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Discussion About "What Is Killing Our SPvP Community?" And What Can We Do About It?


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@Shadow Order.7258 said:

@mortrialus.3062 said:We can talk about things like balance, and the meta, and build diversity, and match making, and the leaderboard, and duo queue. But I think Guild Wars 2's biggest PvP problem is a more fundamental issue with how it builds its player experience right from the beginning. No amount of refining existing systems in a game mode we all currently have played thousands of matches in is ever going to fix the fact that no one can play one game forever and that people move on and there always needs to be an influx of new blood into the population.

I think there are a lot of interesting points about how Fortnite makes players feel like winners even if they don't win, and how that keeps players playing the game over and over. But like a lot of Guild Wars 2 including basic PvE and WvW, the PvP mode is just not set up well to incentivize people to keep playing, just from a modern game design and psychology perspective. You can have a dynamic PvE or PvP game, with great game feel and interesting flowing metas at the high end but it doesn't matter if players who dip their toe in aren't introduced to an experience that's set up to make them want to play more and if they aren't taught how to play the game.

Don't worry about the obvious clickbaity thumbnail, the video is about a lot of great real game design principals. Most notably from Sid Meyer's GDC lecture on how to keep people playing his games.
  1. Create a Sense of Linear Progression.
  2. Make the player constantly one to play One More Turn.
  3. Make the player feel above average.

Guild Wars 2's PvP tends to struggle with 1 and 3, unfortunately.

I think that #3 nails the critical issue here.

Not only do you lose, but then you're mocked for it with the closing screen.
I end up logging off many nights, feeling bad about myself after losing repeatedly. So, I find myself playing fewer and fewer games..

One thing that improved the experience for me, win or lose, was the crowd in Coliseum. There's something about hearing the roar of the crowd. It feels especially good to be able to shout out and get a response from the crowd.

The culture of the game has been built to make a person feel bad if they aren't on the winning side. That is the root of the problem.

I'll think about how the experience could be improved.

I think for the end game screen rather than being dead the enemy team should be clapping in the foreground Super Smash Bros style. Yeah you lost but there is something courteous and good sported and less mean spirited about it.

The closing screen cancer has always shown how out of touch and encouraging of toxicity Anet really is. I'm surprised they never added a tea bagging option to it.

Had a good sincere lol after reading that.

ty ty

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@"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" The social effects of individual Glicko ratings over time when applied to solo/duo only Conquest, is interesting indeed. My point in creating this thread was not to harp at Arenanet, but rather to stir healthy thought & discussion. I fully understand that Glicko is what we are working with. I was however, hoping that maybe someone had an idea for a quick & easy fix, something that might steer the sociology of the community back towards something cohesive, in terms of incentive to play together rather than avoid each other like the plague. I won't claim to have a "miracle suggestion", but I do know that it's the smallest things within a system that dictates how players conduct themselves within and around that system. I believe my initial statement in this thread about "the core of the social problem" to be absolutely true. There has to be something, some small tweak, that could be done to at least lighten the load of this social problem. Possibly something within or added to the algorithm, or something to alter with the que system.

There are two issues. The biggest one is the nature of players themselves and the gaming industry as a whole. The vast majority of the players aren't going to help other people get better especially at the top end of the spectrum. It is a waste of valuable time. It is that way across all game modes. PVE players are the same way. That is never going to change. Video games have a short shelf life so there is no point in developing players like successful sports do. Anyone that cared about playing competitively or making money playing video games left GW2 long ago for the same reason. Those people aren't going to stick around a game or with "friends" when it is costing them rating, viewers, and money. There is more money/views in the next hot game than there is in a 5 year old game. A good twitch stream has 10s of thousands of viewers. A good guild wars 2 stream has 100.

IMO there is nothing wrong with glicko it is working correctly. The problem is match maker and how people exploit it.

  1. All alts should use the rating of the main account. People should not be able to have more than one rated account. Tie it to the two factor phone authentication. It is too easy to have 2 1700 players each with a tanked alt that duo together at off hours. One plays their 1700 account and one plays their 1500 account. You can extend this to any level. Boosting ratings is bad for the match maker and enough people are doing it that is makes for very poor match quality.
  2. Soft reset should go away. It gives people huge rating swings in both directions and reduces the overall match quality. Combine that with alt accounts, and you have a mess of people in divisions they don't belong in throughout the season.
  3. Get rid of duo queue. There are too few players for this to work, and all it is used for is boosting accounts. It is virtually impossible to overcome a duo of people that are at a rating they shouldn't be at. There are other game modes where people can play competitively with their "friends".
  4. Give people an option to limit the MMR range they play against. I'd rather have long queue times than be ping ponging between matches against top tier players, and low gold tier players. I don't care if a top 100 player that is playing at 4 in the morning can't find a match. Making them wait will negatively affect far fewer people than putting them with/against people they shouldn't be playing with.
  5. If 4 isn't going to happen then at least show people's rating at the start. If there are going to be huge skill gaps in games make it obvious who are the top rated players and who is going to need help. Just because something is a good class match on the mini map doesn't mean much if a 1400 player is stuck against a 1700 player.
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