PvP was a failure, should support continue?

Just some thoughts on this,

Gw2 PvP has been plagued with problems since day one. Just some highlights:

• The closure of ESL and official support of Gw2 as an E-Sport
• The lack of viewership due to the action being hard to follow (caused by core game flaws specific to spectating matches, such as particle effects masking critical moments)
• The impossibility of properly balancing classes PvP against WvW and PVE
• Lack of variety in game modes and balancing the entire game around "standing in a tiny circle"
• The consistent shrinking of the PvP community, with queue times becoming longer. The PvP community is a "loud but small" community across the whole of Gw2
• The impossibility of making good matchmaker algorithms due to having not enough people in the PvP community playing games
• The exodus of many once popular pros to other more successful games that are built for PvP exclusively
• Dead PvP content like personal rooms, and Stronghold

There was a point in time that I enjoyed PvP. Personally I find the little free for all arena in the new mists update more fun and populated than all of PvP itself. This begs the question, as a program manager myself, why continue support for PvP?

I am sure that PvP is a huge resource draw with a full team dedicated to it. The problems of PvP bleed into other game mods such as WvW and PvE -which are very successful and always populated. On reset night, WvW queues are always full with sometimes 30 minute waits to get in. Balancing problems in PvP greatly affect other mods simply because things like strong support (which is fine for WvW and PvE) break PvP because of bunkering on a little circle. This leads to game mods with larger playerbases and more success being negatively affected by PvP centric balance issues (that may not be fixable due to how limited the design scope is for conquest).

With how minor PvP has become, why not cut support for PvP and move those teams and resources into balancing and creating content for the other more successful game modes? Why do the majority players in WvW and PvE continue to be plagued by bad design decisions made to support a tiny amount of content that has an almost insignificant amount of players?

idgaf anymore I'm just going to play the game for the gold from the reward chest

Well, esport was over because anet decided that gw2 doesnt only consist of pvp, thats why they didnt support pvp as much as it would have needed. Why dont delete pve, gw2 could be esport if anet only focused on pvp. Makes sense to me .....

I kinda want a complete overhaul. Better balance / splits. More gamemodes. Team-q for ranked conquest with the best rewards, etc.

I'd even pay for it. Right now, as mainly a PvP player, I have no incentive to buy gems because that money goes into supporting PvE while PvP languishes. And then their data will show PvPers don't buy gems, so they don't support PvP as much. It's vicious cycle!

Stubborn adherence to a refusal to split skills between gamemodes is no longer an issue based on recent balance activity. Negative impact of PvP on PvE and WvW balance now has little validity, and vice versa. It will take time to see this new trend have greater impact. The underpinnings of this complaint is a policy issue, not a gamemode issue.

"Should they consider re-allocating PvP resources to PvE and WvW because I think PvP is a failure due to past and current problems?" No, I don't think they should. I think the developers have finally found overall cohesion and vision across the game. The direction is good, but it will take time to get to where we all want to go.

They should keep GW2 for PvE and push GW1 for PvP tbh.. they even fixed the ping this week so the biggest problem was solved.

Nah let it die. Pull the plug.

Unless they double down and hire a real balance team (like some one worked at Blizzard) and release a monthly balance patch, my humble opinion is that they should not spend more resources on this "PvP".

They have way more debt on the skills/balance side than they realize. Even when Mesmer got nerfed, things are still not balance due to several other things (SB will be next..). They will have to constantly nerf stuff monthly for a year before they even get to an OK state.

Ever since 2014-2016 when the marketing budget was shifted from banner ad-clicks to World Tournament Series events there existed this really dumb school of thought, it went like this:

"Why spend resources on pvp , use that money to make WvW/PvE better". Yeah, I'm sure it would be preferable for some to have ArenaNet cut costs on marketing, cut support for less popular game modes which you dislike, all for the purpose of improving the game modes you like.

The main problem is that no MMO studio will shift all funds away from marketing their game or let a major game mode become completely defunct, as both of those make the studio look horrible.

I get that people like the OP make persuasive arguments as to why PvP sucks, I'm not saying PvP in GW2 is objectively good. However, asking for the mode to be ignored by ArenaNet is the same as wishing it be consumed by bugs and go from un-enjoyable for many to outright unplayable for all.

