Last ditch effort to bring in pvp players

The one golden rule is that regardless of what game mode you play, at the end of the day the main reason gw2 does anything is because it has to make a profit first. That being said the majority of their profits are pve related, and it's where their effort has been, it's no secret. But with pvp, there's not many people working on it in terms of numbers, balance patches are wide spread and underwhelming, and the population of pvp is so low that regardless of how look at the matchmaking for better or worse, the quality of matches will be arguably poor. Something needs to be done. So my suggestion is what if you made heart of the mists free, as a makeshift glorified trial. Players would get access to every expansion in terms of talent specializations that everyone else does so there's a equal playing field, and you can stay there permanently if you'd like to, but if you'd like to go outside the heart of the mists, then you'd obviously need to buy the expansions to do so.

Sure on the flip side you could make an argument that arena net would lose money from people that just play pvp. While that's true, however what they could gain from potential new players would outweigh the cost of making heart of the mists a permanent free trial.

TLDR "ish": Heart of the mists goes free to play, new players try it and buy the pve portion of the game to experience the rest, not to mention gemstore items. They take that money and invest it back into pvp because it's essentially the face of the game when it comes to whether or not new players stick around. Everyone wins.

Countless

Yup, agreed. PvP is indeed the face of a game, and Anet invests way too little in that face.

Or they could sell something like this (from GW1):http://store.guildwars.com/store/gw/en_IE/pd/productID.305585700

A package that contains all the elite specs of the expansions, at a reduced price.

It's hard to tell if it will ever return to its former glory. It all went down after introduction of elite specs and ESL. Once ESL dropped gw2 they started to focus on doing living world seasons. But isn't this game PvE oriented to begin with? We won't have good competitive pvp if the main motto is "casual friendly" because what is happening now is the best example of casual friendly PvP, which is more or less trash.But in the long run, if there is any faint will to fix this mess, then I would also suggest adding a better tutorial to the HoTM. Let's be honest here, new players who want to have fun won't check out every nook and cranny on the internet to look for builds, rotations and stuff like that. It all has to be in the game, easy access. Maybe an NPC or an extra interface window where you can check out terms such as: rotation, focus, lord, trebuchet, node and so on and so forth. Perhaps some tactics and tips such as: "Don't go on a point that is already being contested by a team of enemy players if you are sure that you won't win the fight or keep the point contested for a long time", or something that regards a problem that is pretty frequent: "Don't go one by one after respawn into a lost teamfight, consider rotating to other location".Knowledge is the key and if it is easy to get in touch with all these informations, then it would be much easier for new players to get better at the game.

I do not think pvp can get out of the devious circle. It would probably need 50 devs dedicated to pvp and balance. But Anet wont hire those devs because PvP in its current form does not earn enough money. And since it wont earn money without actually being good, the money will never be there.

They wouldn't do it. Since HoT gw2 was p2win, why would they offer HoT for free when they can still make money off few pvp'ers. Do you really think they care about pvp population?

@Malediktus.9250 said:I do not think pvp can get out of the devious circle. It would probably need 50 devs dedicated to pvp and balance. But Anet wont hire those devs because PvP in its current form does not earn enough money. And since it wont earn money without actually being good, the money will never be there.

Im pretty sure it doesnt/shouldnt/wont take 50 dedicated devs to figure out problem and find a solution for the problem. When you take a general look on the pvp forums, its impossible u'll miss it lol.

• The new spec releases are based on pve only. Anet doesnt think how specs will affect metagame outside pve. ( We actually tested them before pof release in pvp/wvw and EotM and everyone said they needed major nerfs, and there's a weird playerbase thinking bugfixes were nerfs.)
• Class balances requires half of community to complain about same thing over forums by making same threads over and over again, there isnt any mid season class balance at all, stuff stays broken for 2 seasons straight before anet makes one, and that one is mostly rework instead of actual nerfs, stuff just gets more broken.
• Anet's logic with condi meta where fights should last under 15 seconds is neither competitive nor healthy playstyle.
• Anet havent realized most people is against the condi meta because it is very simple to play, there is no high risk high return, you can just punch your keyboard and still be viable with half of classes.
• Anet doesnt listen to its own playerbase for pvp uptades. ( No need to remind gw2 fell from esl/competitive because pvp sucked so bad? Ever since it havent improved at all and still getting worse. )
• Season pvp's losing decent players and streamers and anet's attempt of bringing pve players into pvp wont save the pvp. ( Introducing shitload of season rewards just caused bunch of people to run spvp for its rewards. Because unranked has nothing to offer to pve players. The player base of pvp doesnt increase, people quits season after chests.)
• With the disabled duoing, matchmaking eventually encouraged people to throw games so they can keep playing with their friends. ( Because you cant blame them if they wanna play together and keep getting rewards, this should be the mentality of any mmo game.)
• Season pvp's doesnt have any group format matchmaking , people cannot play with their friends. Pvp guilds and stable pvp groups cannot exist because of this.
• Unranked not giving any rewards isnt encouraging anyone to play it as a group format efficiently and consistently. People would just play unranked during season to chill or dailies. ( Wvw reward tracks are working faster and comparably far more better
• Automated tournaments are mostly won by same people forming different groups . I have seen couple times the same group of 5 ( Where 4 of the team belonged to legendary division ) win tours consistently. You / your LFG AT group wont stand a chance versus good organized teams. ( Chances of you getting recruited to a party for AT and getting kicked out at round 1 is way too high. ) So, this doesnt really solve our problem with party matchmaking.
• Unranked matchmaking is a mess that a legendary division player can match against a newbie.
• Players are slowly quitting pvp cuz of meta restrictions. Out of 9 classes that can run 100 different spec combinations, there are like 5-6 specs can completely destroy the remaining 90+ builds. Versality of good builds is nonexistent.

