131 replies to this topic

[GammaWolf]

As several threads have pointed out, it has become very apparent that there has been a major drop-off in the interest in s/tPvP.

Paid tournaments are seeing long queue times even during peak hours, and there seems to be a dwindling number of teams that are taking the game seriously anymore.

There are several reasons for this:
- Stagnant, uninteresting play (bunker guardian, tp mesmer in every comp, few viable builds overall)
- Limited options for solo players
- New or pickup teams have no consistent way to play against other evenly skilled opponents
- The ticket system is placing a barrier in front of people who may actually want to try to find consistent arranged opponents
- tPvP is missing many basic features that even GW1 released with 7 years ago
I elaborate on these points in the following video.



The actual combat mechanics and gameplay are very good, but this system currently in place is not fostering a healthy growing competitive community.

It is my hope that posts and videos like this will spur Anet to take immediate action to save the competitive side of their game as we are dangerously close to losing the critical mass of players that is necessary to sustain competitive sPvP.

QPs Post:
Based on the qualifier point post made yesterday there are ~70 players with 5 points or more which equals 14 teams that have had any sort of consistency if the list is accurate.

That isn’t enough to run 2 fully competitive tournaments at once. If you look at the number of people who have more than 20 points and probably win / farm newer teams consistently, it looks like around 4 teams which can even run 1.

These are Anets own numbers, and should in my view be a red flag for people who would like to see a healthy scene.

[FoxBat]

Your complaints are legitimate but they also pretty much describe Tombs that took over a year to die off, while the proper matchmaking of GvG took months to really come online. (As sigils started spreading, important features like guesting implemented, tournament placement for ladder seasons, etc.) Or compare Random Arenas popularity vs. the numbers you saw in hot join, keeping in mind that RA was even more distant from whatever was going on in Tombs/GvG. Frankly there is more that is fundamentally wrong with GW2 sPvP as compared to GW1 than what you have addressed. You say you and others like the mechanics (or possibly conquest format), but I think the bottom line is that too many people simply don't, or else they prefer MOBAs these days which hardly existed in GW1's infancy.

One solid point we can take away from your rant is that Anet's plans to monetize sPvP are likely going to blow up in their face. The game can hardly get enough players to play sPvP for free, let alone make them pay for servers and competitive tournaments. They'd be better off providing those things for free now and focus on adding aesthetic pay options down the road (a la LoL.)

Edited by FoxBat, 08 November 2012 - 03:53 PM.

[Veles]

I agree with this post. tPVP is just stale and boring, GW2 tried to be MOBA, while it is not and it is trying to be some sort of MMO and it is not. From all the hype that this game had it has turned into one one of the biggest fails in the last few years of MMO scene, but since there are no subscription fees we will never see the actual numbers.

And I just cannot agree with this statement:

Quote

The actual combat mechanics and gameplay are very good

Edited by Veles, 08 November 2012 - 04:04 PM.

[ArcherHenchman]

Free tournaments do not inject enough tickets into the economy to keep people queueing for paids without feeling devastated if they're knocked out in the first round. at 45 minutes per cycle, spending 4 hours of winning play in frees to practice against good teams for 5 minutes is abusive, to say the least. The qualifier points ranking attests to this.

[Odinson]

I couldn't agree more.  Until GW2 realizes that the moba LOL has it down when it comes to competitive play vs. non-competitive play and takes notes from what they are doing, the game will be nothing more than a blip in the radar of fun.

Some of the things GW2 needs to add asap or it will die:
-rankings/ladders
-solo queue random matches for 5v5
-duo queue random matches for 5v5 weighted based on rankings
-team 5v5 only
-solo queue tournament matches for 5v5
-duo queue tournament matches for 5v5 weighted based on rankings
-better ways to hook up with a team while waiting in the mists

[Syia]

Paid tournaments should be free, but require a full premade to run. Make free tournaments solo/duo/triple (not sure) only. All premades are then thrown into the pool. Set a timer where, if the tournament doesn't pop after X minutes, the tournament can be completed over two maps with 4 teams.