It'll never happen, and just sounds like a petulant temper-tantrum. Just let people casually enjoy PvP for what they can in peace

Anet already isnt releasing new maps/gamemodes for pvp and other than elite specs pvp received almost 0 compared to other gamemodes.In reality the only thing theyre adding is an exclusive monthly item every month so that the 20-30 high lvl competetive players left have something to play for 1nce a month.

So they already are basically doing nothing.(evan said they're working on swiss but thats not new content that's just modifying old content).

Anything for pvp in the future will most likely be in the form of an AT with new rewards:/

At least we have evan who at least interacts on some basis,other than that we've lost touch with anet entirely. Pvp has been dead since WTS

@pah.4931 said:I kinda want a complete overhaul. Better balance / splits. More gamemodes. Team-q for ranked conquest with the best rewards, etc.

I'd even pay for it. Right now, as mainly a PvP player, I have no incentive to buy gems because that money goes into supporting PvE while PvP languishes. And then their data will show PvPers don't buy gems, so they don't support PvP as much. It's vicious cycle!

The ability to q with a full 5 man premade would break the game man. Why don't people realize this? How would you like to fight against 5 scourges? How about 5 mesmers? Wouldn't be fun would it? The system they have in place now is fine with only 2 people in a party.

Also why would you want ANET to just let PvP go? Myself and a lot of players only enjoy PvP because I love being competitive and playing actual players. The PvP in this MMO is the best I have ever experience and I won't want them to just let it go.

@BMW.2951 said:

@pah.4931 said:I kinda want a complete overhaul. Better balance / splits. More gamemodes. Team-q for ranked conquest with the best rewards, etc.

I'd even pay for it. Right now, as mainly a PvP player, I have no incentive to buy gems because that money goes into supporting PvE while PvP languishes. And then their data will show PvPers don't buy gems, so they don't support PvP as much. It's vicious cycle!

I refuse to believe that GW2 provides the best PvP anyone has experienced unless they've only played 1 or 2 MMOs ever. Granted, I moved from better PvP to GW2 because players in the better PvP games were exploiting weak matching systems. It is humorous in hindsight.

I've also experienced significant issues with people running 3rd party apps, people exploiting the games use of their system with God mode like hacks, map exploits, people inflating rankings through alt accounts, DDOSing servers or star players when losing, etc. Most of these issues exist on GW2 as well though. Having experienced it in game after game, I've come to accept that losers are just going to cheat in life and online rankings mean absolutely nothing. It is extra humorous in GW2 though, as there isn't any real in-game reward. Cheaters can get the pip rewards faster I suppose, but the real carrot is a pointless title.

PvP is my favourite thing to do in the entire game, I cannot disagree with this notion more.

@"Sunshine.5014" said:Unless they double down and hire a real balance team (like some one worked at Blizzard) and release a monthly balance patch, my humble opinion is that they should not spend more resources on this "PvP".

They have way more debt on the skills/balance side than they realize. Even when Mesmer got nerfed, things are still not balance due to several other things (SB will be next..). They will have to constantly nerf stuff monthly for a year before they even get to an OK state.

???

WoW PvP has been a hideous joke for like a decade now. Even now Arena PvP is currently the Demon Hunter show. Hearthstone is like the objectively worst of the most popular CCG, far worse than Magic the Gathering and Yugioh, when it comes to balance. I haven't played Overwatch in any serious capacity, but the community there is just as consistently upset about balance as ours.

Don't delete pvp it's the only thing I waste my time on

Don't play it if you don't enjoy it?

Some of these arguments are ridiculous anyway, WoW Arena is much harder to follow and still managed to become an "E-Sport". Anet not having the financial means to generate a huge hype train for it was most likely the problem.

