PVP Rejuvenation

[tiika.8512]

I have been wanting to get into PVP with my friends and family to play together against others, you can imagine how discouraged people get when they constantly keep dying in seconds and losing matches without ever knowing what happened to them even if they try to learn how to play, and there is no variety to keep them engaged.

 

PVE is great and all but nothing gets the blood pumping like PVP, and it's in a sad discouraging state, a wildly missed opportunity, the learning curve is so steep, no way any1 who does not have the time to study every profession in the game and their mechanics will be able to play and enjoy PVP, I will present some changes and suggestions I would like to see in the mode:

 

- More modes than just "Conquest": make 2v2, 3v3 available all the time not just pre-season and add new modes and new areas, it's been long enough it is becoming stale to see the same maps and same modes all the time, like PVE, where before we had only Dungeons and now we have Fractals, Raids, Strike Missions, PVP needs variety as well, it feels like it got stuck in time.

 

- More welcoming to new players : PVP needs a tutorial or a guidance section when the player creates a character and decides to go to the most for the first time he should be greeted by an NPC where he would give him an option for a tutorial that would explain to him the basic processes, like reward tracks, ranked and unranked, tournaments, etc. In my opinion, having to look up a video or a wiki to understand something in a game is a bad sign.

 

- Update the PVP Lobby : same thing as the Maps, it's stuck in time, for example, multiple expansions have passed and we're stuck with the same NPCs to train with which are all core classes which brings me to the next suggestion:

 

-- Add new NPC dummies with Elite Specs : to get the flow and better practice, it feels so disconnected when you practice on an NPC with a Core class and facing mostly Elite Specs during the matches, you're not acustomed to the animations, and if you are playing Casually and not studying all classes due to time constraints, this will help to educate and enhance players all around and get better balance in PVP, we will see less Novice players, less mistakes as players will play better when it comes to roles during matches, which brings us to the next point,

 

-- Establish clear ROLES \ ROTATIONS in PVP : let's face it, it is so abstract even elite players sound unsure when they say they know it, this is a result of the class design as they are versatile and open so many options to play with which is not a bad thing, but coordination is key for winning matches, so I would suggest we take a page from Riot and use the same idea from the system they use in League of Legends, where summoners pick their legends then they pick their ROLES in the match, so it is established before the match even begins who is doing what and is responsible for what objectives, this will help SOOO much in balance, in educating players as it will help them isolate where a problem is in a match if it's related to people's roles, and confirms whether they lost due to not being well aquatinted with the classes they are facing or if they lost due to bad coordination.

 

- PVP Education and Training : this is a hard request but I would love if there is an IN GAME way to educate players about combat, how to counter against other classes, a private room for practice with various options and utilities, this is already there with videos and PVP guilds, which is the option I'm currently pursuing, I'm saying it would be better to have it in game, since it might be intimidating for some to have to look up people online and ask them to train or teach you, even though the GW2 community is one of the best out there <3 toxicity is inevitable even if minority.

 

These r some ideas I keep thinking would be great to add to the PVP scene and would love to know what others have to say, certainly hope the devs take this into consideration as well as ALL other already published or upcoming great community suggestions to be added in the game, I really love the combat, the battles and the flow of it, it's the thing that makes us keep returning to the game for me and my friends and family, but PVP needs to rejuvenate and feel fresh again, it feels left out as if the devs lost interest when in fact the very foundation of GW2 was PVP in the first place which explains the great combat mechanics and design, here's hoping the new leadership does it justice, we have high hopes here.

 

Hello from Egypt btw.

 

 

[Myror.7521]

You would laugh but ....... the old pvp lobby back then where Start with a "how to pvp" Island and after you go trough the Portal your then at the normal one...... gosh i miss this times

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

Let me tackle some of the points you made here. I know that you mean well...but I'm here to be the the bringer of bad news, the Grinch that stole Christmas, The Town Crier: Hear-yee, Hear-yee! and tell you that most of these ideas don't work.

 

PVP Education/Tutorials :

In my view, PvP education is not as simple as making a tutorial area...in other words, just making a tutorial area isn't gonna magically fix the problems of SPVP. A tutorial area for completely new players does no harm...there's no reason not to have one, and if they made one...great! Arguably, these tutorial areas already exist, or have existed.

 

Duel Arena's, which were user-generated server rooms where players can enter and exit with autonomy was a great place to meet, chat with people to make friends, learn how to duel, counter classes, and learn things (the exact proposition you made). Hot-joins were probably the best thing about this games PVP scene.

 

But these duel arena's are dead...Why are they dead? Well its not a simple answer.

 

Many factors have contributed to the death of Hot-joins and Duel Servers...a combination of dwindling population, lack of build variety and balance, the inception of the public arena, the lack of people staying in hot-join servers to keep it at a sustained population... and overall the server system is just flawed, un-appreciated and neglected... and maybe some more I haven't mentioned.

 

What I'm saying is that...people underestimate the complexity of these problems...and just a guess here...but if you made a tutorial area, not only would they be misleading and misrepresentative of actual SPVP experience, they probably wouldn't be visited all that much anyway. People skip game cinematics for crying out loud I can't even imagine people having an attention span to do a SPVP tutorial, especially one that covers it's nuances. 

 

Modes

Do we need more modes? Yes we should have more modes...how do we avoid the fiasco that was Stronghold? With good system design. I don't think A-net has the capability to do this...some of their systems are deeply flawed, overly complicated and unintuitive...in fact this is why you probably mentioned we need "education" to begin with because of bad systems design of these systems in the first place. A simple system that operates on some simple rules, requires no education really...because it's easy to understand how it works, and afterward is an exploration of the consequences the system's ruleset has on it's agents. This is why conquest as simple as it is, generates it's persistently novel complexity...it's easy to get understand how to win the game : hold the nodes more than the enemy does. How you go about that is up to you...and there's a near infinite way to do that job (if there's enough variety to do so)

 

So why did stronghold fail again? Well to be honest I don't really know. Maybe someone who's played it more would like to speak on exactly why nobody plays it. My guess is "kill the enemy lord" is a goal that doesn't involve having to interact with other players, and so it just ends up as a rush to the other side and this is not SPVP but just PVE in SPVP and that's boring for SPVP players. Just my guess.