So yeah. Safe to say anet doesnt really care much about pvp.

@Trigr.6481 "TLDR "ish": Heart of the mists goes free to play, new players try it and buy the pve portion of the game to experience the rest, not to mention gemstore items. They take that money and invest it back into pvp because it's essentially the face of the game when it comes to whether or not new players stick around. Everyone wins."

So correct me if I am wrong in any part of my following statement but it sounds as if you want brand new players completely new to the game swarming pvp? The current PvP player base cant even tolerate PvE players who can actually play the game a bit as thus every time Anet dangles a carrot infront of Pvers who then swarm ranked grinding rewards. The forums fill up with complaints about ....wait for it ...you guessed it! Pvers being in ranked. Now I can completely understand if new players were restricted to unranked then I could see that being a thing it would help them but not sure they would appreciate being new to the game and instantly pigeon holed into unranked. While I can semi support your idea surely you understand the amount of backlash this will draw from both the PvP Player base And PvE players and ill list the likely reasons for both.

For PvPers there are currently quite a few forum threads up about new players or Pvers being allowed into ranked to begin with as some do lose intentionally ...some flat out suck they afk in short there are quite a few reasons why Pvers or new players are utterly despised in PvP especially ranked. I my self have encountered it in unranked which is odd considering unranked means even less than ranked which is quite the statement when you factor in how shitty PvP is atm

For PvE whether or not the PvP player base knows or cares but you actually have to unlock your elite specs in PvE which does require time and a certain amount of effort which may or may not depend on the help of others be it random person or people you know. I bring this up because a lot of vet players whether they are PvX Or just PvE who (1) most likely paid for the game (2) paid for the expansion and said elite specs (3) had to take the time to unlock them. They will not be thrilled when it comes out that they will now be on equal footing with new players who (1) Don't even have to pay for the game now (2) Wont have to pay for the expansion/elite specs to PvP (3) Wont even have to learn the game a bit or even unlock said elite specs. You do realize the shit storm that will come from this aye? On the scale of backlash this will draw its like when Ramsey snow from GoT suggested that they should kill the Lord Commander of the nightswatch aka Jon snow. The result being Everyone in the north would pretty much be pissed. You are looking at that kind of reaction tbh. That being said don't get me wrong I would love to watch such complaints via forum threads as I gobbled a bag of extra buttery popcorn every night laughing like a maniac but it wouldn't go over to well and that is assuming you didn't have any plans to prevent such backlash ....if you do great ....if not ....heh forward into the abyss!

@Cyczer.7834 is right about the state of the game

tbh, unless anet decides they actually want to add group play and balance the game this game pvp will just bleed more players. honestly, i don’t think they have any intention to fix the gamemode, if they wanted to they would have done it a long time ago.

one thing they will never do is give the expansions out for free. that directly cuts into the money they make, there is no way they would do that.

..........

Profit is key...but my money will only go to this company after it expands/improves/overhauls its competitive game modes.

I bet they could actually make more money if we had organized wvw tournaments and gw2 is a bit more of esports.

It's a vicious circle . PvP should be the highlight of any MMO. Hell thats what online gaming is about. Sadly tho unlike how GW1 had the best pvp out there and still till now. Gw2 is based off purely the gem store and making money. Sure you have epic PvE till it gets boring but the competitive side of the game is slowly withering away.

Other MMO games (including gw1) it was PvP > PvE. Once tho a company finds that they can make money off of pvE more then PvP like they found out towards the end of GW1 and just before gw2 came out. Then PvP is left to die with just one chained up monkey who smashes keys on a keyboard to work on a "balance update".

The devs are where the money is which is'nt pvp in this game. You probably have 3 devs on PvE, 1 on story line, 1 on graphics, a chained up money for pvp and wvw, then 25 devs working on glider skins, mount skins, full outfit skins, and anything gem store related.

If you dont realize now the PvP has been dead since around season 5 then you are just naive. The only way now that i can enjoy pvp with all the pve reward hnuters/afks, trolls, toxic bad players, and match manipulators is to just play unranked where only thing that exsists is bad puggies. All the trash is playing "ranked" games.

P.S. Beest example is how the PvP servers are now on cheaper laggy servers that unless you are on the east coast you are screwed. That is a highlight to the lack of caring about PvP.

..........

I played sPvP during season 5-8. But when season 9 starts I left it.The reason is all these idle players. This cancer previously was mostly in unranked. But in season 9 it becomes common thing in ranked.

