Is PvP as bad as everyone is claiming it is?

[Greyrat.2378]

As long as you don't care about your rank and whether you lose or win, you will probably have fun times if you like the combat.

Otherwise if you want to climb and compete for the title, I don't think that's going to be very enjoyable experience.

[Khalisto.5780]

Bottom line is if you have fun or not

 

If you're a low elo player 30% to 70% of your games will have an afk

 

If you around g3 you started being victim of match manipulation schemes

 

Not so much the famous wintrade but more of ppl abusing the matchmaking system to get easy matches and totally ruining the experience for the other 8 player

 

Why 8 players, cuz even if you one of the 3 dudes being carried by the duo abusing the system, next match you could be as easily against them in a match you have 0 chance of winning

[Sundoor.5630]

Been playing since June 2022, sPVPing almost on a daily basis. Despite what many on the forums say, the system itself is fine. Yea balance issues are there, but there are always going to be, it is impossible to balance out this many professions with this many builds. It is acceptable.

Problem is the few toxic players out there. Not too many, but even those few can ruin the game for a lot of others. Many of them just cannot handle the stress that comes with PVP and become prima donnas, but there are others who are just outright MEAN. It can be really disheartening, especially that they can go on and participate in many games in a row, ruining games for around 30 people before they get bored and/or ragequit.

It's one thing that bad behavior isn't penalized, but it is another that terrible behavior isn't either (harsh verbal abuse, intentional game throwing etc.).

 

Personally never seen any bots/cheaters in normal ranked games (I'm currently gold2)

[Fenris.8563]

I'm still new  to the game as I've only been playing for about 3 months now.  

With that being said, I've been completely taken by this game.  It is so much more (and better) than I always thought it was.  I wish I had played it 10 years ago instead of FFXIV, among other games.   The MSQ/PVE in general is so much better than I ever thought it would be.   It's the best I've ever experienced in an MMO.   I even get that sense of adventuring that I haven't been able to find since FFXI.   

 

With that being said, the PVP is SO good, and SO bad all at the same time.  The format of it is excellent.   The gameplay is pretty much perfect for PVP.   What I can't stand about it:   Awful balancing, Lack of usable weapon combos/builds that will actually work (which I guess you could just contribute to balancing), toxicity (insane levels, but you're just gonna encounter that in PVP.  I don't think anet can do much about that.), and I can't stand the fact that ranking is done based on Ws and Ls instead of individual performance. 

Last night (solo que) I lost like.... at leats 10+ matches in a row (ranked 3v3).  Mostly because people either didn't understand basic strategy, were AFK/disconnecting, or the other team was 3 meta builds that all have a ton of sustain, endless CC, and insane DPS at the same time.  

I'd like to see individual performance be the bigger decider in rank points.   Maybe have it slightly nudged by W/L's,  but if I am getting all the kills on my teams, doing most the damage, healing, etc, I think my team not doing much shouldn't be dragging my personal rank down.  It's insane.  

As far as balancing goes, we can go on all day.  I play as a Ranger so my point of view is quite strong on this topic as Ranger seems to just get shafted/ignored, as unlike these other classes, we have to choose between either doing good DPS or having actual stability, for the most part.   

[pcgamefreak.5208]

I don't know about the PvP mode but I say stick with it because WvW is not PvP at all.  It's player vs "CC" vs high-ranged-dps, vs "OP" classes, vs hackers vs "ArenaNet Babies."

 

I have been playing games since atari and the first white box Nintendo that came with Mario and Duckhunt.  I was born a gifted artist and decided to learn programming because I thought it would be cool to bring artwork to life and turned out, coding was my calling.  I have always had a high level of creativity and can easily point out the weakness of a game and knew exactly what it needed to be better or if I developed one against it, I could destroy it.

 

Final Fantasy 7 original was one of the greates games ever made.  After analysing that game as a developer, it was so cleverly and beautifully done.  Square Soft, before they combined with Enix, was a top company back in the days and the "Devs" were on point.

 

Anyway...