 

Clear ROLES \ ROTATIONS in PVP

If you've been taken away anything I said above, about system design, then it's going to help you understand the flaw of this line of thinking is...the topic of clear roles and the particular problem it creates is super complex and deals with the design of systems. Like we said earlier about conquest...conquest has a very simple ruleset:

 

There are three nodes, 10 teammates...hold the nodes longer than the enemy team and you win.

 

Beyond this there are no rules to conquest, and any form of strategy to win the game is arbitrary. Because of the size of it's rulespace...the amount of possible arbitrary ways and strategies one can take is essentially infinite, then it becomes impossible to clearly define anything.

 

But aside from the arbitrary ways one can describe strategy in conquest, the idea that classes and builds should have singular roles, and singular rotations lead to a much more worse problem: Lack of Diversity. People probably don't remember this, but "Purity of Purpose" was the nick-name given to the balance directive at the time of some key balance updates, in which the prerogative was to give clear purpose to sets of traits...meaning that roles were made clear for said class or spec hence the name.

 

For example, If you played a thief, then your purpose is to be a +1 Decapper. The traits, the skills and options limit you to pretty much only able to do this job. Likewise, if you chose a Reaper, your Purity of Purpose was to be a team-fighter. 

 

Perhaps most people don't notice...that this purity of purpose that has existed for 5 or more years now, was the driving force for massive imbalance and lack of diversity in the game. To elaborate...when you pick a class or spec, you are forced by your option selection into a specific role...where essentially the options you pick "don't matter." If you wanted to play a thief healer? well to bad you don't have good enough options to do that...if you wanted to play a thief with this weapon? To bad, this spec only works with the elite specs weapon.

 

This shoehorning of roles, collapsed the variety one was able to see in the game...and the game has forever since declined after these changes. Yes we got to have some functioning builds from those changes but we lost countlessly many more...it was by far the worse design choice ever made, and the game still suffers to this day from it. It was the failure of this balance philosophy that actually lead to the February 2020 doomsday patch...which was like taking an already terrible problem and making it even worse.

 

So even though most people are aware of my dislike of the 2020 balance patch, Purity of Purpose was even worse, as these were mechanic based decisions, meaning they are rules, that would drive the behavior of the agents in the game...that behavior driving diversity into the ground, forcing people to play the same builds. So the answer to this is no...Roles should not exist. Options should exist. Since these issues are about system design, how to approach solutions to them are arbitrary...you can't really teach someone how to design a good system...it's kind of like a skill or an art that you develop by just making systems, then seeing what they do, making changes and observing what the changes do. They require imagination, and a compromise between it's simplicity and it's complexity. So the statement I made earlier that A-net is not capable of this...i think that they had 10 years to kind of show if they would be capable and i don't think they are.

 

Just for a moment think about Cyberpunk 2077 and it's systems. An incredibly beautiful game that I love to play...but man...this game has terrible... terrible systems. In fact the way you enjoy this game is to just ignore most of it's systems entirely and just explore the world...Turn off the mini-map, Turn off your quest markers, and pick up the phone only when you get called as you walk and drive around the city. Cyberpunk is a good example of a great game, ruined by bad system design...forget numbers...buffs...nerfs...none of those things matter. Just rules and the consequences of those rules.

Edited May 30, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Tescao.3042]

35 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Let me tackle some of the points you made here. I know that you mean well...but I'm here to be the the bringer of bad news, the Grinch that stole Christmas, The Town Crier: Hear-yee, Hear-yee! and tell you that most of these ideas don't work.

 

PVP Education/Tutorials :

In my view, PvP education is not as simple as making a tutorial area...in other words, just making a tutorial area isn't gonna magically fix the problems of SPVP. A tutorial area for completely new players does no harm...there's no reason not to have one, and if they made one...great! Arguably, these tutorial areas already exist, or have existed.

 

Duel Arena's, which were user-generated server rooms where players can enter and exit with autonomy was a great place to meet, chat with people to make friends, learn how to duel, counter classes, and learn things (the exact proposition you made). Hot-joins were probably the best thing about this games PVP scene.

 

But these duel arena's are dead...Why are they dead? Well its not a simple answer.

 

Many factors have contributed to the death of Hot-joins and Duel Servers...a combination of dwindling population, lack of build variety and balance, the inception of the public arena, the lack of people staying in hot-join servers to keep it at a sustained population... and overall the server system is just flawed, un-appreciated and neglected... and maybe some more I haven't mentioned.

 

What I'm saying is that...people underestimate the complexity of these problems...and just a guess here...but if you made a tutorial area, not only would they be misleading and misrepresentative of actual SPVP experience, they probably wouldn't be visited all that much anyway. People skip game cinematics for crying out loud I can't even imagine people having an attention span to do a SPVP tutorial, especially one that covers it's nuances. 

 

Modes

Do we need more modes? Yes we should have more modes...how do we avoid the fiasco that was Stronghold? With good system design. I don't think A-net has the capability to do this...some of their systems are deeply flawed, overly complicated and unintuitive...in fact this is why you probably mentioned we need "education" to begin with because of bad systems design of these systems in the first place. A simple system that operates on some simple rules, requires no education really...because it's easy to understand how it works, and afterward is an exploration of the consequences the system's ruleset has on it's agents. This is why conquest as simple as it is, generates it's persistently novel complexity...it's easy to get understand how to win the game : hold the nodes more than the enemy does. How you go about that is up to you...and there's a near infinite way to do that job (if there's enough variety to do so)

 

So why did stronghold fail again? Well to be honest I don't really know. Maybe someone who's played it more would like to speak on exactly why nobody plays it. My guess is "kill the enemy lord" is a goal that doesn't involve having to interact with other players, and so it just ends up as a rush to the other side and this is not SPVP but just PVE in SPVP and that's boring for SPVP players. Just my guess.

