[Removal of Free Tourney Format] ruined the game.
Eurantien.4632
Member ✭✭✭✭
Edit: Changed title as this is really more about the lack of incentives to build teams that were removed with free tourneys than leaderboard addition. Although I think that leaderboards are still a factor in toxicity.
The funnest this game has ever been was with free tourneys. The reason for this was you could queue with any number of people and placed in a match. If your team one you progressed to round 2. Won that? Your team goes to round 3. Then that was it. However many games you won, the better reward you got. The point was to win but if someone was a weak link on your team and you lost it wasn't that big of a deal, I could queue again or queue with friends to avoid that. Ideally this would have grown to have old GW1 style where you stay with your team till you lose. That created some awesome comraderie. Still, that's how I found my first PvP buddy's/team. We did great in a free tourney and then eventually stuck together to try paid tourneys.
Now, it's a mess. I queue up, solo or duo. Wait 6 minutes. And have WAY more to lose than if I win. If I win now I get slightly better reward track progression and some rank points. If I lose, I get slightly less rewards but ALSO I lose 2-3 wins worth of rank points on the leaderboard. This just breeds animosity, someone makes a mistake now is way more frustrating because there is so much more to lose. I can't form new bonds and stay with players I thought did decent, because I saw them in 1 game. That's not enough time to form a strong enough impulse to want to queue with someone when weighed against the risk of losing 2-3 games worth of rank points. Not only that, but if i am duo'd we can't queue with that person.
We can't have fun with new builds because it alienates teammates who also have more to lose now than back then. We can't form new bonds with people because the risk is too high. All we can do is queue with who we think are good and slowly grow to hate everyone else. And play builds we know are good.
In free tourney days, I had a desire for other people to get better because I might have to be with them for 3 games in a row.
Now, I just hope that person isn't on my team.
What we have now is not a formula for a healthy community the way free tourneys were. ATs were kind of a growth from this but also fail to breed comraderie. I don't want to risk playing with people I don't know because of the time investment of an AT. I don't want to waste an hour standing around to not win the whole AT. I want to do two ATs a month as to not waste my time. If we lose... I'm already mad at my team because now I have to do at least ANOTHER AT and waste at least another hour to get enough QPs.
TL;DR: leaderboards Make it so there is too much to lose now for little gain. Max duo queue means no way to form new bonds anymore. [Edit: Free tourneys incentivized teams and allowed them to spam games together and not have to wait ages for ATs]. There is little reason to try new things besides to counter meta now because it just triggers teammates. This combo is a complete 180 from the community of free tourney days And it's leading to a toxic community.
Comments
The issue is not leaderboard the issue is variance in player skill.
Few people in this game have figured it out to the point where anybody that is in their matches not at that level completely destroys the experience and flow of the game
For example, I come across you on soulbeast and I would argue it OP. I come across a soulbeast in the 1500 range and I honestly question if they are mentally ill and rage silently in real life even though rating would suggest them not far behind you. That being near as close as it gets to you and a few other southeasts playing it at your level
couldn't care less if the leader board was removed. it doesn't do much but attract undesirables anyways.
something to note tho, we will have no real way of keeping track of all those bots! the humanity.
te lazla otstara.
fingers crossed meta ~
Make it a hidden leaderboard, but still grant titles. I would like it better that way and I think all of us would too. It helps us find our comfort zone and makes us panic less if we drop out of a certain tier such as top 250 or top 100.
I agree. PvP needs a drastic shift beyond what Swiss tournaments will gain us. Nicely written post.
No leaderboard = no competitiveness = no PvP = boring.
twitch.tv/chillichur
no leaderboard = less match manipulation = more pvp = gud.
te lazla otstara.
fingers crossed meta ~
That is so bull lol, if there was no incentive to play and no competitiveness it will not create more players, in fact it would drastically reduce the amount of players.
