The problem with PvP

[Arheundel.6451]

On 1/13/2023 at 4:15 AM, Jagdtiger.2517 said:

I think the biggest problem is and always has been balancing. Arenanet doesn't know how to balance the game at all. They always do massive sweeping changes that make some classes unplayable, and other broken. This makes casual players quit the game when their class becomes garbage, or when they get farmed by a high level player playing a broken spec. Arenanet hasn't learned after 8 years and they probably never will. I don't really understand how they're that incompetent.

Because unless sweeping changes (aka Remove X spec from equation) the angry mob will keep crying their eyes out on this forum....which for some non sensical and absurd reason it gets seriously considered...one of the main reasons why GW1 was so great...there was no PvP forum so the devs were free to do their job rather than bending over for an entitled community ...although back in the days players were not this whimsical and entitled so it was easy to balance too. Back in the days players would recognize when they actually suck at the game and would seek advise from vets...but today?! Even Timmy who played the game for 50 hrs think he should be legendary rank....just because he plays..and if he loses it's because the game balance sucks....

[noiwk.2760]

the problem with pvp is Anet and pvp. thats all. there are way more problems than there are good state things  
no new mods. no new maps  awful balance bad matchmaking barely any players alot of design issues..  lack of properly functioning builds due to over nerfs / buffs in core traitlines  and many oudated skills/traits. 
pvp is just bad.. . 

[Abyssisis.3971]

The problem with pvp is people still think it’s pvp, it’s literally just another pve mode with the option to attack other players.

[Zombiesbum.3502]

1 hour ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

The problem with pvp is people still think it’s pvp, it’s literally just another pve mode with the option to attack other players.

We are not talking about PPTing on WvW. 

Edited January 19, 2023 by Zombiesbum.3502

[Abyssisis.3971]

1 hour ago, Zombiesbum.3502 said:

We are not talking about PPTing on WvW. 

Clearly you haven’t been paying attention. Pvp is pve with “top” players wintrading and selling gizmos while other peeps farm legendary equipment/gold.

[Zagerus.8675]

On 1/10/2023 at 1:07 AM, Kuma.1503 said:

Ignoring all matchmaking related issues, the biggest issue with PvP is honestly... Animations. 

 

The readability in this game is atrocious. The poor readability of fights is why this game will never succeed as a spectator sport. Viewers need to have a lot of game knowledge to decipher what's happening at any given time, and even if they have that knowledge it can still be uncertain what a person is doing unless you're literally watching their cooldown bar. 

 

Particle effects play after a move has already connected. Hand waving can be completely obscured by random particles such as auras, ground AoE's, damage splashes, distortion effects, ect. If the enemy is an asura their entire model can become obscured by the damage splat alone, so reading any hand wave animations (Like spinal shivers) is impossible. 

The end result is that it feels like builds just... do things to you. You fight someone, they sort of vaguely flail around a bit, damage happens, you flail around a bit, damage happens at them, and eventually more people get involved in the flailing until someone pops into downstate. If you lose, it's difficult to understand why or what exactly killed you. So if someone fights a matchup they can't win, people can get frustrated and just default to "that build OP" because they have absoluely no clue what the opponent is doing on a moment to moment basis, and no way to re-evaluate the fight they lost. That is unless they record it and go frame by frame to analyze what the other person is doing. 

 

A perfect example of all of the above is a class I love to play. Catalyst. You fight one and what do you see? AOE's stacked on AoEs.  Orbs constantly rotating around the player. Multiple stacked auras that make it difficult to tell which auras they have. Spirit animals dancing on the node. Now imagine the catalyst is an asura. Good luck catching that vague hand wave animation before a phoenix crits you in the face for 7k. 

 

If there's anything that would really, REALLY make PvP better to get into for new players. It's fixing this game's animations. New players just can't tell wtf is killing them, and half the time vets can't either. 

I agree. Maybe it's time to implement a skill cast or action bar UI so we can add a skill name/icon to an animations we see in-game. Perhaps let us adjust it's position and size. Perhaps even let us check a box where we can see the skill casts of enemy players right above their characters. I know they've said in the past that they'd prefer that we watch the battlefield rather than bars and icons, but I think a cast bar would be really handy. FPS games have a similar effect with the directional damage indicators to help you better understand which direction another player is shooting you from.

Elegantly conveying when 3-4 different skills are used at once would be a challenge but I think they could pull off some sick UI fades ect. to make it look great. Maybe a fancy new system we get with the next expac?

[Zombiesbum.3502]

7 hours ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

Clearly you haven’t been paying attention. Pvp is pve with “top” players wintrading and selling gizmos while other peeps farm legendary equipment/gold.