 

Clear ROLES \ ROTATIONS in PVP

If you've been taken away anything I said above, about system design, then it's going to help you understand the flaw of this line of thinking is...the topic of clear roles and the particular problem it creates is super complex and deals with the design of systems. Like we said earlier about conquest...conquest has a very simple ruleset:

 

There are three nodes, 10 teammates...hold the nodes longer than the enemy team and you win.

 

Beyond this there are no rules to conquest, and any form of strategy to win the game is arbitrary. Because of the size of it's rulespace...the amount of possible arbitrary ways and strategies one can take is essentially infinite, then it becomes impossible to clearly define anything.

 

But aside from the arbitrary ways one can describe strategy in conquest, the idea that classes and builds should have singular roles, and singular rotations lead to a much more worse problem: Lack of Diversity. People probably don't remember this, but "Purity of Purpose" was the nick-name given to the balance directive at the time of some key balance updates, in which the prerogative was to give clear purpose to sets of traits...meaning that roles were made clear for said class or spec hence the name.

 

For example, If you played a thief, then your purpose is to be a +1 Decapper. The traits, the skills and options limit you to pretty much only able to do this job. Likewise, if you chose a Reaper, your Purity of Purpose was to be a team-fighter. 

 

Perhaps most people don't notice...that this purity of purpose that has existed for 5 or more years now, was the driving force for massive imbalance and lack of diversity in the game. To elaborate...when you pick a class or spec, you are forced by your option selection into a specific role...where essentially the options you pick "don't matter." If you wanted to play a thief healer? well to bad you don't have good enough options to do that...if you wanted to play a thief with this weapon? To bad, this spec only works with the elite specs weapon.

 

This shoehorning of roles, collapsed the variety one was able to see in the game...and the game has forever since declined after these changes. Yes we got to have some functioning builds from those changes but we lost countlessly many more...it was by far the worse design choice ever made, and the game still suffers to this day from it. It was the failure of this balance philosophy that actually lead to the February 2020 doomsday patch...which was like taking an already terrible problem and making it even worse.

 

So even though most people are aware of my dislike of the 2020 balance patch, Purity of Purpose was even worse, as these were mechanic based decisions, meaning they are rules, that would drive the behavior of the agents in the game...that behavior driving diversity into the ground, forcing people to play the same builds. So the answer to this is no...Roles should not exist. Options should exist. Since these issues are about system design, how to approach solutions to them are arbitrary...you can't really teach someone how to design a good system...it's kind of like a skill or an art that you develop by just making systems, then seeing what they do, making changes and observing what the changes do. They require imagination, and a compromise between it's simplicity and it's complexity. So the statement I made earlier that A-net is not capable of this...i think that they had 10 years to kind of show if they would be capable and i don't think they are.

 

Just for a moment think about Cyberpunk 2077 and it's systems. An incredibly beautiful game that I love to play...but man...this game has terrible... terrible systems. In fact the way you enjoy this game is to just ignore most of it's systems entirely and just explore the world...Turn off the mini-map, Turn off your quest markers, and pick up the phone only when you get called as you walk and drive around the city. Cyberpunk is a good example of a great game, ruined by bad system design...forget numbers...buffs...nerfs...none of those things matter.

Beautiful!

I have nothing against streamers, but remember the times when there was no coverage of all possible events and direction for the "correct" game. In those days, popularity was at its peak in MMOs, people enjoyed the fact that they were swimming in the flow of mystery - in the flow of love. Reminds me of Eden and the eaten apple of knowledge.

Edited May 30, 2022 by DomHemingway.8436

[Terrorhuz.4695]

The easiest solution is to ask other players tbh. If you play thief, search for some thief and ask them how you're supposed to play. Many people will ignore you, but all it takes is for one to actually give you the answer. People can be nice, if you just give them a chance to.

[Vancho.8750]

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684

There is nothing wrong with the purity of purpose on Elite specializations, since you know you specialize in something, you need restrictions to have difference.

The problem is that Anet never did purity of purpose properly it either had pigeon hold builds on profession level instead of elite spec level or its good at everything Blob builds, since they add rules but make multiple exceptions to some professions. 

Restrictive variety is better than random variety, we already have 3 elite specs per profession giving each one a niche would be way better than pushing for more variables, since you will always end up with something that will become all purpose blob builds that will reduce variety since everyone will gravitate to those. 
Majority of People prefer curated experience with some variety over total randomness. When you have lets say an attack does x but you put some traits in and now does y instead of x people will not feel ok when they are on the receiver end, since people have build in expectations over time and creates overload of information, the game already has sensory readability issues as is.

The game has 36 options between core and elite specs to give each one a purpose and that is plenty of variety if anyone bothers to curate a good experience for each one. 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

26 minutes ago, Vancho.8750 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684

There is nothing wrong with the purity of purpose on Elite specializations, since you know you specialize in something, you need restrictions to have difference.

The problem is that Anet never did purity of purpose properly it either had pigeon hold builds on profession level instead of elite spec level or its good at everything Blob builds, since they add rules but make multiple exceptions to some professions. 

Restrictive variety is better than random variety, we already have 3 elite specs per profession giving each one a niche would be way better than pushing for more variables, since you will always end up with something that will become all purpose blob builds that will reduce variety since everyone will gravitate to those. 
Majority of People prefer curated experience with some variety over total randomness. When you have lets say an attack does x but you put some traits in and now does y instead of x people will not feel ok when they are on the receiver end, since people have build in expectations over time and creates overload of information, the game already has sensory readability issues as is.

The game has 36 options between core and elite specs to give each one a purpose and that is plenty of variety if anyone bothers to curate a good experience for each one. 