My last day in this game started with 4 matches like this: our afk, our afk, enemy afk, our disconnect. 4 games with zero competitiveness (of course, it was not first such case). It was so frustrating and exhausting. No competition means no fun. It was last straw for me. And I stopped playing GW2 (not only PvP but game altogether)I really like GW2 combat system. I like how many interesting and fun classes / builds this game have. And I easily adapt to meta (no matter that it's far from ideal). But all these afks / trolls really killed this game for me (again: no competition means no fun).

The problem is rather easy to solve with some automatic idle player control. But nothing have been done till now.

P.S.I understand that this problem was crucial for me. And other players have other "crucial issues" with sPvP. But that's what make me quit the game. I'm still looking at GW2 forums and game updates and will possibly return, but...

Most followed games on Twitch are competitive games. In the top twenty any of then can break 10k views at any moment 8at least in the weekends). Some can recruit ~500k views if is a top franchise with a world championship in place. The best that GW2 was able to get was ~12k concurrent viewers with the tournament which rewarded $400k in prizes. Currently is hard for GW2 to have over 2k concurrent views any weekend, except the week an expansion or big parch is released.

So the main problem in PvP is not the absence of rewards, but the fact that the game is boring to watch. Extremely boring. GW2's PvP lavcks adictiveness, and seems that the problem is largely shared by a big chunk of MMOS: WoW, ESO, Tera... even BDO (which has better Twitch numbers on regular basis) had problems retaining more than 3k-5k viewers at time.

I must say also that isn't a genre problem: some would say that "do you need a top cow shooter or an MOBA to get that popularity". But that's false: last Call Of Duty games, Heroes of The Storm, Starcraft II or Diablo III can barely crawl outside of 5k-10k when a large event arrives.

I barely touched GW1; everyone says that the PvP from that game was leagues ahead of GW2's one. Is that true? Or would it fall in the mud if were adapted to GW2?

Doesn't matter too much: all the cited games seems to look like shinking ships. Enjoy while last.

Yes pls!!!

@Buran.3796 said:Most followed games on Twitch are competitive games. In the top twenty any of then can break 10k views at any moment 8at least in the weekends). Some can recruit ~500k views if is a top franchise with a world championship in place. The best that GW2 was able to get was ~12k concurrent viewers with the tournament which rewarded $400k in prizes. Currently is hard for GW2 to have over 2k concurrent views any weekend, except the week an expansion or big parch is released.

So the main problem in PvP is not the absence of rewards, but the fact that the game is boring to watch. Extremely boring. GW2's PvP lavcks adictiveness, and seems that the problem is largely shared by a big chunk of MMOS: WoW, ESO, Tera... even BDO (which has better Twitch numbers on regular basis) had problems retaining more than 3k-5k viewers at time.

I must say also that isn't a genre problem: some would say that "do you need a top cow shooter or an MOBA to get that popularity". But that's false: last Call Of Duty games, Heroes of The Storm, Starcraft II or Diablo III can barely crawl outside of 5k-10k when a large event arrives.

I barely touched GW1; everyone says that the PvP from that game was leagues ahead of GW2's one. Is that true? Or would it fall in the mud if were adapted to GW2?

Doesn't matter too much: all the cited games seems to look like shinking ships. Enjoy while last.

Some games are more funny to play rather than watch... especially for Quaggan.

@Morwath.9817 said:

Some games are more funny to play rather than watch... especially for Quaggan.

True, and some have low view numbers, low player numbers and a declining income which puts their future in a compromise. That's why making something popular is important (at least for Riot, Valve, etc...).

But don't worry, the day the last server shutdowns Quaggan can come to sleep in the doghouse.

@Buran.3796 said:

@Morwath.9817 said:

Some games are more funny to play rather than watch... especially for Quaggan.

Foooo, they won't shutdown.They will launch Quaggan Wars 3 instead, wooo-hooo.

At this point they can't save competitive PvP. All they can do is try to make it as fun as possible for the remaining players. They know this too as they haven't spent any resources keeping the competitive scene alive and you can't fault them really. They made the mistake of trying to push PvP as an esports at launch for 3-4 solid years, but the number of times this has work for ANY game is ZERO. I suggested a f2p PvP only client years ago and people didn't seem to like the idea. The whole game going f2p helps but isn't enough and I think there is still time for a f2p PvP if they time it correctly with the next expansion + market the shit out of some huge PvP overhaul or something. This would have to include things like build templates, replay feature, etc BUT without pushing esport this time. It probably won't save competitive PvP if competitive means GW2 becomes even a tier 4 esport, but I still think it's the best course of action.

Perhaps it is good that the population is falling. ANET may respond to that.

@Ithilwen.1529 said:Perhaps it is good that the population is falling. ANET may respond to that.

If Anet is willing to learn from pvp+wvw failure

@Ithilwen.1529 said:Perhaps it is good that the population is falling. ANET may respond to that.

They won't. It is NCSOFT game, gw2 will meet same fate as CoH/CoV and co.

I hope not, I really kind of enjoyed CoH.