Excellent post. I’ve always pugged in every game I played, and although at some point I would get matched against a premade, it was never as game breaking as GW2. Right now there simply is no point in pugging free tournaments. I try it once in while only to realize that it’s still impossible to play a fair free tournament up to last round without hitting a premade. This is unfortunate because it leave no competitive games for puggers and quickly leads to boredom. There simply is no competition in sPvP, so it needs to be implemented somewhere else for solo players.
WvW->8v8->5v5->free->paid.
At some point along that line of progression you’re going to have to learn to play with others if you want to be any good at this game at all.
Being good involves yourself only. In a 2v2 if you’re good and your partner is bad you’re still a good player but in a mediocre team. If pugs are matched against pugs and you’re a good player, your win ratio will be higher than 50% because you bring higher skill to your team.
Spvp seems like the answer.
Absolutely not. sPvP is not taken seriously and people don’t care if they win or lose. Solo players want tPvP where people care and try their hardest to win but in a competitive environment where pugs are matched against pugs.
1v1 with matchmaking would be the best way for players to get better, and developers to balance the game. Developers could gather basic statistics such as win/loss ratios between 1v1 profession fights, but also much deeper stats such as which abilities were the most used and how much they contributed to total damage, making it a lot easier to cross-balance. Also, imagine if the game was known for providing near 50/50 win ratio, you would know that any player that beats you actually really outplayed you rather than carried by his chosen profession.
The big problem is the way sPvP works. Games just don’t feel serious at all. Pugs vs pugs free tournaments is what is needed the most. Solo players currently have nowhere to go to enjoy a serious fair competitive game without the unfair interference of premades.
I’d say being an esport is a secondary objective to actually having players play your game. If the game being balanced for pros end up being a kitten experience for the majority of (casual) players, you can never be an esport anyway because no one will be interested in the game. More players but not an esport generates more revenue for a company than being an esport with only a few players if that is even at all possible, since no one is likely to sponsor an event with a small audience.
I like how fast paced combat is in this game. However, I do not welcome professions like thieves and mesmers in their currently overpowered state. People complain because they want to keep playing, and for that, obvious problems such as lack of balance, matchmaking, and rankings must be addressed.
The problem is if you put a glass canon thief against a glass canon of another class, well you won’t get a fair glass canon fight because the thief will kill the other glass canon in one opener.
You can’t ever force a player to play when he doesn’t want to. They should concentrate their efforts on making the PvP experience as fair and enjoyable as possible so people don’t give up because the same predictable outcome happens over and over, such as premades vs pugs and too many bunkers, thieves, or mesmers which skew the fairness of matches too much.
I have to wonder why duels aren’t already implemented considering it’s a huge time sink for PvPers. It keeps them happy, entertained and playing the game for much longer. Never underestimate the amount of people interested in 1v1, it’s the only way to know if you’re really skilled.
Removing healers was a great move. Now if they could just tone down bunkers with too much mitigation/healing we could actually start to experience the PvP they originally envisioned.
Mesmers will lead in the complaints department as soon as thieves are toned tone, and rightfully so.
My experience with PVP has always been “Once the QQ nerfs begin the game starts dieing.” There are several classes that hit just as hard as a thief and some with better survivability.
I am all for justified balance, but balance means ALL classes not just one or two.
It must start somewhere though, and thief is first in line. It’s not like they weren’t given plenty of time to exploit their imbalance while others had to suffer the grief. So, even if they were overnerfed for a time, it wouldn’t really be that unfair.
Thieves are currently a bigger problem than mesmers, but not by much. When thieves get toned down, the complaints will shift to the next overpowered profession. It will take a few cycles like this until balance gets anywhere near good. I like this game but I have to say that I absolutely hate how much PvE entities they brought into PvP.
Good post. I tried a glass canon thief too just for fun, and although I didn’t survive much in sPvP, it felt like it was way too easy to down any player I selected. And don’t even think for a second that I mastered that insane OP opening combo, I messed it up most of the time but could still down my target just with landing basilisk, then heartseeker and auto attack. Thief playstyle didn’t feel rewarding to me because you don’t feel you need to get better to kill other people, it’s way too easy from the first time you try it. The only thing I could see is that it takes skill to get good at surviving in the sPvP zerg environment.
anyone know exactly what they have in mind to nerf these power houses of dps, 50% reduction in damage maybe? would be a small step in the right direction i think.
I think if you leave thief dps alone and just remove stealth, so we can see them coming that would be enough to balance them.
DPS is a short hand form of Damage Per Second and thieves aren’t a DPS powerhouse, they are a spike damage powerhouse… big difference.