I didn’t say we should be presenting random options…and I’ll elaborate on this later.

 

but regardless things find order in randomness. It’s argued that this is fundamental to why we exist in the world the way that we do.

 

Interesting and non-relevant fact. Have you ever wondered why plants are green? It’s because our sun’s visible spectrum peaks (has the highest intensity) of the green wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. Plants on Earth evolved (were selected for) where plants that were more green then plants that were not would reflect more of the sun and prevent them from getting too hot (keeping themselves cooler) than their competitors, and so the plants that survived were green!

 

The point is that in the randomness, systems of order are found naturally. It’s an inevitability and it doesn’t need to be manufactured or restricted…it just happens as a consequence of things existing. I wouldn’t call presenting options as those being “just random options.” Like stated earlier…making mechanics and systems is an art form…it takes skill and finesse to make good mechanics and systems that yield interesting and complex behaviors.

 

In terms of sensory and information overload…ehh I think what we have now is information overload. We’ve got skills in the game where the tooltip of those skills takes up more space than the screen and so you can’t read their entire effects…that’s ridiculous. No skill should have a mechanic that is longer than 3 or 4 sentences…not paragraphs…and those skills should not be restrictive…that’s pretty much it. Nowhere do the skills need to be “random.”
 

The space of possible builds being small and overbloated is like the inverse of what a designer should strive for and the former is what we have now…it’s conceptually ugly but also is not balanced or diverse.

 

Just an example, Imagine walking into a building where to get to the bathroom you needed to follow a single precise, but long instruction manual and convoluted procedure to get there, rather than having many random, different but simple ways to get to the bathroom.
 

In the space of possible random ways to get there…you’ll seek out the one that suits your purposes…the stairway, the elevator, the escalator, the buggie, walking…

[bethekey.8314]

Hotjoins build community with continuous lobbies. Spectator mode teaches people how to play.

Anet killed both.

Edited May 30, 2022 by bethekey.8314

[Shao.7236]

GW2 learning curve is rather step without a lot of mistakes.  My entire first year of it was filled with losses and lack of success, it's only after facing each professions enough that many of the important cues started to make sense and that habits started to form.

 

Some may learn faster but this game is not a game you can pick up and not expect to be blasted a quite a few times with no clue to what happened. Which is one of the reasons why the player count is not all that high, it's quite easy to be dominated if you're clueless and there's hardly any motives to keep going other than getting good.

 

Anet had a legendary amulet in PvP for a bit until I guess enough have complained and they wanted nothing to do with PvP and just keep doing PvE.

 

Personally GW2 combat is highly entertaining without having to sweat with aiming/precision which is what keeps me going with it. I can have a degree of challenge that is still good timing in combat but without having all the FPS skills constantly involved since I've had so much of it in my life.

 

I do believe that you can truly enjoy the game with your people, secret is to not beating yourself for it since it never was easy to be good at it. There's a lot to remember in the game, it's not casual friendly and does require you wanting to look up the what when and why of the game more than anything.

[Tescao.3042]

10 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

I didn’t say we should be presenting random options…and I’ll elaborate on this later.

 

but regardless things find order in randomness. It’s argued that this is fundamental to why we exist in the world the way that we do.

 

Interesting and non-relevant fact. Have you ever wondered why plants are green? It’s because our sun’s visible spectrum peaks (has the highest intensity) of the green wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum. Plants on Earth evolved (were selected for) where plants that were more green then plants that were not would reflect more of the sun and prevent them from getting too hot (keeping themselves cooler) than their competitors, and so the plants that survived were green!

 

The point is that in the randomness, systems of order are found naturally. It’s an inevitability and it doesn’t need to be manufactured or restricted…it just happens as a consequence of things existing. I wouldn’t call presenting options as those being “just random options.” Like stated earlier…making mechanics and systems is an art form…it takes skill and finesse to make good mechanics and systems that yield interesting and complex behaviors.

 

In terms of sensory and information overload…ehh I think what we have now is information overload. We’ve got skills in the game where the tooltip of those skills takes up more space than the screen and so you can’t read their entire effects…that’s ridiculous. No skill should have a mechanic that is longer than 3 or 4 sentences…not paragraphs…and those skills should not be restrictive…that’s pretty much it. Nowhere do the skills need to be “random.”
 

The space of possible builds being small and overbloated is like the inverse of what a designer should strive for and the former is what we have now…it’s conceptually ugly but also is not balanced or diverse.

 

Just an example, Imagine walking into a building where to get to the bathroom you needed to follow a single precise, but long instruction manual and convoluted procedure to get there, rather than having many random, different but simple ways to get to the bathroom.
 

In the space of possible random ways to get there…you’ll seek out the one that suits your purposes…the stairway, the elevator, the escalator, the buggie, walking…

The head belongs to society. The head may be a wonderful servant, but a bad master, society needs our head, it is afraid of our heart - afraid of love. The head is always traditional, the heart is revolutionary (Meta is traditional, Non-meta is revolutionary).

Edited May 30, 2022 by DomHemingway.8436

[jdawgie.1835]

On 5/30/2022 at 1:12 AM, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

But these duel arena's are dead...Why are they dead? Well its not a simple answer.

When they eliminated 5 man teams - they eliminated all spvp specific guilds. Who did a majority of the training and education. Two people per match is not enough to sustain a spvp only guild. There we once dozens upon dozens up Spvp only guilds. When they left because they could no longer play together - or for example have four vet players take along 1 near person and coach him/her. This was standard for a spvp guild. 

 

DUO made those guilds obsolete and once they left a massive chunk of the pvp community was gone. Bringing back 5 mans would bring back spvp focused guilds  and therefore alot of the healthy basics those guilds did.  

