The major problem with PvP : The Community, Anet, and Toxicity

[Waffles.5632]

Fact : The best way to ensure the death of a hobby is for veterans of that hobby to be rude and elitists towards new people entering the space.

Opinion : The majority of new  players will try to actually pvp for fun, but the majority of pvp veterans actually play pvp to just abuse the current meta/broken specs. They do not play for fun, but rather to win at any cost, even if it means abusing pvp/class/game mechanics. You will see players switch to necro, guard support, decap druid, or any number of high tuned bruiser specs which win battles primarily by attrition and survival, having the class and stats/numbers do the majority of the work for the player, rather than having the player make tight and impactful decisions. Again this is not the minority, but the majority of veteran pvpers I feel.

This is not fun. Not only will veterans swap classes before a match, which you should be stuck with the class you queue with, and not be able to switch in the first place, since it creates nothing but unhealthy pvp habits the higher you climb since everyone will be doing it, which just ultimately ends with : everyone play necro/support/decap/meta specs which means if you are one of the few players who don't do this, you're really boned each and every match as you climb. This leads to a lot of stomp matches, which aren't fun for either side. This also leads to every match becoming the same thing with the same meta specs and classes.

Some classes are at a mechanical disadvantage with no one at anet looking out for them in terms of balance. I have read that there will be a pvp balance team in the near future or something, but I am not putting much faith into it. How many times has Anet said that before...but this time it's different! Okay.. 😆

Furthermore, the amount of sheer toxicity in each and every game at the higher rankings is just flat out insane. Again no accountability either. Report doesn't do anything. Regardless if you make a mistake or not during a match, too often it's instant profanity about how bad of a player you are. This is not some games, this is every other game. Literally.
 

 The mentality and culture is : if we lose a team fight, it is always ONE players fault, and that player is bad/a bot/needs to go back to pve. If it is more than one players fault, they're all bots/bad players/need to go back to pve. The insults and comments only get worse from there. We've all seen it.

And we all know the next move that person does. He or she afk's/throws the match and continues to blame their team. Sometimes in higher ranks you will get a duo that does this too. So you will have two people insulting you now. Great.

Blocking/ignoring/reporting only does so much. There needs to be a powerful push to reshape both the pvp community and the game mode itself. This really needs to happen from Arenanet themselves. An official push to make pvp fun again, but the community also needs to chip in. Otherwise it is just not worth it. The main pvpers don't seem to actually want new players to join, but rather new players to abuse. And anet does little to nothing in response to this.

I know I am not speaking anything ground breaking, however I am adding my pile, to the already large mountain, of reasons why I feel pvp in gw2 is effectively dead.

I have played Power Mirage exclusively for awhile now in pvp, and have maintained gold 3 through plat 1, ranking inside the top 200 for the most part, with my highest rank being #37 or so at the beginning of this current season, with my rating being like 1577 or something, I have not cleared plat 2, but the population is so small in pvp that I have played with and against all the top pvpers, especially this past season. I also exclusively solo queue in 5v5 ranked, only duoing when the 2v2 and 3v3 seasons hit. This is nothing special, it just gives context for my perspective. My youtube channel is Wild Kusanagi, I have uploaded tons of power mirage videos. I do not want to link because I don't want people thinking I'm trying to advertise myself. It is only for evidence to back up this post.

I cannot stress enough how for the most part, power mirage is fun, but there is a mechanical wall that it simply cannot ever pass atm.

I am glad though, because I feel it offers a very unique pvp perspective as with one dodge and other mechanical limitations, you can see a lot where all the other classes under perform, or over perform.

Unbalanced classes which aren't maintained so they are left unbalanced for long periods of time, combined with veteran pvpers opting to play those classes in favor of fun/healthy pvp, combined with Anet being pretty much silent on the whole matter. I'm not even getting into tournament problems. Sheesh! I love pvp in gw2, but the more I look at it, the more I realize it's a complete mess.

 

Whether your team wins or loses, the metric that should be judged is : Does each player want to queue up again.
 

I'm going to take my salt and go home now. 😢 hahahahaha

Thanks for reading!

 

Edited September 16, 2021 by Waffles.5632

[Dawdler.8521]

56 minutes ago, Waffles.5632 said:

Opinion : The majority of new  players will try to actually pvp for fun, but the majority of pvp veterans actually play pvp to just abuse the current meta/broken specs. They do not play for fun, but rather to win at any cost, even if it means abusing pvp/class/game mechanics.

