Guild Wars 2

Too Frisky.9165:

SMITE, League of Legends, and DotA2 are all the same game beating the same dead horse and the reason they have an eSports “community” is because they are free to play and because they were built specifically for tournament play in mind. Some of the most competitive eSports games were never developed specifically for tournament play and their success didn’t happen over night. Starcraft and Counter Strike were originally just awesome titles to play and now you can watch the GSL or CS tournaments all over the globe; it took time though.

My point is, quit comparing an MMO (this is what it is…) to games developed completely for tournaments. Oh and $100k is nothing and as they have literally no sponsors this would immediately spell the death of this game if the tournament fails, which is quite possible because SMITE is the most garbage game I have ever played.

uh gw2 was developed specifically with and for tournaments lol

mesmer, best burst/survivability combo for zerging

Pinder.5261:

NevirSayDie.6235:

True, and there just aren’t a lot of people who are SO extremely casual that they’re all right with hotjoin. I think “semi-casual” is going to become a buzzword in the industry within the next five years.

Since when has an absence of match-making been the realm of the super casual? Most old pvp games with multiple, hot-joinable servers (especially FPS games, whom GW2 used as a model for the server list) have had nothing at all to do with match making. You join the game, and you play your best. Some people were worse than you, some were better, and everybody dealt with that. The concept of casual and hardcore never played in to it, nor did the want for match making. And those games were never worse for their situation.

On the contrary, I’d say everyone acts totally backwards about hot join. The whole concept of necessary matchmaking in non-tournament pvp is a poor byproduct of esports. As if once you reveal to players that they form a qualitative tier hierarchy, those players feel compelled to abide by it, when there’s no actual need to do so.

The issue is that this is NOT a FPS, and using an FPS as a model is the mistake. In a FPS you can still have fun if you are on a team with less people, the maps are bigger and you can still find places to hide, snipe, gank, etc and have fun. GW2 has small maps, one game mode that promotes mindless zerging. There is nothing similar in how GW2 plays vs a how a FPS plays.

There’s a reason every other mmo with pvp doesn’t have something similiar to hot join and instead uses a system that starts the game when both sides have equal number of players and penalizes people who quit before the game ends.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

They have stated before that load screen issues do not show up in their testing. One cannot catch what one cannot see

and the naked mesmer bug?

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Sprawl: Some people have lives, but just happen to be better at video games than others. Calling them “no-lifers” is an excuse to justify one’s own deficiencies. The fact that people who play casually have a hard time competing against those who practice is a good sign for the game’s skill ceiling.

However, the casual scene could definitely use some work, and I think the essence of the bullet points does outline part of the issue. There’s really no place for a casual to go for a really fulfilling teamwork-oriented game of GW2, and with the rank bar starting to set itself for PUGs, the problem will get worse and worse for new players.

It’s possible custom arenas will be developed that foster a 5v5 scenario that you can hot-join and enjoy with others who have a similar mentality, but if those are in high demand, they’ll be hard to get into. Alternatively, it’ll be difficult to keep some full, leaving games with those of a more competitive mind at uneven numbers.

im only basing my comment on real play hour requirements I have seen in “serious” tournament pvp recruitment threads. play hours that require, well having basically no life. I’m sure /age of the “top” players divided by days the game has been released would only confirm this further.

theres really nothing good to buy, go research spvp gear and mystic forge and figure out what gear you like/want. Then just buy cheapest chests, salvage and craft what you want, then wait 10 ranks and do it again. The ranks take exponentially longer as you go so you will end up with a ton of glory and nothing to spend it on

you can tell how much their alpha testers PvP based on all the awesome bugs that go through and are noticed in 5 seconds of live.

daydream.2938:

The casual experience is lacking, in large part because of no match mkaing and barriers to entry in competitive play.

Your either a super casual hot join player, or competitive, its hard to be semi casual which is what grows the community with enough interest in the pvp enviroment to be interested in a competitive e sports generating environment.

This exactly. As it is right now the people who fall in the middle, who are likely the majority have the following options:

1. continue playing zerg-join which offers no sense of team work, no sense of accomplishment, and no sense of victory.

2. solo queue for tournament and get 4v5 matches and premades

3. form a casual team for free tournament and stomp pugs 5v4, lose to elite premades who need tickets because they lost to no-lifers in paids, and on very small occasions, face a similarly skilled team.

4. form a team for paid tournaments and get stomped by no lifers.

Shukran.4851:

anet should raise the price of high rank chests.

people buy high rank chests? just buy low rank chests, salvage everything and then craft whatever gear you want with tons of glory left over to wait for another 10 ranks.