[Skyro]

Yeah... nothing new here. ANet is taking their jolly ol' time fleshing out the sPvP side of their game. I don't think there is a danger of losing that "critical mass" because it was never there to begin with. The question really is that when they finally do get adequate structures in place, will it be enough to actually draw the players in? Time will tell.

I do agree that the base combat mechanics are good, and that how ANet tried to monetize sPvP (via paid tourney) has so far fallen flat on its face.

[GammaWolf]

FoxBat, on 08 November 2012 - 03:51 PM, said:

Your complaints are legitimate but they also pretty much describe Tombs that took over a year to die off, while the proper matchmaking of GvG took months to really come online. (As sigils started spreading, important features like guesting implemented, tournament placement for ladder seasons, etc.) Or compare Random Arenas popularity vs. the numbers you saw in hot join, keeping in mind that RA was even more distant from whatever was going on in Tombs/GvG. Frankly there is more that is fundamentally wrong with GW2 sPvP as compared to GW1 than what you have addressed. You say you and others like the mechanics (or possibly conquest format), but I think the bottom line is that too many people simply don't, or else they prefer MOBAs these days which hardly existed in GW1's infancy.

One solid point we can take away from your rant is that Anet's plans to monetize sPvP are likely going to blow up in their face. The game can hardly get enough players to play sPvP for free, let alone make them pay for servers and competitive tournaments. They'd be better off providing those things for free now and focus on adding aesthetic pay options down the road (a la LoL.)

Hey I appreciate the response, I guess we differ in that despite the problems I don't want spvp to simply just die off because I do believe the innovative mechanics do make the combat itself fun and enjoyable.

Conquest mode is not ideal at all, and i would prefer something closer to GvG, but I don't see new game modes coming in any time soon if the current mode dies.

That said, I really don't blame people for packing up and leaving, and I pretty much have done so myself at this point.

Veles, on 08 November 2012 - 04:04 PM, said:

I agree with this post. tPVP is just stale and boring, GW2 tried to be MOBA, while it is not and it is trying to be some sort of MMO and it is not. From all the hype that this game had it has turned into one one of the biggest fails in the last few years of MMO scene, but since there are no subscription fees we will never see the actual numbers.

And I just cannot agree with this statement:

Well they didn't even get to anything close to a MOBA because they have no solo system, have no ladder or MMR and are asking for currency to play an incredibly bare bones arranged team system.

When I refer to good mechanics I am talking about no trinity, no auto targeting for most skills, dodging which are new innovations for the genre. I do see how people may not like things like down state or conquest mode however.

ArcherHenchman, on 08 November 2012 - 06:54 PM, said:

Free tournaments do not inject enough tickets into the economy to keep people queueing for paids without feeling devastated if they're knocked out in the first round. at 45 minutes per cycle, spending 4 hours of winning play in frees to practice against good teams for 5 minutes is abusive, to say the least. The qualifier points ranking attests to this.

Agreed. Once the newer teams ran out of tickets after being farmed by the small number of hardcore people a lot of them simply left rather than spend time farming frees or spending money.

Odinson, on 08 November 2012 - 07:04 PM, said:

I couldn't agree more.  Until GW2 realizes that the moba LOL has it down when it comes to competitive play vs. non-competitive play and takes notes from what they are doing, the game will be nothing more than a blip in the radar of fun.

Some of the things GW2 needs to add asap or it will die:
-rankings/ladders
-solo queue random matches for 5v5
-duo queue random matches for 5v5 weighted based on rankings
-team 5v5 only
-solo queue tournament matches for 5v5
-duo queue tournament matches for 5v5 weighted based on rankings
-better ways to hook up with a team while waiting in the mists

Yes all solid points and things that are needed to maintain a sustainable community.

Skyro, on 08 November 2012 - 08:29 PM, said:

Yeah... nothing new here. ANet is taking their jolly ol' time fleshing out the sPvP side of their game. I don't think there is a danger of losing that "critical mass" because it was never there to begin with. The question really is that when they finally do get adequate structures in place, will it be enough to actually draw the players in? Time will tell.

