131 replies to this topic

[Larsen]

So is it completely dead by now? Nobody is really talking about PvP at all. A friend is inquiring about trying the game on my account and he wanted to know if it's as flatlined as it looks.

[GammaWolf]

The last patch did a few things to try and promote competitive play:

- Daily and monthly achievements that award tickets
- Qualifier points for the top 4 teams in a paid tournament
- Paid tournaments have a 1 in 4 chance of awarding gems (slot machine)
- 5v5 hot joins
- New beta map

By giving out more tickets and gems there is slightly less of a money or time grind/barrier for teams to even queue up for paid which is a good thing.

The central problem does however still very much exist in that only a small number of hardcore teams are continually farming the system because there is rarely more than 1 or 2 paid tournaments running at any given time. This will continue to persist as long as there is no ladder or MMR system which allows teams to play against similarly skilled competition in order to work their way up and improve.

If anything, the new paids reward system just rewards the same few teams even more than before because they still get rewards if they don't finish first, yet newer teams get pretty much nothing except for a gem slot machine.

5v5 hot join was desperately needed, but that mode in general has little lasting appeal because it very shallow.

[Aodan]

GammaWolf, on 21 November 2012 - 08:50 PM, said:

The last patch did a few things to try and promote competitive play:

- Daily and monthly achievements that award tickets
- Qualifier points for the top 4 teams in a paid tournament
- Paid tournaments have a 1 in 4 chance of awarding gems (slot machine)
- 5v5 hot joins
- New beta map

By giving out more tickets and gems there is slightly less of a money or time grind/barrier for teams to even queue up for paid which is a good thing.

The central problem does however still very much exist in that only a small number of hardcore teams are continually farming the system because there is rarely more than 1 or 2 paid tournaments running at any given time. This will continue to persist as long as there is no ladder or MMR system which allows teams to play against similarly skilled competition in order to work their way up and improve.

If anything, the new paids reward system just rewards the same few teams even more than before because they still get rewards if they don't finish first, yet newer teams get pretty much nothing except for a gem slot machine.

5v5 hot join was desperately needed, but that mode in general has little lasting appeal because it very shallow.

I like the incentive they did for Paids, but still ques are pretty soft. You have at most two ques going but really one in a half.

Solo que for Free's needs to be implemented and Custom Arena - Good Obs/Useful Score board.

[Veles]

Aodan, on 27 November 2012 - 06:55 AM, said:

I like the incentive they did for Paids, but still ques are pretty soft. You have at most two ques going but really one in a half.

Solo que for Free's needs to be implemented and Custom Arena - Good Obs/Useful Score board.

Custom games are only good for scrims between best teams and sponsored tournaments (don`t really know who in their right mind would sponsor some GW2 tournament) . Seeing as so called best teams (or better to say what is left of PVP players in this game) play versus each other in payed tournaments already this feature would be useless. Obs mode would be a cool feature, but it would not help the game in any way at this moment.

This game needed ranking system from the start and obs mode to make it interesting, but now when most PVP players left nothing can get GW2 on it`s feet anymore.

[derigain]

I honetly think that Anet have all of the tools already in place to make an amazing pvp mode. With GvG so successful and so outstandingly fun in GW1, and WvW actually being fun even for an sPvP lover such as myself, why not combine the two in some way? A kind of 'kill the guild lord and take the keep' scenario where you can stop supply, build defences etc etc. There is any number of tactics with this, and the old GvG rating system meant that you were always playing against people of a similar standard to you once everything gets going. Even the oldschool GvG gametype by its self is far too good to scrap. The lack of complex builds and 100s of skills shouldnt make a difference, as most top guilds ran one of about 3 builds anyway. I am a very sad guild wars fan when it comes to pvp though I hope something gets done

[Aodan]

Veles, on 27 November 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

Custom games are only good for scrims between best teams and sponsored tournaments (don`t really know who in their right mind would sponsor some GW2 tournament) . Seeing as so called best teams (or better to say what is left of PVP players in this game) play versus each other in payed tournaments already this feature would be useless. Obs mode would be a cool feature, but it would not help the game in any way at this moment.

