I think our main priority should be growing the PvP playerbase

[xblankk.4207]

How do we get PvE players to come try out PvP? How can we attract new GW2 players to check it out?

 

Between learning Conquest, strategy, class roles, and our notorious toxicity, no one wants to give it shot.

 

I think permanent 1v1 and 2v2 modes would help that. Easier to play with one other friend, or solo (people don't have to worry about throwing a game and getting flamed). Maybe no ranked for these modes or lesser ranked rewards than Conquest, idk. Tournaments would be fun too.

 

I just don't think Anet will ever do much of anything with PvP unless our playerbase was more respectable, and I think having more approachable PvP would help our community a lot.

[oscuro.9720]

Well I’d venture to guess that one of the main reasons people don’t take to pvp is that the community is incredibly toxic.
So each and every person can definitely make a change by being a nice, helpful person who is encouraging to their teammates! 

[Kuya.6495]

I think anet just needs stricter punishments for toxicity in chat. Like dishing out bans within 24 hours of you flaming your teammates in a match. You should get at least a 6 hour ban even if it is your first time being toxic. Once players are afraid of even saying your teammate smells weird maybe people won't find a need to block team chat in pvp anymore. Perhaps then people will actually use chat to communicate instead of just flaming your teammates because you have poor emotional control. 

[oscuro.9720]

2 hours ago, Eugchriss.2046 said:

pvp is by definition a competion. Competition is by definition toxic. People wont suddently become nice just to meet your low level of self esteem. As some one said once : "Everyone is trying to change the one but no one think about changing themself"

Toxicity can beget more toxicity. Positivity can beget more positivity. It doesn’t mean it will be gone entirely. 

As you correctly point out, some humans inherently get aggressive when they are failing at something they derive some level of self esteem from. This is inescapable.

However, other people get toxic because of the toxicity surrounding them. If more people keep good vibes, we can get some good vibes rolling and maybe make the community more welcoming 🙂 

Actually I know this is the case because gw2 pvp has some of the most salt I’ve ever encountered. 

Edited February 5, 2022 by oscuro.9720

[Hotride.2187]

Wouldn't splitting the already too-few players into extra queues only make it worse?

Imagine the current state of getting 2-4 top rank players in your 10 player game, but downscaled to a 4 player game. You get 1 baron of the arena in a 2v2 spvp game with 2 pve players on one team who want to learn spvp, the floor is mopped with them, they quit spvp.

Edited February 5, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Eugchriss.2046]

7 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Toxicity can beget more toxicity. Positivity can beget more positivity. It doesn’t mean it will be gone entirely. 

As you correctly point out, some humans inherently get aggressive when they are failing at something they derive some level of self esteem from. This is inescapable.

However, other people get toxic because of the toxicity surrounding them. If more people keep good vibes, we can get some good vibes rolling and maybe make the community more welcoming 🙂 

Actually I know this is the case because gw2 pvp has some of the most salt I’ve ever encountered. 

100% bs.

First of all, toxicity is not some kind of contigious disease. Humans are toxic by nature because life is about survival and survival is about competition and competition is toxic. There is no such thing like A became toxic because B is toxic. Stop the victim hood mentality. You are toxic because YOU CHOOSE to not restrain your natural toxicity anymore, and not because of your environment "forced" you to. Period.

Toxicity is relative. The same words, actions can be judge toxic by some and not toxic at all by others. Toxicity is basically an interpretation of how you view the world. YOU CAN NOT IMPOSE YOUR INTERPRETATION OF THE WORLD TO OTHERS. STOP IT.  How do you know if A is too toxic or it is B who is too emotional? 

People need to stop pointing the fingers at others, stop blaming the world and start looking at themself. Is the world too harsh or are you too weak?

[Khalisto.5780]

the new player experience is total bad

 

due to things that are good for top players

 

like duo q and faster q times

 

both things were gone for a short period of time and top players came to forums to get em back and they got it

 

i don't know what were the numbers at the time, but now anet is like to scared losing 200 viewers on twitch in order to get new players a better experience

[Bingus.4236]

10 hours ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Well I’d venture to guess that one of the main reasons people don’t take to pvp is that the community is incredibly toxic.
So each and every person can definitely make a change by being a nice, helpful person who is encouraging to their teammates! 