[Lysico.4906]

5 mans were the death to PvP 

[Myror.7521]

@Lysico.4906 5 man was the only time where pvp was actually alive you mean. Duo left every possible competetive way and made pvp to what it is todays. A death game Mode with a such low community thst your lucky your not ranked against and with the same peoples every second matchub

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

1 hour ago, Lysico.4906 said:

5 mans were the death to PvP 

removing 5mans removed the player pool that had the social skills to get along with two-four people. 

which was most of PvP. 

The same people getting stomped by 5mans and being upset about it are the same people getting blown up by legend duos today and afking after they lose mid first skirmish. 

Or is PvP alive now? 

Edited May 31, 2022 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

1 hour ago, jdawgie.1835 said:

Bringing back 5 mans would bring back spvp focused guilds  and therefore alot of the healthy basics those guilds did.  

This, + an avenue for people who want to solo (like 1v1s or PuG with thoughtfully modified rewards based on performance) would allow people to insulate themselves from a large portion of the issues preventing people from pvping that arent directly tied to balance. 

[Tescao.3042]

Pre-assembled groups couldn't save WoW PvP, besides, pre-assembled groups made WoW pvp even more meta-slavery, with "limitless" setups possibilities. The same teams play each other after 2k, above 2.4k even more limited, RBG even sadder.

Our body is small, our mind is small, our being is limitless.

Edited June 1, 2022 by DomHemingway.8436

[SlayerXX.7138]

What PvP could need is some better community generated guides. As most builds and guides i see online are from and for High level players.

Like someone already noted barrier of entry is the biggest problem GW 2 PvP faces. 

 

10 hours ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

removing 5mans removed the player pool that had the social skills to get along with two-four people. 

There are tournaments that partly fill that niche. There are just not enough people in PvP to make it a fun experience if your 5 man is below plat.

[tiika.8512]

On 5/30/2022 at 10:12 AM, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Let me tackle some of the points you made here. I know that you mean well...but I'm here to be the the bringer of bad news, the Grinch that stole Christmas, The Town Crier: Hear-yee, Hear-yee! and tell you that most of these ideas don't work.

 

PVP Education/Tutorials :

In my view, PvP education is not as simple as making a tutorial area...in other words, just making a tutorial area isn't gonna magically fix the problems of SPVP. A tutorial area for completely new players does no harm...there's no reason not to have one, and if they made one...great! Arguably, these tutorial areas already exist, or have existed.

 

Duel Arena's, which were user-generated server rooms where players can enter and exit with autonomy was a great place to meet, chat with people to make friends, learn how to duel, counter classes, and learn things (the exact proposition you made). Hot-joins were probably the best thing about this games PVP scene.

 

But these duel arena's are dead...Why are they dead? Well its not a simple answer.

 

Many factors have contributed to the death of Hot-joins and Duel Servers...a combination of dwindling population, lack of build variety and balance, the inception of the public arena, the lack of people staying in hot-join servers to keep it at a sustained population... and overall the server system is just flawed, un-appreciated and neglected... and maybe some more I haven't mentioned.

 

What I'm saying is that...people underestimate the complexity of these problems...and just a guess here...but if you made a tutorial area, not only would they be misleading and misrepresentative of actual SPVP experience, they probably wouldn't be visited all that much anyway. People skip game cinematics for crying out loud I can't even imagine people having an attention span to do a SPVP tutorial, especially one that covers it's nuances. 

 

Modes

Do we need more modes? Yes we should have more modes...how do we avoid the fiasco that was Stronghold? With good system design. I don't think A-net has the capability to do this...some of their systems are deeply flawed, overly complicated and unintuitive...in fact this is why you probably mentioned we need "education" to begin with because of bad systems design of these systems in the first place. A simple system that operates on some simple rules, requires no education really...because it's easy to understand how it works, and afterward is an exploration of the consequences the system's ruleset has on it's agents. This is why conquest as simple as it is, generates it's persistently novel complexity...it's easy to get understand how to win the game : hold the nodes more than the enemy does. How you go about that is up to you...and there's a near infinite way to do that job (if there's enough variety to do so)

 

So why did stronghold fail again? Well to be honest I don't really know. Maybe someone who's played it more would like to speak on exactly why nobody plays it. My guess is "kill the enemy lord" is a goal that doesn't involve having to interact with other players, and so it just ends up as a rush to the other side and this is not SPVP but just PVE in SPVP and that's boring for SPVP players. Just my guess.

 

Clear ROLES \ ROTATIONS in PVP

If you've been taken away anything I said above, about system design, then it's going to help you understand the flaw of this line of thinking is...the topic of clear roles and the particular problem it creates is super complex and deals with the design of systems. Like we said earlier about conquest...conquest has a very simple ruleset:

 

There are three nodes, 10 teammates...hold the nodes longer than the enemy team and you win.

 

Beyond this there are no rules to conquest, and any form of strategy to win the game is arbitrary. Because of the size of it's rulespace...the amount of possible arbitrary ways and strategies one can take is essentially infinite, then it becomes impossible to clearly define anything.

 

But aside from the arbitrary ways one can describe strategy in conquest, the idea that classes and builds should have singular roles, and singular rotations lead to a much more worse problem: Lack of Diversity. People probably don't remember this, but "Purity of Purpose" was the nick-name given to the balance directive at the time of some key balance updates, in which the prerogative was to give clear purpose to sets of traits...meaning that roles were made clear for said class or spec hence the name.

 

For example, If you played a thief, then your purpose is to be a +1 Decapper. The traits, the skills and options limit you to pretty much only able to do this job. Likewise, if you chose a Reaper, your Purity of Purpose was to be a team-fighter. 

 

Perhaps most people don't notice...that this purity of purpose that has existed for 5 or more years now, was the driving force for massive imbalance and lack of diversity in the game. To elaborate...when you pick a class or spec, you are forced by your option selection into a specific role...where essentially the options you pick "don't matter." If you wanted to play a thief healer? well to bad you don't have good enough options to do that...if you wanted to play a thief with this weapon? To bad, this spec only works with the elite specs weapon.

