team: Codi Rev/Herald x2, Bunker Mesmer x2, Tempest x1. Pro teams are doing it so you have examples of how to play it well out three. Go steam roll.

In seriousness, it’s not all about the builds. You have to have skill with these classes, skills running the codi rev/chrono bunker duos also. But it seems once people nail that down they become very, very difficult to beat.

Over the last few days I have seen a few unknown characters in Heart of the Mist with pro team guild tag (tag and name) in Amber division. I know there are currently no rules against a pro team member running an alt, but do you think this should be changed so Pro players are restricted from using alt accounts in ranked play?

The answer may be found in peeking behind the curtain. While we can’t do that we can get some insight from former and current employees thanks to glassdoor.com. While not ranked horribly, ArenaNet is ranked lower than most studios behind competitive play titles including: Riot Games, Valve and even Activation-Blizzard. Going solely by redundant information found on that site over time, we see some patterns emerge. It seems ArenaNet has more office politics than most environments and management tends to micro manage randomly and just because without any real set triggers. When they launched GW2 back in 2012 the spirit was very we’ve created the most innovative, beautiful MMO ever made There was a lot of pride in the product. A lot of that warranted, but I think the failures of the core game launch are well known. I think the failures in the first year of release are well known and the numbers just aren’t there. The game may have met financial milestones, but certainly not the hope that the passionate hard working crew behind it had hope it would. Frustrated by who knows what, many of them have departed leaving us with the next wave of talent.

All companies have problems, I just hope they aren’t delusional about how grand GW2 in the mix of MMOs on the market place here in late 2015. The play mechanics hold much untapped potential and even potential to be #1 but that is restricted by where it falls short in so many other aspects and I’m way beyond talking PvP alone here.

I do honestly feel at this stage in it’s life ArenaNet is aware the game is no longer viewed as fresh and new. In fact, it’s quite old to the gaming community, so their strategy is likely to take small risk, every feature designed to maximize revenue even at the expense of what some players may view as the integrity of the game.

They care much more about loss of play time and spending than rants. So when they see you’re in forums chatting up all that’s wrong then you return to game only to play another 4.6.8 hours a day understand…. You are the fish and they have their hook in you. They are in control and ultimately for them, the design is working. They know your love of what the product was and hope for what will be fixed help root you and they are likely playing this to their advantage.

It’s a virtual theme park, all the needed professionals are on staff to implement system to keep us in game and spending money.