 

People don't take to PvP because it's bad. The ranking is not competitive, manipulated and meaningless. Your first impression is to be put in teams with bots. You can aspire to be put in a team full of others that you no choice over and then your personal rating depends on how well 4 other people perform.

 

If people are toxic, it's probably because they put in a lot of hours before they realised the game mode sucked and they keep playing instead of just admitting that and doing something else.

 

[LuRkEr.9462]

PvP tends to be a toxic environment to those learning how to PvP. The only way to get more people into it would be the impossible task of fixing the toxicity. 

GW2 is a more of a casual MMO and those players tend to put up with less toxicity than those who play the big PvP MMOs. 

The reward structure and botting could also be better.

[Zekent.3652]

10 hours ago, Eugchriss.2046 said:

pvp is by definition a competion. Competition is by definition toxic. People wont suddently become nice just to meet your low level of self esteem. As some one said once : "Everyone is trying to change the one but no one think about changing themself"

Where did you even heard that from? by the nonsense toxicity from persons like michael jordan, cristiano, ninja? lol no, they're just childish with the emotional maturity of a potato.

[Aylpse.6280]

It's toxic, wintrading and bots are rampant, the rewards are meaningless, and the community is garbage. Furthermore, if you show a PvEr or WvWer a seasonal title, they simply don't care. Understandably so, no one cares if you are the king of kitten mountain, it's still kitten. But I think I understand the root of the problem, it's ranked, it makes people angry.

 

I went into WvW this week, grabbed some gear and had some duels out roaming. I was surprised not once but twice to get friendly tells from my opponent after the fight discussing the match and sharing tips. There was sportsmanship. I'm sure this is a rare outlier but in this situation as opposed to ranked, the only thing on the line is your ego, no rank points involved. I've had similar experiences in the duel pit and old hotjoin in spvp, looking back.

 

Without a real community, and the would be "heads" of the spvp community too busy making bank selling gizmos and leader-board positions to set an example, it's doomed to die a slow, painful death. New blood won't stick around and only the angry, beaten and broken diehard addicts will remain. You know, the toxic ones. Unless there is a miraculous universal change from a cesspool to a helpful community, it's a lost cause. I don't even bother with ranked anymore myself, just a handful of unranked games to keep sharp and duels because they are fun.

[Knoxxius.1524]

You'd need to completely rebalance PvP to attract more players. It's dogsh*t right now. 

[Arheundel.6451]

14 hours ago, Eugchriss.2046 said:

pvp is by definition a competion. Competition is by definition toxic. People wont suddently become nice just to meet your low level of self esteem. As some one said once : "Everyone is trying to change the one but no one think about changing themself"

People are toxic by choice not due to competition! You can choose to be a kitten ands a sore loser...or you can learn to act with dignity and respect. The competitive person looks for a challenge and enjoy the fight regardless of the outcome as long as the fight is enjoyable...on the other hand we have real life toxic individuals with lack of social skills and overall terrible human beings and it's got nothing to do with gaming competition.

The kind of messages, threats I received in this game gots nothing resembling healthy banter ...on the contrary it holds everything a psychiatrist would find very interesting and possibly..very alarming.

[felix.2386]

14 hours ago, Eugchriss.2046 said:

pvp is by definition a competion. Competition is by definition toxic. People wont suddently become nice just to meet your low level of self esteem. As some one said once : "Everyone is trying to change the one but no one think about changing themself"

lol untrue, if the matches are fun and competitive, people will enjoy and there will be way less toxicity compared to when matches are completely one sided or full of bots or unbalanced builds all over the place.

80% of the toxicity born with imbalance, unfairness, bots and bad teammates caused by bad match making caused by low population.

 

and there's 20% of toxicity which comes from competition which is part of the game and has minimum negative impact toward the game.

 

it is the 80% of the toxcity caused by stuff mentioned above causes the game to be unfun and unbearable 

 

 

ON TOPIC:

yea.. well..if the game is actually fun and balanced..there will be actual population maybe..and you  attract pve people by showing them you are having fun...that's how you bring people here...none of the other stuff, like 1v1 2v2 matter..because they suck...

you attract people by showing them you are having fun, and you keep people by them having fun themselves....there's nothing else to that..don't need pointless dicussion.

