A Fanboy's Eulogy For Guild Wars 2 Ranked Spvp

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

I see many posts this season, more than ever, that are pointing out the lack of play that the ranked game mode is getting. I posted something like this in another thread but I felt this post really deserved it's own thread. Please respond and leave any feedback. Be serious about it and give Arenanet something constructive to read. Tell us how you feel about season 10.

The ranked game mode has become dirty and stressful. This is why after all of these years, I finally walked away from it:

• After playing organized ATs with proper comps and remembering 5 man play again, my rage has more than tripled with bad ranked match making.
• Why is match making so bad in my opinion? 1. Match manipulation 2. Hack programs 3. Log out/back on class stacking 4. Seriously imbalanced intra-class meta. In my opinion this meta has the largest margin we've seen yet between ineffective builds and obviously dominant builds. HoT release was not THIS bad and even if one were to claim that it was, Arenanet was hotter and faster to attempt patch work back then.
• It feels to me, like dumb luck through match making is more responsible for wins/loses at this point than actual skill. Did I roll a good team comp? Does my team have an OP meta stack or does the other team have the OP meta stack? Oh look my team's average party rating is nearly 100 difference than the opposing team, it will be a blowout either way for sure. Are there people in the match running match manipulation tactics? Are they making my team win or lose this match? Despite if you play 1000-1200 or 1700-1800, a 1200 rating could get a good luck day and ride a series of games where he falls on the good side of a manipulation team and ends up in bottom plat where he should not be. Then a 1800 could have a bad day or two or three, where it just keeps giving him one bad double thief game after another with no Firebrand against a bunch of teams with firebrand/scourge/druid/mirage and end up riding back down to 1600 or so. A given player's minimum rating vs. peak rating will show his range, yes. But my point here is that each season that passes, a given player's range of rating keeps expanding. In older seasons I had played tightly around 1500-1600. Nowadays I play at a range around 1460-1715, at most points hovering between 1600-1650. This indicates that there are more "gambits" in play than ever before and that they have much to do with a player's final rating achieved at the end of a season. Did he get good luck on those last 10 games or was a bad streak? It "feels" bad to know that your range is gold 3 to plat 3 and that the final placement will be decided so heavily on the good or bad luck of those last 10 games.
• From what I've seen, most avid spvpers who actually care about their rating recognize the above, then they recognize that to achieve a higher rate of better matches, there is a "game" to be played: Que dodging, playing at on or off peak times, on certain days and only enough to prevent decay and stay on leaderboards, sometimes wait till end of season to shoot through matches and appear on leaderboards so that they don't undergo que sniping throughout the entire season, ect.. ect.. ect.. until some players say "screw it" and just run some MMs at the end to get that legend icon. Ultimately, players see that playing the game mode as least often as possible and only at highly advantageous times, is the best way to achieve and maintain a higher rating. The 2nd asterisk is the disease. The 3rd asterisk are the symptoms. This 4th asterisk is the result, a dying game mode.
• The most important aspect of why people are walking away, what it all boils down to = The true competitive pvp player base actually does care about their rating and as such, it is very frustrating and confusing to experience the problems listed above. I find myself questioning: "Well am I a gold 3 player or am I a plat 3 player?" How can you tell when you are in gold 3 one day, back to plat 3 the next, back to gold 3 by the end of the week and then back to plat 3 the next? The worst part is that, even though other players know the match making can often be a complete gambit, they still judge each other based on rating. One week I'm in plat 3 and everyone whispers me to join ATs with them. The next week I'm in gold 3 and no one wants to play with me. --To Arenanet-- Do you have any idea the social stigma spawned from such volatile rating changes? A team trusts you and loves you one week and then excludes you the next. It "feels" bad. A player can only endure so much of this inconsistent flip flopping segregation until they say "Screw it" I'm going back to unranked where it's fun and only playing ATs for competitive because I get to choose who is on my team. <- It's true.

