What's wrong with PvP in Guild Wars 2

[Dreams.3128]

Mobility powercreep- ALOT of these classes should not be moving like thieves or even mesmers. A lot of these classes don't DESERVE mobility because they were tailored around originally be able to simply just run from point to point, but being REALLY good in their specific niche. Now that we don't have that limiter, a lot of classes simply break the game because they have their strengths PLUS being able to either speed to wherever they need to go or port through walls, little cliffs, etc.

Boon uptime- Too many boons. Too many boons equals too much survivability. Builds that SHOULD be dying to proper combos, don't which is due to powercreep from elite specs and other various vuffs/nerfs that classes received.

Conditions- Same with boons, powercrept to high h ell and back. 

Player engagement- It's at an all time low. People simply don't care anymore. And if they do care, they care too much because they've put too much investment in this game to ever be consider healthy. It's one extreme or another, never both. Also, this gamemode is not newb friendly in the slightly. I don't think I've ever seen people talking about actually helping new players, only flaming them because they are trying to get the rhythm of this game and instead of being welcoming, they act like absolute toddlers screaming that they lost their miniscule win. This came about due to the previous points up above.

Lack of punishment- People know Anet doesn't punish people enough. People have said the most VILE, racist kitten to both me and my friend that it is actually insane. Even the more 'well-known' people. It's insanity really that people can basically say the most disturbing stuff and not get punished. Anywhere else their accounts would've been swiped and deleted. But here? Nah, slap on the wrist and they continue to infest pvp with toxicity.

Powercrept builds not being addressed quickly- Self explanatory

Matchmaking- Again, self explanatory. Why is a bronze being matched against a plat? Why are g2s getting matched with legendary folks? The lower ranked players don't deserve this, yet this hasn't been addressed not one time by Anet. The other team gets free elo for an effortless kill, while the guy who is trying to see if his skills improved gets beat back down because the matchmaker can't make a decent, equal sided match. I know my own limitations due to the fact I don't dedicate myself enough to gw2 anymore, but it's just sad when people are put in a match they can do nothing about. 

 

20 hours ago, Dr Meta.3158 said:

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 bother virtually and verbally until the end of time (game closes). Its actually pretty thematic.

This right here describes the situation very well and no one can really justify it. I could post up dozens of screenies between me and my friend with the crap that was said in our matches. It honestly reminds me of a mental institution or purgatory.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Dreams.3128

[roederich.2716]

 

[Bazsi.2734]

PvP was pretty well populated (at least there was no way for us to see if the playerbase is dwindling) until around 2018. With the addition of swiss tournaments, PvP recieved the last thing it ever got.
Ever since PvP devs (or any devs for that matter) stopped communicating about PvP whatsoever. The huge "PvP driven" reworks started with the 2019 patch, but never fully finished - the 300 second placeholder traits just got reworked recently, way after EoD release, an x-pac that wasn't even in the picture when the damage reduction patch was announced - and there is nothing in the works for PvP, not even a promise like alliances is for WvW players.

The gamemode has been abandoned for 5 years now. A-net drove the people away by ignoring it. 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Bazsi.2734

[Dr Meta.3158]

5 hours ago, Sahne.6950 said:

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. 

 

That's not a fair comparison. Sakurai loves his games. He doesn't just make them to squeeze money out of people.

[Infinity.2876]

this in a nutshell:

basically, I consider gw2 perfectly balanced when the meta can't kill you without taking damage.

[apharma.3741]

39 minutes ago, Dr Meta.3158 said:

That's not a fair comparison. Sakurai loves his games. He doesn't just make them to squeeze money out of people.

I know a lot of people meme on Nintendo but you can tell they (at least used to) really care about games and fun for all.

[Spellhunter.9675]

41 minutes ago, apharma.3741 said:

I know a lot of people meme on Nintendo but you can tell they (at least used to) really care about games and fun for all.

Every gamedev company cares only about money. Since there is little of it in gw2 - anet doesn't care much.

[apharma.3741]

6 minutes ago, Spellhunter.9675 said:

Every gamedev company cares only about money. Since there is little of it in gw2 - anet doesn't care much.