This game needed ranking system from the start and obs mode to make it interesting, but now when most PVP players left nothing can get GW2 on it`s feet anymore.

The game itself doesn't need a internal ranking system nor would I want them to focus on that, if so they need to do something very similar to Leagues, but right now there isn't enough players/fresh blood circulating to bracket up players.

With Custom Arena's you will have Ladders and Tournaments that will be advertised as certain skill levels.

Any good Tournament or Ladder hosters will bracket players accordingly as they register for rosters.

Similar to that of Jowst. when registering your team you pick a level of skill that you want to compete in (Ameture, Profesional, etc) and then get bracketed against those who are of similar "registered" skill.

This fashion would be no different than how Game Battles > MLG works or how the old CAL system work where you go Open > Invite > Premier > Major > etc.

Or you will have introduction of minor leagues like TWL or OGL where higher skill teams may compete in those but teams would have a chance to fight similar teams for the first few brackets and at least have some "warm up" instead of a stomping on the first pairing. (They would get feedback of where they are and how far they have to go, and have PROGRESSION which new players have little of with in-game tournaments)

Ladders for FPS was and is currently the best way to build up to actual tournaments that have sponsors. I played DoD original as my first "esport" and went from a pub stomper to OGL to CAL-o up to Major and competed in a few sponsored LAN events and tournaments online.

The issue is right now Free doesn't have Solo Que which is needed and is discussed in the vid by Jacobin, then players need to form teams and do free's, and eventually progress to Paids. What Custom Arena's would allow is a wider base than just frees for people to learn.

Scrimmaging is a VERY POWERFUL tool for both beginners and advanced players in terms of building strong teams and player skill. If you honestly disagree with this statement than I don't think you know what your talking about as far as implementation of Custom Arena's and it's affects on this game.

I was doing paids last night and had great games against people I knew and new faces. The problem isn't just the game but also the player base, I went through the same deal all the new players had to go through and most previous player skill from other MMO's had little impact on how well I developed in this game, but I started with less than most players have now and I'm still climbing in skill as I learn more and more professions.

The problem with an internal ranking system is ATM the player-base is too low to have internal separations (such as a ranking system in game). An example is hot join where you should get paired up against similar ranks but you still have Rank 30+ going against Rank 1-10s

Edited by Aodan, 27 November 2012 - 09:23 PM.

[rektlol]

Aodan, on 27 November 2012 - 09:10 PM, said:

The problem with an internal ranking system is ATM the player-base is too low to have internal separations (such as a ranking system in game).

Thing is, people will start coming back once competitiveness due to MMR/Ladders/Seasons and all that comes back into the game. It definitely should have been shipped with release, though.

Edited by rektlol, 28 November 2012 - 11:14 AM.

[Miku Flarestorm]

Right now you got "GLF 25+ free tourney" and "R40 lfg Paid". How is it not a separation withing the game? The only thing that can help is a real ladder.

[Aodan]

rektlol, on 28 November 2012 - 11:12 AM, said:

Thing is, people will start coming back once competitiveness due to MMR/Ladders/Seasons and all that comes back into the game. It definitely should have been shipped with release, though.

What has the QP ladder done? Nothing, it's not a real competitive format or a successful Ladder.

Even if you have MMR right now, many low MMR players would still go up against high MMR players, not to mention if they implemented an MMR system (which is the rank system) everyone would start low atm and currently there isn't enough feedback even in MOBA's to accurately gauge a MMR (DOTA2 for example).

A point Holder, isn't going to score as many points as a Roamer unless their point is constantly under siege.
Nor for example, me as a mesmer drop a null field and time warp mid and go back to my home point to catch a split, I won't get a ton of points for that cause I didn't touch anyone with "damage".

The QP system and Rank system are basic MMR. You would get a lot more feedback having players/communities manage this through outside tournaments/ladders than an in game system and free's up Anet Devs to focus on other things.

So no, I don't think any intricate in game MMR system would help bring players back to this game.