Bring back team arenas, that is the point. How can you think a game can be an e-sport and can be competitive without a team enviroment?

no more buy gems from my end till I actually see a drastic improvement

can we just balance tpvp and wvw can go to hell because its pve who cares

@"lordhelmos.7623" said:Just some thoughts on this,

Gw2 PvP has been plagued with problems since day one. Just some highlights:

• The closure of ESL and official support of Gw2 as an E-Sport
• The lack of viewership due to the action being hard to follow (caused by core game flaws specific to spectating matches, such as particle effects masking critical moments)
• The impossibility of properly balancing classes PvP against WvW and PVE
• Lack of variety in game modes and balancing the entire game around "standing in a tiny circle"
• The consistent shrinking of the PvP community, with queue times becoming longer. The PvP community is a "loud but small" community across the whole of Gw2
• The impossibility of making good matchmaker algorithms due to having not enough people in the PvP community playing games
• The exodus of many once popular pros to other more successful games that are built for PvP exclusively
• Dead PvP content like personal rooms, and Stronghold

There was a point in time that I enjoyed PvP. Personally I find the little free for all arena in the new mists update more fun and populated than all of PvP itself. This begs the question, as a program manager myself, why continue support for PvP?

I am sure that PvP is a huge resource draw with a full team dedicated to it. The problems of PvP bleed into other game mods such as WvW and PvE -which are very successful and always populated. On reset night, WvW queues are always full with sometimes 30 minute waits to get in. Balancing problems in PvP greatly affect other mods simply because things like strong support (which is fine for WvW and PvE) break PvP because of bunkering on a little circle. This leads to game mods with larger playerbases and more success being negatively affected by PvP centric balance issues (that may not be fixable due to how limited the design scope is for conquest).

With how minor PvP has become, why not cut support for PvP and move those teams and resources into balancing and creating content for the other more successful game modes? Why do the majority players in WvW and PvE continue to be plagued by bad design decisions made to support a tiny amount of content that has an almost insignificant amount of players?

Only one of those issues has been around since day one... The rest is down to poor management. Basically they had someone in charge that didn't know how to handle the game mode, ceded to "popular opinion" instead of what would be healthy for the game, and killed it.

• Removing Teams from ranked killed the organized competitive scene.
• Ceding to "popular opinion" and not working on Stronghold as a game mode, and eventually removing it just compounded the effect of having conquest has the dominating game mode.
• Making the decision to only output balance patches at HUGE fixed intervals, disregarding the actual state of the game created unhealthy metas that lasted several seasons in a row.
• Short seasons discourage people that can't afford to play 2-3 matches daily from even playing at all.
• Rewards focused on farming instead of accomplishment foster toxic, anti-sport behaviours.
• Making the game F2P, thus opening PvP to more players, but then pretty much making it impossible for those same players to be competitive by making core builds extremely sub-par compared to Elite specs.

All these and other decisions have had a comulative effect that keeps driving and burning out people from PvP. Not the least of which the short seasons. Most people can't really afford the pressure to keep "competing" at the same pace at such short intervals. Seasons are too short which just fosters a grind/farm mentality for PvP, especially with the bulk of rewards being largely independent of how good you play and your ranking. Its all a mess, and its not the game at its core that is to blame, although, like you said, it's not a easy spectator sport, mostly due to visual clutter, which is still a bane of GW2, even in Raids. But more than anything it were decisions made in 2016 that killed PvP. If you look at 2014, and early 2015, PvP was booming, and at its best.Every decision that came after HoT release, and up till after PoF release, were just small nails on PvP's coffin. And honestly, i believe its too far gone to be fixable.

It's already starting to look like PvP support is over.

@sephiroth.4217 said:It's already starting to look like PvP support is over.

There is no money for ArenaNet in PvP (there was a really good opportunity for them to make money, but who cares right?) - therefore their workforce is all currently in PvE/WvW.

@Chilli.2976 said:idgaf anymore I'm just going to play the game for the gold from the reward chest

This is what you get for playing many games -120 rating so far but plenty of gold - good thought process from who ever developed this pip thing and MMR.

PvP is basically in maintenance mode. It's not going away, it's not going to get sweeping quick changes. PvP was grossly mismanaged and it's at a good point now although it does need some better balancing.

The glory days are over. Just enjoy PvP for what it is now.

@phokus.8934 said:PvP is basically in maintenance mode. It's not going away, it's not going to get sweeping quick changes. PvP was grossly mismanaged and it's at a good point now although it does need some better balancing.

The glory days are over. Just enjoy PvP for what it is now.

How can you when PvP population is dead?

Perhaps anet could make existing pvp like random arena in gw1 - that could revitalize it some and make it more fair. Also, removing the whole pip/mmr thing is essential imo.