You are factually wrong: https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/nintendo-gives-staff-pay-rise-despite-a-fall-in-profits/ar-AA17dudy
They care about making money but they also care about the long term business and "develop(ing) software titles that could impress people around the world."

[UNOwen.7132]

The 2020 balance patch. That was pretty much the turning point, it was at least stable before that.

[Spellhunter.9675]

15 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

They care about making money but they also care about the long term business and "develop(ing) software titles that could impress people around the world."

They are the same picture.

[Aalter.2950]

I'd say 3 main reasons:

 

1. Underperforming behavior moderation

Most new players get pushed out by the rampant toxic behavior of more experienced players. Bad behavior needs to be punished harshly and good behavior needs to be rewarded, like many popular PvP games have realized.

 

2. Relatively low development support

I'm not referring to new content like elite specs or maps - those can help but only for a short time. I'm talking about community support like events, prize pools, structure, frequent balance patches, etc. People don't feel like playing PvP will amount to anything. Rewards and progression are vital for PvP games. Without that, it feels like an afterthought.

 

3. Overwhelming and unimpressive mechanics

The learning curve is very high and resources for skill improvement are surprisingly disparate and hard to find. There are so many moving parts and information to keep track of for new players that they get overwhelmed and have no idea what's going on. Anyone wanting to get better has to dig deep just to learn some of the rhetoric, let alone the skills needed to improve.

Furthermore, many mechanics are janky and unintuitive. At times, it looks and feels like a game from 2012 and that's not what you want in 2023. These need care and attention to be tuned up for the expectations of a new decade.

[apharma.3741]

13 minutes ago, Aalter.2950 said:

I'd say 3 main reasons:

 

1. Underperforming behavior moderation

Most new players get pushed out by the rampant toxic behavior of more experienced players. Bad behavior needs to be punished harshly and good behavior needs to be rewarded, like many popular PvP games have realized.

 

2. Relatively low development support

I'm not referring to new content like elite specs or maps - those can help but only for a short time. I'm talking about community support like events, prize pools, structure, frequent balance patches, etc. People don't feel like playing PvP will amount to anything. Rewards and progression are vital for PvP games. Without that, it feels like an afterthought.

 

3. Overwhelming and unimpressive mechanics

The learning curve is very high and resources for skill improvement are surprisingly disparate and hard to find. There are so many moving parts and information to keep track of for new players that they get overwhelmed and have no idea what's going on. Anyone wanting to get better has to dig deep just to learn some of the rhetoric, let alone the skills needed to improve.

Furthermore, many mechanics are janky and unintuitive. At times, it looks and feels like a game from 2012 and that's not what you want in 2023. These need care and attention to be tuned up for the expectations of a new decade.

2. I think this is something they can and sort of are improving on in some regard. A balance patch every 2 months that shakes up the meta in a big way might get fatiguing to some people but on the other hand every 3 months seems too little as change is slow. The preview streams to get people wondering and theory crafting a few weeks before I think help address this by creating some hype and talk about changes a little over that 2 month cadence.
We used to have weekly ESLs for gems which was quite popular but I don't think there's the infrastructure of casters and audience for that. Nearest we have is mAT but there's been little policing of it as you allude to in point 1. With the old ESLs you would get banned from them for cheating.

3. I do agree to some extent and a lot of this started with the expansions. On the one hand you don't want the game to feel like 2012 old MMORPG so speeding it up and making people feel stronger helps especially with new skill design. On the other making new skills do more and more and making the game faster and faster creates this big learning curve on top of an already steep learning curve of MMORPGs in general. Personally I wish skills and traits did less and combat was a little slower but the kill potential is still there if someone just doesn't play well. It's a hard system to balance out. Any thoughts?

[wanya.1697]

power creep is the main problem also the game is way too fast and complicated with its dozens of build options
even with slowed down videos I cant see what happened and even when I see what happened that does not help at all when it ingame happens in a blink
dragon ball arena and wintersday pvp are probably the most barable and enjoyable for me knowadays
pre HoT condi rework patch at least you only had condis as mild anoyance besides confusion knowadays its imposible to deal with condi and direkt dmg builds at the same time if only all condis where just none dmging soft cc's or status effects eg poison only reducing healing instead of also dealing dmg

Edited February 16, 2023 by wanya.1697

[cyberzombie.7348]

On 2/14/2023 at 1:23 AM, Pati.2438 said:

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

In a way, dueling/1v1 servers used to be that. Though like others mentioned, much of the veterans stopped playing. So dueling communities pretty much died out around the late 2010s. 

