What Can ArenaNet Actually do To Make PvP Better? (A Thread for Thoughts)

[Bast.7253]

I think the point is they don't WANT to attract more players because that's just justification for more work/resources. (Likely mandated by the NCSoft overlords.)

Ideally, at this point, they want to milk the living story crowd with micro-expansions while they meet carefully planned checkboxes to fund their other ip's.

So - what COULD they do and what WILL they do are entirely different. 

What you can expect is MAYBE one or two more micro-expansions, some more weapon unlocks, and your usual bi-annual draw a skill out of a hat coefficient nerf followed by six months of something being blatantly busted. 

Expecting any major reworks to anything at this point is just hopium and you can insist I'm a doomer but I think the writing is on the wall. Best of luck to them on their new ip's though. 

To be honest, at the rate gen AI is advancing by the time they finish these other ip's, or any other studio for that matter, the mmo/game market as we know it may be heading for sunset. Between advances like Apple Vision, ai video/image gen, things like LLM's that can be used to simulate real player behavior, eventually if not already present gen ai 3d models - 

I mean, we may be creating our own completely customized video games before too long. 
 

[ShadowInTheVoid.9183]

On 10/5/2023 at 6:20 PM, Vancho.8750 said:

You can play for you know fun, like  I know it is a hard concept these days to play a game for fun and not shiny pixels but it can happen. At some point if you played long enough rewards don't matter. Also at least for me unranked seems to have better match quality since the mmr is constant , while in ranked it volatile at the start and you have like 30 to 50 games of slog with kitten quality matches till the volatility goes away, but then you start hitting the leaderboard kitten and you still get kitten matches. In unranked there is no reason to lose on purpose (except being total piece of kitten wasting everyone's time) so you literally just play for the fun of it.

But the problem is your insentified to play ranked which is so full of toxic players, afks, match fixing.
I might actually enjoy playing unranked if it didn't have those things but while i'm farming Ascended Shards of Glory it would just be slowing me down

 

You know what, the one PvP map I actually enjoy is Battle of Champion's Dusk, the Stronghold match type is actually far more interesting then Conquest (Legacy of the Foefire is at least a bit interesting).
If PvP actually had a future they should really swap to Stronghold matches, they would be far better for getting teams to work together. (Assuming they actually did something about all the AFKs and matchfixers)

[zaced.7948]

On 10/5/2023 at 2:36 PM, ShadowInTheVoid.9183 said:

Even a win in unranked gives less reward then a loss in ranked.

and that right there is the reason the low and middle section of ranked is fill with afk bots.

[aranyics.8256]

I'm honestly pretty happy with PvP gameplay, I'm having good fun, end up around 53-54% winrate at the end of seasons, and I can deal with bad matchmaking that happens sometimes. I can't get salty about video games anymore.

But oh my god, take like two days sorting out the mess some systems the interface has, like

1. fixing the standings tab on an AT,
2. waiting for 2 minutes on the 'Match ready' window, when someone idles, considering you only have 30 seconds to click on Accept
3. fixing (by removing) the 'Favourite Map' stat, because there is no way that my favourite map is Legacy of the Foefire, as I actively avoiding choosing that map for years
4. give a list of meaningful stats I can review over the season to check my skill/progress. Mental rewards are just as important for longevity as material ones.

[schokelmei.8271]

Get rid of 2v2 in seasons would be a major improvement.

[Shagie.7612]

4 minutes ago, gebrechen.5643 said:

Get rid of 2v2 in seasons would be a major improvement.

It's a mini-season, lol

The alternative would be what it was in the past:
No ranked between seasons

Don't queue it if you don't like it, like a normal person

[schokelmei.8271]

So, Anet can't just switch to another normal season and make this 2v2 a thing? That's like "hey, no raids, only fractals for this week".

The point is: No ranked for (at least) two weeks means no pvp for two weeks.

 

[Virdo.1540]

Remove the chat & the accountnames of players. 
No toxicity = fun gamemode

[TheQuickFox.3826]

More PvP game types.

GW1 has:

• Random and team arena's
• Fort Aspenwood
• Jade Quarry
• Alliance Battles
• Heroes Ascent
• Guild vs Guild

GW2 has:

• Conquest
• Stronghold (Which seems still in beta with just one map and no ranked)
• WvW (Outside of the scope of this, but it is PvP and well worth a mention)

I would love to see the return of Fort Aspenwood as Stronghold map or separate PvP game type.

[Ehecatl.9172]

5 hours ago, TheQuickFox.3826 said:

More PvP game types.

GW1 has:

• Random and team arena's
• Fort Aspenwood
• Jade Quarry
• Alliance Battles
• Heroes Ascent
• Guild vs Guild

GW2 has:

• Conquest
• Stronghold (Which seems still in beta with just one map and no ranked)
• WvW (Outside of the scope of this, but it is PvP and well worth a mention)

I would love to see the return of Fort Aspenwood as Stronghold map or separate PvP game type.

