DoomNexus.5324

Imo GW2 should just in general have way more pvp modes - why not just make 2v2 and 3v3 permanent as an unranked queue and give unranked season rewards as well? Maybe directly get progress for season rewards (at a lower pace maybe?) or copy-paste the chests without ranked specific drops such as the ascended shards of glory if Anet really wants to keep the "good" stuff locked behind ranked. And FINALLY make GvG its own game mode... Poor guilds who have to set up their own fights in WvW.. Could be a generic 20v20 or 50v50 or whatever imo where you can sign up with your zerg, then also non-guilds can join or smaller guilds can team up with randoms to make fights slightly more even. Idgaf about longer queue times due to the split queue at all either. The game mode is dead so queue times are not great anyway and even if the queue pops quickly it's a kitten match because the mm couldn't even form proper teams.. And Stronghold also exists and is played, we already have a working split queue so this argument was non-sense from the very beginning.

And it still annoys me because that's not at all how Glicko-2 (the rating system GW2 is supposed to be based on) handles volatility lol. It should track the consistency of an individual player over several matches and adjust rating changes based on their volatility. So a more consistent player will have more meaningful rating changes (aka volatility is low, therefore the gains and losses will be higher) while a more volatile player isn't punished as hard when they are having a bad day (with the draw down of not being rewarded as much on a good day). But for this to work Anet would need a system that evaluates a player's performance and they won't implement that (even tho other complex team games like CS2 can, so it's not impossible). So, I understand why they opted for this kitten volatility system but think it ultimately holds back the game mode at lot actually. I think the above is also one of the reasons for this. If you win the first few matches it should not be uncommon to immediately jump several skill divisions, so when you are actually g1 and win 3 matches in a row (even just because an opponent is afk/throws) then you may end up in g3 or even p1. Anet implemented volatility like this to let players get to their appropriate skill class in less matches, but imo with the coin flip of a matchmaker and low population it just gets chaotic af and it makes the placement phase way more chaotic.

They just need to bring back the pvp modes in GW1 ngl. And finally introduce GvG as an actual game mode with a reward track and stuff.

Anet should in general realize that different roles should be rewarded for different tasks differently. This also requires recognizing which role (or at least in which category of the holy trinity) a build falls. A burn firebrand is not comparable to a support firebrand for example. Probably easiest thing to take into account is the amulet but there are other more sophisticated ways for sure. Just matching amulets with the elite spec tho, would result in a matrix of still manageable size while probably already giving a pretty good estimate what to expect from that character. Imo that's also a mandatory feature for the matchmaker to ensure proper team compositions and not match a team with support, team fighters and a roamer against only roamer builds with no support or kitten like that and I think it's kinda mind-boggling that GW2 still doesn't have that after 12 years. Well.. not so mind-boggling when you consider that PvP has been abandoned since at least 9 years ago but still. I do realize that a really good system for that is hard to execute in a complex game like gw2 but there certainly are ways (other games can do it too, even just third-party rating tools exist for some games) and even just a semi-decent system will be magnitudes more fair than just looking at wins and losses.