Miku Flarestorm, on 28 November 2012 - 03:29 PM, said:

Right now you got "GLF 25+ free tourney" and "R40 lfg Paid". How is it not a separation withing the game? The only thing that can help is a real ladder.

This. I'm rank 32. I beat and play better than most Rank 40s.

This system/separation is very basic and doesn't work with the complexity of players and the games mechanics.
Thus why this system would be better managed OUTSIDE of the game, by player/community ran Tournaments/Ladders.

Why push that on the Devs when there are tons of players/communities waiting to do this for them.

[AarodCutshot]

I know tpvp is about dead I dont think you know what you are talking about spvp thou cause there are hundreds of people playing on my server.

Edited by AarodCutshot, 28 November 2012 - 08:38 PM.

[JaxSilven]

Sigh, the most awkward thing about all this is the queues are shorter in GW1 right now, for GvG's, than they are for paids. And due to work and nobody else playing the tournament queues are too long for me to have gotten a game in the last  2weeks.

It's really shitting me, first they make a game centered around pve. That's fine with me, the gap between pve and pvp will be closer and thus have a big pvp following (watching streams, tournies, etc) unfortunately you have to kind of implement competitive things so people will actually pvp.

tldr; the game started off without the GW1 mechanics/features which made it so competitive and popular and they moved on to not implementing features which could have at least brought some popularity. Instead they introduced crappy indicators of ability/rank so that the people who are decent but not that good can just farm QP's.

[Garethh]

When it comes to qualifying points... It's rediculous if you look at how much a small portion of the population plays this game.
Look at Java, to win 384 tournies, lets say it took 400 tries just for an even number.
To get a group and run threw a paid tourny, with the bad que times and everything probably takes about an hour.
That's 400 hours of just playing the paid tournies.. basically a full time job for 2 and a half months, worth of nothing but GW2 paid tournies...

Just another reason to hit my head against something hard about having no ladder system....

Edited by Garethh, 29 November 2012 - 02:02 AM.

[Aragiel Renegade]

You get 5 QP´s per 1 tournament win. Meaning 384 points is only 76 victories  = 76 hours.

In pass it was 1 QP per victory but it was changed last patch. Since that you see the boom of QP gain and players getting above 200 - 300 allready.

[Garethh]

Aragiel Renegade, on 29 November 2012 - 06:49 AM, said:

You get 5 QP´s per 1 tournament win. Meaning 384 points is only 76 victories  = 76 hours.

In pass it was 1 QP per victory but it was changed last patch. Since that you see the boom of QP gain and players getting above 200 - 300 allready.

Aaaah, that makes allot of sense, thnks.
Its cumulative though?
Meaning the 180~ before the bump to 5 points per win still existed?

Edited by Garethh, 29 November 2012 - 12:40 PM.

[Dirame]

GammaWolf, on 21 November 2012 - 08:50 PM, said:

The last patch did a few things to try and promote competitive play:

- Daily and monthly achievements that award tickets
- Qualifier points for the top 4 teams in a paid tournament
- Paid tournaments have a 1 in 4 chance of awarding gems (slot machine)
- 5v5 hot joins
- New beta map

By giving out more tickets and gems there is slightly less of a money or time grind/barrier for teams to even queue up for paid which is a good thing.

The central problem does however still very much exist in that only a small number of hardcore teams are continually farming the system because there is rarely more than 1 or 2 paid tournaments running at any given time. This will continue to persist as long as there is no ladder or MMR system which allows teams to play against similarly skilled competition in order to work their way up and improve.

If anything, the new paids reward system just rewards the same few teams even more than before because they still get rewards if they don't finish first, yet newer teams get pretty much nothing except for a gem slot machine.

5v5 hot join was desperately needed, but that mode in general has little lasting appeal because it very shallow.

I believe the QP system is just a way of guaging the people who can be considered one of the best and pitting those together. I don't believe Anet wants to start a tournament without having a good idea about who to pit against the other.

[Aodan]

Dirame, on 29 November 2012 - 12:58 PM, said:

I believe the QP system is just a way of guaging the people who can be considered one of the best and pitting those together. I don't believe Anet wants to start a tournament without having a good idea about who to pit against the other.