I do agree that the base combat mechanics are good, and that how ANet tried to monetize sPvP (via paid tourney) has so far fallen flat on its face.

Yes asking new people for money to get stomped by hardcore players who already have unlimited tickets is incredibly stupid. This isn't poker where a noob can get lucky and win. They will just get farmed and leave which means the community cannibalizes itself to death.

And getting people to come back after they were basically duped by Anet into thinking the game had Esport potential is incredibly difficult with so much competition out there these days.

[Condiments7]

I agree with this assessment, which is incredibly frustrating because of how much I enjoy this game. I WANT to see it grow and become more e-sport worthy, but A-net has been essentially mum on their long term strategy for keeping their populating going. Taking too long to create these features will kill a chance at a good community, even if the game has no sub fee.

I hope they can introduce features to save this game in the long run.

[Psikerlord]

15 nov patch is the cut off for me. if there arent some good fixes in there (eg 5v5 hotjoin or fix some major bugs or balance issues) then it's off to CoD BO2 for me. zombies!

[Zauric]

My issues with sPvP in this game as a player that was in guilds ranging from top 100 to top 5 in GW1.

1) High barrier to entry, especially compared to either Tombs or random areas. No real way to effectively solo or duo queue with people to face similarly ranked players. Included with this is no real way effective way to find groups. In GW1 the entire population was located within a few zones, making in easy to find people for pug groups. In GW2 it is just your lone server in Heart of the Mists, so I hope you are in an active pvp one.

2) Stomp or be stomped gameplay, mostly caused by no real match making system. You can face players with 1000 tourney wins in your first tourney, and conversely you can face people that have never played a tourney before, while you have 1000 wins. Neither option is fun. The travesty that is paid tournaments I don't even want to get into.

3) No sense of continuity between your pve character and pvp character. Why shouldn't you be able to use your PvE skins in PvP, and your PvP skins in PvE. If I farm a legendary I should be able to use that skin in PvP, and conversely if someone else farms a legendary, I want to be able to curb stomp them while they are wearing it. On the other side if I unlock cool skins via PvP, I should be able to transmute them onto my PvE gear.

Edited by Zauric, 09 November 2012 - 04:13 AM.

[UssjTrunks]

I agree about the combat in this game being awesome. It's very fast paced and action oriented, especially once you download Combat Mode.

However, with that said, PvP is way too barebones and I can see why people have stopped playing it. It's taken them two months to add basic features like paid tournaments, leaderboards (not even fully implemented yet), and another map. They still need to add an observer mode, voice chat, private servers, and possibly additional game modes.

I also agree that the current metagame is terrible. They need to find a way to limit either the effectiveness of bunkers, or to limit how many bunkers a team can bring into a game. They keep talking about how they don't want defence to win games, but they have yet to do something about it.

Clearly the PvP was only an afterthought when designing this game. MMO developers should really consider releasing PvE and PvP versions of their games separately, each with their own development team.

Edited by UssjTrunks, 09 November 2012 - 04:33 AM.

[Aodan]

I'll simply add that there was no real point to QP's till now. Now there is a Ladder that people can view and compete on. This won't solve many issues but now it gives some meaning to Paid apart from waiting for the first MAT

Competitive play as far as publicly hasn't really started until now. There is a Ladder for QPs and hopefully shortly custom arena.

Players/teams will probably come back if not now but when custom arena comes and players are able to host/make tournaments outside of automated ingame.

The fact that there are still very strong competitive teams in the game with only 3-4 having a strong pressence on QP ladder actually proves the game isn't on a death spiral. What the QP ladder simply means if not whats mentioned before, that many players have either:
1. Not qued up for Paid
2. Many don't have the required skill yet to compete with some of the top teams.

I for one have not been on/played with a strong team yet in paid that is at the level of cohesive/competitive play like that of those in the Top 10-20

UssjTrunks, on 09 November 2012 - 04:29 AM, said:

I also agree that the current metagame is terrible. They need to find a way to limit either the effectiveness of bunkers, or to limit how many bunkers a team can bring into a game. They keep talking about how they don't want defence to win games, but they have yet to do something about it.

