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My perspective on sPvP right now (take with a grain of salt)


KryTiKaL.3125

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I am going to preface this by saying that I by no means believe that I am 100% factually right in my opinions, they are of course opinions and opinions can be wrong, I just felt that I personally wanted to express my perspective as a player of this game for the last 8 years, and an avid and constant fan of Guild Wars as a franchise for the last 15 years as well as someone who has played MMORPGs for practically their whole life. Guild Wars has been a part of my life for over half of it, anything negative I might express about the developers or the game is because it is important to me. I am also well aware that I'm just some random derp monkey on the internet, I don't believe my opinion or perspective is more important than anyone elses, I'm just taking the time to express it as best as I can.

Also feel free to correct me if I am wrong on anything, I'd like to try to keep the facts that are there as accurate as possible.

For quite a few years now sPvP has been slowly degrading and has run into numerous issues over the course of the life of GW2. Particularly this pertains to Conquest as a mode, and more broadly Ranked and how the PvP systems are handled and have been handled.

This is essentially how the Ranked problems played out over the years;

  • 5 man premade teams were being paired against smaller, or no, premade teams in Ranked matchmaking.

  • Players justifiably complained about this, I think we can all agree that it was not a great system to have in place.

  • ANet, after a few years, eventually put up a poll for the community to vote on keeping the queue as it was or to change it to solo/duo queue.

  • The community voted to change it, their frustrations having built to the point of beyond boiling over.

  • ANet eventually released a patch that added solo/duo queue as the only option for Ranked and implied this would be in place for one season to see how it worked out (image below). This was also when they added Titles to the Leaderboard.

    ! ZRT95jT.png

  • After that season ended solo/duo queue stayed in place and we heard nothing else about it from ANet.

  • Two months after Season Five ended ESL announced they were closing their GW2 section.

  • Shortly after ESL closed its GW2 section, ANet decides to add Automated Tournaments to the game. This provided players with some measure of "clout" and yet again allowed people to play together with full premade teams.

  • ATs were, unfortunately, time gated "events" that happened only at specific times of the day/week/month.

  • ATs have only been populated by practically the same 3 or 4 teams all consisted of practically the same players over and over again.

  • To address these issues ANet then decided to work on "Swiss style" tournaments and attach it to ATs. I genuinely don't think this helped.

Now here we are today, the situation in sPvP is no better than it was, its probably worse now with population being low and the actual issues not being addressed. ANet has tried to address these issues, mostly by entirely skirting around them, but PvP still feels neglected as a mode. This is a stark contrast to how it felt, and potentially even was, in GW1. Things are probably better on EU, in fact it genuinely looks and feels that way, but I also think that it is also still worse off than things used to be.

There are plenty of things ANet can do better, but I feel these are some of the important highlights;

  • Ranked queue has always needed to be split between multiple types; Solo, Duo, 5 Player. I don't care what Helseth said years ago when they ran the Poll, he was right and he was wrong. He was right in that the Dynamic queue was the wrong way to go, but he was wrong in that he was supportive of the solo/duo only queue. It needed to be split.
  • Conquest is horrendously outdated from a mechanics standpoint. It was designed back with Core GW2 and objective size and the general capture mechanics have not changed, or have barely changed, with how Classes have changed over the years. Conquest has not been altered to accommodate for the significant shifts in class mechanics with the introduction of Elite Specs which heavily contributed to the Power Creep progression that CMC has now been trying to alleviate in competitive modes.
  • The leaderboard, as it currently functions, needs to go. Titles too (for now). That all needs to be reworked. Separate leaderboards for Solo, Duo queue and 5 player premade queue. They have the the beginnings of the UI elements, look at the UI for ATs, I'm fairly certain they can do something.
  • Communication. ANet has historically not done a good job at this in the last...3 or so years. It used to be a bit better, they even had consistent streams where they would talk about PvP related changes and provided tips for new PvP players, but those went away. During those times Hugh Norfolk was very engaged with the community and their stream "Points of Interest" and the "PvP 101" segment were pretty good. ANet needs to have a weekly, or at the very least a bi-weekly stream where they talk about a variety of subjects relating to GW2 content; updates on changes coming to PvP, skills, traits, classes, PvE content, previews of new skins being added to the game, etc. They can also use it as an opportunity to highlight community fanart and do giveaways, or just to do something fun that relates in some way to acknowledging the community for this game. ANets biggest weakness over the years has been their inability to take advantage of the platforms and resources that are available to them, or in this case that they stopped doing so. Cmc's State of the Game/Q&A interview he did with MightyTeapot and Angeels was a step in the right direction, but it needs to be something that ANet fully embraces and grows, and improves upon. I actually genuinely respected the fact that Cmc acknowledged that they are not always right. Before that point I don't think, at least to my memory, that I have ever heard that phrase come out of an ANet employees mouth, or read it.