Follidus.8027:

Sprawl.3891:

dear mr I want this game to be an esport? where did I say they were required? all I did was say that trying to make an argument that one team is able to win against the smallest population of competitive pvpers in any game out right now is a joke. along with any discussion about meta and skill levels. grats you play vs 5 other teams for a couple hours, want a cookie in a game with no match making and no rankings. tell me more about how qp means something.

Everyone that complains about this issue is like the same to me. Sorry if you never said those words exactly, but the general vibe of your complaining is the same. “x is overpowered and we can’t win without it,” or “x is overpowered and it creates boring gameplay.”

Also, QPs work like gladiator in WoW: if you have QPs it doesn’t mean you’re good, but if you don’t have QPs, then you’re probably not great. I notice that people that complain about QPs the most are the ones who don’t have any. So you can say I’m bias about QPs because I have a good amount, but you’re just as biased because you don’t have a lot.

Either way, you need to change your mindset. You know why there’s only “5 teams that take paids seriously?” Because people think like you do.

wow gladiator atleast had to beat thousands of teams to get to top .01%. qp you have to beat like 10 different teams stop making horrible comparisons lol.

for all you know theres teams who would smoke you but they quit long time ago since paid dont pop during their play time since not even 7 other teams give a kitten outside a 2 hour window.

Vyndetta.9415:

Sprawl.3891:

blah blah cry blah blah cry blah blah blah

After seeing you try to troll and cry on the Rift forums, I would think you would get better after a couple years. Sadly you still disappoint =\

when did I ever cry on rift forums? I played warrior and rogue the two most powerful pvp classes. glad you remember me though cuz I have no clue who you are. wild bill wannabe is my guess. keep striving to be a big fish in a kiddie pool and act like people acknowledge it or care.

dear mr I want this game to be an esport? where did I say they were required? all I did was say that trying to make an argument that one team is able to win against the smallest population of competitive pvpers in any game out right now is a joke. along with any discussion about meta and skill levels. grats you play vs 5 other teams for a couple hours, want a cookie in a game with no match making and no rankings. tell me more about how qp means something.

Follidus.8027:

Sprawl.3891:

Follidus.8027:

Narcarsis.5739:

This just in: you don’t! Be creative, run what you like to play and make it work. Look at PZ for example. They all play classes they enjoy, and it just so happens that not one of them is a Mesmer.

Yup, they don’t run a mesmer or any kind of bunker and are beating everyone in NA.

beating the few teams that still play seriously isnt saying much. they could probably win most games running 5 warriors just with their strategy.

not in paids

All I’m saying is they are a strong team that doesn’t run a mesmer. You can run a mesmer and still be viable. I’m sorry that you don’t see this. I’m sorry that you’re not good enough to be a team that can do that. But that doesn’t change the fact that mesmers are not required.

vs the 5 teams that take paid seriously. but hey dropping mesmer for ele is deep meta

Follidus.8027:

Narcarsis.5739:

This just in: you don’t! Be creative, run what you like to play and make it work. Look at PZ for example. They all play classes they enjoy, and it just so happens that not one of them is a Mesmer.

Yup, they don’t run a mesmer or any kind of bunker and are beating everyone in NA.

beating the few teams that still play seriously isnt saying much. they could probably win most games running 5 warriors just with their strategy.

hey shadows wolf there are a ton of great changes I’d love to tell you about but cant at the moment but I will tell you soon.

no match making to go along with it? lol feel bad for the lower tier teams who get random draw pro teams until they have no tickets left

Abazigal.3679:

I’m not entirely convinced the 4v5 in tournaments are ragequitters issues though. Sometimes i’m whispering the guy who didn’t join ( not offline) and he says that he doesn’t have a tournament window..

It happens so many times that i can’t believe it’s all ragequits ( whether it’s before the match starts or not )

ive never had that issue. Every time I message the 5th they are offline. So they queued then said screw it due to wait time and logged off before they got a pop, or they joined the game before I did, saw the other team was a premade and logged off.

part of the issue seems to be if someone logs off while in queue they stay on the roster.

Brutalistik.6473:

Sprawl.3891:

Brutalistik.6473:

YojimboJones.6243:

I think I’m pretty qualified to speak int his thread as someone who just last week got back into WoW. (sorry GW2, your endgame is lacking and pvp has grown stale after 5 months) I’m not thrilled about having to pay a monthly fee again but the varitey of PvP modes available (plus the sometimes frustrating, always exciting world pvp) are just staggeringly more enjoyable than gw2’s ONE pvp mode. I guess you could say 2, counting would vs world, which is fun but…again after 5 months of more or less the same thing it’s grown stale.