 

This shoehorning of roles, collapsed the variety one was able to see in the game...and the game has forever since declined after these changes. Yes we got to have some functioning builds from those changes but we lost countlessly many more...it was by far the worse design choice ever made, and the game still suffers to this day from it. It was the failure of this balance philosophy that actually lead to the February 2020 doomsday patch...which was like taking an already terrible problem and making it even worse.

 

So even though most people are aware of my dislike of the 2020 balance patch, Purity of Purpose was even worse, as these were mechanic based decisions, meaning they are rules, that would drive the behavior of the agents in the game...that behavior driving diversity into the ground, forcing people to play the same builds. So the answer to this is no...Roles should not exist. Options should exist. Since these issues are about system design, how to approach solutions to them are arbitrary...you can't really teach someone how to design a good system...it's kind of like a skill or an art that you develop by just making systems, then seeing what they do, making changes and observing what the changes do. They require imagination, and a compromise between it's simplicity and it's complexity. So the statement I made earlier that A-net is not capable of this...i think that they had 10 years to kind of show if they would be capable and i don't think they are.

 

Just for a moment think about Cyberpunk 2077 and it's systems. An incredibly beautiful game that I love to play...but man...this game has terrible... terrible systems. In fact the way you enjoy this game is to just ignore most of it's systems entirely and just explore the world...Turn off the mini-map, Turn off your quest markers, and pick up the phone only when you get called as you walk and drive around the city. Cyberpunk is a good example of a great game, ruined by bad system design...forget numbers...buffs...nerfs...none of those things matter. Just rules and the consequences of those rules.

 

I love how you spread in detail what works now, what didn't work before, what of the presented ideas CAN'T work and so on, let me thank you firstly Justice, you seem like a Vet with the way you speak about the topic, if you would allow me to specify some things, I understand that the education problem is not going to be fixed ONLY by tutorial areas, those are just suggested to introduce ppl into PVP, to be more welcoming, a quick explanation of the systems and what can the players find and do in the lobby area. That will ofc not work for combat education, which is my main problem, there are no practice or combat training modules or incentives in the game, u only have those core classes npc in the pvp lobby and the open lobby which is frankly not that helpful.

 

You need to have clear information of what are you expected to do and what you should expect back from the game, for example, I just lost a match today on my warrior, ofc I got bursted to death just like my teammates, I looked at the info panel, the little i inside the circle when u die, for the cause of the stomping, there was 32k damage hit from "Torture" ... How the hell is that even allowed, characters don't have 30k health pools, unless u r a necro maybe w shroud if u can consider that, plus the info panel doesn't give u any other info, it doesn't tell u which character did it, it doesn't tell u what that character's equipment is, there is only empty space for speculation, not helpful at all, i won 2 out of 6 matches today, and it felt awful, i am an olay player, not an elite mind you, but i understand the class mechanics, but there are some classes i haven't played yet and I haven't got the time nor character slots to play them yet, it would be sure helpful to have some things in the game to help educate ppl in combat against other classes, the reason why I said maybe let's start simply with new elite spec NPCs to poke when in lobby, at least it will familiarize us with the animations, maybe add a way to check your opponent's build and equipment later on, add more information about how u died, it leaves a sour taste when u get obliterated and have no idea what the hell just happened, some ppl quit the game because of this.

 

The Dual arenas was something I missed out on, but having no incentives to do them marks them as a waste of time so their death is understandable, I'm thinking maybe make a system where elites can make combat classes or training arenas and that can replace those, while giving them a reward of some kind for leading, something akin to the commander or mentor tags thing, to teach others the tricks and good-to-knows of their class, while recieving rewards for their efforts.

 

More modes? Yes, variety is good, we are currently in a stagnation of this game mode, conquest over and over again is one of the things that bores players from playing PVP, plus the stomping ofc, need to freshen things up, at least new maps or add the 2v2 and 3v3s as an option instead of conquest, they're at least faster and less time consuming.

 

Lastly the clear roles thing, I get your point, and I'm actually with you on it, cause as I said "variety is good" but hear me out, currently, no one fully understands what player roles are in PVP, the game's variety is so complexe, it doesn't have that much of a professional competitive scene, I don't see a lot of GW2 PVP tournaments with real money pools, maybe I'm mistaken please correct me if I'm wrong, and if I am, it's definitely not popular like other competitive games. What I am trying to say is, and I dislike using the word somewhat, but the mode needs to be "streamlined", to cader to normal audience, casuals, people who want to play and chill, people who have other responsibilities and not enough time, the mode very much needs it, increase the player base, make it so everyone can play PVP and make it as accessible as possible, the barrier to entry is so high ppl either just ignore or try it out for a bit and lose their kitten.

 

I love the game's combat, but i detest PVP, as it currently is, it needs to change, Anet needs to work on this, some way or another, it doesn't have to be as per my feedback I'm not a game design or programing expert but at least give us something to look forward to.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

On 6/4/2022 at 6:20 PM, tiika.8512 said:

 

I love how you spread in detail what works now, what didn't work before, what of the presented ideas CAN'T work and so on, let me thank you firstly Justice, you seem like a Vet with the way you speak about the topic, if you would allow me to specify some things, I understand that the education problem is not going to be fixed ONLY by tutorial areas, those are just suggested to introduce ppl into PVP, to be more welcoming, a quick explanation of the systems and what can the players find and do in the lobby area. That will ofc not work for combat education, which is my main problem, there are no practice or combat training modules or incentives in the game, u only have those core classes npc in the pvp lobby and the open lobby which is frankly not that helpful.