The game is balanced for PvE boss encounters. The downward spiral really started to pick up when Anet introduced raids and only got worse with subsequent additions of DRMs, strikes, big meta bosses, etc. Conditions are broken in sPvP because we get the same or similar balance as in WvW, which is a completely different beast. In WvW stuff is primarily balanced for zergs (or at least I think Anet tries to do it but Anet isn't the best when it comes to balancing overall), but there you have a lot of supports which can just cleanse hundreds of stacks of condi in basically no time. When you are on your own in sPvP, however, you typically don't get that, especially in solo-Q. So either you are in luck and play a class with easy access to condi cleanse (e.g. via light fields) yourself, then condis are absolutely no issue, or you just can't do much against it. I think that's also where the discrepancy comes from, where some people think condi is literally the worst in the game (myself included) and some say it's absolutely no issue at all (pOwEr Is StIlL mEtA sO cOnDi cAn'T bE gOoD). sPvP is also inherently bad to balance around the huge amount of AoE spam we have, since everyone should be at or at least near a node. This is again not the case in WvW, where zergs and roamers can just move around freely (+ in PvE it's better to have every skill hit everything all the time anyway). This is not a pure condi issue tho which you can see with people crying for DH trap nerfs again. I can be wrong, I didn't go through the list of all skills and checked but I assume the majority of wells and aoe in general has some conditions attached. Add traits to the mix à la "if you apply crippling you also apply burning, torment and confusion" (<- I don't think this exact configuration exists but you get the idea) and it's clear why you are bombarded with dozens of stacks of 5 different conditions as soon as you go near a team fight. I hard-dislike the concept of conditions being even viable as a "main" damage source but yea, it is what it is. Even hybrid is stupid to me. I'd prefer conditions to be supplementary at best, ideally no or just 1 or max 2 damaging conditions in the entire game, with the rest being debuffs and not flat out damage. Like, buff healing reduction of poison to 50 or even 75% but remove the dmg ticks. In my opinion they should be more of a tool than an alternative dmg source. I know this won't change as there apparently are a lot of players who even prefer condi over power (probably including Anet staff) but yea. Just my 2 cents.

Unfortunately, yes. I still love Stronghold tho, I think they could easily make it a really fun game mode with just a few small balancing adjustments (to the map/supply, etc - not player balance). Would love to see a new Stronghold map too, just to have a bit more variety, but I know it will never happen. I think Anet/GW2 doesn't need any inspiration from other game genres, actually. Making 2v2 and 3v3 a permanent queue or at the very least add them to the tournament list would already help a lot I think (we had special tournament events in the past where they were added them to the AT list - was very nice imo). Finally getting 10v10 up and running again would also be very nice or make a dedicated GvG mode. Doesn't need to be within the realm of sPvP tho, I wouldn't mind it as a variation on WvW especially since the current GvG scene already uses WvW maps to carry out their fights. Even if I don't do GvG I actually really want this in the game as an official, ranked mode similar to in GW1. Which is probably the game they should draw most inspiration from anyway (as mentioned in an earlier comment already). GW1 had a ton of very fun PvP modes and I think they should just revamp them and add them to GW2. The concept for the Jade Quarry from GW1 could be perfectly tied in with the Gyala Delve lore for example. A similar objective as Fort Aspenwood could also be easily integrated within the Echovald Wilds lore and map. Honestly, I had some expectations regarding new sPvP content for EoD since the Cantha expansion was also the one in GW1 that added a ton of new PvP stuff and I was actually quite disappointend when nothing was even mentioned or patched in later. I think this was also the moment all of my hopes for new sPvP content died completely. Even just making already existing content available at all times (like 2v2/3v3) is probably too much of an investment in sPvP for Anet. I even suspect that NCSoft themselves have put in a block for Anet as all of NCSoft's MMOs have pretty much abandoned their pvp modes. Blade&Soul apparently stopped their esport thing in 2018 or so too and has abandoned the game mode ever since. At least the forum sections in B&S, Aion, etc look similar to GW2's with cries for attention from the devs.