Edited February 5, 2022 by felix.2386

[Eugchriss.2046]

4 hours ago, Zizekent.2398 said:

Where did you even heard that from? by the nonsense toxicity from persons like michael jordan, cristiano, ninja? lol no, they're just childish with the emotional maturity of a potato.

Dude those words are simple facts and I will write them again: "Everybody is trying to change the world but no one think about changing themself".

Real life concrete examples:

• Everybody is aware of climate changing but what are  you doing about it on the personal level? You are all blaming oil companies while still using gas for your cars. You are all blaming china for polluting as hell while still buying products imported from china. 
• Everybody is aware that GAFAM are becaming a huge threat to democraties and privacy but what are you doing about it on a personnal level? You are still using google facebook tiktok every single day.
• Everybody is aware that GW2 pvp sucks as hell and that anet doesn't give a kitten about pvp and what are you doing about it? Blaming anet while still playing the same game you are criticising.

To sum up: stop pointing the fingers at other and start pointing it towards yourself. Call me emotional maturity of a potato if you want but for me the potatoes are the ones who are so weak that they can't and don't want to look at themself as the issue or at least part of it.

[Eugchriss.2046]

1 hour ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

People are toxic by choice not due to competition! You can choose to be a kitten ands a sore loser...or you can learn to act with dignity and respect. The competitive person looks for a challenge and enjoy the fight regardless of the outcome as long as the fight is enjoyable...on the other hand we have real life toxic individuals with lack of social skills and overall terrible human beings and it's got nothing to do with gaming competition.

The kind of messages, threats I received in this game gots nothing resembling healthy banter ...on the contrary it holds everything a psychiatrist would find very interesting and possibly..very alarming.

I've never said that competition make people toxic. I said competition enables the instinctive toxicity of people. Some resist to that instinct, others don't. But as you say one can learn to act with dignity and respect as much as one can learn toughen up and that's exactly my point. Learning is hard that's why each side want the other side to do the effort so that they themself don't have to. WORK ON YOU NOT ON OTHERS.

For messages and threats, GW2 is -18 game. If you get triggerred by what some random dude in a random country on a random video game said to you, then you shouldn't  be playing the game in the first place. It's like going to war and then complaining that the ennemy is trying to kill you like what tf did you expect?

Edited February 5, 2022 by Eugchriss.2046

[Eugchriss.2046]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 

Edited February 5, 2022 by Eugchriss.2046

[oscuro.9720]

5 hours ago, Eugchriss.2046 said:

100% bs.

First of all, toxicity is not some kind of contigious disease. Humans are toxic by nature because life is about survival and survival is about competition and competition is toxic. There is no such thing like A became toxic because B is toxic. Stop the victim hood mentality. You are toxic because YOU CHOOSE to not restrain your natural toxicity anymore, and not because of your environment "forced" you to. Period.

Toxicity is relative. The same words, actions can be judge toxic by some and not toxic at all by others. Toxicity is basically an interpretation of how you view the world. YOU CAN NOT IMPOSE YOUR INTERPRETATION OF THE WORLD TO OTHERS. STOP IT.  How do you know if A is too toxic or it is B who is too emotional? 

People need to stop pointing the fingers at others, stop blaming the world and start looking at themself. Is the world too harsh or are you too weak?

Experimental analysis of emotional contagion through social networks: https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788

Emotional contagion in personal interactions: https://collablab.northwestern.edu//CollabolabDistro/nucmc/p295-hancock.pdf

Positive emotion contagion in personal interactions: https://hms.harvard.edu/magazine/science-emotion/contagion-happiness

Look, I don’t disagree with your philosophical message at all. But to say that one’s environment and the surrounding emotions don’t impact the probability of specific attitudes/emotions from manifesting is false according to everything I’ve seen. Note: I am not infallible, so there’s a reasonable probability there is disproving evidence I’m not aware of.

This has nothing to do with finger pointing or absolving ones self of blame. It has to do with the reality of how people behave. Yes, it’s each persons responsibility to not be toxic themselves, which is explicitly what I said to do in my first post.