I know their priority is private servers (which will cost gold/gems to use, BTW) and after that spectator mode and matchmaking. But after that please, PLEASE work on new game modes.

How do you think World of Warcraft started up in the very beginning? It didn’t have endgames or battlegrounds at the start. However they did had world pvp, but that was the only pvp in the game before any new stuff came in afterwards which took about a year or so.

Anet already said they’re coming up with new ideas for pvp so that will come. You’re doing the right thing though if you don’t want to frustrate yourself through pvp and etc. Take a break for a while until changes comes and they will come.

To be honest I don’t see me ever going back to WoW for a while. The only time I’ll go back to it is when they upgrade their models and stuff so I can play around with it for a month or 2 and that’s it.

As Hharry said the pve in this game is amazing..the story mode and choices you make does it for me.

tired, old argument. What was wow’s competition when they released? Then compare GW2s competition when released. Just because wow took 2 years to add meaningful pvp doesn’t give every other game a 2 year pass as well.

Just like all industries, you have to deliver a product that is on-par with the competition at that time, not on par with the competition 10 years ago.

Sorry man but that’s how it is and you know GW2 will get better when they add more stuff to the game. As far as I know GW2 beats Wow in a lot of elements except end game and more pvp game modes. GW2 will get more pvp modes because that’s what they’re gearing for, but as for endgame I don’t really care too much about that crap. It was ok, but end game was like having a 2nd job with no paycheck. The only paycheck you got was epic gear and etc.

that’s how it is and why it’s failing and why it wont ever be able to rebound. And no, they aren’t gearing for more game modes, not anytime in the near future at least.

Imagine WoW releasing arena without rankings, it would have made zero sense, just like GW2 “competitive” pvp.

Chi Malady.2015:

That would be a terrible idea. Sometimes people have to leave due to a real life emergency or their internet connection fails or their computer crashes. Not everyone is rage quitting.

Rift and other games have made it possible to re-join a match without getting deserter debuff if you drop connection or crash. There needs to be a harsh penalty. So sick of people queuing for tournament then going sorry gtg and logging off or quitting as soon as they are losing by 50 points. Your failure at time management should not ruin the fun for 9 other people.

If it’s a one time emergency you shouldn’t have a problem with a one time debuff. If it’s happening multiple times a week, you dont belong in tournaments and should stick to hot join.

Brutalistik.6473:

YojimboJones.6243:

I think I’m pretty qualified to speak int his thread as someone who just last week got back into WoW. (sorry GW2, your endgame is lacking and pvp has grown stale after 5 months) I’m not thrilled about having to pay a monthly fee again but the varitey of PvP modes available (plus the sometimes frustrating, always exciting world pvp) are just staggeringly more enjoyable than gw2’s ONE pvp mode. I guess you could say 2, counting would vs world, which is fun but…again after 5 months of more or less the same thing it’s grown stale.

I know their priority is private servers (which will cost gold/gems to use, BTW) and after that spectator mode and matchmaking. But after that please, PLEASE work on new game modes.

How do you think World of Warcraft started up in the very beginning? It didn’t have endgames or battlegrounds at the start. However they did had world pvp, but that was the only pvp in the game before any new stuff came in afterwards which took about a year or so.

Anet already said they’re coming up with new ideas for pvp so that will come. You’re doing the right thing though if you don’t want to frustrate yourself through pvp and etc. Take a break for a while until changes comes and they will come.

To be honest I don’t see me ever going back to WoW for a while. The only time I’ll go back to it is when they upgrade their models and stuff so I can play around with it for a month or 2 and that’s it.

As Hharry said the pve in this game is amazing..the story mode and choices you make does it for me.

tired, old argument. What was wow’s competition when they released? Then compare GW2s competition when released. Just because wow took 2 years to add meaningful pvp doesn’t give every other game a 2 year pass as well.

Just like all industries, you have to deliver a product that is on-par with the competition at that time, not on par with the competition 10 years ago. Rift released with multiple game modes and standard 1 match battlegrounds which gave debuff to quitters. I wish GW2 would go with this standard mode of play, but no. GW2 releases with one game mode, no penalty for quitters, god awful “hot join” and a 40 person requirement to start structured matches.

Follidus.8027:

Sprawl.3891:

Follidus.8027:

Dee Jay.2460:

With how easy it is to revive in this game, it will never be considered a competitive e-sport.

With the boring Conquest + Bunker dynamic, it will never be fun to watch.