Because players with 5000+ hours in the game couldn't possibly have learned a thing or two for their preferred class compared to someone enjoying his first hour of play.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Dawdler.8521

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

Has OP ever considered that winning, and by extension perfecting your mechanical ability on your favorite class or build, can be fun?

 

Quote

 the amount of sheer toxicity in each and every game at the higher rankings is just flat out insane.

 

I've said this on League forums in the past, and I'll say it here as well: as far as competitive game modes go, you can ignore, or even mute a toxic, player. You cannot mute or ignore their bad mechanics and/or tilt.

If your mindset cannot endure a player speaking their mind in the chat, maybe the competitive mode or game. at hand. isn't for you.

Edited September 16, 2021 by NorthernRedStar.3054

[Waffles.5632]

14 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Has OP ever considered that winning, and by extension perfecting your mechanical ability on your favorite class or build, can be fun?

 

 

I've said this on League forums in the past, and I'll say it here as well: as far as competitive game modes go, you can ignore, or even mute a toxic, player. You cannot mute or ignore their bad mechanics and/or tilt.

If your mindset cannot endure a player speaking their mind in the chat, maybe the competitive mode or game. at hand. isn't for you.

That is literally why I started playing power mirage, because it is the only class in pvp where you have to outplay your opponents or die. You don't have many mechanics to do the work for you. The perfect match involves not getting hit, of which I strive for every encounter.

I have also competed in many sports both growing up and as an adult. My mind is solid. Both your reply, and the one before, are just nit picks that attack my character rather than my argument. Using your own example, League has a wonderful way of dealing with toxicity now compared to what it was before, and I played LoL long before they completely re-worked the report system and a number of other things specifically dealing with what, at the time, was a massive toxicity problem very similiar to gw2 now.

I even remember a dedicated ad campaign they did aimed at providing good examples of team work, good sportsmanship, and a positive attitude, for instance this video :
 

That video is 8years ago, and the first message couldn't be any clearer :

We play for fun.

Simply saying "oh get a tougher skin or don't play" is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. Any reasonable person will look at that and just leave. There is no negotiation. It is literally "You deal with how I act, or just go away" which okay, thank you, I will gladly go away and then you will pvp with no one but bots.

The alternative is playing with team chat off, blocking a person every game or every other game. Imagine that, a team game so toxic that the preferred method to play is by cutting communication off with your team mates.

All of these lead to zero.
 

Edited September 16, 2021 by Waffles.5632

[Saiyan.1704]

Addressing OP's pvp toxicity: That's in every PvP game. At least you don't have people in COMMS screaming in your ear after they die, telling you something about your mother lol. Other game's PvP is a whole lot worse than GW2.

 

Quote

This is not fun. Not only will veterans swap classes before a match, which you should be stuck with the class you queue with, and not be able to switch in the first place, since it creates nothing but unhealthy pvp habits the higher you climb since everyone will be doing it, which just ultimately ends with : everyone play necro/support/decap/meta specs which means if you are one of the few players who don't do this, you're really boned each and every match as you climb. This leads to a lot of stomp matches, which aren't fun for either side. This also leads to every match becoming the same thing with the same meta specs and classes.

I consider myself a casual "veteran" player but wholeheartedly agree that we should lock-in classes on every Rank queue instead of being able to swap classes. Many don't realize this but Anet posted a thread giving the community a choice as to whether or not we wanted that and the community said, "NO I want to be able to change classes based on the team comp!".... and that was that. Anet isn't going to revert this change. They can change the matchmaking to however they want but the "majority of the community and 'top' players" asked for this.

As for everything else, the meta is the meta just like any other game. But I have seen 2 thieves on a team completely dominate the map. So even though we do have a metagame, you can still outperform other players in the match to turn the tide. I am a SoloQ Guardian only player but have consistently maintained Plat for several seasons in a row even though I never swap classes. I'm currently at 501 games played in this season (may have an addiction issue lol!) and i'm still somehow still Platinum (the more games you play, the more likely you'll lose rating).

[Waffles.5632]

@Saiyan.1704 Comparing one suffering to another doesn't get anyone anywhere. Of course I realize that GW2 is not the worst when it comes to toxicity, because I never compared it to anything, you did. If GW2 had people screaming in comms/voice, that would indeed be worse. I agree.

With that being said, GW2 PvP still has a major toxicity problem.

I also did not know about that, and if it was a community decision, wow. That is most likely the worst community decision ever made for pvp. I really can't see how people thought that was a good idea. The higher ranked players always do the same strat of class swapping, and isolated, that isn't bad. The idea.