Don’t forget that they are increasing our sustained damage when they blunt our spike damage, so if they nerfed BS by 50% damage, that damage would be added in some other form to our sustained abilities (most likely auto-attack damage) or some form of debuff to opponent.
The end result is that over a 5 second period we will still produce the same amount of damage but our damage will be spread over 5 seconds rather than front loaded into the first second and then having us do nothing for the next 4 seconds.
That sounds a lot more reasonable since you can’t get killed within one basilisk stun.
If there’s one thing I love about the PvP in this game is how it’s focused on very fast paced fights and not having 50 different button abilities to press. I had the most fun as I improved my reaction time and became exponentially better at the game.
When fights are balanced 1v1 everything becomes more fun as you scale up into group fights. I love 1v1, and I love group fights, but I hate losing a 1v1 in a group fight because of flawed balance and people exploiting the most overpowered FOTM builds.
Why would a solo player want to waste time in a game where odds are not 50/50? When I play a tournament it’s because I want to play a game where it matters to me to win or lose. I’m not gonna waste my time feeding premades and pretend to have fun doing it because it’s not anywhere near fun. This flawed design is extremely unfair to solo players. I barely do any free tournaments anymore because pugs always hit a premade at some round or another.
I think one thing that gets a lot of people frustrated is that there are serious bugs and balance issues which are allowed to ruin the gameplay of the majority of players for months rather than days. Fixing these should be done ASAP, new PvP content can wait.
Your sarcasm is unwarranted. The community, more often than not, is right. It’s the changes that are not coming anywhere near fast enough. I like the philosophy of small incremental changes but they shouldn’t be spaced months apart. Overnerf/overbuff often until balance is reached. It’s quite ridiculous to allow a few builds to ruin the game for so many people for so long, and inevitably leads to losing a chunk of the player base.
Slivers were much harder to get for me. Even now that I have the gear I want, and am just collecting mats, I have about 50 free tournament tokens and maybe 10 slivers. I always buy gold chests and salvage the mats as well as the chests I win in tPvP.
People don’t have to be elite players to voice their opinions on the game. If anything, casual opinion is worth a lot more than elite players, because when those casuals leave you’re left with very little (elite) players to play with and certainly can’t make the game into a worthwhile esport. Casuals are the ones who make or break a game’s popularity.
Also, it just feels like OP doesn’t like the fact that the general opinion is that thieves, mesmers, and guardian bunkers are currently overpowered, the 3 professions he chooses to play. In my opinion, playing these FOTM removes all the credibility of OP who probably can’t be good with anything not currently overpowered and it is his opinion that should be ignored rather than anyone else’s.
And it’s not just about being skilled, it’s also having to be willing to dedicate 1 out of your limited 3 utility slots to deal with thieves exclusively i.e. a stun breaker utility when you can easily do without when playing other professions. When a single profession imposes this kind of limitation on other builds you know there’s a problem.
People complain about thieves because there is so much truth to it that it stabs you in the eyes when it happens. What thieves can do now only reminds me of people leveling up a rogue in WoW and nearly one-shotting every one with 1 ambush hit, leaving opponents with no opportunity to defend themselves. Exploiting bad mechanics like this is griefing and only damaging to the game, but it should also get fixed a lot faster.
Nothing can be done against basilisk without a stun breaker, and when you regain control of your character to pop whatever other defensive ability you have it’s already too late. This does not happen with any other glass canon professions. I usually manage to reactively mitigate at least half the damage from mesmers trying to burst me or other warriors trying to HB me so these fights tend to be a lot more balanced. Thief basilisk + burst combo is simply not counterable without a stun breaker. Being forced into selecting a utility slot ONLY because of thief damage is unacceptable. I can accept losing half my health because I choose to run without a stun breaker, but not 90%+ of my health at 22k hps with 20 points in defense traits.
Greatsword + axe/shield + bull rush with “movement breaks immobilize” + “last stand” traits and I’m almost never rooted. The most annoying thing that happens to me is being crippled, but I’d feel very overpowered if some professions couldn’t cripple me. My only real issues are thieves killing me within one basilisk stun, and bunkers with what feels like endless full heals who can survive through an unmitigated perfect burst combo. I’d rather see thieves and bunkers nerfed than warriors buffed.
Balance would need serious improvements before penalizing leavers. Also, I often leave games that fill out and become a zerg fest AOE spam and go look for another game with max 8-10 players.
I don’t have a problem with most thieves on my warrior also, but that’s just because the majority of them are very bad. The problem is when you meet a GOOD glass canon thief it just doesn’t matter how well you play your warrior because you’re lucky if you still have 10% health left after they open up on you. The damage is simply way too high and overpowered in the hands of a moderately good player. The problem with thief damage is that everybody would be forced to use a stun breaker ability for the single purpose of countering thieves, when fighting any other profession is manageable without a stun breaker.