I know the hottest topics of debate and contention are almost all related to balance and class mechanics, however I do believe that it needs to be acknowledged that you can only go so far with those as solutions. They are important aspects of maintaining any PvP environment and keeping it competitive, of course, however when there is just something, or many things, fundamentally wrong with how your system is functioning then you will not see any meaningful effect on the overall state of sPvP.

Please feel free to give feedback on this post, or even disagree with it if you want. Discussion is important for any subject, just please make sure you're courteous to others even if you disagree with them.

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This is a nice timeline.

I believe there should be solo queue and premade queue (instead of ATs).

Premade queue should always stay and act like a better replacement for ATs. Monthly AT should still stay, but you gain QP by queueing premade conquest. QPs still reset every month of course.

Solo queue can act like current ranked. It could still have the season system with "1 normal season and 1 mini season". Normal seasons could only accept solo queue but mini seasons should DEFINITELY accept full premade.

This way you don't spread players too thin.

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@"Tayga.3192" said:This is a nice timeline.

I believe there should be solo queue and premade queue (instead of ATs).

Premade queue should always stay and act like a better replacement for ATs. Monthly AT should still stay, but you gain QP by queueing premade conquest. QPs still reset every month of course.

Solo queue can act like current ranked. It could still have the season system with "1 normal season and 1 mini season". Normal seasons could only accept solo queue but mini seasons should DEFINITELY accept full premade.

This way you don't spread players too thin.

Honestly that does sound like a pretty good idea, having premade queue stay active and allow you to gain QP (along with the standard pips). That would probably allow for a much more diverse team spread in the mAT and actually allow teams to consistently push and test themselves and climb in rating as an actual team.

The biggest thing is that they really do need to split the queue, I'm sure it will generate longer queue times in the short term, but the long term benefits where people might actually return to the mode will offset that with enough time.

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I could not agree more with what you said. I think a huge problem lies with that in the current climate, rating means nothing and ranked does not seem like a team game. It seems to play like its every man for themselves. From a game development standpoint, the game does a terrible job of teaching players how to play effectively. We as a community have created various roles that builds can fit into to create various team compositions. I wish the game leaned more into this and encourage players to play these those roles during games. Similar to how League of Legends, you can queue as a support etc.I really enjoy playing Tournaments with my friends as having a coordinated team is honestly, it's so enjoyable to play with!

Rating isn't valued or respected. I remember when seeing a player with a Gold trim cape or a r10 Hero title in Guild Wars 1 it was something impressive. In Guild Wars 2, PvP just seems like a side hustle.

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@"Broady.2358" said:I could not agree more with what you said. I think a huge problem lies with that in the current climate, rating means nothing and ranked does not seem like a team game. It seems to play like its every man for themselves. From a game development standpoint, the game does a terrible job of teaching players how to play effectively. We as a community have created various roles that builds can fit into to create various team compositions. I wish the game leaned more into this and encourage players to play these those roles during games. Similar to how League of Legends, you can queue as a support etc.I really enjoy playing Tournaments with my friends as having a coordinated team is honestly, it's so enjoyable to play with!

Rating isn't valued or respected. I remember when seeing a player with a Gold trim cape or a r10 Hero title in Guild Wars 1 it was something impressive. In Guild Wars 2, PvP just seems like a side hustle.

Yeah, specifically in regards to its Ranked experience GW2 is just completely missing that aspect. It doesn't allow for you to just log in with your friends at any given point during a day just to queue up for full premade team games and actually climb in Ranked. The way things are now does not make the game more competitive, it makes it less so. Sure their approach allows for shorter queue times...but that doesn't resolve any of the actual issues, and if they simply took an approach that would benefit the mode in the long run that particular problem, long queues, would eventually take care of itself.

Personally I haven't valued rank or rating for a few years now for a variety of reasons, but ultimately it does come down to the fact that its, as you say, a purely "every man for themselves" environment and it hasn't done the mode any good. Personally on other MMORPGs, even other genres of games, I don't like queuing into any PvP mode without a team of friends with me. Battlegrounds on WoW are pretty much the only exception.

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Personally I haven't valued rank or rating for a few years now for a variety of reasons, but ultimately it does come down to the fact that its, as you say, a purely "every man for themselves" environment and it hasn't done the mode any good. Personally on other MMORPGs, even other genres of games, I don't like queuing into any PvP mode without a team of friends with me. Battlegrounds on WoW are pretty much the only exception.

I'm the same. I play an MMORPG to play with other people, not play solo. sPvP should be encouraging team play and it just doesn't. I'd like to see a push in encouraging players to team up to compete in Tournaments. My ideal situation would not allow PUG groups in the Monthly Tournament, instead only allow Guild Teams which are older than a week. Means then at least 3 people in that team have played together. That would bring a level of prestige back to the Monthly Tournament.