However, majority of people will not consciously make those decisions and will simply behave how they instinctively respond to the stimuli they are exposed to. I was simply illustrating that being positive/nice can actually combat toxicity, which I think is a great thing! I’m actually saying that changing yourself can help improve the attitudes of everyone around you!

You can disagree or whatever, that’s fine, you are free to have your opinion, am I’m not saying that I’m absolutely right. I’m just saying to try and be nice. Take care friendo 🙂

Edited February 5, 2022 by oscuro.9720

[Eugchriss.2046]

41 minutes ago, felix.2386 said:

lol untrue, if the matches are fun and competitive, people will enjoy and there will be way less toxicity compared to when matches are completely one sided or full of bots or unbalanced builds all over the place.

80% of the toxicity born with imbalance, unfairness, bots and bad teammates caused by bad match making caused by low population.

 

and there's 20% of toxicity which comes from competition which is part of the game and has minimum negative impact toward the game.

 

it is the 80% of the toxcity caused by stuff mentioned above causes the game to be unfun and unbearable 

Exactly blame the whole world but you. Keep going.

[Arheundel.6451]

6 minutes ago, Eugchriss.2046 said:

Dude those words are simple facts and I will write them again: "Everybody is trying to change the world but no one think about changing themself".

Real life concrete examples:

• Everybody is aware of climate changing but what are  you doing about it on the personal level? You are all blaming oil companies while still using gas for your cars. You are all blaming china for polluting as hell while still buying products imported from china. 
• Everybody is aware that GAFAM are becaming a huge threat to democraties and privacy but what are you doing about it on a personnal level? You are still using google facebook tiktok every single day.
• Everybody is aware that GW2 pvp sucks as hell and that anet doesn't give a kitten about pvp and what are you doing about it? Blaming anet while still playing the same game you are criticising.

To sum up: stop pointing the fingers at other and start pointing it towards yourself. Call me emotional maturity of a potato if you want but for me the potatoes are the ones who are so weak that they can't and don't want to look at themself as the issue or at least part of it.

Such non-sense

-People are born in the system and unless you are willingly to live alone on a mountain in a cave, you will have to find yourself a job and majority of times, you will have to travel to work and for as long as they don't invent instant teleportation, you will either drive or use public transport...there is no choice!

-Guess what?! The same device you are using now to type away on a keyboard has electrical components in it made in China....no matter where you live or what product you use, every company on the planet buy cheap in china to maximise profits, that expensive GPU ...that powerful CPU..has components made in China...we can't help it!

-There is more to GW2 than PvP and people adapt: some change class to stay on top...some abandon the mode and some just go WvW for their PvP fix...and overall the majority of players simply have emotionl attachements to the class they play, be it for all the money they spent building it up or for the thousand of hours spent playing the living story...plenty of reasons to stick around regardless of the problems.

 

You talk like a spoiled millenial, an idealist who think people can live on just drinking water....

[DoomNexus.5324]

I don't care too much about toxicity tbh. It's annoying and I'd rather not get flamed of course but what really kills the game for me personally is that my own team seems to be - more often than not - completely incompetent and people go afk or start texting if the match didn't start out as they intended. Like, I'm not saying they are bad and I'm not flaming them or anything but I have soo many matches which are just thrown by people who prefer to argue about how their tactics is far superior than to actually play the game.
In addition to that it's extremely demoralizing when you work really hard for not losing and when you then do lose, your rating drops just as hard as the guy who was just walking around in the base all match literally contributing nothing, kitten talking everyone else.

So my main issue is basically how rating is gained or lost. It's far too simple imho as afaik the only real decider on your gain/loss is how your personal rating compares to the averages between the teams. This was probably fine years ago when we still had full-team queue but since everybody has to rely on 3 to 4 strangers now, it's really not sufficient and unfair.
Personal performance should imho have some noticeable influence over gain/loss. Even if it's just a rough approximation and it doesn't have to be tied to top stats (like a lot of people immediately think if they read this suggestion). Players don't know much about how the rating system in csgo works but from what we do know it is infinitely better than what Guild Wars 2 has in place.