[Myror.7521]

@cyberzombie.7348 well I used to play in 1v1 Arena back then too ..... but with all v all arena on map i stoped using them mostly. But anyway back then I wasnt even near as good as best players soooo xd.

[Multicolorhipster.9751]

Literally everything but the 2015 balance patch.

It's barely even memorable and the chances are that nothing short of everything changed in the 2015 patch was changed at some point between then and the 8 years inbetween.
It probably was a 💩patch that came at a bad time as they tried really hard to get the competitive scene take off.
But rather than ever trying again, they contented themselves to failure and PvP has hardly been touched since as a whole.

Lack of competitive modes is the biggest issue by far.
There is none.
ATs have been whittled down to "AFK ATs" by the toxic, lazy wintraders that Anet always takes the side of.
Ranked is Solo/DuoQ which is not competitive and also puts the advantage with the aforementioned wintraders.
And unranked is supposed to be on paper: "for fun"
 

People can point fingers at balance all they want, they're liars and they aren't genuine. The balance is bad and has consistently been bad for the entirety of sPvP's existence. It isn't bad enough to make the game not worth playing on its own. If someone's whining about how a game is balanced, know that the complaining comes from a place of obsession.
It's everything else that makes PvP unbearable, and everything else's tendency to be buried underneath the aforementioned balance complaints.

[Bunbury.8472]

On 2/14/2023 at 5:41 PM, FrownyClown.8402 said:

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

 

these are the the reasons honestly, only thing missing is no banning of afk or toxic players. years of afk with no bans have ruined the community.

 

no idea how I'm supposed to get my discord friends into ranked when me and my duo partner can't play w them so we just play WvW. literally can't recommend a gamemode we can't play together.

[Ferus.3165]

On 2/14/2023 at 5:07 PM, Fueki.4753 said:

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

the lack of clear and readable animations with meaningful cooldowns in exchange for fast "spamy" gameplay.

 

This gameplay got introduced with HoT when elite specs made for PvE with insane powercreep threw all balance out of the window.

 

HoT started the mess that is pvp today and the only way to fix it would be to roll back balance to before HoT and deny elite specs altogether. (Maybe reintroduce them one by one after careful balance updates and with time in between)

But nothing will happen sadly because anet or their investors do not want to spend the money needed for developers to make actual changes (like visible and more distinctive animations for example).

 

The saddest part is that imo gw2 has/had the potential for the best pvp in any mmo and it maybe could even compete with moba games but the lack of attention by anet is killing this gamemode.

 

[Aalter.2950]

On 2/16/2023 at 12:54 PM, apharma.3741 said:

2. I think this is something they can and sort of are improving on in some regard. A balance patch every 2 months that shakes up the meta in a big way might get fatiguing to some people but on the other hand every 3 months seems too little as change is slow. The preview streams to get people wondering and theory crafting a few weeks before I think help address this by creating some hype and talk about changes a little over that 2 month cadence.
We used to have weekly ESLs for gems which was quite popular but I don't think there's the infrastructure of casters and audience for that. Nearest we have is mAT but there's been little policing of it as you allude to in point 1. With the old ESLs you would get banned from them for cheating.

3. I do agree to some extent and a lot of this started with the expansions. On the one hand you don't want the game to feel like 2012 old MMORPG so speeding it up and making people feel stronger helps especially with new skill design. On the other making new skills do more and more and making the game faster and faster creates this big learning curve on top of an already steep learning curve of MMORPGs in general. Personally I wish skills and traits did less and combat was a little slower but the kill potential is still there if someone just doesn't play well. It's a hard system to balance out. Any thoughts?

I think you're right that they're getting better re:2 and I'm actually all for waiting to see if this improves without *too much* griping.