In my experience if you take the trait to give 100% rally chance on vengeance, you lose a much better trait for it such as “movement skills break immobilize” for example. I’d rather try not to get downed than spend a trait just for that situation.
I tried to play a thief just for fun. I could down most people while mashing buttons like a monkey and not even knowing what half the abilities on my bar did. Thief playstyle is not rewarding, when you down someone you can’t even say it’s because you’re skilled. I found the damage a thief does is absolutely insane compared to my warrior. A basilisk stun, a few autoattacks and heartseekers is all it took me to down most people so I can see how very overpowered it would be if I played that profession even just half as good as I play my warrior.
The fact that there are no duels and very limited 1v1 fight opportunities is surely driving a lot of PvPers away. I will always wonder why MMOs prefer to develop primarily for the group play minority when the much larger percentage of the population would rather have good balanced 1v1 that recognizes their skill in a ladder system.
It’s easy to kill anyone in sPvP when you get good yeah. However, when you fight someone equally as good as you but playing one of the current overpowered builds you can clearly see the obvious imbalances, which happen over and over again and surely drive a lot of people away from the PvP in this game.
Issue 0.
Free tournaments:
- Pugs matched against premades.
Proposed Solution:
- Have different queues, and let solo players enjoy the game instead of feeding them to premades.
My top choice of what ruins pvp experience is pugs vs premades in free tournaments because when you meet a premade they are always using as many of the most overpowered builds possible on top of having communication. At least pug vs pug, each pug has a random chance of having, or playing against, an overpowered build. It’s not ideal, but it would at least be less unfair, and a step in the right direction to make PvP enjoyable for solo players who don’t enjoy the sPvP zerg fest.
Arenas would be amazing. Especially 1v1. MMOs need to start capitalizing on the massive amount of players who crave for good 1v1.
The number of replies in a thread with such a title is a pretty strong indication of the extent of the thief burst problem. They need to change thieves so that they take some sort of strategy to play. Right now, even a monkey could get some kills while playing a thief and mashing some buttons.
Good point. I always look for games with 7 or 9 players to join in and hope it doesn’t fill up, but it often does. I usually end up wasting quite a bit of time just trying to find a server with constant max 10 players.
I’d love to see higher base hps and weak heals such that fights would be a SLOW race to emptying the opponent’s health, but it should be impossible for anyone to recover much health until you get out of combat. I find that healing is what causes the worst imbalances in games.
Very good message. Couldn’t have said it better.
It’s fine in theory while in practice it’s probably costing them unhappy players. Small nerfs are not the problem, it’s the time it takes to bring them in. At the current rate you expect overpowered builds to stay that way for months instead of weeks, plenty of time for people to get fed up. Time is an important variable.
Very bad idea until pugs no longer get matched against premades. It’s perfectly acceptable not to want to waste time in an unfair tournament game.
Except that you lose players in the process because it takes too long for “justice” to happen. Might work out since it’s not subscription based though, but you ideally want to have the highest retention in any business.
Yes, that would be good. The problem to slow balancing is that players not playing a FOTM end up suffering way too long before a balance is reached, and have more chance to get fed up and move to another game. Stronger buffs and nerfs keep the balance changing so everyone can feel more or less powerful at any point of time keeping the overall interest higher in the game. The thief, mesmer and bunker problems have certainly dragged long enough to impact the game negatively.
Tried 3 free tournament yesterday. All premades on round 3. Had to go back to sPvP rather than keep wasting my time in tournaments.
There is no reason thieves have to be so fragile and deal so much ridiculous damage. Give them more base hps, drop their damage. Force them to actually have to put some effort to drop someone down.
Yeah it’s impossible to get a fair free tournament. Round 3 almost always has a premade, so it’s really pointless and not worth playing solo for the most part. It’s a shame because tPvP pug vs pug is really fun.
Allowing bunkers to be unkillable in 1v1 is just bad design and I hope it gets fixed. I wouldn’t have a problem with bunkers if they were tanks i.e. high toughness, low damage, low HEALING. The problem is that right now they have both high toughness and high HEALING.
What if I don’t want the weight of an entire team on my shoulders? I certainly can’t drag them down with my warrior or ranger.
What if I just worked an 8 hour shift, giving and taking orders for people all day, and now I just wanna come home and play my game @ 3am, alone?
Pugs and casuals are the biggest demographic, by far. They’re also what competitive teams will grow out of. There’s got to be a place and format for them to just step into the game and have fun with, while remaining competitive and cooperative. Just force less communication through another mode or design.
Nice example. Most people want to play with others but in their own little bubble of relaxation. Having to communicate with others by voice is not relaxing.
(edited by shaolin.9716)