 

Out of all my years, I have never seen anything as horrible as the mess in Guildwars 2's WvW and I can only say mess because it's not players fighting players because you're fighting 'blobs' and instant death from blob AOE.

 

The two biggest issues with World of Warcraft, One, the "Devs" stuck the best gear in the game behind 'OP' Raids, which made it impossible to go into PvP on an even playing field gear-wise.  The second issue was classes being unbalanced but the class balancing thing was VERY fixable, the "Devs" just never did it.  I always knew it was a matter of time before players got tired of trying the impossible Raids and when a "Dev" drop that video of his 5 year old wearing all God Raid gear in PvP (he got for free) destroying players, that was the final blow.  I found out about it in-game because the in-game-chat was exploding with anger over it.  The video got removed but the damage was done.  Players were like, "I spend 10 hours Raiding a day and get nothing to show for it but this brat gets the newest gear that just dropped for free!"  "Did you see the video!?  The lil f$%&%$ didn't even know what he was doing, just pressing buttons and killing everybody because of the gear!"

 

Fans of "WOW" made excuses by saying, all the players grew up or they got a life.  That's the most stupid excuse anyone can drop because you have new generations of gamers coming in as old gamers go out.  The new generation gamers just did their homework by looking at all the things players were complaining about and once they got a taste of it, they weren't going to stick around for years like older gamers, they just moved on.

 

Right now, there is no really great mmo that features outstanding pvp.  Final Fantasy 14 online may be the best mmorpg, but the pvp is limited, yes FF14 has it, but it's not on a level like World of Warcraft battlegrounds.  So until a truly masterful mmorpg comes out with flawless pvp, horrible pvp games like GW2 will look ok....which is to be expected when you don't know what really outstanding would look like.

 

I seen another player flying on their mount in WvW....  I got my character controlled several times now in a week by most likely an "ArenaNet Baby" because I don't think hackers can go that far.  Hackers can go in God Mode, walk underground, through walls, fly mounts, etc....but that controlling your character thing, I don't think that's the typical hacker, that's excess to the game...THE GAME ACCESS!

 

Thieves going invisible at will for as long as they want, while walking throug AOE DPS but not getting touched or revealed....  After playing WvW for some years now, that garbage has played out.  The huge mess that WvW is has played out.  The only objective is the finish the legendary set now.  There's zero fun in WvW, there's zero player vs player in WvW.  If you're not a hacker or an "ArenaNet Baby", you're a rabbit, peroid!  Glass build classes won't even take a scratch.  You can barely stay alive on those classes in PvE and we're talking WvW but they somehow become Gods and keep a constant never ending health shield....    RIGHT!!

 

Can't believe I was thinking about dropping 10k in the "cash shop" (buying gold)  I don't see myself sticking around for much longer and as a matter of fact, next week my time on will start to decrease a lot until I vanish like an "ArenaNet Baby" deadeye.

 

Peace "Babies" and Hackers you know who you are and the one "ArenaNet Baby" who keep doing the gesturing in WvW, you're wasting your time because you're the worst player in the mode for doing what your doing and the fact you're hiding behind a blob from regular players and got privileges, makes it even more ridiculous.

 

It's like watching the "WOW Dev's" five year old go at it again but this time, he's been cloned into many.

 

That's WvW.

 

PS, "Babies" or Hackers, seriously, stop making 'invul' last 10+ seconds to 2 minutes.  That's IS noticeable and points you out really fast, especailly when you dance around in the middle of a Zerg for a minute taking zero damage and then vanish with a class that don't even vanish.

 

Lame.

 

 

 

[Myror.7521]

@Horace.3184 You do acutually never Played Thief before arent you? 

 

First of all WvW is Just basicly Like PvE but instead of group v mobs its group v group and has indeed nothing to do with PvP. Its basicly how you said? Blob against blob or to say it real zerk against zerk. The more Player the better. If you want to Play PvP Just go into PvP and Play conquest Sir. 