Defense doesn't win the games but it creates a ton of map control that allows for their roamers to effectively deal with the other team. Even with JL and other teams that compete against RC/PTC/PZ they use a combination in comps to both play bunkerish while coutering it (2grd with 3 roamers or close variants)

The issue with Grds atm is 1. Runes of Savnir and Mercy 2. Simply superior boon application + retal 3. Invul capabilities to break burst (Shelter + Savnir + RF) esp now with RF being mobile.

Apart from this is the issue of Symbols healing effectiveness coupled many times with a good roaming ele = strong cleanse and point healing that can foil any good burst if focus isn't on point.

Edited by Aodan, 09 November 2012 - 04:49 AM.

[Garethh]

Nice, I was just about to put a link in this section to that post on the official forums
A good thread...

Spilled my 2 cents there

Spoiler

Good post, agree with it.
One of the main kickers, at least for me, was the lack of synergy.
The game is 5v5 conquest.
Balanced around and only played threw.
A solid tourny setup, but terrible pug.
It caused working with people in this game to involves voicechat, pretty much end of story. The game has its teamwork done threw maneuvering around to cap/keep BOs, the disparity of who is with who (along with the general class setup) just ruins open/innate synergy between players.
I mean they got rid of the trinity which made synergy part of PvP by nature, but didn’t actually replace it with anything. That just left classes as far too standalone to really fit my taste, at all…
(bunkers bunker and roamers roam… you can work a comp to have toons be able to work together to a notable degree but it is just rarely there otherwise)
Pug PvP, it involves zerging, it always does in every game, but this pug PvP by far, to me, is the least entertaining I’ve played (I went threw WAR->Rift->here, was one of the top zealots on war for a while, in Rift I playedh a rogue till the final tier while they were still a terrible class [won near every 1v1 and never touched the assassin tree, that and me and my brother won 2v4~s pretty consistently] then rerolled a half dozen toons before leaving since 1-40? was a hell of a blast)
I loved WAR, thought Rift was great play till the final tier… GW2 had a chance to trump them all, WAR had 99 problems because of a shoddy after release dev team; Rift screwed up their entire PvP end game, had a terrible open world PvP system and a mess for team v team fights; leaving plenty of room for improvement. GW2’s combat is even setup far better, but the devs just couldn’t work out how to make classes work together, there isn’t good balance at all, SPvP matching is just bad (as in it is an utter pain to find a server at your skill level and worth playing in, for whatever goal you have in mind), terrible bragging rights (bad looking gear and score cards that say nothing) that and tournies are blind (no idea what team is doing what and winnning) and mean nothing (just tickets in an inventory). Oh and of course auto-dyeing.. kitten its more obnoxious than anything… if its for observer mode, put it in observer mode.
So close, but they failed.
I’m sorry there’s just too much they ‘almost’ did for me to see any hope for the game’s PvP keeping a large populations attention (nonetheless mine)…
I’m just starting to think its a conspiracy, I can’t see how corporations funneling so much money into games can get such bad results… especially when everything a dev team needs is already out there, if they just slapped together the best parts of other games people would thank them…
But i can’t think of an aim worth all the time/money…
><

Edited by Garethh, 09 November 2012 - 05:23 PM.

[Garethh]

Condiments7, on 09 November 2012 - 12:18 AM, said:

I agree with this assessment, which is incredibly frustrating because of how much I enjoy this game. I WANT to see it grow and become more e-sport worthy, but A-net has been essentially mum on their long term strategy for keeping their populating going. Taking too long to create these features will kill a chance at a good community, even if the game has no sub fee.

I hope they can introduce features to save this game in the long run.

They did a good job at hyping it, allot of people care about this game and want it to succeed...
There have just been fail after fail when it comes to MMOs.. and GW2 would have been there for a glorious change of pace...
But I guess hopes don't solve problems...

Edited by Garethh, 09 November 2012 - 08:43 AM.

[Draecor]

Lets hope for some good changes with the next patch next week.

[GammaWolf]

UssjTrunks, on 09 November 2012 - 04:29 AM, said:

I agree about the combat in this game being awesome. It's very fast paced and action oriented, especially once you download Combat Mode.