Have a look at any other sport, everything has a leaderboard pretty much - we humans are naturally competitive, and it doesn't have to be games/sports it could be other things.
twitch.tv/chillichur
just revert back to Vanilla system
this current system was made because the game had esport scene back then
since there is no longer esport i would love to go back Vanilla system. more fun to play. nothing to lose
you think most peoples incentive to play is cuz of leader board? that's funny lol. if people actually leave cuz of no leader board, then good, they were probably win traders anyways.
comparing a video game with ephemeral rewards to other sports where they are paid millions of dollars, well yeah, im sure you get the picture now.
te lazla otstara.
fingers crossed meta ~
This game orbits too closely around a gravity well of rock-paper-scissors paradigms to foster a high skill ceiling. Builds are incredibly forgiving and encourage auto-pilot tendencies by removing risk from engagements. The only real difference between a "good" player and a "bad" one is in how the former will have a muscle-memory sense as well as a long-form sense for the timing on skill rotations. This is a very, very basic skill threshold. Getting a sense of timing for 20 or so buttons is a tiny hill to climb when none of them really need to be aimed or properly timed when being used (most abilities that make it onto skill bars are either instant or under 0.75s activations). Moreover, the concept of "gamesense" is mostly absent when everyone has a minimap that is nearly on par with Halo with regards to its generous amount of enemy position info. All of this means that GW2 has less of a "read and predict" skill ceiling and more of a "slow rhythm game" ceiling. It's all about hard-counters and PvE-style rotations rather than aim or timing (especially when instant or passive abilities will consistently negate the efforts of opponents).
If the game is good, players will find a way to make their own systems. In the same way that certain games like Team Fortress 2 or Age of Empires II will hold their own respective LANs or prize tournaments in 2019, if the playerbase is big enough for GW2, then it would find a way to make its own tournaments. That said, GW2's committed, competitive playerbase is absolutely anemic due to its general PvP gameplay. If stress was taken off of the "need to be plat+" then players might take a more pro-active stance at forming their own ranks and creating in-houses or tournaments for fun which isn't regulated by some mindless robot.
tl;dr: If you removed the robotic ranking system, players would have to judge for themselves how good they were; if they had to judge for themselves, then they would need a community by which they could measure their skill; that process is what makes a competitive scene healthy and sustainable. Ranked is mostly just killing any urge that most GW2 players might have to create an independent PvP community.
By removing the numbers it is no longer who is good by numbers and back to who is good by the "eye test". You keep things like monthly tournaments and what not. People would still know who is good or not. You can watch any game or any sport and tell who is good without seeing their numbers. People play this game cause this combat is good, with little incentive already.
Then it mostly just becomes a game of who you know in the community
// Yanim
If you just remove LB basically nothing would change. Maybe a few less players each season.
// Yanim
There is no metric of skill that is more accurate than skill rating.
False
AoE spam ruined the game. The fact that a few classes can attack everything on the point by virtue of existing is bad for the game.
How many times we gotta tell you GRIND IS NOT CONTENT there ANet?
Leader of Tyrian Adventure Corp [TACO], member of [RaW][TACO][Owls][HELL] Alliance, Kaineng.
Duo and solo q leaderboards should be seperate. One should never get to solo top player as a duo player.
It is realistic. Anet have overhauled various systems multiple times, putting resources into yet another system rework is not going to "make pvp good".
// Yanim
I think the topic title does not do justice to your post. Free tourneys are awesome and it baffles me that they moved away from the SEVERAL available modes they could have derived from GW1. Playing with your team until you lose was a great move back then and it would be awesome right now, at least for unranked. The leaderboards I don't think are the real problem but in reality we are all tired of having only the same mode and the same maps forever. This game has so much potential for a variety of PvP modes but all we get is capture-the-point.
If you don't enjoy it, don't play it. If you don't play it, why waste time on its forums?
See where I'm going?
I can say the same to you. if you don't like the current system, don't play the game.
// Yanim
I am sorry for my English Googolian, be indulgent thank you.
It's absolutely beautiful post, it's my state of mind for almost 3 years where I say to myself that the community is more and more hermetic and can not pull up the players who are lower in the ranking and are real pearl.
To make believe that in a team of 5 only one player can shoot the 4 others by himself to victory is false.