Fish for an argument.

[Abyssisis.3971]

33 minutes ago, Zombiesbum.3502 said:

Fish for an argument.

Sounds like you disagree with me. I have another question… which are you? Wintrader/match manipulator, gold farming botter, pver here for legendary armour?

[Zombiesbum.3502]

12 hours ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

Sounds like you disagree with me. I have another question… which are you? Wintrader/match manipulator, gold farming botter, pver here for legendary armour?

None of the above. Stop painting everyone with the same brush, you're only going to get negative reactions when you say stuff like that. Hence why I implied you're here only for an unproductive argument, rather than for a conversation of the topic at hand. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression you are giving me.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Zombiesbum.3502

[Abyssisis.3971]

27 minutes ago, Zombiesbum.3502 said:

None of the above. Stop painting everyone with the same brush, you're only going to get negative reactions when you say stuff like that. Hence why I implied you're here only for an unproductive argument, rather than for a conversation of the topic at hand. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression you are giving me.

The topic at hand is “the problem with pvp” and I said it’s the reward system that’s brings in a certain type of player.

[Greyrat.2378]

2 hours ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

The topic at hand is “the problem with pvp” and I said it’s the reward system that’s brings in a certain type of player.

That does not make much sense tho.
Yes, there are people that are probably doing PvP for one of the reasons you mentioned above, but personally I find the reward system pretty good in terms of what you can get out of it, and I don't think that it deteriorates the quality of games.
If anything else, it should pull in more players to give it a try and perhaps they will stick to the mode.
Problem is that:

1) learning curve is extremely steep right from the start

2) lack of any tutorial for some basic tactics and what you are supposed to do (importance of nodes, some basic explanation of roles, rotating etc.)
3) lot of important info that you need to be aware of to properly react gets lost due to visual clutter and bad readability, which leads to people just wing it, press all of their skills and hope for the best

And probably many other smaller issues that are all kind of intertwined together.
If you neglect them long enough, it just compounds into one big negative experience and huge turn off for new players.
Sure, you can blame players for being toxic, but honestly ANet deserves lot of flak for this kind of negligence.

[Abyssisis.3971]

Just now, Greyrat.2378 said:

That does not make much sense tho.
Yes, there are people that are probably doing PvP for one of the reasons you mentioned above, but personally I find the reward system pretty good in terms of what you can get out of it, and I don't think that it deteriorates the quality of games.
If anything else, it should pull in more players to give it a try and perhaps they will stick to the mode.
Problem is that:

1) learning curve is extremely steep right from the start

2) lack of any tutorial for some basic tactics and what you are supposed to do (importance of nodes, some basic explanation of roles, rotating etc.)
3) lot of important info that you need to be aware of to properly react gets lost due to visual clutter and bad readability, which leads to people just wing it, press all of their skills and hope for the best

And probably many other smaller issues that are all kind of intertwined together.
If you neglect them long enough, it just compounds into one big negative experience and huge turn off for new players.
Sure, you can blame players for being toxic, but honestly ANet deserves lot of flak for this kind of negligence.

How does it not make sense or do you just not realise what’s actually been going on in pvp for years now?
 

Pvp is a business with “top” players selling titles/gizmos to other players. They manipulate matches and rankings in order to continue doing it.

In lower tiers, you can literally match in an all bot match were gold and pip farmers are earning their rewards… I’ve seen stacks upon stacks of pretty much the same name characters all queuing into matches, watching multiples of these farming accounts just come and go out of matches while trying to report them which doesn’t go anywhere even when you ticket it.

You take away the rewards, there will be no reason for these trash muppets to log into the game mode, but even then it won’t fix pvp. Imo, only completely reworking the whole system is going to fix it, but it’s already too late for that.

[Greyrat.2378]

2 minutes ago, Abyssisis.3971 said:

How does it not make sense or do you just not realise what’s actually been going on in pvp for years now?
 

Pvp is a business with “top” players selling titles/gizmos to other players. They manipulate matches and rankings in order to continue doing it.

In lower tiers, you can literally match in an all bot match were gold and pip farmers are earning their rewards… I’ve seen stacks upon stacks of pretty much the same name characters all queuing into matches, watching multiples of these farming accounts just come and go out of matches while trying to report them which doesn’t go anywhere even when you ticket it.

You take away the rewards, there will be no reason for these trash muppets to log into the game mode, but even then it won’t fix pvp. Imo, only completely reworking the whole system is going to fix it, but it’s already too late for that.

