What's wrong with PvP in Guild Wars 2

[Guizao.4167]

In your opinion, why isn't PvP as played as PvE? Why do you think ArenaNet has abandoned this gamemode, alongside WvW?

* 2015 Balance Patch changed a lot of things for a lot of professions: many builds simply disappeared.

* Conquest's been the only "competitive" game mode ever since the beginning of the game. ArenaNet claims it is their bread and butter, however conquest promotes specific meta builds, making it rather stagnant and tiresome to play.

* The overflow of PvE rewards in sPvP - a hot topic. Back when I start to play Gw2 there were no gear rewards in sPvP. There were only armor/wep skins that could be acquired spending Honor points.

[Downstate.4697]

It’s a bunch of reasons.

1. Boon and condi spam and a ui that confuses new players

2. Pace of the game increased making it harder to understand what is happening for new players.

3. Same game mode since launch 

4. killing 5 man ranked and not promoting community interaction.

5. Infrequent updates to the mode

[Ovark.2514]

There are 2 reasons I believe that sPvP has remained on a steady population decline since launch:

 

1) THIS IS THE MAIN REASON The devs have never focused their attention on designing skills and traits that are healthy for competitive play. I.E: skills and traits that are fun to both USE and to play AGAINST. They also don't design skills and traits to be effective in all game modes. Equalized PvP is only as fun as the extent of VIABLE buildcraft.

 

2) The SYSTEMS that sPvP uses have never been fleshed out in a way that makes you feel like you are rewarded for playing well and for playing the spec you enjoy. Even though the matchmaker works well, it becomes the target of a lot of vitriol because players are allowed to abuse it in so many ways. Custom Arenas, Unranked, Ranked, and Tournaments are not designed well from several aspects. Also sPvP is not integrated into the rest of GW2 (PvE mainly) so that players feel comfortable playing multiple modes at the same time. For instance, there is no icon telling you what your queue time is when you're in a match or even THAT you're in a match without opening up the PvP panel. Also if you're doing an event in PvE and then your queue pops you will get no rewards from that event (success or failure) if you accept the queue and are pulled into PvP. Also you when the pop-up happens if messes you up big time and can't be moved. The list goes on. . .

 

Here is a brief list of reasons that DON'T have any bearing on the health of pvp:

1) New game modes

2) New maps

3) More frequent balance updates (numbers changes)

While these things might pull in players briefly, no long-term population increase will occur.

 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Ovark.2514
Typo

[Khalisto.5780]

well, I only started playing pvp hardcore in 2018

 

the thing that stand out the most is the general feeling it's an abandoned game mode

 

patches take way too long to drop

things well known by the community like God of Arena and gizmo RMT not dealt with

we got to a point the feeling of competition was completely gone

you see a gold 3 player using a B tier build beating a god of arena with the most powerful build in the game

so the god of arena prolly bought the title or exploited the matchmaking with the well know, duo q, q dodge offhours strategy

this well known matchmaking issues not dealt with (removing duo q)

Edited February 14, 2023 by Khalisto.5780

[Sahne.6950]

What killed pvp:

Veterans got bored of playing the same thing for YEARS... so they left.

New players are overwhelmed by the UI -  New players get roflstomped, because there is no "rookie-servers/protected bracket" - New players dont play one of the 3 metabuilds and get smacked left and right, thinking they are bad......    so they leave after the first few games.

 

gw2 pvp is bleeding veterans and is not generating new players.

Edited February 14, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[Chaos God.1639]

I think the game needs more pvp content. Maybe they can add temp game changing anomalies to the unranked pvp mode to make it more attractive and to test new changes. balance is fine for a game that's not even an esport game.

[Sahne.6950]

1 minute ago, Chaos God.1639 said:

balance is fine for a game that's not even an esport game.

you are aware that the winnerTeam of the monthly tournament was...... 5 Elementalists?

[Markri.9475]

1)The Players.

Gw2s players aren't any worse than any other community, but gw2 pvp is different. The PvP is small-scale, and "fair". This makes it easy for the players to spot who on their team is to blame for the loss, and in their "righteous" fury they make that player unwilling to play anymore. Other games I have played, there are big teams meaning hard to tell who was "responsible" for the loss. Or it has gear progression. Hard to tell if the player was bad, or just undergearged. Much less "righteous" fury going around. Not much hate going around in WvW among team mates for instance... so why is the plat player berating the silver player for playing like a silverplayer?