I they could at the very least double check the role with an amulet. Wouldn't make sense to queue as a support with a Zerker amulet for example. Yes, but differently to for example WoW. You don't just have dps, tank and healer but rather for example roamer, bruiser, side-noder, ... and support. Idk, I think the argument against any improvements for the sake of "keep queue times short" has been made for way too long. In 2018 I started to get really active in sPvP and ever since people made this point. But I think this has ultimately lead to the downfall of gw2 sPvP, actually. The fear to be innovative or give players a better time because they may need to wait a bit longer was ultimately the cause for stagnation and declining population in my opinion, which triggered a downward spiral, making flaws in the system ever more noticable and relevant. Like duo-Q for example - I think duoQ is not an issue by itself but having nobody to queue anyone up with and having 2 plat 3 players in the enemy team in an otherwise gold 2 match is bs. Many suggestions have been drowned over the years with this argument, such as a (separate) full team queue in ranked, 2v2/3v3 queue being available at all times, more modes in general (we used to have 10v10), etc. I think having more options and more modes would ultimately not have resulted in a spread out population but rather there are plenty of players who just don't like Conquest and have always asked for TDM-style modes, so I'm convinced the overall population would've increased, not been spread out, since those queues don't really interfere with each other and would allow players to also have some variety and join the other queues from time to time. But yea, the fear of longer wait times has certainly played a huge part of where we are now in my opinion. But.. I think sPvP is too far gone now anyway. Its reputation is inevitably damaged, GW2's as a whole probably still*. There are a ton of players who are just not interested anymore and have quit for good. Plus, Anet stopped giving a kitten about sPvP years go too, so the chances any attempt to resurrect the game mode will be made are virtually non-existent. * Anet left a lot of people disappointed when they introduced ascended gear for example, despite making promises to never increase the power level. This was all the way back in 2013 but there are plenty of players who still don't trust Anet/GW2 because of such occurrences or with the directions it took with content creation for example (living story etc). And I don't blame anybody for not staying up-to-date with a game they aren't interested in.

I'd prefer Anet just nerfed conditions so it isn't mandatory for an entire game mode to counter 1 unfun and broken mechanic. Nerfing conditions doesn't need to target damage or duration btw, but could for example (finally) address the super easy mass application we have right now. Or add a universal cleansing to all classes (maybe remove 1 on dodge or something) as a base-line to level the playing field a bit. Because one of my personally biggest criticisms regarding condi has always been that it's highly effective against some classes that have kitten poor cleansing capabilities in their kit or need to jump through hoops to get a few stacks off while it's virtually useless against some other classes, which have easy access with low cd (typically support-heavy specs but they can also go for damage and still benefit greatly from their defensive skills).

Well, I think since this is the sub-forum dedicated to sPvP nobody is really talking about siege battles (WvW/Cyrodiil) or PvEvP or stuff like that. While they can certainly be a lot of fun and I do also like to join WvW for example, it's not what this is about. The equivalent to sPvP in ESO would be Battlegrounds, which you didn't even mention and I think not even talking about what should probably be the most competitive PvP mode also has some message. Like I said, I think sPvP in rpgs is dead - or maybe was never really alive/too niche to sustain any real competition. There were certainly some games with quite large populations in arenas and battlegrounds, thinking of WoW for example, but for some reason every RPG game studio just ruins their arena-style PvP scene sooner or later and I don't really know why.. And I'd argue that it's actually the studios themselves because usually the game mode is thriving (maybe not financially enough to the shareholder's liking tho?) until a series of controversial adjustments is implemented or the devs just completely abandon it and all the players just lose interest.

Agreed, it's a bummer. In my opinion GW2 has the best movement and combat system in all MMOs and PvP used to be a lot of fun too. But the devs have abandoned the game mode, their only focus is now on PvE with a very limited capacity for an ongoing WvW change that has been in the works for years and is still not out. I doubt PvP will ever be of any interest to the devs tho since it doesn't bring a lot of cash. Casual players chilling in the open world just buy way more stuff off the cash shop and that's what they are catering to. Don't get me wrong, I love the open world stuff and basically all pve content apart from the story itself, it's a lot of good content but yea. Don't expect any support/fixed or new content for anything else from the devs.

This has been discussed ad nauseam in the past few weeks - yet again. Totally agree with split team and solo-only queue (although there would probably a debate regarding the team queue because I'd favor arbitrary teams, even 4+1 is ok imo) but I highly doubt Anet will do ANY of that anyway, so further discussing the topic is likely pretty useless. Even disabling duoQ is probably too much time spent on Anet's behalf as none of their staff is remotely interested in PvP and I could even imagine they have a block from higher up (NCSoft) for working on anything but expansions, pve bugfixes and the gem store (+ limited capacity for World Restructuring since WvW is still popular). But yea, like already mentioned, ATs and mATs are insufficient for proper team play. Case and point: There is no sPvP community. However, there was a community when we still had team queue, so either ATs are clearly not sufficient to sustain the game mode or everyone who was interested in competitive PvP has already lost interest in the game (mode) a long time ago and won't come back. In both cases this is bad for sPvP. And of course the vast majority of players are solo-Q'ing. Nobody knows anybody to queue up together. There is no community anymore and hasn't been for ages, and I'd argue that is also why pvp is in a constant downfall. Virtually every other game mode - even kittening erp - has a bigger sense of community than sPvP. Its "community" only consists of a bunch of individuals with tunnel vision chilling out in the lobby/arena and waiting for the Q to pop. No wonder people get tilted, toxic and leave. If you don't have a good time then there's no saving grace. With friends you can at least meme about it and still enjoy the clownfiesta. If people are so adamant about solo-only they should go to ESO or Blade&Soul where you can play solo-only. Oh, wait, their pvp scenes are also dead. Wonder why..