However, with that said, PvP is way too barebones and I can see why people have stopped playing it. It's taken them two months to add basic features like paid tournaments, leaderboards (not even fully implemented yet), and another map. They still need to add an observer mode, voice chat, private servers, and possibly additional game modes.

I also agree that the current metagame is terrible. They need to find a way to limit either the effectiveness of bunkers, or to limit how many bunkers a team can bring into a game. They keep talking about how they don't want defence to win games, but they have yet to do something about it.

Yes the innovations in the actual combat mechanics are very good which is why this game needs to survive. A lot of people want to play competitively in an rpg format, and GW2 has done combat better than anyone else. Its just such a shame the competitive systems in place are so barebone and completely unsustainable.

Zauric, on 09 November 2012 - 04:12 AM, said:

My issues with sPvP in this game as a player that was in guilds ranging from top 100 to top 5 in GW1.

1) High barrier to entry, especially compared to either Tombs or random areas. No real way to effectively solo or duo queue with people to face similarly ranked players. Included with this is no real way effective way to find groups. In GW1 the entire population was located within a few zones, making in easy to find people for pug groups. In GW2 it is just your lone server in Heart of the Mists, so I hope you are in an active pvp one.

2) Stomp or be stomped gameplay, mostly caused by no real match making system. You can face players with 1000 tourney wins in your first tourney, and conversely you can face people that have never played a tourney before, while you have 1000 wins. Neither option is fun. The travesty that is paid tournaments I don't even want to get into.

3) No sense of continuity between your pve character and pvp character. Why shouldn't you be able to use your PvE skins in PvP, and your PvP skins in PvE. If I farm a legendary I should be able to use that skin in PvP, and conversely if someone else farms a legendary, I want to be able to curb stomp them while they are wearing it. On the other side if I unlock cool skins via PvP, I should be able to transmute them onto my PvE gear.

1) Very good point I hadn't even thought about. Stratifying the spvp crowd across 50 or whatever servers is yet another thing that hurts new people and new/pickup teams forming.

2) Yes no ladder or MMR leads to a situation that is completely non-competitive. Even further is that the less experienced people who get stomped have all for the most part left, leaving about 30 players who are 'competitive' which is a joke.

3) I agree this is a design flaw because people from other areas of the game are not interested in sPvP. This means that the competitive development gets put on the back burner and nothing changes before everyone is gone.

Psikerlord, on 09 November 2012 - 02:10 AM, said:

15 nov patch is the cut off for me. if there arent some good fixes in there (eg 5v5 hotjoin or fix some major bugs or balance issues) then it's off to CoD BO2 for me. zombies!

I highly doubt there are going to be any fundamental changes to the system. Its just going to be some balance and bug fixes.

Garethh, on 09 November 2012 - 08:42 AM, said:

They did a good job at hyping it, allot of people care about this game and want it to succeed...
There have just been fail after fail when it comes to MMOs.. and GW2 would have been there for a glorious change of pace...
But I guess hopes don't solve problems...

Yep, they slapped an e-sports sticker on the game as a marketing to sell more boxes at release even though the game isn't anywhere close to having a functioning competitive system let alone Esport potential.

Garethh, on 09 November 2012 - 08:36 AM, said:

Nice, I was just about to put a link in this section to that post on the official forums
A good thread...

