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What's Wrong With GW2 PvP


CalmTheStorm.2364

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As much as i like pvp i like these side activities too.

 

PvP needs lots of love especially if you are new player or one that has only dabbled with it here and there pvp just outright sucks mainly because it feels that i am constantly but against people who have played pvp for thousands of hours and secondly for me to enjoy pvp there is way too much burst damage that wipes me out before i can even react.

 

I would love for the PvP lobby have more difficult training "dummy" ai enemy bots to train against because i would prefer that 100% instead of being a weakest link of my team.

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13 hours ago, Scolix.4879 said:

As much as i like pvp i like these side activities too.

 

PvP needs lots of love especially if you are new player or one that has only dabbled with it here and there pvp just outright sucks mainly because it feels that i am constantly but against people who have played pvp for thousands of hours and secondly for me to enjoy pvp there is way too much burst damage that wipes me out before i can even react.

 

I would love for the PvP lobby have more difficult training "dummy" ai enemy bots to train against because i would prefer that 100% instead of being a weakest link of my team.

You're right; the matchmaking in PvP is pretty atrocious at times and it makes it very challenging for new players (and even veteran players) to get into fair matchups consistently.  It is a serious deficiency in PvP and has been discussed in many posts.

 

But that actually brings me to the reason for the OP: Priorities.  People play this game chiefly for a.) the story, b.) adventure, and c.) combat (and not necessarily in that order).  People do NOT primarily play this game for fishing (or crafting or gathering, etc).  It's absolutely fine for those things to be part of the game, but they are the side dishes, not the main course.

 

Why, then, is so much being invested in the "side dishes" like fishing and skiffs when there are so many things in the core gameplay, most notably profession balance, that are lacking or broken?  Focus on the things that make GW2 a great game in the first place, and let the fishing and boats come later.

 

20 years from now, if people remember this game at all, it will be because of immersive and compelling game content--in all game modes, PvE, PvP, and WvW.  It won't be for fishing or boats.  Let's put the focus where it really belongs.

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For me, everything boils down to the game mode. Fighting over nodes is boring gameplay especially in mmo pvp. Every mmo pvp meta revolves around being the tankiest, most survivable you can be while still being able to burst someone down. Gw2 is no exception and its game mode just amplifies some of the worst, most unfun builds: hambow, cele, bunkers, scourges, etc.

 

Conquest also requires you to know how to position yourself on the map on top of knowing everything else that you need to know about playing a pvp game. It's arguably a more important skill to have over being mechanically proficient. If you ever watch a good player stream, they constantly complain about people who shouldnt be where they are, and frankly why should those people bother to learn in this extremely casual game? Why should a new player coming into this game first learn rotations over actually being good? It's very unsatisfying.

 

The game mode also makes for some major snowballs. Soon as a person dies, their team is at a big disadvantage. This disadvantage often perpetuates until the end of the game because the deaths and respawns are always staggered and it takes communication to regroup, something that just doesnt exist in most games. 

 

There's other reasons why the game is bad like matchmaking, population, but yeah the game mode is definitely the worst offender. A more traditional pvp mode like arenas would alleviate a lot of problems but it's unlikely and probably unfeasible to change the whole balance direction for a game mode that doesnt even have a lot of players to begin with. In short, the game is unsalvageable and we should all move on to greener pastures. Any future lost ark pvpers?

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🙂 Priorities indeed.

 

Aside from the sale of the expansion, the new fishing activity will open up another source of income at the gemstore. Im predicting stuff like boat skins, fishing rod skins, special bait, upgrade to a bigger boat, special bags and the like. 

 

I read a few months back that GW2 generated 61B SK Won (approximately $52M USD) in 2020. Since NCSoft is a public company, feel free to look this up. The pandemic and lockdowns may have boosted their revenue by a little bit but not exponentially. I searched online about their recent employee estimate count and according to ANET's LinkedIn page, they have 259 employees. 

 

In business, you generally add between 30-40% above the employee's salary, thru benefits, if you want to be competitive and attract the right people.  With inflation and all, let's say the average employee makes $120K/year benefits included (in Silicon Valley FB, Goog, Salesforce employees avg $230K/yr)

 

In labor costs alone, they are already at $31M. This doesn't include marketing, the affiliate payouts they give partners, massive server costs and maintenance, rent, other overhead costs, allowances for the ones working from home etc. That number is a mystery so Im guestimating at $10-12M. That leaves them with a gross margin profit of around $10M/year or $830K/mo. 