2) Lack of polish.

Combat is one of the best parts of gw2, but bugs and weird interactions that never get fixed is very frustrating. Like spellbreakers permanent full counter. Or placed targeted abilities aiming at your feet if any UI element is in the way of your mouse (including popup text ui).

3) existence of low-intensity builds

It's fine for PvE, but in a pvp environment. It's not.

 

All in all ; let bad players be bad. Goes to both the players and Anet.

[Greyrat.2378]

I believe same topic was discussed here:

Question is whether ANet is willing and able to fix some of these issues, since it's not that difficult to identify the major problems with this game mode from new player perspective.

[Myror.7521]

@Greyrat.2378 well they do not even care about this game Mode. (They even said their priority gamemodes ate PvE (mostly open World) and WvW) 

So yes the only guys that actually do care at least a bit about PvP is the balance team...... but even they can't help this gamemode stay alife (also some of them patches to get their fav classes into good Spot lmao)

 

What we would have need before this gamemode died:

 

1. Solo Q and 5man Q separate ranked Systems

2. Monthy and Daily AT (thats what we at least got)

3. Other game modes and of course more maps for them

4. More maps for conquest

5. A real Training area for beginners where you learn about mechanics and stuff

[Ragnar.4257]

By far the biggest issue, which I'm amazed nobody has brought up, is the matchmaking.

9/10 games are blowouts, where you get Plat+ players being put in the same games as people who are obviously playing their first PvP game.

This puts new players off, as they are immediately getting dunked on with no chance to learn or understand or get any incentive to keep trying.

And it puts veteran players off by putting them in boring pointless matches.

This is not helped by the fact that 5v5 Conquest is by its nature quite snowbally, meaning that even if 2 teams are in theory quite closely matched, the game can still end up with one team dominating another.

[Sahne.6950]

10 minutes ago, Pati.2438 said:

A real Training area for beginners where you learn about mechanics and stuff

There is the "bots" in the training area... you know those "mesmer" "revenant" "guardian" npc´s that you can fight....   I think they believe that this is supposed to be a challenging training area.  (in anets last balance stream he died to such a NPC xD)

[Sahne.6950]

3 minutes ago, Ragnar.4257 said:

By far the biggest issue, which I'm amazed nobody has brought up, is the matchmaking.

how are you supposed to make balanced games, when outside of primetime, there is literally just 15 people Queueing per region xD

[Sereath.1428]

The same kitten game mode since forever.
No amount of baLanCe is going to bring and keep players here.

Matchmaking isn't the problem, there's just nothing that can be done with what feels to be 50 players.
Maybe introduce bots? 😄

PvE rewards a problem? If anything this needs constant and unique skins. They didnt even bother giving legendary armor unique skins. Maybe more of that and less of raw gold and materials, otherwise this looks like a another farm.

Edited February 14, 2023 by XxsdgxX.8109

[Myror.7521]

@Sahne.6950 well back then there was also a beginner Area where you learned how to finish/rez peops or cap/decap points. Sad they removed ot back then xd.

[Shao.7236]

Anet is catering to the players that makes the investors happy (PvE) and there is no push towards player skill with proper balanced content in PvP.

Right now there's only more and more power creep rather than having controversial changes to put effort in the hand of the players.

There is a surprisingly good amount of builds that would work if there wasn't so much neglect from the devs to slap their players wrists because the majority of the playerbase would easily ditch the game if it took any effort.

The benefits of making a game with no monthly fees I guess, gotta scrap pennies so hard that you can't even pay one person to properly balance something properly.

[Chaos God.1639]

5 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

you are aware that the winnerTeam of the monthly tournament was...... 5 Elementalists?

but anet is already creating balance patches... I also play with different classes I will just switch to another class if something will get nerfed.

Can you tell me a video game that is 100% balanced? Also show me the proof that is 100% balanced, because I'm not interested in subjective opinions. People cry so much about balance because it's very easy. This game is not chess.

I also think competitive players care mostly about winning and they will look for the easiest strategy to be able to win.

[Dr Meta.3158]

On 2/14/2023 at 2:50 AM, Sahne.6950 said:

What killed pvp:

Veterans got bored of playing the same thing for YEARS... so they left.

New players are overwhelmed by the UI -  New players get roflstomped, because there is no "rookie-servers/protected bracket" - New players dont play one of the 3 metabuilds and get smacked left and right, thinking they are bad......    so they leave after the first few games.