 

Okay now Back to Thief. They can be perma stealthed thats Just the Thing about the whole class and yes as Long as you dont use a reveal skill they will Not get out of stealth the only other way would be Attack ya. But also ranged classes and thiefs are fav in Open field Play cause they can refresh the fight when ever they want that is also a downside in terms of WvW soooo all I could recommend to you would be visit the conquest PvP!

[unknown.8952]

From my experince is you enjoy memes and trolling definately fun. There are nice long ques for games that you either lose instantly or win. I am not sure why but matches are very onesided now making it not fun. Most top players match manipulate in front anets eyes but they dont mind. Id love to see some build lock in system and not able to reroll. Also since ques are arlready long might well take time to find a match where there one each class and not people quing duo scrapper.

[Revilrad.9280]

Let me give you the side of a vet player who came back to GW2 after a long break. I played from LWS1 to PoF and did fairly often sPvP back then. Most rank I got was Gold. So I am not good, but not terrible either.

When I returned I did so with a new steam account so I can tell you how the new player experience feels like in 2023.

Basically in comparison to WvW PvP Ranks advance extremely slow and so do the reward tracks. If you are after PvE rewards just do some WvW zerging.

Anet forces you to go rank 20 before you can queue up ranked games. It takes a little more than 50 games without any boosts to get that far.

Now there is nothing wrong with making players know good amount of basics before going in ranked, the problem is that something happened to unranked play that changed it in a way it was not like before.

It is filled with high level players.

I mean  plat / leg. High Skill.

I do not know if that is the low number of active players or the fact that ranked system changed how ranks can be gained or lost, anyways the main "official reason" I could gather is that they "practice new builds" there to not kitten up their rank in ranked.

That , combined with extremely bad matchmaking results in you getting thrown in very lopsided matches. 

I regularly had 500 vs ~100 matches, either for my side or for other side. I mean like 70% of the 50 matches I played until now were like that.

You will instantly die or do not contribute to anything at all if you are a new player. After many frustrating hours I literally stopped giving a kitten. To be honest the hardest part is to actually not go AFK. After the first one or two clashes it becomes apparently clear who is going to win and there is absolutely no reason to carry on any futher. At this point you need to force yourself to go out to get slaughtered to not be a AFK jerk.

On the other hand if you are in the roflstomping team you just watch the person(s) who is/are carrying the team and get some random "kill" achievements because you just were in the vicinity of greatness.

 

At the end of the day it feels like kitten to play unranked as a new player. And no, it will never get better. To actually have fun you need to invest so much time to PvP to get better that it would be another person and not you anymore.  

Sometimes, very very rarely, you end up in a match where players have the same skill level more or less and you actually have fun. Every Death is a learning experience and every kill is a tight fight. But those are so rare that the only purpose it serves is to remind you how good PvP in GW2 could be if there was any matchmaking at all.

For all intents and purposes , for me , GW2 PvP is dead. There is 0 enjoyment in it and only reason I would put my foot into that cesspool of toxicity is to get any exclusive rewards I can and gtfo. 

 

Best thing Anet can do is to add any items and exclusive rewards from PvP to other modes too , including leg armor and backpiece so the "elite" players who complain about how bad others are can go their merry way and play with each other (all 200 of them) 

 

PS : Also Let me give you a random report on one experience I had :

There was this one guy I encountered 5-7 times who always had a "friend" with him who literally stood AFK. When me or other players complained in team chat he said "he is new" or "does not know what to do" and "stop being a jerk". Sometimes the new player moved for 20 seconds to come to a stop. And the best thing was , this "friend" had always a new name. So basically the guy was going in with his alt account to farm rewards. 😆

 

Cheers.

[Stalima.5490]

I believe alot of the trouble in pvp is because the maps are out of date and the classes are no longer in line with the map balance to to the power creep on just about everything from attacking and defending all the way to mobility, the result is there is alot of builds now designed purely to just abuse the terrain through mobility, in some cases even to the point of getting to otherwise inaccessable locations for anyone who doesn't have a very similar kind of leap skill.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

9 hours ago, Stalima.5490 said:

I believe alot of the trouble in pvp is because the maps are out of date and the classes are no longer in line with the map balance

Mobility creep screwed up conquest gameplay.