Spilled my 2 cents there

Spoiler

Good post, agree with it.
One of the main kickers, at least for me, was the lack of synergy.
The game is 5v5 conquest.
Balanced around and only played threw.
A solid tourny setup, but terrible pug.
It caused working with people in this game to involves voicechat, pretty much end of story. The game has its teamwork done threw maneuvering around to cap/keep BOs, the disparity of who is with who (along with the general class setup) just ruins open synergy between players.
They got rid of the trinity which made synergy part of PvP by nature but didn’t actually replace it with anything. That just left classes as far too standalone to really fit my taste, at all…
(bunkers bunker and roamers roam… you can work a comp to have toons be able to work together to a notable degree but it is just rarely there otherwise)
Pug PvP, it involves zerging, it always does in every game, but this pug PvP by far, to me, is the least entertaining I’ve played (I went threw WAR->Rift->here, was one of the top zealots on war for a while, in Rift I playedh a rogue till the final tier while they were still a terrible class [won near every 1v1 and never touched the assassin tree, that and me and my brother won 2v4~s pretty consistently] then rerolled a half dozen toons before leaving since 1-40? was a hell of a blast)
I loved WAR, thought Rift was great play till the final tier… GW2 had a chance to trump them all, WAR had 99 problems because of a shoddy after release dev team; Rift screwed up their entire PvP end game, had a terrible open world PvP system and a mess for team v team fights; leaving plenty of room for improvement. GW2’s combat is even setup far better, but the devs just couldn’t work out how to make classes work together, there isn’t good balance at all, SPvP matching is just bad (as in it is an utter pain to find a server at your skill level and worth playing in, for whatever goal you have in mind), terrible bragging rights (bad looking gear and score cards that say nothing) that and tournies are blind (no idea what team is doing what and winnning) and mean nothing (just tickets in an inventory). Oh and of course auto-dyeing.. kitten its more obnoxious than anything… if its for observer mode, put it in observer mode.
So close, but they failed.
I’m sorry there’s just too much they ‘almost’ did for me to see any hope for the game’s PvP keeping a large populations attention (nonetheless mine)…
I’m just starting to think its a conspiracy, I can’t see how corporations funneling so much money into games can get such bad results… especially when everything a dev team needs is already out there, if they just slapped together the best parts of other games people would thank them…
But i can’t think of an aim worth all the time/money…
><

Yes the threads on the main forum made by Pray and myself got merged and the titles changed to 'PvP feedback'. It honestly looks like an attempt to bury legitimate criticism.

[fatality39]

Draecor, on 09 November 2012 - 11:01 AM, said:

Lets hope for some good changes with the next patch next week.

From all indications, Anet focused on the pve side of things with minimal pvp scraps in this patch.  Burning ship right now in all forms of pvp in the game.

[raspberry jam]

Bro look at what you are saying.

GammaWolf, on 08 November 2012 - 02:54 PM, said:

Stagnant, uninteresting play (bunker guardian, tp mesmer in every comp, few viable builds overall)
(...)
The actual combat mechanics and gameplay are very good

What made GW1 special was the metagame with hundreds of skills etc. Period. It wasn't perfect and you often got periods of stagnant play, yet due to there always being a ton of unused skills, fresh gameplay was only a rebalance away. GW2 doesn't have the same system and therefore you don't get anything that make it stand out, and no way to refresh itself. Despite the hype, there is no emergent gameplay and certainly no emergent mechanics in GW2.

[GammaWolf]

raspberry jam, on 09 November 2012 - 04:26 PM, said:

Bro look at what you are saying.

What made GW1 special was the metagame with hundreds of skills etc. Period. It wasn't perfect and you often got periods of stagnant play, yet due to there always being a ton of unused skills, fresh gameplay was only a rebalance away. GW2 doesn't have the same system and therefore you don't get anything that make it stand out, and no way to refresh itself. Despite the hype, there is no emergent gameplay and certainly no emergent mechanics in GW2.

The good gameplay I am referring to is the combat mechanics like no trinity, no auto targeting on skills, dodging, and other things.

The stagnant play is due to the overall lack of builds that see consistent play, especially bunker guard and tp/time warp mesmer which make up 2 out of 5 on most comps. A guardian is fun to play, but when every guard is running and doing the exact same thing it gets boring over the long term.

And yes this was also a major problem in GW1.

[raspberry jam]

GammaWolf, on 09 November 2012 - 04:46 PM, said:

The good gameplay I am referring to is the combat mechanics like no trinity, no auto targeting on skills, dodging, and other things.

The stagnant play is due to the overall lack of builds that see consistent play, especially bunker guard and tp/time warp mesmer which make up 2 out of 5 on most comps. A guardian is fun to play, but when every guard is running and doing the exact same thing it gets boring over the long term.

And yes this was also a major problem in GW1.