 

gw2 pvp is bleeding veterans and is not generating new players.

True, though dark tetrad players will create new accounts just to harass new players for their own enjoyment.

Which leads to the real biggest problem in pvp. The players themselves. The cheating, gatekeeping, toxicity, alagmation of the worst behaved players of the guild wars 2 community gathered together in their own circle of hell in the mists due to fight each other both virtually and verbally until the end of time (game closes). Its actually pretty thematic.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Dr Meta.3158
Typo

[Fueki.4753]

In my opinion, the following are the biggest issues in sPvP:

Stealth

Teleports

CC spam

Immobilize spam

Blind spam

Boon spam

Condition spam

AoE vomit

Particle effect vomit

lack of developer attention

Edited February 14, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[Downstate.4697]

8 hours ago, Ragnar.4257 said:

By far the biggest issue, which I'm amazed nobody has brought up, is the matchmaking.

9/10 games are blowouts, where you get Plat+ players being put in the same games as people who are obviously playing their first PvP game.

This puts new players off, as they are immediately getting dunked on with no chance to learn or understand or get any incentive to keep trying.

And it puts veteran players off by putting them in boring pointless matches.

This is not helped by the fact that 5v5 Conquest is by its nature quite snowbally, meaning that even if 2 teams are in theory quite closely matched, the game can still end up with one team dominating another.

Matchmaking is fine if you have the population for it. The bigger issue is why the population is declining which I agree the match making is a factor.

[RedAvenged.5217]

No one in a video game ever wants to hear it- but sometimes if you want something you have to earn it.

 

many in the community got what they wanted with mats and the cmc mega patch-

 

but what they did with it was use the platform to cheat and threaten the safety of of players, until the mega patch got canceled.

 

gw2 could have a future in a world of non toxic pvp, but the community seems to want to kill this option.

[Saiyan.1704]

We can talk about bad matchmaking, rating abuse, selling titles etc. all day.... tbh the thing that really hurt GW2 PvP long term was how much of a fail Stronghold was.

Stronghold was SUPPOSED to be the new flagship PvP map but the Devs never listened to our suggestions, such as incorporating a type of equipment character progression, or anything else similar to a MOBA but GW2 style. But what we got was something that was less strategic than Conquest.

[Doragor.2749]

winsellers and spellbreakers...

[Sahne.6950]

18 hours ago, Chaos God.1639 said:

Can you tell me a video game that is 100% balanced? Also show me the proof that is 100% balanced, because I'm not interested in subjective opinions.

HAHA! This answer is easy^^ You want data and not opinions? i gotchu fam.

 

Smash bros Ultimate. 

They analized 1 million online matches and this is the result.

https://i.imgur.com/ABHaPeY.png

 

"Based on the average of their win rates against all other characters, Lucina is the highest rated character with a win rate of 55%, and Ryu is the lowest rated, with a win-rate of 46%. While individual character matchups can be better or worse, on average all characters are roughly equal."

A winrate difference of 9% from highest to lowest.... Thats HELLA balanced if you ask me. in SSBU you can play just about anything and do just fine.

 

Meanwhile you have specs in gw2 that have literal 0 representation if you go higher than plat, while people are stacking 5 times the same build to win monthly tournaments. 

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Sahne.6950

[apharma.3741]

There's different aspects that affect PvP, in no particular order or being exhaustive:
Leaderboard positions are sold across the game as well as mAT wins and ANet hasn't done anything about it. This undermines the the spirit of competition and being a fair game, why try to do better when someone pays $200-$400 and beats you?

Revenant Catalyst is a class favoured by the best and the best tend to win. To explain this, "top players" tend to gravitate to the lowest risk, highest reward build and this has happened across the life of the game but isn't a problem in and of itself. It's the statement that left revenant and now catalyst unchecked for 6 months+ and is likely to keep these classes strong without really shaking up the meta in a drastic way. If you play a class (or classes) not favoured in this round of GW2 then you are going to have an uphill fight for usually 6 months or longer in some cases. The slowness of change is an issue as well as the inherent bias for and against certain classes.

Point capture has been the main game mode for a long long time, they tried stronghold, some kind of spin on a moba like LoL/DotA but that kind of flopped and in true ANet fashion they go back into the turtle shell and don't try something new for years. Part of this could be down to balance, TDM is what we see in mini seasons and it's a nice break but it shows many of the balance problems of the game when a certain 3 man comp was unwinnable against for everyone which often sucked out the will to play for many people.