Maybe open world or WvW. Those are the 2 things not mentioned and considering open world pve is the single most played type of content, followed by WvW, it's also highly probable I'd say. Anet wants PvP to die and players should stop taking PvP seriously. Even back when Anet still had some people caring about the game mode (like BenP) virtually nothing happened. Now that Anet has absolutely no person even remotely interested in PvP the game mode is dead for good. And I think the shift in focus even comes from the very top as NCSoft has apparently abandoned pvp in all their games. The PvP section in Blade&Souls forum is also pretty dire and this game even had a rather successful e-sport league for quite a long time (unlike GW2's journey into esl, which was more like a flash in the pan). So yea. I think PvP in general is pretty much dead for RPGs unfortunately, at least I don't know a single mmo or online rpg with a still alive pvp scene. Only one I could think of rn that's not p2w is GW1, which still has a rather active GvG community but ehh.. gw1 just doesn't compare to gw2 game play wise imo, way less fun. Final Fantasy 14 apparently is also quite big again but maybe the hype after some pvp reworks has already fallen off and I think the game play is also pretty kitten compared to GW2 or ESO (which, imo, has pretty bs pvp too unfortunately).

1. No. I would've more than a full set of legendary gear by now and I'm not even that active lmao. That's way too much and I don't think rewards are necessary at all, let alone legendary gear. Edit for clarification: I do appreciate rewards, since this is a mmo and I want to be able to play pvp while not missing out on gold, aka not "waste my time" in that sense that everyone else playing would get more gold value for just grinding or doing virtually anything else. But I don't think rewards should be an incentive, just a mere "compensation" for time spent. So I'm more than happy with just getting gold or universally useful things like mats or something like that. No need to put a carrot on a stick in front of players imo. 2. This has been discussed for ages, the last 3 weeks or so too. I won't go into detail on that. 3. Also no for me, upping rewards are not necessary imo. I'd prefer to just get pips and stuff for unranked too, so in terms of loot there wouldn't be a difference between ranked and unranked anymore, meaning people who just want to get their drops can go play unranked and don't bother ranked teams. Maybe Ascended Shards of Glory and/or PvP tickets could be gated behind a repeatable ranked win achievement if Anet really wants it to remain gated behind ranked seasons. But honestly, I guess Anet doesn't want pvp popularity/population to increase. I think the current staff is happy that PvP is finally on its last breath and hopefully soon completely dead as they haven't been interested in it for years. sPvP didn't even get a single mention anywhere since even before End of Dragons. Apart from balance updates I think the last reference to anything sPvP related was in 2018 or 2019 or so? No hope we will get something in the future unless Anet has a massive shift in priorities. Which I'm not completely dismissing, especially after the shift from Living Story to expansion driven updates (which I highly appreciate) but I'm quite pessimistic nonetheless. sPvP is probably already too far gone to be resurrected, so investing in it would probably be a gamble for Anet anyway. Maybe exactly because of the shift to expansions Anet will finally get more funds to properly support WvW and PvP again and we will finally get something new but I don't think so. Debt is expensive nowadays, their business probably needs it to keep the lights on and survive a bit of a rougher time period in the studio.