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@"Broady.2358" said:

Personally I haven't valued rank or rating for a few years now for a variety of reasons, but ultimately it does come down to the fact that its, as you say, a purely "every man for themselves" environment and it hasn't done the mode any good. Personally on other MMORPGs, even other genres of games, I don't like queuing into any PvP mode without a team of friends with me. Battlegrounds on WoW are pretty much the only exception.

I'm the same. I play an MMORPG to play with other people, not play solo. sPvP should be encouraging team play and it just doesn't. I'd like to see a push in encouraging players to team up to compete in Tournaments. My ideal situation would not allow PUG groups in the Monthly Tournament, instead only allow Guild Teams which are older than a week. Means then at least 3 people in that team have played together. That would bring a level of prestige back to the Monthly Tournament.

I wouldn't go that far with not allowing pug groups because if, in this hypothetical situation, they actually qualify to participate in the mAT I'd say it was probably deserved and they worked for it. This would potentially work best if @Tayga.3192 's idea of having the Five Player Queue give participating teams Qualifying Points (QP) then that would be enough of a gating mechanic for that level of competition. I would also suggest that since they clearly have the capability to build a UI to identify team names they can have a team leaderboard with a rating attached to it that is the accumulated, or averaged, rating of the whole team (just an idea, this can be worked out more precisely) and you need to meet a specific rating along with enough Qualifying Points to be able to participate in the mAT.

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I actually think the current system is good. The real question is whether or not Swiss is good and if there should be more options for 2s 3s and maybe something like 10s or a capture the flag version that is better than stronghold.Swiss sucks for brand new players or ppl that want to do ats for quick farm, but for semi-serious casuals or casual serious players it’s good, though not that fun for pro level teams who want ez first place wins. As such it should take a large portion of the population saying they hate it to get rid of it.Having more game modes is tricky as it would add variety but would possibly end up a meme game mode, because no one would take rating seriously. Team q is also an actual problem because it would suffer from this issue and just make qs more meaningless if they made a separate team q just to make most players in the game feel bad about rating and lacking a team in general.

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@"Dantheman.3589" said:I actually think the current system is good. The real question is whether or not Swiss is good and if there should be more options for 2s 3s and maybe something like 10s or a capture the flag version that is better than stronghold.Swiss sucks for brand new players or ppl that want to do ats for quick farm, but for semi-serious casuals or casual serious players it’s good, though not that fun for pro level teams who want ez first place wins. As such it should take a large portion of the population saying they hate it to get rid of it.Having more game modes is tricky as it would add variety but would possibly end up a meme game mode, because no one would take rating seriously. Team q is also an actual problem because it would suffer from this issue and just make qs more meaningless if they made a separate team q just to make most players in the game feel bad about rating and lacking a team in general.

Fair point, however people already don't take the rating and leaderboards seriously. Thats sort of the point. It has gotten to the point that people care so little about it that rather than get frustrated and angry and lash out as they play Ranked and try to climb, they literally just stop caring and take a "just for fun" approach to Ranked. Which isn't bad, that isn't a problem, but to me that speaks to how irrelevant as a mode sPvP is in that regard. I'm not saying that people should be getting angry when they lose, or can't climb, or that they should be lashing out at people and insulting them, its just that clearly things have gotten to the point where they feel its just better to not care at all because they feel like things just won't get better or change, and not caring is just healthier for their sanity.

There is a reason why ESL closed their GW2 section, their is a reason why sPvP has been hemorrhaging players, there is a reason why so many more people now are saying "Ranked isn't worth caring about" and gradually the same is being said more about ATs.

Swiss to me is just the most recent problem that has appeared in the ever expanding list of poor decisions being made in relation to sPvP, one of the earliest problems being the dynamic queue that unfortunately evolved into solo/duo queue only. There are plenty of other competitive games out there that have solo queue options, or multiple queue options, that players who participate in them don't feel like it is "meaningless" because that is its own separate entity. It has its own separate rating, its own separate queue and sometimes builds/classes/whatever that work better in that queue. Even Ubisoft is considering adding Solo Queue as its own separate thing in R6 Siege (a bit late on that but better late than never).

Now while I would like for them to add more actual game modes to sPvP, I would love to see 2v2 and 3v3 deathmatch just be a constant as an option, but I still feel that functionally they need to do a lot of improving and changing to sPvP, specifically Ranked, so people actually care about it and want to play it, as well as so they don't feel like it is completely irrelevant because of where the state things have been brought to. Imagine if they had added solo/duo queue only as an option for Ranked, keeping them separate from full team queue, way back in 2016. I genuinely don't think it is a coincidence that ESL pulled out after that change went through, and especially after the change stayed.

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@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@"Dantheman.3589" said:I actually think the current system is good. The real question is whether or not Swiss is good and if there should be more options for 2s 3s and maybe something like 10s or a capture the flag version that is better than stronghold.Swiss sucks for brand new players or ppl that want to do ats for quick farm, but for semi-serious casuals or casual serious players it’s good, though not that fun for pro level teams who want ez first place wins. As such it should take a large portion of the population saying they hate it to get rid of it.Having more game modes is tricky as it would add variety but would possibly end up a meme game mode, because no one would take rating seriously. Team q is also an actual problem because it would suffer from this issue and just make qs more meaningless if they made a separate team q just to make most players in the game feel bad about rating and lacking a team in general.