I am pretty sure most of the competetive scenes work like that, except that it's not that apparent due to bigger population.
Counter Strike, Dota, League of Legends, you name it. All of them are guilty of having cheaters, afk players, match fixing etc.
Reworking rewards does not solve much, you will always have people that will resort to some shady/unfair ways just to "win".
ANet would have to rework a lot more then just rewards, but considering how incredibly small PvP population is, I don't see it happening.
As Sahne said it in some different topic, if you put the TOP 250 players in the leaderboard into perspective of whole PvP population and compare it with some other games with PvP ladder, it's actually kind of depressing.

[Swagg.9236]

5 hours ago, Greyrat.2378 said:

That does not make much sense tho.
Yes, there are people that are probably doing PvP for one of the reasons you mentioned above, but personally I find the reward system pretty good in terms of what you can get out of it, and I don't think that it deteriorates the quality of games.
If anything else, it should pull in more players to give it a try and perhaps they will stick to the mode.
Problem is that:

1) learning curve is extremely steep right from the start

2) lack of any tutorial for some basic tactics and what you are supposed to do (importance of nodes, some basic explanation of roles, rotating etc.)
3) lot of important info that you need to be aware of to properly react gets lost due to visual clutter and bad readability, which leads to people just wing it, press all of their skills and hope for the best

And probably many other smaller issues that are all kind of intertwined together.
If you neglect them long enough, it just compounds into one big negative experience and huge turn off for new players.
Sure, you can blame players for being toxic, but honestly ANet deserves lot of flak for this kind of negligence.

I'd argue that it does make sense, but mainly for the reasons you put forth against it.  GW2's learning curve is, yes, basically a 90° wall in some regards, but the skill ceiling is low enough that new players often either (1) find it difficult to see a point in grinding the game or (2) find themselves plateauing HARD after they run the meta (with maybe a duo) up into plat with an inordinately low amount of effort.  Adding rewards to those paradigm is inviting corruption.  There's not enough award from simply playing the game because the game is shallow; people end up metagaming for a prize in ways beyond the intended scope of the guidelines and sportsmanship intended by the game format.

If you want to see how many people actually enjoy gw2 PvP, you'd want to remove tournament rewards, allow equal pips to generate from unranked, and then give players a means to engineer their own PvP maps from scratch using a simple asset editor like what anet has on hand for building terrain.

[Swagg.9236]

Multiple posts error.  This forum runs as well as the game.

Edited January 20, 2023 by Swagg.9236

[Swagg.9236]

Multiple posts error

Edited January 20, 2023 by Swagg.9236

[Abyssisis.3971]

7 hours ago, Greyrat.2378 said:

I am pretty sure most of the competetive scenes work like that, except that it's not that apparent due to bigger population.
Counter Strike, Dota, League of Legends, you name it. All of them are guilty of having cheaters, afk players, match fixing etc.
Reworking rewards does not solve much, you will always have people that will resort to some shady/unfair ways just to "win".
ANet would have to rework a lot more then just rewards, but considering how incredibly small PvP population is, I don't see it happening.
As Sahne said it in some different topic, if you put the TOP 250 players in the leaderboard into perspective of whole PvP population and compare it with some other games with PvP ladder, it's actually kind of depressing.

I’m not talking about reworking the rewards, the whole pvp system needs to be reworked, but as I already said it’s too late for that. Best the pvp community can hope for is a better system in gw3, if the company doesn’t collapse between now and then, which honestly would surprise me if they didn’t.

[Leonidrex.5649]

On 1/16/2023 at 10:06 AM, Zombiesbum.3502 said:

Yeah, pretty much. League goes in the total opposite direction, which is equally as bad at times.

league : kassadin has 52% winrate, lets reduce cost of seraph by 400g

Edited January 20, 2023 by Leonidrex.5649

[Divine Motovation.5203]

I have to agree mostly. PvP feels more and more like a 1st person shooter. Ranked play is a pure joke with all the afk'ers imo. My last gold ranked match 3 people left bc there was one thief that quite literally downed each of us with one shot. It seems as if the PvP department is filled with devs that are trying to hurt the game or just aren't paying attention.

I still play PvP bc I remember the good old days when it felt more like an mmo and I guess I miss it.

[Divine Motovation.5203]

On 1/18/2023 at 3:13 AM, Arheundel.6451 said:

Because unless sweeping changes (aka Remove X spec from equation) the angry mob will keep crying their eyes out on this forum....which for some non sensical and absurd reason it gets seriously considered...one of the main reasons why GW1 was so great...there was no PvP forum so the devs were free to do their job rather than bending over for an entitled community ...although back in the days players were not this whimsical and entitled so it was easy to balance too. Back in the days players would recognize when they actually suck at the game and would seek advise from vets...but today?! Even Timmy who played the game for 50 hrs think he should be legendary rank....just because he plays..and if he loses it's because the game balance sucks....