 

You need to have clear information of what are you expected to do and what you should expect back from the game, for example, I just lost a match today on my warrior, ofc I got bursted to death just like my teammates, I looked at the info panel, the little i inside the circle when u die, for the cause of the stomping, there was 32k damage hit from "Torture" ... How the hell is that even allowed, characters don't have 30k health pools, unless u r a necro maybe w shroud if u can consider that, plus the info panel doesn't give u any other info, it doesn't tell u which character did it, it doesn't tell u what that character's equipment is, there is only empty space for speculation, not helpful at all, i won 2 out of 6 matches today, and it felt awful, i am an olay player, not an elite mind you, but i understand the class mechanics, but there are some classes i haven't played yet and I haven't got the time nor character slots to play them yet, it would be sure helpful to have some things in the game to help educate ppl in combat against other classes, the reason why I said maybe let's start simply with new elite spec NPCs to poke when in lobby, at least it will familiarize us with the animations, maybe add a way to check your opponent's build and equipment later on, add more information about how u died, it leaves a sour taste when u get obliterated and have no idea what the hell just happened, some ppl quit the game because of this.

 

The Dual arenas was something I missed out on, but having no incentives to do them marks them as a waste of time so their death is understandable, I'm thinking maybe make a system where elites can make combat classes or training arenas and that can replace those, while giving them a reward of some kind for leading, something akin to the commander or mentor tags thing, to teach others the tricks and good-to-knows of their class, while recieving rewards for their efforts.

 

More modes? Yes, variety is good, we are currently in a stagnation of this game mode, conquest over and over again is one of the things that bores players from playing PVP, plus the stomping ofc, need to freshen things up, at least new maps or add the 2v2 and 3v3s as an option instead of conquest, they're at least faster and less time consuming.

 

Lastly the clear roles thing, I get your point, and I'm actually with you on it, cause as I said "variety is good" but hear me out, currently, no one fully understands what player roles are in PVP, the game's variety is so complexe, it doesn't have that much of a professional competitive scene, I don't see a lot of GW2 PVP tournaments with real money pools, maybe I'm mistaken please correct me if I'm wrong, and if I am, it's definitely not popular like other competitive games. What I am trying to say is, and I dislike using the word somewhat, but the mode needs to be "streamlined", to cader to normal audience, casuals, people who want to play and chill, people who have other responsibilities and not enough time, the mode very much needs it, increase the player base, make it so everyone can play PVP and make it as accessible as possible, the barrier to entry is so high ppl either just ignore or try it out for a bit and lose their kitten.

 

I love the game's combat, but i detest PVP, as it currently is, it needs to change, Anet needs to work on this, some way or another, it doesn't have to be as per my feedback I'm not a game design or programing expert but at least give us something to look forward to.

 

Thanks for the reply. I know I can come off and sound abrasive, and partly this just has to do with how cynical I can be, but I'm glad you didn't take that away from my post.

 

The topic is much too large to speak about...but generally speaking, my response would basically boil down into : Anet needs to create better systems, and fix already existing systems. They've kind of avoided the fixing part...and instead have been over the past 10 years just adding more and more and more systems, without ever going back to fix, or simplify anything. Some of the new systems are made simply to replace older systems (like abandoning dungeons in favor of strikes and dragon response missions) and so this is why we have 6 pve dungeon modes, where only 1 or 2 of them are played and the rest are just collecting dust.

 

So rather than saying streamlined...I think streamlined is the wrong word to use...because it implies that what is needed is a more dilute or uniform experience. We don't need a more uniform experience, we need systems fixed, and better systems to be made. We need good game design.

 

Cheers,

Edited June 7, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[KingJake.6529]

On 6/4/2022 at 5:20 PM, tiika.8512 said:

The Dual arenas was something I missed out on, but having no incentives to do them marks them as a waste of time so their death is understandable, I'm thinking maybe make a system where elites can make combat classes or training arenas and that can replace those, while giving them a reward of some kind for leading, something akin to the commander or mentor tags thing, to teach others the tricks and good-to-knows of their class, while recieving rewards for their efforts.

Duel servers  allowed people to improve their mechanical skills with people who may have similar skill levels, vets who may be willing to teach newer players or people who wanted to learn a new class. They didn't need a reward because you would join them to get better at the game, It had an entire community by itself and it was an organic thing. What mainly killed duel servers is the FFA which doesn't really have the same feeling as those servers have and is just there for cheap quick content instead of learning.

Edited June 7, 2022 by KingJake.6529

[Odin.6487]

all great ideas but pvp isnt even an after thought for anet. they cant even fix a que bug for wvw....

[jdawgie.1835]

On 5/31/2022 at 2:28 PM, Lysico.4906 said:

5 mans were the death to PvP 

Your a massive troll my guy. 

 

On 5/31/2022 at 3:45 PM, Pati.2438 said:

5 man was the only time where pvp was actually alive you mean. Duo left every possible competetive way and made pvp to what it is todays. A death game Mode with a such low community thst your lucky your not ranked against and with the same peoples every second matchub

This here is the truth. 

[Ragebru.1397]

It's weird to say that 

On 5/29/2022 at 5:04 PM, tiika.8512 said:

no way any1 who does not have the time to study every profession in the game and their mechanics will be able to play and enjoy PVP

because that is literally any PvP arena style game.. League, WoW, Smite, Valorant, GW1, literally anything- you have to know what your opponents could have, what they're guaranteed to have, and how to counter it. For the most part, there is a real simplicity to GW2 combat, more often than not, players fail to utilize their dodges and pop their defensives too early. I would recommend taking a quick screenshot of the death breakdown while you are waiting to respawn- review what killed you, and what did the most damage at the end of the game. 

As for the new game modes, I couldn't agree more. However, these threads pop up every few weeks, and the PvP population would probably gain significantly more momentum if we had one single thread that we kept up. After all, in this day and age, it's all about view numbers and posted comments. So please, let's make one mega post, and keep it afloat for the sake of being heard and acknowledged.

[oscuro.9720]

On 5/30/2022 at 1:12 AM, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Let me tackle some of the points you made here. I know that you mean well...but I'm here to be the the bringer of bad news, the Grinch that stole Christmas, The Town Crier: Hear-yee, Hear-yee! and tell you that most of these ideas don't work.