Fair point, however people already don't take the rating and leaderboards seriously. Thats sort of the point. It has gotten to the point that people care so little about it that rather than get frustrated and angry and lash out as they play Ranked and try to climb, they literally just stop caring and take a "just for fun" approach to Ranked. Which isn't bad, that isn't a problem, but to me that speaks to how irrelevant as a mode sPvP is in that regard. I'm not saying that people should be getting angry when they lose, or can't climb, or that they should be lashing out at people and insulting them, its just that clearly things have gotten to the point where they feel its just better to not care at all because they feel like things just won't get better or change, and not caring is just healthier for their sanity.

There is a reason why ESL closed their GW2 section, their is a reason why sPvP has been hemorrhaging players, there is a reason why so many more people now are saying "Ranked isn't worth caring about" and gradually the same is being said more about ATs.

Swiss to me is just the
most recent
problem that has appeared in the ever expanding list of poor decisions being made in relation to sPvP, one of the earliest problems being the dynamic queue that unfortunately evolved into solo/duo queue only. There are plenty of other competitive games out there that have solo queue options, or multiple queue options, that players who participate in them don't feel like it is "meaningless" because that is its own separate entity. It has its own separate rating, its own separate queue and sometimes builds/classes/whatever that work better in that queue. Even Ubisoft is considering adding Solo Queue as its own separate thing in R6 Siege (a bit late on that but better late than never).

Now while I would like for them to add more actual
game modes
to sPvP, I would love to see 2v2 and 3v3 deathmatch just be a constant as an option, but I still feel that functionally they need to do a lot of improving and changing to sPvP, specifically Ranked, so people actually
care
about it and want to play it, as well as so they don't feel like it is completely irrelevant because of where the state things have been brought to. Imagine if they had added solo/duo queue only as an
option
for Ranked, keeping them separate from full team queue, way back in 2016. I genuinely don't think it is a coincidence that ESL pulled out after that change went through, and especially after the change stayed.

I think part of why ranked is seen as almost irrelevant is more because of the design of the game. Being able to kill and carry can be almost irrelevant at times because the game gives very little for kills. You will see thief players just get 1 kill and then go decap and monster side noders who can stay at far even 1v3 do nothing to win matches becuz it just doesn’t matter on a level of depth as almost every pvp game in the world. Because of this solo q grinding can be irrelevant, while duo q can range from relevant to plain op when new players go against top teir ones. This is also a reason why team q goes out of control, since top teir teams and semi-serious ones will have an unclosable gap.Imo opinion in this game it’s what you make of it. If you are good and/or in a good duo and try enough ranked can be somewhat enjoyable, but if you don’t take a slightly serious approach rank deludes into something meaningless . For me it’s just a live with it thing because I know how the game works and I just try to enjoy the good parts that make the game unique- and it is unique, I’ve never seen a game so different and yet have some all encompassing basic mechanics that matter on this level

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This is how it needs to be.

Rather than snubbing Solo/Premades/Duos they should all have a way to play Ranked. The response so far has basically been to favor one side at the expense of the other's.

People like to cite that they tried split queues before and SoloQ just died the first time. Why does that even matter at all if that happens?The SoloQs are either moving to premades/duos or quitting. Neither warrant dropping the entire system for a merged queue.

They should just bring back split queues and that would end the entire discussion on Solos/Duos. If either way of playing dies out, that is absolutely fine. That just means that people didn't prefer to queue that way in the first place, so nothing is really lost.

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@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:This is how it needs to be.

Rather than snubbing Solo/Premades/Duos they should all have a way to play Ranked. The response so far has basically been to favor one side at the expense of the other's.

People like to cite that they tried split queues before and SoloQ just died the first time. Why does that even matter at all if that happens?The SoloQs are either moving to premades/duos or quitting. Neither warrant dropping the entire system for a merged queue.

They should just bring back split queues and that would end the entire discussion on Solos/Duos. If either way of playing dies out, that is absolutely fine. That just means that people didn't prefer to queue that way in the first place, so nothing is really lost.

I actually have a question though. How will they make a duo q only q? There are 5 players per team, so will one of them be a solo qer at random? This would just hurt solo qs more as they will have little coordination than the duo qers at times. Or do we make a new game mode for them?

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The removal of the free tourney format was the true downfall.

It was the best way to positively find a team. If you won you continued (at least for a bit). It helped build positive connections with other players because you were incentivized on this fundamental level to work together to succeed. It encouraged you to work together without even thinking about doing it.

You have this amazing positive.You also have the negatives of any PvP game.