And that’s a great opinion. I bet other games are boring to watch when you don’t understand the competitive scene in those games, either.

theres nothing to figure out with 3 point conquest, just nobody watches it. close games are rare with snowballing, even number fights are rare and most of the match is about moving around, not fighting, more boringness.

There’s nothing to figure out? This game has yet to be figured out. It’s just really easy for people to fall into the mindset of certain things being “required” to win, or they’re getting “hard countered” instead of playing better/thinking of something new.

what im saying is to a casual all you need to know is blue team is bunkering two points and sending an extra person to eveery fight so they win and red team is only able to bunker 1 point. that’s 90% of matches. I know you’re on a team so you desperately want this game to take off but it never will its just not fun enough to play/watch. ooh powerr tried something new and ran two op eles, gaiz meta is so deep!

Follidus.8027:

Dee Jay.2460:

With how easy it is to revive in this game, it will never be considered a competitive e-sport.

With the boring Conquest + Bunker dynamic, it will never be fun to watch.

And that’s a great opinion. I bet other games are boring to watch when you don’t understand the competitive scene in those games, either.

theres nothing to figure out with 3 point conquest, just nobody watches it. close games are rare with snowballing, even number fights are rare and most of the match is about moving around, not fighting, more boringness.

most high qp thief players say they need a nerf and they cant be countered when they need to gib someone.

also enjoy shatter nerf on your mesmer sataar :-)

what about solo queue rated?

Wolfheart.1938:

How many viewers were watching LoL 5 months after it launched?

did lol have over 3 million accounts after 5 months?

conquest is boring

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Is there anything in the history of anything that encourages even play? Sports basketball exploit uneven matchups
Shooters video games- attack as a group
etc etc.
Who would ever pass up the opportunity to have an advantage

basketball is still 5v5 with the exception of fast breaks. Hockey has uneven match-ups but only as a penalty for bad play.

Comparing to sports is more about personnel match-ups like in basketball do you run a big/defensive 5? a small quick shooting 5? balanced 1/2/2? Regardless of how you build your team it’s still always 5v5 with set half court offenses. in GW2 almost every fight eventually ends unbalanced.

~Sprawl, #1 Athlete in GW2, EU/NA/CH

Med.6150:

The game is going to be FIVE months old in 10 days, let’s be realistic here. I keep reading the 6 months stuff, when it’s been 4 months and 3 weeks since it has gone live.

many are including beta where these issues were presented on day 1 along with the complete lack of features that we assumed would be in at release.

vicious.2193:

/sigh. Close the gap, man. The GS auto-attack’s damage is based on range, if you get inside on them it does almost nothing. Use your dodge button and you’ll avoid 100% of the damage from either the zerker or the duelist (and just about everything else, too).

I don’t know why I keep wasting my time here, people just refuse to look at all their own options and figure out how to deal with something so simple. The reasons Mesmers seem to overpowered to 95% of the people that make threads to nerf them into the ground is because folks go into a fight with a mesmer already believing they’ve lost. You can’t play defensive against a mesmer – you have to be aggressive. Aside from frenzy, they have NO real mitigation – especially if they’re running GS/S+P.

Seriously, it’s not that hard. Learn the class before you start complaining about it. Or, better yet, learn your own.

mesmers are tricky because if you close the gap they will just frenzy, pistol 5 stun, then GS knockback + blink and reset. I run a phantasam build and the zerker and duelist do hit hard as he described. I also run the phantasam health trait and utility so it’s not easy to just kill them unless it’s a big aoe class like a HB warrior. The key to beating me at least in 1v1 is to dodge the phantasm skills and keep pressure on. But even then most good mesmers will use knock back/stun in order to guarantee the phantasm gets off then just kite / gs auto and then swoop in again with stun/frenzy/shatter to finish off. condi spammers are the best counter.

SteepledHat.1345:

Yes, it’s one of the reasons it’s so boring.

Shukran.4851:

there is no skill either in 100b combo honestly. or Xcondi stack in necro, or “op dps” on ranger shortbow.
if you ask me “do you want thief to be nerfed?” i answer “ofc yes, but make it playable and competitive”.
there is a difference between my statement and yours.
and lowell’s personal opinion is only an opinion. anet should change it. we should only ADAPT to what anet wants for his game.
so l2adapt

edit: it is what i mean:

Philosophy inside weapons and class balance
We want every single class to feel like they have multiple options to deal with every situations, this doesn’t mean every class will have the exact same options.
We want every single class to deal situations in an unique manner – we keep “purity” in certain skills/traits i.e. only mesmers and thieves have stealth to deal with some situations. Not everyone have stealth but every class have a defensive mechanism they can use if they don’t stealth.
We want to bring up all the weak weapons/traits on par with strong weapons/builds/traits in addition to reduce AoE effectiveness.
A lot of classes have 1-2 good builds while some have 5-6 builds , we want to bring up all the classes to 5-6 good and viable builds.