 

I dont think they are losing money but the margins are a bit low for a game this size. Some Mobile gaming companies with 20 employees easily out earns GW2. 

 

A little investment in PvP would be great but it's hard to find a way to capitalize from the small player base. 

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4 hours ago, greedywholesome.9081 said:

🙂 Priorities indeed.

 

Aside from the sale of the expansion, the new fishing activity will open up another source of income at the gemstore. Im predicting stuff like boat skins, fishing rod skins, special bait, upgrade to a bigger boat, special bags and the like. 

 

I read a few months back that GW2 generated 61B SK Won (approximately $52M USD) in 2020. Since NCSoft is a public company, feel free to look this up. The pandemic and lockdowns may have boosted their revenue by a little bit but not exponentially. I searched online about their recent employee estimate count and according to ANET's LinkedIn page, they have 259 employees. 

 

In business, you generally add between 30-40% above the employee's salary, thru benefits, if you want to be competitive and attract the right people.  With inflation and all, let's say the average employee makes $120K/year benefits included (in Silicon Valley FB, Goog, Salesforce employees avg $230K/yr)

 

In labor costs alone, they are already at $31M. This doesn't include marketing, the affiliate payouts they give partners, massive server costs and maintenance, rent, other overhead costs, allowances for the ones working from home etc. That number is a mystery so Im guestimating at $10-12M. That leaves them with a gross margin profit of around $10M/year or $830K/mo. 

 

I dont think they are losing money but the margins are a bit low for a game this size. Some Mobile gaming companies with 20 employees easily out earns GW2. 

 

A little investment in PvP would be great but it's hard to find a way to capitalize from the small player base. 

You are most likely right.  I don't have enough business background to speak intelligently about the numbers, but it certainly is the case that the bottom line drives most business decisions.

 

I bet they could monetize (and incentivize people to play) PvP with new/better skins and items that are unique to PvP.

 

I'd also love to have some accurate statistics on how many people are playing each game mode.  People routinely say "there aren't many people playing PvP" and that's probably true, but just how few are we talking here?

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6 hours ago, ellesee.8297 said:

In short, the game is unsalvageable and we should all move on to greener pastures. 

Whoa, let's slow down there, Mr Doom and Gloom.

 

It's true that we are currently in a bunker meta and that there are plenty of problems with that.  However, that's hardly unsalvageable.  Rather, it is a problem that could be fixed- if ANet cared to invest the time and resources to do so.

 

Second, most of your complaints about conquest (the need for players to know their roles, the importance of positioning and communication, consequences when a team makes a mistake (e.g. snowballing)) aren't really critiques of Conquest but rather organized sports in general.  Soccer, football, basketball, etc. all have similar dynamics in their own way.  While you may not find such activities fun, lots of people enjoy the layers of complexity and strategy in sports (e-sports included!).  A better conclusion to draw from this would be "Conquest is not my preferred game type."  And that's totally fine.  

 

You are right, though, that having more game types (e.g. Arena/Team DM, Stronghold, etc) available outside of mini-seasons would be helpful.  First, though, we need to have a large enough PvP population to warrant the investment of resources to develop those game modes.  And the only way we're going to increase the PvP population is to make the game mode more newbie-friendly, improve profession balance, and to improve matchmaking.  And THAT brings us back to the thesis of this thread--that ANet should be putting more of their time and energy into those things rather than window dressing like boats and fishing.

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6 hours ago, ellesee.8297 said:

Why should a new player coming into this game first learn rotations over actually being good? It's very unsatisfying.

 

I'll have you know I was schooled by someone on the forums about optimal skill rotations in PvP for rev, I believe these new players are putting plenty of time learning their skill rotations. 🤣

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I hate anet development decisions in the past 5 years. No map obstruction fixes, no separate balance for each game mode, only one game mode ever available at any given time, anet acceptance of cheaters and botters, yearly balanaces/removal of ammulets that destroy diversity fun and balance, their lack of communication on their pvp goals, the balances they do is either insignificant, or so overly done they do it only once a year creating overly performing easy to play classes that dont get addressed for years. If theres one thing i could wish from gw2 it would be that i have never picked up this game 9 years ago. That amount of dissapointment from pvp side of the game is immeasurable at this point.