All in all I can say that I decided to walk away this season for my own good. I placed at 1560ish by the end of my first 10 matches. I played 3 matches afterwards and was graced with 3x disgusting team comp vs. team comp situations. You know, those situations where your team has a core guard and a reaper but the other team has a scourge and a firebrand or you have double thief, dh and some guy on a condi berserker vs a bunch of PoF meta. Bad luck I suppose? After losing those 3x matches and dropping down to 1506 or something like that, finally after all these years, I hit the breaking point and said to myself: "you know what? this just isn't fun anymore" so I walked away. and let me tell ya, I've been having a lot of fun learning raids with my guild's pve crew and running more wvw.

I do not want to walk away from spvp. Guild Wars 2 had the perfect engine to make a cult classic and enduring mmorpg spvp game mode. All it needed was love, attention, and a moderate amount of work to solve the problems. I am still hopeful for the game mode and always will be.

~ Arenanet, I am not trolling or insulting you, just letting you know how a quintessential fanboy feels about the situation at hand.

[Cynz.9437]

+1. Couldn't agree more.

[Aeolus.3615]

This sum's up why i dont even bother to aknowledge gw2 pvp, its just pick up a recent meta(cause it is easy to play and more efficient) build and have fun with it or go troll, all that matters for Anet is players interested in titles and skins farming.

There are better pvp games already, and imo it hard to believe after 6 years of "buy expantion to be good and feel class progression" will hardly change.

[rank eleven monk.9502]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:HoT release was not THIS bad and even if one were to claim that it was, Arenanet was hotter and faster to attempt patch work back then.Don't be delusional.

DH says hi

[Arnox.5128]

And please, ANet, for the love of everything, find some way to give Guild vs. Guild back to us. Current sPvP options and WvW are not a replacement at all for it and never will be. Or at least say that it'll have to wait until Guild Wars 3. SOMETHING. This silence around PvP is incredibly painful.

[whoknocks.4935]

@rank eleven monk.9502 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:HoT release was not THIS bad and even if one were to claim that it was, Arenanet was hotter and faster to attempt patch work back then.Don't be delusional.

DH says hi

Dh was barely played in tournaments when considered OP, it was a pug stomper mainly in low medium leagues. Then people at high tier nullify the traps with a simple dodge and dh was rekt hard.

Nothing to do with the cancer that scourge and mirage brought in, even 10 dodge are not enough against those 2 classes.

[rank eleven monk.9502]

@whoknocks.4935 said:

@rank eleven monk.9502 said:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:HoT release was not THIS bad and even if one were to claim that it was, Arenanet was hotter and faster to attempt patch work back then.Don't be delusional.

DH says hi

Dh was barely played in tournaments when considered OP, it was a pug stomper mainly in low medium leagues. Then people at high tier nullify the traps with a simple dodge and dh was rekt hard.

Nothing to do with the cancer that scourge and mirage brought in, even 10 dodge are not enough against those 2 classes.Lol this is so untrue. You probably never played against a proper DH. And you could NEVER nullify a trap DH with a simple dodge. Same this was going on here and on reddit, until it was slightly nerfed 3-4 times over a one year span.

But you could go on with chrono (nerfed multiple times in many patches and there are still people complaiming about it), condi reaper, holo.. Maybe not all after HoT launch but it was never any better.

[ukuni.8745]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:The ranked game mode has become dirty and stressful. This is why after all of these years, I finally walked away from it:

• After playing organized ATs with proper comps and remembering 5 man play again, my rage has more than tripled with bad ranked match making.
• Why is match making so bad in my opinion? 1. Match manipulation 2. Hack programs 3. Log out/back on class stacking 4. Seriously imbalanced intra-class meta.~ Arenanet, I am not trolling or insulting you, just letting you know how a quintessential fanboy feels about the situation at hand.

so it defiantly dosent have anything to do with people batting above there level with easy to play builds at all what so ever...........................................................................................