If they don't know by now' they are blind

[Skyro]

I really do not believe the current sPvP population is large enough to sustain its own independent ladders. I hear it is better on EU but NA is pretty bad. If the sPvP playerbase was very large I would completely agree that a built-in ladder ranking is not needed. As is, with such a small playerbase, the focus should be putting in systems to enchance this playerbase as much and as fast as possible, and the way to do that is custom servers and ladder rankings. In-game ladder rankings is a big tool in motivating newer/casual players to see how far they can go, unlike 3rd party ladders where players would need to know about them, sign up for them, make accounts for them, etc.

[Ziddy]

There are 3 paid tournaments going on about PST prime time.  Seems pretty good to me these days.

[Dirame]

Aodan, on 29 November 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

If they don't know by now' they are blind

They did have this idea for monthly and yearly tournaments IIRC. I'm guessing the QP system is just the start of that and Chris Whiteside did say "More details on PvP will come soon." from the last AMA. I'm guessing it might be monthly tournaments that allow people to qualify for the yearlies.

Edited by Dirame, 30 November 2012 - 12:13 PM.

[Aodan]

Dirame, on 30 November 2012 - 12:12 PM, said:

They did have this idea for monthly and yearly tournaments IIRC. I'm guessing the QP system is just the start of that and Chris Whiteside did say "More details on PvP will come soon." from the last AMA. I'm guessing it might be monthly tournaments that allow people to qualify for the yearlies.

I'm hoping that this Friday State of the Game will provide some much needed details.
The pvp side and community will continue to die if they don't implement the changes/tools that should of been in the game at launch.

- Guardian comp Balances (Nerf Book Heal and deal with Retal)
- Implement a useful score board that gives useful feedback to players and spectators
- Spectator mode/Obs
- Private Servers (Custom Arena) - Scrims/Player held Tournaments/Ladders

The last three esp Custom Arena would really help bring players back and strengthen the community. The QP ladder is simply just an indicator of dedicated/active players/teams, not really a strong indicator of WHO is the best and hurts the community because new players/teams look at the ladder and are basically discouraged to climb the already existing gap from PZ who plays 40 hours a week.

I'm now one of those people who can't wait for Custom, because I don't play enough to really get far on the QP ladder. I can only get 2-3 Paid ques per day and only play 3 times a week where I can be on during the prime time que. Thus I don't get to have that great of a competitive experience because I basically have to play and rotate my life around the paid que times.

[Xeviant]

I do wish there were a way to create permanent teams for tPvP and sPvP play.  It's annoying to join as as group and not be able to play with your friends.  I do agree that the combat and mechanics are much more fun than other games.  Furthermore I love the gear equality.  Farming up Arena/BG gear was irritating beyond irritating.

[nurt]

SPvP is so unconnected to PvE/WvW and the RPG elements that draw a lot of people into MMOs that it's basically it's own stand alone game.

The problem is it wasn't given nearly enough attention to stand as it's own game.  The combat is fun (imo), but if you think about SPvP in a vacuum you realize just how unpolished it is.  The reward and ranking system is not well though out for one thing.  You should be receiving usable items at a consistent rate as you rank up.  The current system spams you with so many duplicate items that you become desensitized and chest rewards/ranks completely lose their value.  There's no accurate match making system to ensure even  games, or skill based ladder to work on as a long term goal/measure of progress.  There are only a few maps and one game type.  The UI for joining pubs and tournaments isn't nearly as clean, polished, informative, or intuitive as it could be.

It just didn't get the attention it needed to stand on it's own as an experience people can easily get immersed in.  Fortunately the basic combat is fun, so if they work to add content and features to SPvP I don't think it will be that difficult to build up a healthy following over the next year.  The most difficult thing will be restructuring the rewards system since it's likely that people in the current system will either be  way ahead of the intended curve, or screwed over when their progress becomes irrelevant.