you can see hb combo and see condi stacking. lowell kills people literally before visible and before reaction os possible

people saying l2p need to stfu. here is what Lowell (top player) said when asked if one shotting should be possible and requires skill to pull off in paid tournaments vs other top players:

" I don’t think it should be possible, there is no skill in punching my numpad."

so please stop with the whole its so easy to avoid nonsense

Lowellollipop.5817:

I don’t think it should be possible, there is no skill in punching my numpad.

nice to finally see a top player acknowledge this and stop the l2p easy to avoid nonsense

jportell.2197:

Mesmer shatter does AOE damage but I think they were going more for the reticle AOE abilities.

wouldn’t be so sure shatter stacking is abused in wvw

do you consider 1-shotting someone skillful gameplay or do you think it should not be possible to the degree it is now?

im all for any change that nerfs mesmer shatter builds, d/d ele builds, etc. cant wait

capping should be an interaction with a point that can be interrupted but only takes a few seconds to flip. that way a simple knockdown and stun can allow for a flip so we dont have these boring kitten bunkers just sitting in a circle

go watch the Lowell vid that was posted. its boring and just a bunch of out numbered fights once they establish point control. spectating conquest is flat out lame

I thought thief cant one shot ppl at high level since its so easy and any noob can avoid it and stuff

also what is up with posting a horribly one sided match?

Manditory.7934:

Hey,

So I log in and I feel like playing some pvp, check with two of my friends that are online but they are both doing pve. Whatever I’ll play some by myself.

I don’t feel like playing hot join, because you know, it’s hot join. A big zerg fest where no one gives two kittens about capping, only about getting those kills (which can be fun too at times.)

Being unable to do paid tournament due to not having a team I enter to closest thing resembling anything of a pvp match – Free tournament.

Enter lobby, yes I’m ready. I’m playing my favorite class, Mesmer. I tell my team I got waterfall and will portal push mid.

I run to waterfall and start capping. I then get instantly killed by a mesmer and two thief’s from the same guild that had stealthed up on me with mesmer mass invisibility ult (lol).

Fair game, no problem. Having three at my point should give us advantage on other points. I check to see how my team was doing.

My team consists of me and a warrior, whom is almost dead. I re-spawn with enemy having all three bases.

I keep fighting, some people join but leave as quickly. Defeat.

I do two more tournaments; mass leavers. Once I was on the winning side with us having all 3 points, and /y consisted of the two people on the enemy team wanting to duel our team 1vs1.

It doesn’t matter if you’re on the winning or losing side, it’s still very frustrating, boring and waste of time.

I know you’re working on a February pvp update so I hope you do something about these leavers, hopefully some kind of punishment (etc can’t queue any PVP or WvW for a hour on entire account.)

About 1/5 free tournament actually plans out as a fun 5vs5.

tldr; Do something about free tournament leavers, unplayable.

yup first mmo I’ve played with no penalty for deserters

I think sataar is jealous of powerr running a different comp sucessfully and trying to do it himself now.

ZenoSpyridon.1396:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

madatom.5218:

Sprawl.3891:

reddit agrees

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/16lxj9/esports/

reddit only agrees with popular opinion

if you want criticism dont go to reddit

im confused? that entire reddit thread is criticism of the pvp system. whether reddit, guru or here the thought is the same that gw2 pvp just isnt fun

welcome to gw2 where if you dont play during primetime 2/3 of spvp is unavailable.

edit – actually i was just able to do a free tourny. Started out 4v5. We were actually winning 150-140 then another guy logged so 5v3 and we lost.

Great work Jon. Great systems you have in place.

this game will never be an esport

OpenWounds.6729:

people complain games are too easy, but when something takes time and grinding to earn, they cry. if earning titles/gear/qualifying points/acheivs isnt enough to make you want to continue playing a game, then your just not a real gamer, go play barbie

there’s ways to make progression feel good vs feeling like a grind. many people have already provides ideas.

I dont see any higher individual skill in tournies just better team play. you rarely have an even 1v1 or 2v2. either your team brings an extra or the other team does and its gg

it is a game issue. game is bad and not many are playing. tack on requiring 40 people to start a match lol, not sure what they were thinking.

reddit agrees

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/16lxj9/esports/

how is there a real meta with like 10 regular tournament teams?