Many explains that arenanet has to question itself that the pvp has to challenge itself, but not as Eurantien says the community must first question themselves and certainly the top 250 because there are examples ...
As said above pull the pvp community up today when the mood of the environment is nonexistent.
The solo and duo are made for a ranking of values that initially report in a way that falsifies the ranking.
Today the state of mind is also you are not in the top 250 you gonna do to one or the top players and well it will sum it up by luck.
This is unfortunately probably true at this point. However, removing the leaderboard kind of kills the game for many people and that probably isn't a good idea right now. This leads into this guy's point:
Thing is, it would reduce the amount of competitive players yes. But it would bring in more casual players. Nothing would change in terms of raw population, just the type of population.
^ This is 110% true in any environment with a system that denies social favoritism and match manipulation. But we are talking solo/duo Guild Wars 2 Ranked spvp here, where there is this small but existent fascist like inner circle of win trading going on. The players involved in this are able to pick and choose who they like & allow to have fair games or who they dislike and que snipe, when they play on their alts. If a player chooses not to participate in the social stigma of this eminence front, the leaderboards are not as fair as they are for the players who do choose to participate.
@Eurantien.4632
Agree with everything you've said. The current model of everything in spvp is designed to isolate and segregate different demographics of players so they have nothing to gain from interacting together, but everything to lose. There isn't a reason to form an spvp guild within the game's current UI. There is nothing to benefit from a guild that is any different than our personal contact's list and there isn't even a requirement to do so "like other games that require a guild team to register themselves."
Most of us who have played for a very long time now share these kinds of opinions and it becomes obvious that the community is sick like a stage 3 cancer patient because there isn't enough incentive or even opportunities to play as a team together. ATs are great, they are, but it isn't frequent enough. We need a game mode that allows a guild to que as a team all day long if that's what they want to do, and I mean something competitive, not unranked. As you've already stated, we need a reason to get to know people again, and a way to do it while not risking such heavy loss.
You know I don't even show up to inhouses or scrims very often, for the same types of reasons you've already mentioned. What is convenient in scheduling/organizing/supporting any of this when I only get to run an AT once every 4 hours? Sometimes I'm not even online at the right time to be able to run that AT, and when I am online, I have no guarantee that I'll even be playing with the people I was practicing with. Ideally for me, speaking for myself here, what I would like to see happen is something like this:
I'm sure plenty of people have arguments for the above suggestions, that's fine. But one thing is certain, we need a game mode that encourages players to play together again, instead of que dodge each other or go offline so people they don't want to disappoint can't message them, and in general avoid each other like the plague. Because this stuff is killing the community.
My Twitch Gank Channel
I think one good step to less match manipulation is to make legendary easier to get into. how has it been for the past several seasons, maybe like 3 people per season get in there? thats ludicrous. its an entire tier left empty cuz +2 -20 rating scoring.
well said.
te lazla otstara.
fingers crossed meta ~
Some days I don't, but I still play and enjoy the game, which is why I still visit forums. The day I quit is the day I stop visiting the forums. See what I'm saying?
I enjoy tournaments and I enjoy casual ranked/unranked games. I can want changes in the culture and development but still not call the game trash, old and irrelevant, which is how you've described it.
Flandre said their/your suggestions won't change anything, and I called it realistic. Overhauling the system (again) won't make people come back, enjoy the game, create communitues, teams, and so on. It is just wishful thinking.
// Yanim
K. Disagree, but K.
The problem with legendary tier, especially on NA, is population - plain and simple.
To understand it, first realize that rating is a bell curve. When population is small, the extremes of the bell curve can't push out as far, as the rating system will maintain the shape of the curve. Think of it as a pile of sand in an hourglass: as more sand falls, the pile spreads out more. The small rating adjustments on a win - and big on a loss - will always happen at the positive extreme of any bell curve rating system. Again due to low population, this is happening earlier than one would expect (around 1700-1800 rather than 2000+).
The most sensible way to address the lack of legendary players is to assign tiers (bronze, silver, gold, platinum, legendary) based on percentile of the population, rather than fixed cut-offs. For example, the top 1% would be legendary, top 5% platinum, etc.