Either Anet should give us back full-team queue or a better rating system, or both.
Any additional game mode like 2v2, 3v3, etc would also help tremendously imho. I know several people who are not interested in Conquest and just quit the game completely because of it. They just come back for off-seasons.. if they don't miss them, because they don't care about it anymore and just sometimes catch it.. And even more active players would probably also don't burn out as quickly if they had more modes to alternate between. More new people may also enjoy other game modes more than Conquest and stick to PvP.
The ultimate argument against "the population is too low, Anet can't split queues" imho is Stronghold. At this moment of writing this I have an estimated queue time of less than 2 minutes (1min 54sec - which was pretty accurate in the past). The matches there are usually also much more enjoyable for me than Conquest tbh. The only reason I'm not playing Stronghold all day is because basically everything - apart from reward track - is tied to PvP (season rewards, achievements, etc) is purely ranked PvP and nothing else.

Edited February 6, 2022 by DoomNexus.5324

[SerCharizard.4826]

16 minutes ago, Eugchriss.2046 said:

Dude those words are simple facts and I will write them again: "Everybody is trying to change the world but no one think about changing themself".

Real life concrete examples:

• Everybody is aware of climate changing but what are  you doing about it on the personal level? You are all blaming oil companies while still using gas for your cars. You are all blaming china for polluting as hell while still buying products imported from china. 
• Everybody is aware that GAFAM are becaming a huge threat to democraties and privacy but what are you doing about it on a personnal level? You are still using google facebook tiktok every single day.
• Everybody is aware that GW2 pvp sucks as hell and that anet doesn't give a kitten about pvp and what are you doing about it? Blaming anet while still playing the same game you are criticising.

To sum up: stop pointing the fingers at other and start pointing it towards yourself. Call me emotional maturity of a potato if you want but for me the potatoes are the ones who are so weak that they can't and don't want to look at themself as the issue or at least part of it.

The topic is about why people don't play pvp. People aren't really pointing fingers, they just move away from game modes they don't enjoy (because of behaviour of others). Compare competition survival all you want, but this is just a video game. If experiences in a gamemode are not enjoyable, I'll just play something else. Easy as that. I'm not sure why me saying "I don't enjoy a gamemode where my first experience is 3 guildies corpse jump me, where I get salty whispers and where I see a decent amount of bots. I'll just play something else" is about my (lack of) emotional maturity. Most of this is not even in ranked.

 

[Eugchriss.2046]

15 minutes ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

Such non-sense

-People are born in the system and unless you are willingly to live alone on a mountain in a cave, you will have to find yourself a job and majority of times, you will have to travel to work and for as long as they don't invent instant teleportation, you will either drive or use public transport...there is no choice!

-Guess what?! The same device you are using now to type away on a keyboard has electrical components in it made in China....no matter where you live or what product you use, every company on the planet buy cheap in china to maximise profits, that expensive GPU ...that powerful CPU..has components made in China...we can't help it!

-There is more to GW2 than PvP and people adapt: some change class to stay on top...some abandon the mode and some just go WvW for their PvP fix...and overall the majority of players simply have emotionl attachements to the class they play, be it for all the money they spent building it up or for the thousand of hours spent playing the living story...plenty of reasons to stick around regardless of the problems.

 

You talk like a spoiled millenial, an idealist who think people can live on just drinking water....

You misread my message. I am not judging the world like everybody does. I stopped doing that when I realized that the world is what it is  because I am allowing to. I am judging people who judge the world.

• Being born in  a system is not an argument. It's again an excuse to point the finger on the society instead of yourself. People were born in a system where black people were 3/5 of a person. That system changed because the individuals changed.
• You are right and that's why I am not blaming china or any other country or company because I am aware that they are only doing it only to satisfy my needs. So the problem is my needs not the companies or countries or the whole world.
• If you choose to stay in kitten then you should complain about smelling like kitten.

And btw, If you knew me IRL, you would know that I'm really far from being spoiled. I am actually considered as poor in my country. But yeah, the concept of "poor" is relative.