However in practice, we all see what the result is. Everyone is just playing the same specs, the same team comp, the same classes. I feel I cannot be the only one seeing it. I mean I think I can safely say I will get a necro in every pvp match, but I rarely see firebrands, or scrappers, and there are some others as well that never see pvp daylight.

Scourge has gone through several nerfs and is still on top, that to me is crazy. It truly must have been godzilla at pof launch.

If nothing changes, the game becomes stale. Shake ups are always fun because they invite new things. That is where Anet and the balance come in. Of course there will always be "the strongest" specs, but to maintain that, Anet needs to balance much faster. You can't let something like scourge fester away in pvp for years now where it is still one of the most dominant specs. To those who will say I'm hater however : To me scourge is only OP in numbers. Tone the numbers down reasonable, it's fine. It is not oppressive so much so  in design anymore, just numbers.

The last shake up Anet did was actually pretty well imo, they toned down several high performing specs and targeted key areas, like guardian SoJ's. Before, they could lay down burning SoJ's everywhere, now they have to pick carefully where they want to apply that AOE pressure. Many will say they over did it, but I think that is only because DH Trapper is still insanely strong atm. And so if guardians apply that as a normal, ofc everything else will look weaker with that lens.

For a week, Anet should make it so everything in pvp one shots you. Okay maybe only for a day haha. The point is people will see how much fun it is to kill and be killed. When it's like 400k+ damage but only 8 kills a match, my brain just goes to sleep.

[CalmTheStorm.2364]

2 hours ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

I consider myself a casual "veteran" player but wholeheartedly agree that we should lock-in classes on every Rank queue instead of being able to swap classes. Many don't realize this but Anet posted a thread giving the community a choice as to whether or not we wanted that and the community said, "NO I want to be able to change classes based on the team comp!".... and that was that. Anet isn't going to revert this change. They can change the matchmaking to however they want but the "majority of the community and 'top' players" asked for this.
 

I feel like a reasonable alternative would be to allow class-swapping in tournaments but not in ranked/unranked.  

 

In tourneys, there are only 5-man teams and there is a reasonable expectation of communication and coordination within a team, thereby allowing a team to "get the most" out of their individual classes and skills by coordinating with their teammates.  It  also means that a team can more effectively "counter" yours simply by their composition and ensuring that they position their players in order to make the most of favorable matchups.  That level of cooperation is unrealistic in most ranked/unranked games--even in unranked, most of the time you're not seeing 5-man teams who are all on discord coordinating their play.   Thus, you could allow class swapping in tournaments since it is most likely to have biggest impact on team strategy there and can prevent getting screwed over simply because of the enemy team's comp.  Disallowing class swapping in ranked/unranked prevents one team getting 3 necros and such, and it also defeats the practice of queuing as one class hoping to draw a similar class onto the other team (e.g., Warrior), and then swapping to a different class in game.

[Disney.7826]

Toxicty is everything else than a major problem for pvp being dead

[Spellhunter.9675]

In my opinion if you Q for ranked competitive match then you have to do you best for win. Because it is the main goal of competitive PvP. If you play some meme non-meta build then you are intended put your team in disadvantage. I consider this as griefing. 

Also, I think most people who say something like "it's just a game, I play for fun" are lying to themself. Leave this nonsence for unranked.

[Valik Shin.9027]

Ok so this goes for all game mode. Don't expect to go into a place where you have no idea what your doing and expect people to not be upset when you sink the team. IDC if it's raids, CM fractals, or ranked pvp. If your playing far beyond your skill/knowledge and are bring down the ta as a whole you deserve some "toxicity" towards yourself 

[Avatar.3568]

Changing class/build is fine, imagine the guy need to play Multiple classes on the same lvl. 

Outside of that high rating games are not p1/2, that sector is more like some know what to do some don't and it's still a clownfiesta. Most high rated players are not toxic, they don't care about ranked at all, tho not all

[Allarius.5670]

1 hour ago, Valik Shin.9027 said:

If your playing far beyond your skill/knowledge and are bring down the ta as a whole you deserve some "toxicity" towards yourself 

 

Shouldn't match making and low population be the target of that toxicity? 

[Valik Shin.9027]

2 minutes ago, Allarius.5670 said:

 

Shouldn't match making and low population be the target of that toxicity? 

To a degree yes but if you really don't know what your doing you should probably not be playing rank. Talking really basic thing like don't tank a full 100 blades to the face when you not incapacitated