 

For point 3, I think it's definitely the most tricky of the 3 to fix because it requires the most balance. You want the game to feel fun and interesting without it being overwhelming.

 

Personally, I think the first and easiest thing would be to start supporting/platforming specific types of content primary or secondary content creation around teaching people things that aren't obvious (such as an official video guide series or in-game tutorials for advanced mechanics).

 

The second thing should be devoting even just a small development team of 1-2 people, maybe as part of the Player Pain Points team, to identifying and addressing specifically what mechanics could/should be simplified without significantly impacting the depth of gameplay. I think there are tons, and a lot of players in the community would be happy to provide feedback on this.

 

For example, not every skill needs to have a flashy explosive animation/effect that obscures view of encounter mechanics. Even just adding a way to toggle off some of these could be a huge help.

I don't need to see my allied Spellbreaker's Winds of Disenchantment when I'm trying to watch for the red circle appearing under his character model, and he certainly doesn't need to see it either 😂

[ZolracAtrox.2908]

One heavy reason: they last MONTHS to fix a single class, and when recently starts fixing it, they took several more months to nerf it well. (Power coeff was reduced from 2.0 to 1.5) xD

[Ixl Super Eu Ixl.3259]

Match manipulation is the issue before all else can be addressed accurately. Specifically, manipulation by way of average party rating adjustment with purposely lowered alternate accounts. That paired with cross-gamemode rewards to attract gold diggers who see losing on purpose as a means to success. PvP began with a foundation of honor because it offered very little reward for non-competitive players to join. Gone are the days where the only reason to PvP was PvP. It has devolved into, whatever it is today and ArenaNet is okay with that because it suits the lackluster average dungeon crawler who buys gems more than the rare breed of gamer that wants challenging and fair fights. Still, sPvP is great as long as you take the win and loss rate with a grain of salt and ignore the misleading and ignorant community who complains about balance. Oh and to whatever forum moderator removes this like usual, guess what? I don't careeeeeeee, just like your company doesn't. 

[miredeline.2196]

Pour ma part j'aime se mode de jeu je my investie encore...mais.. dans gw2 pvp se qui me gène c'est l'absence de réel classement que des or 2g3 en classé peut faire 4game de suite avec dieu et demi dieu de l'arène est régulièrement abject (ça vous pourri une saison) pr qui sy investie et aime se mode de jeu.le win trading est dégueulasse et serait facile à bannir qd on voit le ratio...je rêvais d'un PvP plus équilibré ou une classe ne dévore pas tte les autres mais..trop de mises a jrs rendus des builds nouvellement maitriser complètement obsolètes et qd une classe est cassée aucun rectif avt prochaine maj... Site Officiel sur PvP 3a tt casser dont un est rapidement à jours mais très limité du cp aussi.il y aurait tant à faire...mais cela me désole que l'intérêt d'Anet ny soit pas.aucune nouveauté comme 1/1 2/2 3/3 5/5 10/10serait cool classement spécifique solo q et xteam q .nvelles Map aussi serait cool ou qu'ils s'appliqueraient les anciennes ça leur feraient peu de travail pr un bon effet. . les bots report sont tjrs là en tournois ca abuser après qq team completes qui report une vérif serait bienvenue.si il y a peu de monde en PvP et bcp de compte alt qui pompe le tableau de classement aussi prquoi ne pas regrouper serveur NA et EU pour qu il y ait plus de monde du même rank a affronter dans tout niveau...c beau de rêver xd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by miredeline.2196

[Guizao.4167]

On 2/15/2023 at 12:51 PM, UNOwen.7132 said:

The 2020 balance patch. That was pretty much the turning point, it was at least stable before that.

I'd say it was 2015 Balance Patch and the huge influx of pve rewards that started this misery train.

[Xentera.4560]

Clearly the big issue is the MMR that literally punishes people for playing. Easy fix too:

 

1) Take the individual player rating not the average team rating when making matches, even if that means longer queues.

 

2) It is beyond idiotic for the MMR to target a win rate. This literally discourages players from playing driving the population even lower.

 

3) DuoQs vs randoms should not be a thing. Allowing DuoQs at high ratings vs randoms is beyond comprehension.

Edited February 18, 2023 by Xentera.4560