Yeah I know, and if you mean in PvE, well PvE has its own set of problems. The combat is better due to no trinity but that causes other problems.

If you mean PvP, the thread topic (so that's why I thought you meant in PvP), there never was a trinity anyway. The reason why it was not a problem in GW1 for large periods of time was, as I said, the wealth of skills. This caused a system of emergent mechanics. Even when some builds were dominant, the rest were right there, simmering under the surface.
Look at this post, from GWO:

Quote

By David the Hammer (and if you don't know who that is, why are you talking about GW PvP?)

Anet has absolutely fantastic coders, but I've always been under the impression that they sort of lucked into making a really cool game, and they don't quite understand what makes it cool.

He is absolutely right. They didn't understand what made GW1's PvP so successful, and therefore they could not replicate it. GW2 does not have a system of emergent mechanics, does not have self-refreshing system, a rebalance would just result in the same problem as right now but with slightly different builds... If even that.

Uh, one question. What do you mean by "no autotargeting on skills"?

[GammaWolf]

The combat mechanics I am referring to are in sPvP. There is no trinity because there is no class that can spam 1 skill and fully heal allies, although staff eles can sort of do this.

No auto-targeting skills means you can activate skills when the target in not in range and end-up whiffing.

A lot of games in the past only allow you to activate a skill when the target is in range, or its like GW1 where activating some skills will auto run your character to the target.

This stuff has already been debated over and over for months. The hot button topic right now is the dwindling competitive community and the lack of interest in sPvP in general.

Edited by GammaWolf, 09 November 2012 - 05:48 PM.

[Diablo85]

raspberry jam, on 09 November 2012 - 05:33 PM, said:

Yeah I know, and if you mean in PvE, well PvE has its own set of problems. The combat is better due to no trinity but that causes other problems.

If you mean PvP, the thread topic (so that's why I thought you meant in PvP), there never was a trinity anyway. The reason why it was not a problem in GW1 for large periods of time was, as I said, the wealth of skills. This caused a system of emergent mechanics. Even when some builds were dominant, the rest were right there, simmering under the surface.
Look at this post, from GWO:He is absolutely right. They didn't understand what made GW1's PvP so successful, and therefore they could not replicate it. GW2 does not have a system of emergent mechanics, does not have self-refreshing system, a rebalance would just result in the same problem as right now but with slightly different builds... If even that.

Uh, one question. What do you mean by "no autotargeting on skills"?

Do you still think Arenanet has such great coders? Compare Guild Wars 1 with Guild Wars 2. The latter has ALOT more bugs than the first game ever had. I think the loss of three of their best coders, Jeff Strain, James Phinney and Patrick Wyatt really hurt Arenanet in that area. Their replacements aren't nearly as good.

[raspberry jam]

GammaWolf, on 09 November 2012 - 05:44 PM, said:

The combat mechanics I am referring to are in sPvP. There is no trinity because there is no class that can spam 1 skill and fully heal allies, although staff eles can sort of do this.

No auto-targeting skills means you can activate skills when the target in not in range and end-up whiffing.

A lot of games in the past only allow you to activate a skill when the target is in range, or its like GW1 where activating some skills will auto run your character to the target.

This stuff has already been debated over and over for months. The hot button topic right now is the dwindling competitive community and the lack of interest in sPvP in general.

Ok, so when you say no trinity you actually mean no dedicated healer. True enough, but dedicated healer wouldn't work anyway considering how different sPVP (cap points) is from GvG. Also, the existence of a healer class (or rather, the prot abilities of said class) added several layers of tactics to GW1 GvG.

And when you say no auto-targeting, what you mean is really no auto-follow. IMO, that, and the fact that you can use non-instant skills while moving, is extremely bad for the game since it causes input overload (consider the effect of Chiizu dancing in GW1).

I know what the topic is, and I'm telling you exactly why the competitive community is dwindling. It's because GW2 has fundamentally uninteresting mechanics.

[Odinson]

Zauric, on 09 November 2012 - 04:12 AM, said:

My issues with sPvP in this game as a player that was in guilds ranging from top 100 to top 5 in GW1.