I hate it when they nerf my main. My class has struggled for quite some time already and its frustrating feeling like a noob with all the nerfs and changes... very upsetting and makes me feel betrayed as a long time loyal  player 

[Antho.7831]

 

[Ashtaeroth.3940]

I have to agree with nearly everything from the original post and on so many other threads that I've seen. I tried spvp in 2016 and didn't like it, moved to wvw and decided to try again about 10 days ago, enticed by the gold in the pip chests. So I'm not totally new in pvp combat. What I don't understand is why the unranked doesn't give the pip chests. Because the matches seem equally bad in both ranked and unranked and by bad I mean it's total coin toss wether you win or lose. Even if you do your best and try to adjust in the match it most likely won't matter it's gonna end up with 200/500. Most of the fights are "who can spam the most aoe condi and stunlock" and that's it. The visuals are very much covering everything so you kinda have to just spam aoe and hope that something hits. However I don't agree with the TTK part though as I've had plenty of duel fights where they drag out until one team sends another player to help. And I've seen this while trying to play as a support and roamer style with meta builds and my own that fit my playstyle better.

However the low population is a big problem in the system. Over the past week I've come to recognize the same names over and over again. Not that it matters since it's still a coin toss wether you win or lose. I think it's very unfair for the higher tier people to be paired vs low tiered players even at the cost of queue times it should not happen. It is very demotivating to be literally spawn camped halfway of a match which has happened more than few times. Haven't seen that many afk people at least in EU. I was given an advice "Do not play during the weekends" and I wanted to see why not, during 4-5 hours I ended up in a 163 point loss streak against players that my random team had no chance to win and it seemed to get worse the lower I got in the divisions. During the week my matches in both ranked and unranked were fairly 50/50. I highly doubt anet is gonna do anything to increase the population, better rewards or something I don't know but I'm not going to stay and increase the population. I find more balanced battles in wvw and more class variety even if the rewards are far worse there. With some 144 matches played and only 51 wins it's more frustrating than fun especially when you can see wether you win or lose the match within the first 1 minute of the game, even if you still do your best.

[Taco.1428]

a lot people join pvp with complete pve gear 
a lot people afk during match or give up within first 1minute "saying you all suck" 
a lot people dont bother thinking
a lot people ignore points 
a lot people ignore teamfights  and pretend they are famous roamer and dies within first encounter 
some people just come to forum and rage but anet doesnt really care  and if they break the forum rules they just block the used. 
 

[Ashtaeroth.3940]

26 minutes ago, Taco.1428 said:

a lot people join pvp with complete pve gear 

What does this even mean? I've seen plenty of people saying this but the attributes, runes, and sigils from a character's PvE equipment are not used in structured PvP maps.

[Flowki.7194]

Until the MMR gets locked into elo cap, everything else is genuinely meaningless arguments. We have 0 way of truly knowing how good specs are performing, how bad animations truly are etc.. when 10 year vets are in games with 2 month newbs. Going off plat dueling is also a terrible way to uncover these issues, sPVP is not 1v1, and specs do not work the same across skill levels. You have to see that there are two balance issues here, how a spec is in the hands of a vet, and how a spec is in the hands of the average player. You can balance around both.

 

With a locked elo, you will get a much better idea of what specs are over performing, and then what visual tells need to be added, or damage reductions. Personally, I am not in favour of massively broadcast abilitys, I think the damage in game should be balanced enough that 1 dodge miss is not death (or forever on the backfoot until it is death) so that broadcasting is at a minimum. Not having too much broadcast will increase the skill ceiling, players who understand how other specs (or a specific player they know) operates, can begin to predict burst cycles etc. Yet with lower damage, the skill floor will not be too high.

 

Take rangers LB2. Its not massively broadcast/obvious, but given its cast duration, you can still dodge half of the damage if you take the initial hit. Its mechanics like that which lead to better pvp. The ranger can better ensure damage with a stun, fine.. thats half the point of CC. Alternitively, if the range attacks from some obscure location @1500, you still get a chance to dodge half the damage. Thats just a loose example of healthier game play that does not depend on firework level animations to broadcast damage (put aside LB current effectiveness). Eles have been getting some stick here, which is fair enough, but at the same time; arcane shield or focus stun = 1 thing, start mitigating, very clear tell. Just like a herald/WB TPing to you <react>.. becuase obviously they don't intend on a tickle party.

 

You are missing the otherside of the argument though OP. There are a number of specs that are way too forgiving for a lack of dodge skill/game understaning. Multiple skill floors are way too low in relation to the specs effectiveness.

Edited February 10 by Flowki.7194