Edited February 5, 2022 by Eugchriss.2046

[Eugchriss.2046]

37 minutes ago, oscuro.9720 said:

Experimental analysis of emotional contagion through social networks: https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788

Emotional contagion in personal interactions: https://collablab.northwestern.edu//CollabolabDistro/nucmc/p295-hancock.pdf

Positive emotion contagion in personal interactions: https://hms.harvard.edu/magazine/science-emotion/contagion-happiness

Look, I don’t disagree with your philosophical message at all. But to say that one’s environment and the surrounding emotions don’t impact the probability of specific attitudes/emotions from manifesting is false according to everything I’ve seen. Note: I am not infallible, so there’s a reasonable probability there is disproving evidence I’m not aware of.

This has nothing to do with finger pointing or absolving ones self of blame. It has to do with the reality of how people behave. Yes, it’s each persons responsibility to not be toxic themselves, which is explicitly what I said to do in my first post.

However, majority of people will not consciously make those decisions and will simply behave how they instinctively respond to the stimuli they are exposed to. I was simply illustrating that being positive/nice can actually combat toxicity, which I think is a great thing! I’m actually saying that changing yourself can help improve the attitudes of everyone around you!

You can disagree or whatever, that’s fine, you are free to have your opinion, am I’m not saying that I’m absolutely right. I’m just saying to try and be nice. Take care friendo 🙂

You can loose a fight be angry about but yet still shake the hand of the guy who beat your kitten off. You can also choose to shake no hands and yell at everyone. Same emotion different reaction. Toxicity is not an emotion. Toxicity is how you react to your emotion. So that paper work doesn't apply here.

And if you agree with the statement  "Toxicity is how you react to your emotion" then when you think about it, people whining  about toxicity are actually toxic themself. As much as one can't control him self when he loses the other can't control him him self when he feels offended.

So who is toxic now? Real question here.

Edited February 5, 2022 by Eugchriss.2046

[oscuro.9720]

1 hour ago, Eugchriss.2046 said:

You can loose a fight be angry about but yet still shake the hand of the guy who beat your kitten off. You can also choose to shake no hands and yell at everyone. Same emotion different reaction. Toxicity is not an emotion. Toxicity is how you react to your emotion. So that paper work doesn't apply here.

And if you agree with the statement  "Toxicity is how you react to your emotion" then when you think about it, people whining  about toxicity are actually toxic themself. As much as one can't control him self when he loses the other can't control him him self when he feels offended.

So who is toxic now? Real question here.

You are correct, toxicity would be the expression of one’s negative emotions.

Would you agree that the increased prevalence of negative emotion is going to increase the number of people manifesting them in a toxic/destructive manner? 
Would you agree that behavioral learning from others expressing their negative emotions in a destructive manner would encourage more people feeling similar emotions to express them in a similar way due to the observed behavior?

The best way to express this is the idea that “laughter is infectious”. Laughter, I hope you would agree, is not an emotion, but a reaction to ones emotions. The expression of happiness/amusement in a behavioral manner (laughing) is communicated across a group of people in conjunction with the underlying emotional stimulus. Study (granted I haven’t read this specific study, just searched livescience. I’m on mobile and typing on my lunch break 😛) https://www.livescience.com/9430-study-laughter-contagious.html

Another example; if someone smiles at you passing in the street, you smile back. You are introduced to a slightly positive stimuli and mirror the behavioral expression of said stimuli. Conversely, if someone flips you off, you may feel a little angry, and respond with the learned behavioral pattern; flipping them off. This applies to honking in a car, shouting at someone during an argument, people dancing at a party, etc. 

Other than your disagreement that emotions/expression of emotions is not spread, we agree on the underlying statements of your philosophical argument, or at least what I’m understanding it as, which is; don’t blame others for things which you have the capability of doing something about yourself. 

Anywho, we’ve gotten away from the point of the topic; analyzing why the pvp community is small and probably shrinking. As others have said, I agree that matchmaking, balance, etc. are big problems. The hard part is that this is most likely exacerbated by the low population, which makes it worse for the remaining people.

It’s almost as if PVP is in a sort of death spiral, where it’s problems are the cause of its problems. Fixing it is not readily apparent to me, which is why I brought up community. I think that’s something that we, the players, have the ability to change just by being nice 🙂 

Edited February 5, 2022 by oscuro.9720