 

The reason they don't make new game modes is because every time they've tried to introduce one the community absolutely hated it and refused to play it. Anet isn't going to spend money on a game mode nobody plays.

Which is a shame. I personally really enjoy Stronghold and wish I didn't need to choose between ranked rewards and playing it.

[Master Ketsu.4569]

Anet would have to acknowledge that their strategy of nerfing around problems instead of actually fixing mechanical issues which cause those problems has not worked...

...and never will.

All bad balance decisions stem from this critical failure.

 

 

Edited October 18, 2023 by Master Ketsu.4569

[Silvanus.5821]

Me and my friend are both PvP focused players and have played many hours of PvP in other games (Including Lost Ark, League, WoW, GW1, New World and more). I played GW2 for some time when it was launched and I remembered PvP being fun so I recently decided to give GW2 another try with my friend. My friend has never played GW2 before. These are the problems in our opinion:

1. Fights last for a few seconds because everyone is dealing way too much damage (7k-8k hits when we have ~20k HP). Yeah I know "git gud" but how can we get good when we don't even understand what is going on. It's very hard to see what the other players are doing due to all these visual effects, blinks, stealths and constant sparkly rainbows (and a bunch of mesmer clones) to be able to learn which visual cues are deadly and which are not. It is very discouraging to get in the fight and then die in 2 seconds without knowing what hit you and from where. Not being able to learn from your mistakes because you don't even know what mistake you did is incredibly frustrating. I do not recall everything being so bursty when I played this game years ago. I have spent a day trying to make my own tanky build because I figured that if I can survive long enough then maybe I will have the opportunity to see and understand what is going on, but I couldn't make a viable build. I understand that every game has the occasional list of meta builds, but it seems that every meta build in GW2 is a glass cannon build with invulnerability/stealth and anything else is significantly weaker.

2. We felt that everyone else was a lot better at playing the game than us. I am suspecting that there is some matchmaking problems because the gap was just too high. Every game we would just constantly die, 1v1, 1v2 (Us being the 2) or just enter a team fight and die in a few seconds. I swear we are not generally bad PvP players.

3. There are many AFK players and I'm not sure why. Even if anet is not punishing AFK players, there shouldn't be this many of them. Not sure what the deal is.

4. The downed state in PvE is a great feature, but we didn't like it in PvP. In the rare case when we downed an enemy, that enemy would kill us and then somehow would deal more damage than us in the downed state. We didn't find it fun to take down an enemy and then have to run and hide, and wait for cooldown on heal or defensive skill before going back in to finish them (Not to mention that by that time some other enemy would come and kill us and the downed player would rally back to life).  

5. This is minor, but for some reason people don't click 'Ready' when they enter a match and you have to wait for the timer almost every game. 

I don't want to suggest any solutions to these because I do consider myself a new player to GW2, but these are our thoughts on GW2 PvP and why we probably won't be touching it again. For me it was one of the most frustrating PvP experience I had as a new player in a game.

[zonias.1083]

On 10/22/2023 at 5:47 AM, Silvanus.5821 said:

Fights last for a few seconds because everyone is dealing way too much damage (7k-8k hits when we have ~20k HP). Yeah I know "git gud" but how can we get good when we don't even understand what is going on. It's very hard to see what the other players are doing due to all these visual effects, blinks, stealths and constant sparkly rainbows (and a bunch of mesmer clones) to be able to learn which visual cues are deadly and which are not. It is very discouraging to get in the fight and then die in 2 seconds without knowing what hit you and from where. Not being able to learn from your mistakes because you don't even know what mistake you did is incredibly frustrating. I do not recall everything being so bursty when I played this game years ago. I have spent a day trying to make my own tanky build because I figured that if I can survive long enough then maybe I will have the opportunity to see and understand what is going on, but I couldn't make a viable build. I understand that every game has the occasional list of meta builds, but it seems that every meta build in GW2 is a glass cannon build with invulnerability/stealth and anything else is significantly weaker.

Regarding this, i think it is totally what i feel. I remember i saw a video of i do not know who, a pvp player, but they mentioned in their opinion to kill someone you should be able to land more than one rotation of offensive spells. That way the enemy has a chance to counter and it becomes a dance. I get that they do not want an stale meta. But honetsly right now it feels too much. The best playstyle if to play super aggreive with a duo and just one shot someone and snowball from there with little counter play. 

 

As for the other points, the downstate. In pvp it should not be there, they do not want a stale meta? then make it so if you are down you die, and punish you. That way supports would not run the signets banners and all that nonence, about having supports that just res, like scourge when it was a thing. . There would not be something as bleeding opponents and just make re spawn more faster because no downstate.