I know it was from ESO, I've been playing eso too, battlegrounds included. I think it's kitten but that's beside the point - not BGs in particular but the combat/movement in general. You continue to provide examples of a split queue, which I favor, but that's not what I was asking for. Probably irrelevant tho, I get that you also prefer a split queue too, not solo-Q only. The forums are flooded with "rEmOvE dUoQ!!1!" posts without the context of replacing it with a split queue tho, including this one. OP suggested limiting premades to casual play only and removing anything from competitive other than solo-Q only. This is what I'm advocating against. I could go through my post history on the forums and probably pull out a handful of occurrences where I got flak for suggesting a split queue because "team queue is not worth it" with arguments like low population, longer queue times for everyone (as the community is split further), etc.. Which I totally get, but I still think it's absolutely mandatory for a healthy pvp community to at least have the option. Worst case scenario would be that team queue is dead on launch and stays dead because everyone already abandoned sPvP for good. But not having this in the game at all is stupid imo. A community driven game mode like pvp can't exist when the community can't play together at all and we've been witnessing its decay for years. At this point even some completely abandoned games have a more active player base than GW2, case and point: GW1. It didn't receive a single competitive update in more than a decade and I feel like it's still more competitive than GW2 currently. I don't fully understand what you mean with 5v1 but I'm assuming a full stack vs a 4-stack + 1 random? At least that's what I meant with what we have different views on and I disagree with. I've been playing 5v4+1 several times in CS2 and I would not call it uncompetitive at all, quite the opposite. I'd really love to have this in GW2 as well. At least as a solo player I'd rather be matched with a 4-stack than to join a complete clownfiesta of 2 full pug teams because with a stack I could be almost sure that my team mates are at least coordinated and I can focus on my role or fill what their team is lacking maybe. Even if they are bad, it at least prevents the (imo) single most infuriating thing during a match, which are armchair commanders who want to push their kitten silver strats onto the team and when nobody follows their orders they just go afk and whine in spawn like a little kitten. I used to get one of those in like every 3rd or 4th match in g3/p1, it only gets better in p2 imo but they even exist there for some reason. Especially when the MM gives me gold team mates anyway, as nobody plays anymore. The rest, I think, has been discussed enough, I won't comment on that anymore.

You seemed reasonable in another thread. Sad. I won't go into detail on you putting words in my mouth and dismissing my opinion to side with a popular person but let me explain myself. I think I never said something that suggests "I'm right and everybody is wrong", at least that wasn't my intention. I said this is a stupid argument because you are basically arguing against reality. If ATs were sufficient then where are all the pvp guilds GW2 used to have? If a few matches every 6 hours can keep a community alive - why aren't there tons and tons of groups enrolling and a big community supporting it? I see you arguing that "92% are playing solo!!1!!" but that's just delusional.. These stats are from where no team-queue exists so of course the vast majority can't play as a team lmao. Or are you saying gw2 is kitten and can only be played as a solo in a team? Well, okay, I could take that as you opinion. Don't agree in the slightest but sure. And you are - in general - arguing against almost every successful competitive team based game in existence, as you are effectively saying they are all "stupid and uncompetitive"? At least I don't know of a single other game that doesn't offer a mixed team queue for ranked at all. I mean, you can probably come up with an example of a game where this is the case but the next question is: is it successful? If it isn't then it's clearly not a good example. You obviously don't have to have other games leading as an example to make a point but personally, I see the common structure of the vast amount of successful competitive games as proof to my point. Feel free to disagree. And you do realize that ranking and leaderboards are THE single reason why a lot (probably most?) people even play competitive games in the first place, right? So yes, "slapping on" ratings and a leaderboard are pretty much the only distinctive feature for Ranked modes in most games out there. And that's enough, honestly. I think we have a fundamentally different view on the matter so I doubt we will ever agree on this topic but that's also fine. In my opinion teams are the backbone of a competitive game. Without being able to queue up as a team (of arbitrary size) the "community" will decay and eventually consist of a group of individuals, that is getting smaller and smaller by the day. As we can see with GW2 for the last several years. If someone asked me, my ideal solution for GW2 would be a solo-only Q and a mixed-team Q* with their separate rating divisions and leaderboard, as I have said many times in the past. I do realize solo-only is important for people like you and it does make it equally unfair for everyone, so that's kinda good I guess. But I'd prefer to be a solo player put together with a coordinated 4-stack than with 4 randoms, even against a full stack. * Mixed could be anything like 4+1 3+2 2+2+1 ... and full stack of course. Essentially the same mixed-team like CS2 has. I think it allows but tries to avoid matching 2+1+1+1 together in a team for example. I agree tho, it's already too late. The tipping point was years ago. At this point team queue will not bring a lot of people back and I think nothing will ever revive sPvP. Anet is probably wise to not try and resurrect it. I feel like a broken record at this point but sure, try to pressure Anet to remove duo-Q, let the last 500 people still playing sPvP have their peace. I'm indifferent to this and I've never advocated for duo-Q to remain in the game either. If this is so important to you and the 10 other people constantly spaming on the forums about it then I'm from now on your biggest supporter for removing it. I have nothing to add at this point, everything I wanted to say has been said, so yea.. feel free to twist my words again I don't really care, I'm out for good now.