With single game queue you just keep playing and just hoping for lucky rolls. You end up hating people who waste your single game. There is nothing positive than can come from ranked at the moment. ATs also have no positive things for random and new players. They'll just get stomped by higher tier players and discouraged. If you're a higher tier player and play LFG you will hate whoever silver or gold player joins your "plat +" team. Theres only this one sweet spot of plat players finding plat players that makes this game have a positive.

So with the current format. You just have negatives for almost everything. All negatives and no positivity just breeds toxicity.

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@Dantheman.3589 said:

@Dantheman.3589 said:I actually think the current system is good. The real question is whether or not Swiss is good and if there should be more options for 2s 3s and maybe something like 10s or a capture the flag version that is better than stronghold.Swiss sucks for brand new players or ppl that want to do ats for quick farm, but for semi-serious casuals or casual serious players it’s good, though not that fun for pro level teams who want ez first place wins. As such it should take a large portion of the population saying they hate it to get rid of it.Having more game modes is tricky as it would add variety but would possibly end up a meme game mode, because no one would take rating seriously. Team q is also an actual problem because it would suffer from this issue and just make qs more meaningless if they made a separate team q just to make most players in the game feel bad about rating and lacking a team in general.

Fair point, however people already don't take the rating and leaderboards seriously. Thats sort of the point. It has gotten to the point that people care so little about it that rather than get frustrated and angry and lash out as they play Ranked and try to climb, they literally just stop caring and take a "just for fun" approach to Ranked. Which isn't bad, that isn't a problem, but to me that speaks to how irrelevant as a mode sPvP is in that regard. I'm not saying that people should be getting angry when they lose, or can't climb, or that they should be lashing out at people and insulting them, its just that clearly things have gotten to the point where they feel its just better to not care at all because they feel like things just won't get better or change, and not caring is just healthier for their sanity.

There is a reason why ESL closed their GW2 section, their is a reason why sPvP has been hemorrhaging players, there is a reason why so many more people now are saying "Ranked isn't worth caring about" and gradually the same is being said more about ATs.

Swiss to me is just the
most recent
problem that has appeared in the ever expanding list of poor decisions being made in relation to sPvP, one of the earliest problems being the dynamic queue that unfortunately evolved into solo/duo queue only. There are plenty of other competitive games out there that have solo queue options, or multiple queue options, that players who participate in them don't feel like it is "meaningless" because that is its own separate entity. It has its own separate rating, its own separate queue and sometimes builds/classes/whatever that work better in that queue. Even Ubisoft is considering adding Solo Queue as its own separate thing in R6 Siege (a bit late on that but better late than never).

Now while I would like for them to add more actual
game modes
to sPvP, I would love to see 2v2 and 3v3 deathmatch just be a constant as an option, but I still feel that functionally they need to do a lot of improving and changing to sPvP, specifically Ranked, so people actually
care
about it and want to play it, as well as so they don't feel like it is completely irrelevant because of where the state things have been brought to. Imagine if they had added solo/duo queue only as an
option
for Ranked, keeping them separate from full team queue, way back in 2016. I genuinely don't think it is a coincidence that ESL pulled out after that change went through, and especially after the change stayed.

I think part of why ranked is seen as almost irrelevant is more because of the design of the game.

Nah man, it's just win trading and when players go on alts to throw against others. The entire ranked system is designed from the ground up to encourage match manipulation. And after years and years of watching these same undeniable patterns of cheating, people posting about it in reddit, in here, in youtube videos, and on twitch streams, finally in 2020 it is no secret that ranked gw2 is absolutely riddled with massive amounts of match manipulation. Recently, even streamers are exposing each other quite directly with very hard evidence. The worst part about it, is that Arenanet seems to not only not care about what's going on, but they seem to protect it.

Recently a certain streamer had made a video exposing another certain streamer during a very obvious match manipulation. Whether it was an organized win trade, or someone throwing on another player simply because they didn't like them or wanted them to lose rating, is kind of a negligent argument. The main facet to note about this video is that match manipulation is very very real. Lots of supposed top players are involved in it, and it happens much more frequently than players realize. When Arenanet got involved, rather than punish the obvious match manipulation and who was tied to it, they instead remove the anet partnership from the person who exposed the cheating, while allowing the people tied to the obvious match manipulation to get off scott free. <- Everything is wrong with that, and this kind of thing has been going on for years.

But yeah, in 2020 people know what's going on and that is the reason why no one takes ranked seriously anymore. It is also a large reason why most of the streamers have lost their clout and no one cares about them anymore. Most of these guy buried themselves in win trading controversy, and it was well deserved. I mean there are only so many times you can take a team composed of plat 1/plat1/plat1/bottom p2/bottom p2 into an AT, and beat a team full of top 20 players or at least only lose something like 500 to 450, before you start wondering: "How in the f--- do these guys always play 200-300 rating higher than me in every ranked season and always beat me in ranked games with 500 to 80 blowouts all of the time?"