Edited by Eddbopkins.2630
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1 hour ago, Eddbopkins.2630 said:

I hate anet development decisions in the past 5 years. No map obstruction fixes, no separate balance for each game mode, only one game mode ever available at any given time, anet acceptance of cheaters and botters, yearly balanaces/removal of ammulets that destroy diversity fun and balance, their lack of communication on their pvp goals, the balances they do is either insignificant, or so overly done they do it only once a year creating overly performing easy to play classes that dont get addressed for years. If theres one thing i could wish from gw2 it would be that i have never picked up this game 9 years ago. That amount of dissapointment from pvp side of the game is immeasurable at this point.

 

Yes, the lack of communication, lack of assurance that things will get better. Making the current player base feel they are heard may reverse the downward trend we are going through. No word from them about match manipulation, bots, and that the population is improving through engagement. We're not getting any of that. 

 

The population is so low that I'd go against players hundreds of points above me. As a loyal pvper, I feel betrayed from all the mismatched games. Started the season at G2, literally a few more points to P1 then I got farmed proper and barely holding on to G. Losing 8 games in a row is terrible when I climbed up alone, early in the season. No windtrades shenanigans, just Q'd solo

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10 hours ago, ellesee.8297 said:

 

 

Conquest also requires you to know how to position yourself on the map on top of knowing everything else that you need to know about playing a pvp game. It's arguably a more important skill to have over being mechanically proficient. If you ever watch a good player stream, they constantly complain about people who shouldnt be where they are, and frankly why should those people bother to learn in this extremely casual game? Why should a new player coming into this game first learn rotations over actually being good? It's very unsatisfying.

 

The game mode also makes for some major snowballs. Soon as a person dies, their team is at a big disadvantage. This disadvantage often perpetuates until the end of the game because the deaths and respawns are always staggered and it takes communication to regroup, something that just doesnt exist in most games. 

 

 

 

Yes in theory conquest seem so easy but there are a lot of nuisances newer gamers need to grasp.  

 

If Anet spent a few grand and produced a video on the basics of the game, I'm sure newer players wouldn't be as intimidated. Also, they should assign community leaders/volunteers to set the tone and mood of the game. Preferably friendly, non-elitist ones. If we have an actual community with open channels of communication, I believe the population will grow organically. 

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13 hours ago, greedywholesome.9081 said:

I dont think they are losing money but the margins are a bit low for a game this size. Some Mobile gaming companies with 20 employees easily out earns GW2. 

 

It's not so simple. In MMOs you have much more revenue after major patch or expansions. In current situation, where people rather wait for release of expansion than play actual game - it's pretty normal. So I think that we need to wait for statistic from 2021 (start of betas) and release in early 2022 - for actual picture of things. We passed pretty great "crisis" in NCsoft and GW2.  

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6 hours ago, Loules.8601 said:

It's not so simple. In MMOs you have much more revenue after major patch or expansions. In current situation, where people rather wait for release of expansion than play actual game - it's pretty normal. So I think that we need to wait for statistic from 2021 (start of betas) and release in early 2022 - for actual picture of things. We passed pretty great "crisis" in NCsoft and GW2.  

Yeah let's wait and see. I do hope they make money and re-invest back to PvP

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23 hours ago, greedywholesome.9081 said:

A little investment in PvP would be great but it's hard to find a way to capitalize from the small player base. 

 

Yuuuuup. It all eventually comes down to this. It's why ANet time and again always focuses on open world, story, fluff and cosmetics, because that's what draws in the biggest crowds. PvP, WvW and raids/strikes may each have their own dedicated core of fans, but they are insignificant compared to the money bags that the casual base can bring in. (Well, leaving aside the whales for the moment, but I very much doubt that a great deal of those are hanging out in those three modes.) This is why we really should be looking at making the less popular game modes more welcoming and easier to have fun in. ANet may very well want to make bigger and better things for the rest of GW2, but as a business, it must always pass the "is this a sound financial move or good use of resources?" test.