[Ezra]

Aodan, on 30 November 2012 - 06:49 PM, said:

- Guardian comp Balances (Nerf Book Heal and deal with Retal)

Tome of Courage has been nerfed 3 times and Retaliation has received numerous duration nerfs across various skills and traits.

If you still can't deal with it there really is little hope for you.

[Aodan]

Ezra, on 01 December 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

Tome of Courage has been nerfed 3 times and Retaliation has received numerous duration nerfs across various skills and traits.

If you still can't deal with it there really is little hope for you.

Grd is one of my Mains and right now the best far point harasser is a retal GS/Hammer guard who can win most if not all 1v1s and even 1v2 against skilled players if it's against the right professions.

Also if you do Paids, one major thing you run into is Double Grd if not Triple Grd. Comps with this take a considerable amount of less skill to be successful with as demonstrated by PZ. I'm not saying PZ is bad, but you put a Triple Grd comp (less skill comp) in the hands of very coordinated, high skill players, there are very few ways to win.

Currently the only teams that beat PZ or come close, HAVE to kill Powerr (necro) and deal with multiple books from the grds. This comp becomes ever more powerful on BoK as you can book from under CT and secure heavy spawn camps.

IMHO I don't think things are balanced if there is ever a reason to bring two of the same profession into paids.

Edited by Aodan, 01 December 2012 - 05:52 PM.

[AetherMcLoud]

IMHO Guards can pack WAY to much control into a single build (the amount of knockbacks and area denial hammer/shield guards have is insane)

[JPB]

Aodan, on 01 December 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

Grd is one of my Mains and right now the best far point harasser is a retal GS/Hammer guard who can win most if not all 1v1s and even 1v2 against skilled players if it's against the right professions.

Also if you do Paids, one major thing you run into is Double Grd if not Triple Grd. Comps with this take a considerable amount of less skill to be successful with as demonstrated by PZ. I'm not saying PZ is bad, but you put a Triple Grd comp (less skill comp) in the hands of very coordinated, high skill players, there are very few ways to win.

Currently the only teams that beat PZ or come close, HAVE to kill Powerr (necro) and deal with multiple books from the grds. This comp becomes ever more powerful on BoK as you can book from under CT and secure heavy spawn camps.

IMHO I don't think things are balanced if there is ever a reason to bring two of the same profession into paids.

Agree with this completely.

[nurt]

Imo guardians are fine... If you can interrupt the book they really don't bring that much to a team fight.  They're still good for holding out till reinforcements show up and keeping a point capped/neutral in the middle of a big fight, but they're not impossible to kill or retardedly strong in a group fight.  They're about what a bunker build probably should be, and there are other alternatives that aren't so far behind.  Someday down the line hopefully there will be other bunker builds that synergize better when combined with certain other professions, but right now the game as a whole (or at least our understanding of it) just isn't there.

Edited by nurt, 01 December 2012 - 09:42 PM.

[Shinimas]

Ezra, on 01 December 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

Tome of Courage has been nerfed 3 times and Retaliation has received numerous duration nerfs across various skills and traits.

If you still can't deal with it there really is little hope for you.

Just because something'd been nerfed doesn't mean it's become balanced.

[Ezra]

Just because he can't counter it, doesn't mean it's unbalanced.

Aodan might have played a Guardian since beta1 but he isn't that good.

He team hops as much as he sucks up to different teams.

In beta he sucked off TP, then it was SS as soon as they beat them and he went around saying condition cheese was the best thing ever. Now he loves PZ (the exploiting team).


I wouldn't value his opinion very far, there are much better Guardians around to listen to. And much better teams to talk about dealing with bunkers. 3 Guardian specs can be shut down by a proper build and tactics quite eaisly.

[Aodan]

Ezra, on 02 December 2012 - 01:31 PM, said:

Just because he can't counter it, doesn't mean it's unbalanced.

Aodan might have played a Guardian since beta1 but he isn't that good.

He team hops as much as he sucks up to different teams.

In beta he sucked off TP, then it was SS as soon as they beat them and he went around saying condition cheese was the best thing ever. Now he loves PZ (the exploiting team).