Correction: Full team queue was taken out because people were crying about getting matched solo+4 against full stacks, the exact same argument with duo-Q, just different numbers. Back then GW2 even had an esport league, which I'm convinced could've succeeded if Anet didn't kitten up the balance and neglect it so hard that the league had to be canceled. I used to be in some pvp guilds and still had at least some friends playing the game, but with the removal of 5v5 pvp guilds died in no time and all my friends quit. None of my friends play anymore and I actually know nobody whose friends are even remotely interested in GW2 anymore either, so of course only a bunch of sad individuals are left. No wonder 92% are solo-Q'ing. The only people I know who are still playing pvp are the ones who have always played pvp, no matter how kitten it was. And no, ATs are NOT the same thing or even remotely enough and it's mind boggling that everybody always brings this up as an excuse. How is having 2 or 3 matches every few hours enough for a full team? Even Teapot made this stupid point over and over again. Like.. you finally manage to get 5 people together and then have to wait several hours until the next AT starts? Or all come on at the same time to enroll.. there's absolutely no flexibility and even 1 dude delaying for 10min results in possibly the only opportunity for that day gone. How stupid is that? If ATs worked or was enough content for full teams we would still have a pvp community but it is very very obviously insufficient so please stop making that argument, reality is proving y'all wrong.. Heck, even GW1 has a way healthier pvp community than GW2, wonder why... (hint: guilds/teams can play together against other guilds/teams *wink wink*). Last time I checked there were at least 200 guilds still competing (with leaderboard btw) and I even spectated some GvG matches. On-demand ATs have been on Anet's list since 2018 and we still don't have it so they will likely never come. I've been advocating for a split solo-only and mixed-team queue for years too but this will also never come.. the only hard pill to swallow is that sPvP in general is already kittening dead, Anet doesn't care about the game mode or the players there. No amount of posting on the forum will get Anet to spend a single penny on making PvP changes outside of "balancing" either. The game mode is doomed, just accept it. Outside of balance changes there has been 0 change for Ranked in the last idk, 8 years? EoD and SotO didn't even mention sPvP at all! Anet is done with this and has been for a long time, anyone who's still expecting a change is completely delusional. Obviously I still hope for some changes or new content (at some point) but I have 0 expecations anymore, even removing duo-Q is too much effort for Anet at this point, it will never come, get over it.