[Hotride.2187]

22 hours ago, Revilrad.9280 said:

Now there is nothing wrong with making players know good amount of basics before going in ranked, the problem is that something happened to unranked play that changed it in a way it was not like before.

It is filled with high level players.

I mean  plat / leg. High Skill.

Garbage meta games always playing out the same is probably what happened. Unranked is just more fun, more builds, less meta. Less supports, less decap thieves and so on. You just get more fights out of it, way more enjoyment of the combat than in ranked. Also players give up and afk less in unranked from my experience.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Hotride.2187

[Frequency.6407]

For all its problems GW2 is light years ahead of similar MMOs when it comes to PVP.

 

 

[Blackthunder.8679]

50 minutes ago, Frequency.6407 said:

For all its problems GW2 is light years ahead of similar MMOs when it comes to PVP.

 

 

It must be, that's why no one wants to play it or watch it and has retention rates under 0,01,%. People that think this game's PvP is good are ignoring reality.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

PvP at its core is fine, but we will need to overcome inertia and hit critical mass before anyone believes it.

 

The balance is still quite a bit off, but the last few patches have been (largely) consistent in direction, thoughtful and timely, and haven't shyed away from rolling back changes that were objectively bad for the classes. I still maintain that if balance continues to head in the direction its heading, some of the persistent problems will get addressed.

 

The problem that lingers, though; is that we are currently sitting on the dregs of the PvP playerbase. The mode was tended to very late. The most obsessed/passionate people that have stomached the entirety of the negative experiences that got us to this point have nonexistent morale, and they are the ones that form the backbone for the pvp community. 

 

  Low enthusiasm coupled with a matchmaking environment people exploit unpunished for shiny badges is something that will take a significant amount of thoughtfulness to change. It took us a long time to get to this point, it will take a while to get back.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

24 minutes ago, Blackthunder.8679 said:

It must be, that's why no one wants to play it or watch it and has retention rates under 0,01,%. People that think this game's PvP is good are ignoring reality.

The system is light years ahead. The way the system is managed was flawed and contemptuous for years on end, with the flawed management breeding its own contempt.

I won't forget that when gw2 tried to go esports they balanced the game into a bunker meta, then spent the following years shunning pvp because the players played bunker in a tournament setting (because they wanted to win the tourney obviously) and made the game look boring. 

Edited April 10, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Blackthunder.8679]

Just now, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

 

The system is light years ahead. The way the system is managed was flawed and contemptuous for years on end, with the flawed management breeding its own contempt.

 

I won't forget that when gw2 tried to go esports they balanced the game into a bunker meta, then spent the following years shunning pvp because the players played bunker in a tournament setting and made the game look boring.

So it's good in theory but in reality it sucks, got it.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

3 minutes ago, Blackthunder.8679 said:

So it's good in theory but in reality it sucks, got it.

*shrug*

I guess the people who make RPGs don't understand fighting game mechanics, or if they do are not in a position to dictate changes that make combat vs another player fun or worth seeking.

Its doable if the departments involved decide its worth it, even now. 

Edited April 10, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[eXruina.4956]

21 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

The balance is still quite a bit off, but the last few patches have been (largely) consistent in direction, thoughtful and timely, and haven't shyed away from rolling back changes that were objectively bad for the classes. I still maintain that if balance continues to head in the direction its heading, some of the persistent problems will get addressed.

they've actually put out great work last 2 patches, if they continue the streak without lapse, i can honestly see the light at the end of the tunnel, not overnight but probably in the course of rest of this year and into the whole of next year, give or take.

[Kuma.1503]

In a nutshell. 

Gw2 has arguably the best MMO PvP on the market. But it gets no dev time. No development. Cheaters/afks are not punished. Match Manipulation is rampant. Loss/Win Streaks out of your control are common. 

If you can deal with all of those issues, it's great. If not... play something else. 

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

48 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

In a nutshell. 

Gw2 has arguably the best MMO PvP on the market. But it gets no dev time. No development.  

This is the most concise way to explain why I'm so frustrated.