And before anyone comes in here to respond to this with "But there isn't 110% absolute evidence that it was an intended throw or win trade" I have this to say:

If I were in a house with a toddler, and we were the only 2 people in the house, if I took a nap and woke up to find the cookies were all gone out of the cookie jar, I would know that the toddler at the cookies. Even though when I questioned the toddler about what happened and he responded to me with: "If you have no screenshots it didn't happen", I would still know that it was the toddler that ate the cookies because it is obvious what happened.

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I'm going to disagree.

Queue SizeSolo/duo queue restriction did a lot to hurt PvP. Having a solo only queue will do nothing to help it. The people who want solo queue are a vocal minority who think they're better and want to brag about it to everyone.How do I know this? We used to have solo and team (1-5) queue in parallel before HoT. Solo queue was initially popular, but quickly lost favor for two reasons. First, outcome was based largely on luck of the draw - who got the fewest bad or stubborn players and who got a good spec distribution. Second, it quickly bred toxicity - "I was great, the rest of you sucked" and people who would just look for 1v1 fights while ignoring objectives.

ATs are near uselessMost players are casual. They want to play when they have time. They can't be bothered to be locked into a sparse schedule with rigid times. Swiss doesn't help - if anything it made the problem worse. You can't come and go at will between games, and you can't fix a bad team.

Implementing a team queue addresses all these problems.

Game FormatConquest is the best competitive format for the gameplay style of GW2, hands down. The 3-point nature forces the team with more modes to spread it in order to defend, which allowing the team at a node deficit to combine players and dictate where combat happens.

Conquest doesn't need special rules like deathmatch. It doesn't lead to stalemates like CTF. It doesn't promote avoiding players and objectives like Stronghold. Conquest doesn't put balance under a microscope like some of these formats because you can always outnumber or retreat from losing fights, and killing a player isn't the only answer.

Power Creep / Elite specsThis ruined PvP more than anything else, though solo/duo queue is a close second. The game was made for a certain power level; adding more power breaks it. This is true for the whole game, not just PvP. When there is no longer a progression of mechanical skill, PvP dies. When a few specs do too many things well, paying anything else which you might find fun is a disadvantage and gets you ostracized from groups.

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@"Exedore.6320" said:I'm going to disagree.

Queue SizeSolo/duo queue restriction did a lot to hurt PvP. Having a solo only queue will do nothing to help it. The people who want solo queue are a vocal minority who think they're better and want to brag about it to everyone.How do I know this? We used to have solo and team (1-5) queue in parallel before HoT. Solo queue was initially popular, but quickly lost favor for two reasons. First, outcome was based largely on luck of the draw - who got the fewest bad or stubborn players and who got a good spec distribution. Second, it quickly bred toxicity - "I was great, the rest of you sucked" and people who would just look for 1v1 fights while ignoring objectives.

ATs are near uselessMost players are casual. They want to play when they have time. They can't be bothered to be locked into a sparse schedule with rigid times. Swiss doesn't help - if anything it made the problem worse. You can't come and go at will between games, and you can't fix a bad team.

Implementing a team queue addresses all these problems.

Game FormatConquest is the best competitive format for the gameplay style of GW2, hands down. The 3-point nature forces the team with more modes to spread it in order to defend, which allowing the team at a node deficit to combine players and dictate where combat happens.

Conquest doesn't need special rules like deathmatch. It doesn't lead to stalemates like CTF. It doesn't promote avoiding players and objectives like Stronghold. Conquest doesn't put balance under a microscope like some of these formats because you can always outnumber or retreat from losing fights, and killing a player isn't the only answer.

Power Creep / Elite specsThis ruined PvP more than anything else, though solo/duo queue is a close second. The game was made for a certain power level; adding more power breaks it. This is true for the whole game, not just PvP. When there is no longer a progression of mechanical skill, PvP dies. When a few specs do too many things well, paying anything else which you might find fun is a disadvantage and gets you ostracized from groups.

I'm confused. Whom are you disagreeing with in this context and to what extent?

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Nice summary.Balance is obviously not perfect - but it will never be - and they are actually working on it so I don't even feel like listing it as a problem.

The actual problems however:

  • Balance patches with only number changes are coming out too slow. When something is very clearly overperforming(especially after a major rework), why does it take 3 months to adjust it?
  • Balance patches containing reworks drop midseason - this damages the prestige of the ranked ladder.
  • For a gamemode that's designed to have 5 man teams, allowing 2 man premades is unfair. This damages the prestige of the ladder even further.
  • Due to the age of the game, and the problems listed above, the population is deteriorating. By the time they rolled out swiss there weren't enough people left to make the tournament scene work. Maybe add actual PvP prestige rewards? Release an expansion? Do something?
  • Which leads to my last point: communication. After what happened last year you'd think they try to retain players by doing more, but nah. "When it's ready" doesn't work when we can't even trust that something GW2 related is in the works(apart from living story and gemstore skins). Will they drop the next balance patch this tuesday? Or next month? Or next season? Is there a rework coming? When there is hype, speculating is fun. When there is none, having to speculate has the opposite effect.
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@Dantheman.3589 said:I actually have a question though. How will they make a duo q only q? There are 5 players per team, so will one of them be a solo qer at random? This would just hurt solo qs more as they will have little coordination than the duo qers at times. Or do we make a new game mode for them?