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43 minutes ago, Zaxares.5419 said:

 

Yuuuuup. It all eventually comes down to this. It's why ANet time and again always focuses on open world, story, fluff and cosmetics, because that's what draws in the biggest crowds. PvP, WvW and raids/strikes may each have their own dedicated core of fans, but they are insignificant compared to the money bags that the casual base can bring in. (Well, leaving aside the whales for the moment, but I very much doubt that a great deal of those are hanging out in those three modes.) This is why we really should be looking at making the less popular game modes more welcoming and easier to have fun in. ANet may very well want to make bigger and better things for the rest of GW2, but as a business, it must always pass the "is this a sound financial move or good use of resources?" test.

 Agreed, both what you said, and the initial post you were responding to.

 

I am of the opinion that spvp is probably a bottom-tier moneymaker for ANet, based solely on the fact that it requires absolutely no money investment to do well at what matters in that game mode. No cosmetics needed, no server transfers, bag space is not that hard to manage, etc. The mode also showers you with xp tomes and transmutes, which are among the most useful consumables in the game. It's not hard to get a legendary backpack out of it in just a couple of seasons, and I still think the spvp legendary armors are the fastest and easiest set to farm up.

 

In short, it demands so little investment from players, but gives so much - I can't see how ANet could possibly make any real money out of it without something like esports. Of course we all saw how that worked out. I'm not blaming ANet for failing in the esports scene though - it would take a significant amount of effort to really fork off the pvp balance from pve and wvw (and even more effort to fundamentally address some other imbalances in the game). all for a possible esports payoff. Why do that when doing random fluff for LW and pve makes ANet some for-sure money right now? Anyone who hasn't run an actual business could probably chime in and say "well it's an investment! Invest in pvp for a brighter future!" All I have to say is that mmo pvp is a very small niche - there is not much money to be had in it.

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On 9/12/2021 at 11:40 AM, greedywholesome.9081 said:

A little investment in PvP would be great but it's hard to find a way to capitalize from the small player base. 

 

I see the argument of "not worth investing because of small amount of players" a lot and it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

There's a small amount of players because the game mode is not invested in, and the game mode is not invested in because there's a small amount of players. That's just a cycle that'll lead to the death of the game mode before long, and the only way out is for them to bite the bullet and invest in it regardless of small chance of instant capital return, and just take the gamble of "if we build it, they will come" and hope a good capital return will happen later down the line.

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PvP has the same problem as every game i have played that has pvp.

 

Rude douchebags that make you not want to play pvp ever again.

People have weird expectations that everybody is some kind of master class pvp champion. I have pretty thick skin towards morons but i feel kind of sad for anyone who is totally new and they join in pvp and are immediately greeted by irrationally angry people who really should take some vacation from playing anything pvp related.

 

Class balancing is the second problem and how lot of times mmo's have this problem that stupidly OP classes can be OP for entire expansion(s) and balance patches take way too long to implement.

 

Botting and the lack of dealing with them.

 

Psychotic interest to implement E-Sports crap to mmo's it never works and makes most people hating the entire game mode.

 

And as i stated before match making in this game and most mmo's i have played sucks there is nothing fun to be either stomped or being the ones who just crap can the other team in seconds and wins by almost 90% lead on score either way its boring.

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On 9/14/2021 at 5:46 AM, Hirosama Nadasaki.6792 said:

 

I see the argument of "not worth investing because of small amount of players" a lot and it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

 

There's a small amount of players because the game mode is not invested in, and the game mode is not invested in because there's a small amount of players. That's just a cycle that'll lead to the death of the game mode before long, and the only way out is for them to bite the bullet and invest in it regardless of small chance of instant capital return, and just take the gamble of "if we build it, they will come" and hope a good capital return will happen later down the line.

 

I want them, Anet, to make money in hopes some get re-invested in PvP. I've stopped playing for now but it if they recognize how amazing the mechanics are and how there are a lot of new pvpers in the scene, I hope it's enough for them to give the mode more attention. 

 

In-game when I played, I always answer pvp questions from beginners on mapchat. I never call anyone noobs or anything belligerent that would pull the mode down.  

 

 

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5 hours ago, CalmTheStorm.2364 said:

BREAKING NEWS!!!

 

ANet:  "While fishing, a player will have a chance to "catch" a Minion Mancer in PvP and drag them back to PvE where they belong."

 

I take it all back.  Fishing FTW.  

 

Im honestly looking forward to fishing. Already saving my gems for the titanium fishing rod upgrade and OP bait to catch the zoo mancers you speak of. Wait, can they breathe underwater? NVM, they're undead. Probably not worth putting on the grill/barbie. 

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