I wouldn't value his opinion very far, there are much better Guardians around to listen to. And much better teams to talk about dealing with bunkers. 3 Guardian specs can be shut down by a proper build and tactics quite eaisly.

Did I say they can't be shut down (I do recall outlining exactly how to do it)? There are teams beating PZ and I myself have multiple beaten multiple dbl grd comps with a balanced comp.

Regardless of how you view my oppinion the stats speak for themselves, if you go into paids and look at most of the teams winning, they are running 80% of the time dbl grd, why? Because as outlined before right now Grd is the best Bunker and the Best Far Point harass, this simply just takes less skill to gain more reward than running/playing a balanced comp.

If you see a trend where one profession is having 2-3 spots on a comp, there is something wrong with balance. Even now not many comps run Engi's because of their nerfs (and they were huge to nades) and rangers have a sore spot, and even ele's even at EU top play are just hanging on to their viability for comp.

I don't hop teams because I want to, and here I'll lay out the truth for you, since you seem so misinformed about me;
VexX, I left because at the time the community had very limited talent that was active in BWE2-BWE3 and that those who had gotten on the team lacked commitment and caused nothing but a head ache for me so I decided to step down and look for a team that look to have more promising activity into launch.

ALFA - I was kicked due to dealing with this crap on guru like your post and defending myself trying to change others views, which is w/e now to me unless someone like you directly attacks me. I made a successful 2nd team that even beat ALFA's main team twice with my team having 1/3 the time together as his team and 1/4 the practice time, mind you the first time with the exact same strats/comp he used.

After that because of my play times, I join FXN and played with them and their schedule, again beating Zzyzx and him picking up too good community pvp friends Ruin/Baskets then basically kicking them/making them leave and ALFA falling apart.

I personally dropped from FXN who i'm still good friends with because they didn't play much on Sat/Sun which was my bigger days to play, so I tried to make a brand new team BAMF, because most teams want to play Mon-Thu and I can't play Tu/Thu atm due to RL. We did fine and won 2/3 ques in paids our first night, but after that it was constant filling and lack of motivation atm with custom arena's being so far away that 2 players on the team took a break and the other 2 wanted to play more than I could, so we parted ways and still play together when they can use me as a filler. I also still play with 2 players from my original ALFA team but in the games current state there is no reason to really devote such time to the game nor do I have the drive to organize a team anymore as most of my teams have suffered from inactivity. Many other teams have broken up or disbanded for this very reason, thus it's a community issue and until there is more drive in the community to compete then the time investment isn't worth it
(Me being one of the ppl who tried to ignore that for the longest time)

I never sucked off TP, SS, or PZ. Original SS (don't know much about the EU new one) was a good team that at the time knew the meta for BWE3 and knew how to counter it well too (which later would become obvious why) which lead to their notoriety when they stomped what at the time many viewed as the best teams. If anything I've made my view on PZ's comp as distasteful btm paid isn't even taken that seriously, they are simply just grinding it.

I've Played Grd, Nec, since BWE1 and have watch their meta evolve and change, and recently started to play Mesmer even after the nerfs which again I felt were needed due to the hard meta around portals which is now much more soft.

I have beaten most teams in pugs, on other teams, and with my own teams on multiple professions, but my 83% win ratio on my Grd pre community decline shows otherwise. I can compete at the same level as any other Guardian or Necro because frankley the professions are not that clutch in terms of needed player skill. Thus why I've been learning/playing Mesmer and will probably learn Engi or War once they become more viable comp picks.

Across my tournament games I have a 78% win ratio with plenty of games of pugs, teams, stomps and getting stomped.

Teams I've never beaten: TPNA (387 - 500), PZ (401-500), RC (285-500)
(All with teams, I've created and had 1/2 the time with as these teams with their rosters, not too shabby and better than most new teams)

If your going to question someones credibility and skill, you should have at least the decency to post factual information about yourself, if not your argument and statement is nothing more than a puff of air as there is nothing to compare to or draw from that you have any position to talk about me.

Edited by Aodan, 02 December 2012 - 07:49 PM.