Honestly? I think it should be a two-way split.

You can SoloQ or you can TeamQ. TeamQ applies to teams of 2/3/5.Don't want to spread out the population too much.

It does leave out people who specifically want to queue as a 4 person party. But uh...I don't know why anyone would want to queue as exactly 4 people. Just LFG a 5th at that point.

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@"Bazsi.2734" said:

  • Balance patches with only number changes are coming out too slow. When something is very clearly overperforming(especially after a major rework), why does it take 3 months to adjust it?

Intentional. They do not want to touch their new "Babies".

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I think is pretty clear sPvP as a whole needs a rework. They need to try and fix things for the long term benefit of the game, not just short term patches which don't actually fix anything.

A complete overhaul of matchmaking, ranked, tournaments and rewards needs to happen. If these changes are good enough players will return to PvP and the game mode will thrive.

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@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

@"Dantheman.3589" said:I actually have a question though. How will they make a duo q only q? There are 5 players per team, so will one of them be a solo qer at random? This would just hurt solo qs more as they will have little coordination than the duo qers at times. Or do we make a new game mode for them?

Honestly? I think it should be a two-way split.

You can SoloQ or you can TeamQ. TeamQ applies to teams of 2/3/5.Don't want to spread out the population too much.

It does leave out people who specifically want to queue as a 4 person party. But uh...I don't know why anyone would want to queue as exactly 4 people. Just LFG a 5th at that point.

Truthfully the ideal situation is that Team Queue would be 5 player premades only, an argument could be made for 3 and 5 man teams being allowed in the Team Queue, League does this for its "Ranked Flex" option, but I don't know the logistics on how that specifically works. League also, however, has the benefit of its other matchmaking options like Blind Pick, Draft Pick and yes Solo/Duo Queue (again they provide this as one of several options). The point is that back when League made this change, because they as well being a competitive PvP game had only allowed Solo/Duo Queue as an option for their Ranked play and it was not exactly popular with players wanting to actually participate in Ranked with a full team.

This is where it gets a little...amusing, at least to me. While GW2 went and added Solo/Duo Queue only as their Ranked option to move away from Dynamic Queue in December of 2016, League of Legends added more Queue options to move away from Dynamic Queue in December of 2016. Granted these are two games that do not exist in the same genre, and the only similarity they share is that there is a competitive PvP mode on them both, however on GW2 it is a "piece" of the game whereas League is essentially entirely built around it.

I'm not saying GW2 should be a MOBA (I am not a fan of MOBAs) however I do think that ANet should at least consider that for their "competitive" modes they should probably take some hints, especially in regards to matchmaking and systems oriented with it, from the games that are built around such things.

I think it is also somewhat noteworthy to mention that the general view of solo/duo queue on League is that it has bred a lot of toxicity, much like it has done on GW2. The issues the game has seen in solo/duo queue also almost exactly mirror the problems GW2 has been facing with it(the following will be what someone has said is the problem in Leagues solo queue); soft inting (throwing matches), AFKers, queue sniping to throw games for players they don't like (or beat them), ghosting streamers, and a general attitude of not playing to win. These issues in League were all explained by someone in the community who had become fed up with it, and many of the pro players in the game commended and supported that view. In a sense it is like the players who participate in Solo/Duo queue don't have any respect for the integrity of the ladder or the players participating. Sounds familiar.

The key difference here between the situation with GW2 and LoL is that these problems happen the most egregiously in Solo/Duo Queue and it is only an option on League, whereas that is the entirety of the Ranked experience on GW2. Sure we have ATs, but the problem with those again is that they are time gated and the pool of teams and players that routinely participate in them is small.

I didn't mean for this post to be this long, but I hope some time is taken to read it. Its just an interesting observation in my opinion. I also certainly didn't intend to mention League that much, but oh well.

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@Bazsi.2734 said:

  • Balance patches containing reworks drop midseason - this damages the prestige of the ranked ladder.

I've been wondering for quite some time why they do this.

Either it's a complete overhaul mid-season or they make changes to problem specs with something like 2-3 weeks left after the bulk of the damage has already been done.

Meanwhile they have nothing in the off-season - the prime time they should be doing it so people can test around and maybe give some time to tweak things before going into the next season.

It's just more one example of the many missteps that Anet does in the balancing of this mode and game.