Eso, ff14, wow pvp all suck.

Gw2 has almost untapped potential AND a group of people that can solve engine problems in creative ways (mounts as transforms, for instance).

Its like having a prodigy child that won't apply him/herself enough to get passing grades.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[stormemperor.3745]

On 6/12/2022 at 7:47 AM, aserian.1734 said:

I am coming back from a bit of a hiatus. Originally I got to 80 (about a year ago) and just did some casual PvP. I never really got into it enough to know if it was good or bad, but life circumstances meant I ended up stopping for a while right after hitting 80. I am coming back to the game and I am mostly just interested in PvP. I might try PvE, but PvP will generally be my main focus. A lot of the threads I am reading since End of Dragons say that PvP is just completely ruined and terrible.

 

I was just wondering if it's overblown by forum trolls or if it really is that bad? I don't have a ton of time on my hands so I'd prefer to start a game where the PvP will be enjoyable.

Thanks for your time

15+ people on average blocked, 5+ hate pms, 30+ complainers, 20+ afkers, 10+ win traders  per season sounds about right. I don't check what they say in forum but it is at least 2 times worse than what people say. You can't imagine how serious some people in 2v2 and 3v3 as well. 

 

Never ever play pvp at morning, afternoon, night and midnight, utc 0 for EU.

 

Once every 50-100 matches you finally get into reasonably good team, that rotates perfectly well, no one hates/complains or calls out anyone. Your team is so good you faceroll everything.

[Gibson.4036]

My son needed three more wins for The Ascenscion.

We had a string of terrible matches where we were severely outskilled, had afkers on our teams, people yellling at us.

Came back to our next play session, and got three wins in a row. There were afkers on the other teams. Only felt marginally less bad than our previous play session.

He's got his backpack. We're on break from PvP for a while.

Edited April 10, 2023 by Gibson.4036

[naoseiisso.7418]

I just got back to GW2 a couple weeks ago and yes, PvP is nowaday terrible!

I just recorded a video, my team had 3 afk bots running against the wall in my spawn, the other team had known 1 afk bot who always run to the home cap and then stay afk for the duration of the match. Same match, total of 4 afk bots.

I reporter every afk bot I could in the last days and I see them again every day playing at the same time of the day.

Arena.net could block their access to Ranked PvP, this is the mininal I except

Edited April 10, 2023 by naoseiisso.7418

[glenndevis.8327]

I've recently returned to the game as well and most of my time playing has been going into PvP.

I think as a whole GW2 PvP is pretty amazing.

Sadly I feel like it's let down mostly by the amount of afk players.

I wish the people who tend to go afk often should get punished harsher or even punished at all.

 

Other than that the balance has always felt a bit wrong. I feel like even back when i played more Necro & Guard felt way too strong, returning now and both necro & guard still feel like the 2 outliers. Just feels like those 2 classes are Anets little babies that can't be bad. Scrapper has been feeling a bit crazy as well honestly.

Thief has also always been too strong but I feel like they're just really good at what they're supposed to be good at so i'm kind of a bit more forgiving towards thieves.

 

Other than the amount of afkers & certain balance outliers GW2 has my fav PvP out of any modern popular mmo. 

[Damocles.4908]

On 6/12/2022 at 5:47 AM, aserian.1734 said:

I am coming back from a bit of a hiatus. Originally I got to 80 (about a year ago) and just did some casual PvP. I never really got into it enough to know if it was good or bad, but life circumstances meant I ended up stopping for a while right after hitting 80. I am coming back to the game and I am mostly just interested in PvP. I might try PvE, but PvP will generally be my main focus. A lot of the threads I am reading since End of Dragons say that PvP is just completely ruined and terrible.

 

I was just wondering if it's overblown by forum trolls or if it really is that bad? I don't have a ton of time on my hands so I'd prefer to start a game where the PvP will be enjoyable.

Thanks for your time

 

It mostly depends on you, to be honest,, I like the flexibility of builds that the game offers and make my own and test. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, meet some nice folks and meet some not nice folks so again it depends on you 😄