It's so kittening hilarious. If you told anyone in CS2, LoL, Dota2, Valorant,... basically ANY competitive team game ever, that you can only solo Q in ranked games and "yOu CaN pLaY wItH fRiEnDs In UnRaNkEd!1!!!" you could watch this game collapse and die in real-time, yet in GW2 soooo many players are obsessed with the smallest issue imaginable. I've never experienced a game where people are so kitten about being in a 4+1 stack against a full-team that the devs had to remove arbitrary team sizes altogether and people are still crying about "uuhhh duo is broken uhhh". Idk about your matches in particular but I didn't feel any difference back when duo-Q was only until plat2+ or when duo was removed entirely. Been playing solo on a top250 level for the last 5 years too, so I don't know what to tell you. It's not duo-Q that's holding you guys back, seriously. Real talk: If you think duo queue is the only reason why you aren't in the leaderboard then please just stop playing this game because duo is one of the least problems ranked has. Also, you do realize that 5v5 in ranked was the original change that killed competitive game play in gw2, right? Why would anyone form a pvp guild or join any community if you can't even play the single most important queue in pvp together? Like I said many times in the last 2 weeks or so: I couldn't give any less kittens about duo-Q being in the game but remove duo-Q and the game will lose even more players + it's really not nearly as much of an issue as you guys make it look. I'm out, this topic is so utterly ridiculous, it's insane.

But you can already pick either Stronghold only, Conquest only and both for Unranked, I don't really understand your suggestion.. Do you want to combine the queue so nobody will ever be able to play Stronghold again because you can't queue for Stronghold only anymore and you'd get voted out 100% of the time? Yes, and I think Stronghold is actually way more fun than Conquest ngl.

Hard No for me for two reasons and: is not really a solution because 1) none of my friends are at my level so queueing up with them in ATs is kinda nonsensical + I think on-demand ATs have been planned since 2018 or so and we still don't have it with 0 mentioned upcoming changes for PvP either. So I don't think anyone is even working on sPvP at all and even if, in this low population environment there would probably never be enough demand for on-demand ATs anyway. 2) I like to theorycraft and like to test either my own builds, other meta builds or simply other classes without performance pressure (either from ranked or in a tournament) And testing stuff in Stronghold as the only casual mode doesn't work either because the objectives are completely different so builds won't translate super well. You'd also need to find way to "introduce" new players since so far they need to reach pvp rank 20 via Unranked before they can join Ranked, which I think makes sense. Removing the requirement doesn't sound good to me and neither does forcing new players to play Stronghold until they hit rank 20, then throw them into a completely new (to them) game mode with different objectives and everything. I don't know where this hate for queuing with friends comes from? I get why duo-Q is bad design but why also take away the possibility to full team in unranked? ATs are the ONLY place for full teams then with no possibility to practice or anything other than private arenas.

I know I'm not the only person who hates condi in competitive modes but any time I commented that it's annoying people were always arguing against me since "power is still meta". I don't really get how power outperforming in a coordinated team settings and being way more popular among competitive players as a play style is in any way related to condi making ranked queue an absolute cesspool of bullshittery, but there's ALWAYS some people who come up with this argument. Case and point: And apparently Anet agrees. As long as people prefer a power play style "condi can't be an issue, right?" so nothing will ever change probably. At least I think I haven't heard a single person say that their condi build is fun to play or offers an engaging play style ever, apart from maybe when enemies die like flies against it.

Unpopular opinion but I think high condi damage in PvP content is awfully stupid in general. Classes with only a few cleanses will get hard countered while classes with access to a lot of cleanses don't even care most of the time. Super hard to balance, especially since a proper team support will make a condi enemy almost useless but in your regular pug games without a dedicated support they likely are absolute stompers. I was running a kitten condi build with thief for a while and it's just so stupid how effective this is against the right team composition while being absolute garbage in more "organized" matches. Absolutely 0 counter play other than cleansing or outhealing either.