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In a perfect scenario a 1-5 queue would be best. but guild wars 2 doesn't have the player pool for that so it's basically impossible because it will lead to either extremely long queue times for 5 stacks or unbalanced matches. even the system right now is really unbalanced and the ranking spread in your team can be really volatile.

on the other hand, solo q + 5 man q would not work either. i really dislike solo only because conquest is a team based mode. 5 man q would just be dead because most players don't have access to 4 other players they can play with in a somewhat competitive environment. also, there's really no incentive to play ranked with 5 people right now (even if there was a 5 man queue).

now as for leaderboards, they're really terrible. reaching plat is way too easy and it feels like everybody is plat. on the other hand, reaching legend is way too hard. the curve needs to be evened out a bit. more people should be in silver/gold, less in platin, more in legend. the leaderboard should in fact only start after you reach legend where you can accumulate points/mmr/whatever to rise or drop on the ladder similar to how other games work.

players should also be rewarded for their ranking after the season ends. you should get 500 gems for reaching legend, 250 for platinum and 100 for gold. that's really not that much for how long a season lasts.

do away with ladder titles, all they lead to is win trading. placing high on the leaderboards should be rewarding enough.

to put this in perspective:

the leaderboard should start after you reach legend, which should probably be around 1650mmr in the current system.

many people get placed too high after placement games. even i got placed at 1550 when i came back after a 3 year break. more players need to be in silver and gold.

mmr gain/loss after a match needs to be looked at too. it feels very frustrating gaining 4 mmr for a win or losing 15 for a loss. i know this is the result of bad matchmaking when you win/lose a match in which your team is extremely favoured. something like that should never happen, yet it happens and it's frustrating so something needs to be done about that.

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@KryTiKaL.3125 said:

@"Dantheman.3589" said:I actually have a question though. How will they make a duo q only q? There are 5 players per team, so will one of them be a solo qer at random? This would just hurt solo qs more as they will have little coordination than the duo qers at times. Or do we make a new game mode for them?

Honestly? I think it should be a two-way split.

You can SoloQ or you can TeamQ. TeamQ applies to teams of 2/3/5.Don't want to spread out the population too much.

It does leave out people who specifically want to queue as a 4 person party. But uh...I don't know why anyone would want to queue as exactly 4 people. Just LFG a 5th at that point.

Truthfully the ideal situation is that Team Queue would be 5 player premades only, an argument could be made for 3 and 5 man teams being allowed in the Team Queue, League does this for its "Ranked Flex" option, but I don't know the logistics on how that specifically works. League also, however, has the benefit of its other matchmaking options like Blind Pick, Draft Pick and yes Solo/Duo Queue (again they provide this as one of
several
options). The point is that back when League made this change, because they as well being a
competitive PvP game
had only allowed Solo/Duo Queue as an option for their Ranked play and it was not exactly popular with players wanting to actually participate in Ranked with a full team.

This is where it gets a little...amusing, at least to me. While GW2 went and
added
Solo/Duo Queue
only
as their Ranked option to move away from Dynamic Queue in December of 2016, League of Legends added
more
Queue options to move away from Dynamic Queue in December of 2016. Granted these are two games that do not exist in the same genre, and the only similarity they share is that there is a competitive PvP mode on them both, however on GW2 it is a "piece" of the game whereas League is essentially entirely built around it.

I'm not saying GW2 should be a MOBA (I am not a fan of MOBAs) however I do think that ANet should at least consider that for their "competitive" modes they should probably take some hints, especially in regards to matchmaking and systems oriented with it, from the games that are built around such things.

I think it is also somewhat noteworthy to mention that the general view of solo/duo queue on League is that it has bred a
lot
of toxicity, much like it has done on GW2. The issues the game has seen in solo/duo queue also almost exactly mirror the problems GW2 has been facing with it(the following will be what someone has said is the problem in Leagues solo queue); soft inting (throwing matches), AFKers, queue sniping to throw games for players they don't like (or beat them), ghosting streamers, and a general attitude of not playing to win. These issues in League were all explained by someone in the community who had become fed up with it, and many of the pro players in the game commended and supported that view. In a sense it is like the players who participate in Solo/Duo queue don't have any respect for the integrity of the ladder or the players participating. Sounds familiar.

The key difference here between the situation with GW2 and LoL is that these problems happen
the most egregiously
in Solo/Duo Queue and it is only an
option
on League, whereas that is the
entirety
of the Ranked experience on GW2. Sure we have ATs, but the problem with those
again
is that they are time gated and the pool of teams and players that routinely participate in them is
small
.

I didn't mean for this post to be this long, but I hope some time is taken to read it. Its just an interesting observation in my opinion. I also certainly didn't intend to mention League that much, but oh well.

As someone that played every season of league since its release I will explain things.unranked doesnt matter.Flex is made for people to troll, throw, feed, wintrade, or play drunk or high out of their mind with friends. grandmaster/master is equivalent of diamond in flex queues.( its like legend being on the level of plat1/g3 ) Nobody really gives a damn about flex, you play it with friends to have fun, and only reason you chose it over unranked is to have somewhat more balanced games ( if I play unranked Im playing against uber noobs and go 30/0 and make them quit the game its so bad )

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