 

PVP Education/Tutorials :

In my view, PvP education is not as simple as making a tutorial area...in other words, just making a tutorial area isn't gonna magically fix the problems of SPVP. A tutorial area for completely new players does no harm...there's no reason not to have one, and if they made one...great! Arguably, these tutorial areas already exist, or have existed.

 

Duel Arena's, which were user-generated server rooms where players can enter and exit with autonomy was a great place to meet, chat with people to make friends, learn how to duel, counter classes, and learn things (the exact proposition you made). Hot-joins were probably the best thing about this games PVP scene.

 

But these duel arena's are dead...Why are they dead? Well its not a simple answer.

 

Many factors have contributed to the death of Hot-joins and Duel Servers...a combination of dwindling population, lack of build variety and balance, the inception of the public arena, the lack of people staying in hot-join servers to keep it at a sustained population... and overall the server system is just flawed, un-appreciated and neglected... and maybe some more I haven't mentioned.

 

What I'm saying is that...people underestimate the complexity of these problems...and just a guess here...but if you made a tutorial area, not only would they be misleading and misrepresentative of actual SPVP experience, they probably wouldn't be visited all that much anyway. People skip game cinematics for crying out loud I can't even imagine people having an attention span to do a SPVP tutorial, especially one that covers it's nuances. 

 

Modes

Do we need more modes? Yes we should have more modes...how do we avoid the fiasco that was Stronghold? With good system design. I don't think A-net has the capability to do this...some of their systems are deeply flawed, overly complicated and unintuitive...in fact this is why you probably mentioned we need "education" to begin with because of bad systems design of these systems in the first place. A simple system that operates on some simple rules, requires no education really...because it's easy to understand how it works, and afterward is an exploration of the consequences the system's ruleset has on it's agents. This is why conquest as simple as it is, generates it's persistently novel complexity...it's easy to get understand how to win the game : hold the nodes more than the enemy does. How you go about that is up to you...and there's a near infinite way to do that job (if there's enough variety to do so)

 

So why did stronghold fail again? Well to be honest I don't really know. Maybe someone who's played it more would like to speak on exactly why nobody plays it. My guess is "kill the enemy lord" is a goal that doesn't involve having to interact with other players, and so it just ends up as a rush to the other side and this is not SPVP but just PVE in SPVP and that's boring for SPVP players. Just my guess.

 

Clear ROLES \ ROTATIONS in PVP

If you've been taken away anything I said above, about system design, then it's going to help you understand the flaw of this line of thinking is...the topic of clear roles and the particular problem it creates is super complex and deals with the design of systems. Like we said earlier about conquest...conquest has a very simple ruleset:

 

There are three nodes, 10 teammates...hold the nodes longer than the enemy team and you win.

 

Beyond this there are no rules to conquest, and any form of strategy to win the game is arbitrary. Because of the size of it's rulespace...the amount of possible arbitrary ways and strategies one can take is essentially infinite, then it becomes impossible to clearly define anything.

 

But aside from the arbitrary ways one can describe strategy in conquest, the idea that classes and builds should have singular roles, and singular rotations lead to a much more worse problem: Lack of Diversity. People probably don't remember this, but "Purity of Purpose" was the nick-name given to the balance directive at the time of some key balance updates, in which the prerogative was to give clear purpose to sets of traits...meaning that roles were made clear for said class or spec hence the name.

 

For example, If you played a thief, then your purpose is to be a +1 Decapper. The traits, the skills and options limit you to pretty much only able to do this job. Likewise, if you chose a Reaper, your Purity of Purpose was to be a team-fighter. 

 

Perhaps most people don't notice...that this purity of purpose that has existed for 5 or more years now, was the driving force for massive imbalance and lack of diversity in the game. To elaborate...when you pick a class or spec, you are forced by your option selection into a specific role...where essentially the options you pick "don't matter." If you wanted to play a thief healer? well to bad you don't have good enough options to do that...if you wanted to play a thief with this weapon? To bad, this spec only works with the elite specs weapon.

 

This shoehorning of roles, collapsed the variety one was able to see in the game...and the game has forever since declined after these changes. Yes we got to have some functioning builds from those changes but we lost countlessly many more...it was by far the worse design choice ever made, and the game still suffers to this day from it. It was the failure of this balance philosophy that actually lead to the February 2020 doomsday patch...which was like taking an already terrible problem and making it even worse.

 

So even though most people are aware of my dislike of the 2020 balance patch, Purity of Purpose was even worse, as these were mechanic based decisions, meaning they are rules, that would drive the behavior of the agents in the game...that behavior driving diversity into the ground, forcing people to play the same builds. So the answer to this is no...Roles should not exist. Options should exist. Since these issues are about system design, how to approach solutions to them are arbitrary...you can't really teach someone how to design a good system...it's kind of like a skill or an art that you develop by just making systems, then seeing what they do, making changes and observing what the changes do. They require imagination, and a compromise between it's simplicity and it's complexity. So the statement I made earlier that A-net is not capable of this...i think that they had 10 years to kind of show if they would be capable and i don't think they are.

 

Just for a moment think about Cyberpunk 2077 and it's systems. An incredibly beautiful game that I love to play...but man...this game has terrible... terrible systems. In fact the way you enjoy this game is to just ignore most of it's systems entirely and just explore the world...Turn off the mini-map, Turn off your quest markers, and pick up the phone only when you get called as you walk and drive around the city. Cyberpunk is a good example of a great game, ruined by bad system design...forget numbers...buffs...nerfs...none of those things matter. Just rules and the consequences of those rules.

Interesting. I agree that the condensing of professions into set roles has been a long building problem. In your view, would a better way to handle the condensing of viable play styles for certain classes to be to expand the capability of classes to fulfill multiple roles with one build, or be to fulfill multiple roles depending on the build used?

Edited July 15, 2022 by oscuro.9720

[pukish.5784]

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