Out of curiosity. At what ratings have you guys been playing, say, in 2023? Idk, I have never felt THIS to be a particular issue, not even: When I'm playing against Boyce or Sind even I'm kittened, doesn't really matter if they are duo Q or not. Especially since a lot of "high lvl pvp" players play together in (m)ATs and already know how to play around each other without even communicating. In general, my experience so far is that most people don't communicate at all with their duo-Q partner, they just eliminate 1 bad rng afk throw spot in their team. Arguing "that's an advantage too" would be a bit of a stretch tho imo because why not fix stuff to improve the match quality so people have less afk/throwers in their matches in general instead of trying to drag everyone down to the same shitshow level of a clownfiesta pvp currently is? I don't know, I was engaged in this topic several times the last week or so but so far I couldn't make out a single argument pointing towards "duo-Q is the root of all evil". Instead, it's always just another symptom that gets worse and worse with lower population numbers. I'm not saying duo-Q should stay either btw. I don't really care, I am pretty much solo only and don't even have people to queue up with. But with virtually no attention to pvp from Anet I think duo-Q is FAR from the top priority to fix the game mode. Maybe even with a slight improvement: You can choose with which char you want to queue up (your current one being the default selection) and get auto-relogged on match start (once map selection is done, basically). This way the char is de-facto locked in for the matchmaker but people can still run around with their pve char and wait for the queue to pop. So there's practically no reason to allow swapping after accepting anymore as I think this is pretty much the only reason I have ever heard speaking against class locking during the match. Would also give a bit of a quality of life improvement to "legit" opponents of said change as they don't have to join and manually relog to their pvp char.

Would be a point worth considering if the population was big enough for the matchmaker to work properly. Otherwise anyone can be at the receiving end of this without any fault of their own. I've played my first placement match yesterday and we absolutely stomped the enemy team with like 501 : 73. I know at least one of the opponents is a pretty good player tho, wouldn't really sit right to me punishing him for not being able to carry 4 people's kitten. The rewards are less than winning anyway and I'm not opposed to having participation rewards in an mmo. Honestly, I'd just make all rewards available to Unranked too (other than leaderboard titles for obvious reasons) so people who are only in for loot can stay out of ranked and not bother "more competitive minded players". Nothing. Rating has lost its meaning a long time ago. Without personal performance taken into account and everyone getting matched together/against each other ranging from gold 1 to plat 3, there's virtually no competition at all. I think personal performance, while always nice, is likely not mandatory if enough players are present so both competing teams are always at a comparable skill rating. But in the current environment these systems don't work as intended anymore. Unless Anet gives PvP some direly needed attention it will only get worse. Have been saying this for years now and so far I'm proven right continuously as sPvP has been on a rather steady decline since idk, at least 5 years now, likely longer (I'd actually say since HoT but there have been some pretty decent times occasionally in between). We need more content/variety and systems in place to prevent afk players and flaming/ping spaming as it is not productive in any way and drives away new players like crazy. Until pvp can attract more players and the population grows again, sPvP is fubar. Anet needs to change some pieces of the foundation and treat some of the core issues, not just some symptoms of now failing systems. Otherwise it will never regrow.

True. I was looking through some old "Upcoming PvP/competitive changes" and got a little bit sad when I read BenP's old posts. Was always fun to see him in Jawgeous's chat back when he streamed on twitch and Ben was probably the only reason why PvP wasn't complete garbage back then (compared to now, it was in a declining state compared to like the HoT-era already tho). Yea but the balancing team doesn't make new content, that was my point. There's probably nobody left working on actual gameplay updates for PvP. Anet in general seems to only revamp competitive stuff on a cosmetic level at best. Alliances and world restructuring in WvW also has 0 impact on actual gameplay. Sure, the experience might be a bit better if guilds have at least partial control over who you're matched with but the gameplay-loop stays 100% the same. Sometimes that's also great but Ranked for example hasn't seen even cosmetic changes I think ever since the Colloseum map got reworked or Djinn was introduced (can't remember which one was first, both happened ages ago).

True, very good change imo. I was first running that build in sPvP actually and got to plat2 pretty easily. Was an awesome counter to Scourge+Firebrand, which completely dominated pvp back then and classes couldn't spam reflects 24/7. Good old times. Back when Jawgeous and Co were still streaming and casting mATs and stuff (I was also streaming but I wasn't nearly as big on twitch). I think after I took a break a variant of that build became kinda popular and was nerfed into the ground. Was quite sad when I came back and found out that Unload almost required me to take out an initiative-loan to use it. Great PvE change tho, would be too broken if it was also applied to competitive game modes. I actually never stopped running the build in WvW and sometimes even in PvP as it's still pretty good (mostly Daredevil now tho - the relic of the daredevil is SUPER strong with the right build), although not as broken as it used to be.