1) High barrier to entry, especially compared to either Tombs or random areas. No real way to effectively solo or duo queue with people to face similarly ranked players. Included with this is no real way effective way to find groups. In GW1 the entire population was located within a few zones, making in easy to find people for pug groups. In GW2 it is just your lone server in Heart of the Mists, so I hope you are in an active pvp one.

2) Stomp or be stomped gameplay, mostly caused by no real match making system. You can face players with 1000 tourney wins in your first tourney, and conversely you can face people that have never played a tourney before, while you have 1000 wins. Neither option is fun. The travesty that is paid tournaments I don't even want to get into.

3) No sense of continuity between your pve character and pvp character. Why shouldn't you be able to use your PvE skins in PvP, and your PvP skins in PvE. If I farm a legendary I should be able to use that skin in PvP, and conversely if someone else farms a legendary, I want to be able to curb stomp them while they are wearing it. On the other side if I unlock cool skins via PvP, I should be able to transmute them onto my PvE gear.

#3!  Seriously, I wish this were true so bad.  GW2 said they were going to be about customization of your character looks and this is one of the main reasons I started this game.  I'm not about tiered armor to show off to everyone, I'm all about does my character look cool to me at the end of the day.  A lot of times, I mix and match my armor to make this happen.

And why should anet not do this?  Does it matter?  It doesn't.  We have the same stats in PvP already, so you should be able to look like you want based on PvP or PvE.  It doesn't have any affect on your play at all and you've spent the time already in the game, allow us to choose.

Also, it is really frustrating to start the game and know that I can't look at my PvP skins when picking what character to be.  I PvP, that's what I like to do, but all my characters look like homeless hobos because they are in their level teens or lower PvE gear.  Disgusting.

[raspberry jam]

Diablo85, on 09 November 2012 - 05:51 PM, said:

Do you still think Arenanet has such great coders? Compare Guild Wars 1 with Guild Wars 2. The latter has ALOT more bugs than the first game ever had. I think the loss of three of their best coders, Jeff Strain, James Phinney and Patrick Wyatt really hurt Arenanet in that area. Their replacements aren't nearly as good.

It's not me who said it, but no, I do think that the coding quality has gone down. I agree, the star team has left ANet.

Edited by raspberry jam, 09 November 2012 - 05:58 PM.

[GammaWolf]

raspberry jam, on 09 November 2012 - 05:55 PM, said:

I know what the topic is, and I'm telling you exactly why the competitive community is dwindling. It's because GW2 has fundamentally uninteresting mechanics.

Well what can I say, that hasn't been my experience. While I have no doubt there are people who dislike the mechanics, a lot of spvp players did like the combat and spent a ton of time playing initially. Most have left mainly because the current competitive system is so bare bones, they didn't dislike the game at its core.

Edited by GammaWolf, 09 November 2012 - 06:55 PM.

[raspberry jam]

GammaWolf, on 09 November 2012 - 06:53 PM, said:

Well what can I say, that hasn't been my experience. While I have no doubt there are people who dislike the mechanics, a lot of spvp players did like the combat and spent a ton of time playing initially. Most have left mainly because the current competitive system is so bare bones, they didn't dislike the game at its core.

Ok buddy, if you say so. Of course, you talked to the majority of those who left.

Meanwhile, a ton of multiplayer games have horrible competition support systems around them but people still play them because they are fun. Just like they would play GW2 no matter what if they liked the game.

[GammaWolf]

I get it, you don't like the mechanics. There are still many people like myself who do like the combat and don't want to game to die due to a lack of competitive systems. Do I have a survey I can show you? No I don't, all I can say is on here, youtube, the official forums, and on reddit there are dozens and dozens of people who agree.

[Perm Shadow Form]

That's what you get for trying to reinvent the wheel Arena Net, obviously structured 8 vs 8 PvP which worked great in GW1, Heroes Ascent/GvG, was way worse than this poorly designed PvP mode in GW2. Yep.

Not to mention there's no diversity in teams, everyone's running the same build, same skills, using same tactic and strategy., Personally, fint that boring. I