[Shirlias.8104]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

• Why is match making so bad in my opinion? 1. Match manipulation 2. Hack programs 3. Log out/back on class stacking 4. Seriously imbalanced intra-class meta.

1. Can be fixed ( see point 2 ).
2. Due to the fact that seems there has been hacks since the launch ( wvw invisible stuff anyone ), i guess the only thing you can do is to monitorate and ban those who use em ( even without logs ).
3. Can be solved by allowing 1x class team ( also more variety ).
4. Maybe a Split among all 3 game modes could do the work.

[vorpal.1497]

@rank eleven monk.9502 said:Lol this is so untrue. You probably never played against a proper DH. And you could NEVER nullify a trap DH with a simple dodge. Same this was going on here and on reddit, until it was slightly nerfed 3-4 times over a one year span.

I think you are forgetting that other classes were given a hefty amount of unblockable tools in their arsenal at that time. DH was strong but there were plenty of builds that could take them apart.

That said, conceptually DH was a horrible design for the same reason that scourge is (circle-based gamemode with one class having access to circle-based nuclear bombs)

[Nilson.9865]

@"Trevor Boyer.6524" said:All in all I can say that I decided to walk away this season for my own good. I placed at 1560ish by the end of my first 10 matches. I played 3 matches afterwards...So, did you leave the season after 13 matches? Let me tell you something you already know.The sPvP ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to bronze and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as balance patch. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit nerfed and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward...Revenant.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

So I logged in and played a ranked match this morning. First match I play in 3 or 4 days and I load into a match vs. a Reaper using like +300% speedhack, just deliberately and not even trying to hide it. We still won the match by a blowout but it felt dirty and bad to see it. <- This kind of unmoderated shit drives players away from a game mode, especially competitive ones.

[Aeolus.3615]

@Trevor Boyer.6524, was there a firebrand on other team ???Guardians can stack good amount of Quickness on team.

[Kaga.7629]

season X is not worth playing until feb 6th, when the balance patch drops.Then, maybe, possibly things could get fun again for like a week or so ... before metabattle tells the losers what to play again.

[Chorazin.4107]

@Kaga.7629 said:season X is not worth playing until feb 6th, when the balance patch drops.Then, maybe, possibly things could get fun again for like a week or so ... before metabattle tells the losers what to play again.

There needs to be a lot less division between the effectiveness of what is meta and what is not meta. But it's Anet we are talking about, it's like they dont balance test anything ever. They just make sure the skills work and dont break the game. pack it up and ship it out.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Well with 2x expansions now and Core, the system REALLY needs a way to identify the difference between a Core Guard, a Dragonhunter and a Firebrand "as example". It's a real problem rolling teams that look like: Core Guard/Reaper/Ect/Ect/Ect vs. Firebrand/Scourge/Ect/Ect/Ect. Which, this leads right back to Chorazin's point about class balance to begin with but hey, it would help a lot if the system could understand the difference between Core/HoT/PoF Specs.

And for the love of god, implement a feature to stop log out/back in class stacking. It's real simple, a player cannot log out and back in on a class there are already two of in his team. Not sure why this hasn't been added yet.

[BeLZedaR.4790]

@Chorazin.4107 said:

@Kaga.7629 said:season X is not worth playing until feb 6th, when the balance patch drops.Then, maybe, possibly things could get fun again for like a week or so ... before metabattle tells the losers what to play again.

There needs to be a lot less division between the effectiveness of what is meta and what is not meta. But it's Anet we are talking about, it's like they dont balance test anything ever. They just make sure the skills work and dont break the game. pack it up and ship it out.

If they did that we’d be in good shape. Have you ever played rev?

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Renegade should have been hotfixed in some way on day 1 release.

[Cynz.9437]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:Renegade should have been hotfixed in some way on day 1 release.

along with DE lel

[Badcat.7320]

Only do unranked now will save the bother