Drop In Population - Discussion - Suggestions

[Exedore.6320]

The singular problem is the rampant power creep. It overshadows and exacerbates all the other issues.

As long as people enjoy the gameplay, and the gameplay presents challenge and depth, people will continue to play. Good gameplay alone is sufficient to overshadow many other shortcomings for a long period of time. Conversely, if the gameplay isn't fun, it doesn't matter what else you do; any other changes will only hold attention for a few weeks while it's new. After that, players remember that the gameplay just isn't fun and give up.

Power creep is what is killing diversity, as Trevor Boyer.6524 explained in the original post. When builds can do lots of things well and a few things extremely well, there's no way to compete without being exactly the same. And when they have no discernible weaknesses, there's no room for a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. The same effect of power creep makes gameplay stale and repetitive. When you can deal enough damage to kill someone twice over (if it weren't for excessive defense), there's no reason to not spam liberally - enough damage will get through. There's no reason to play defensively. When you don't know what's happening outside of spam and it kills you twice over, there's no incentive to learn anything - just spam faster!

Expansion-based power creep further drives away players who can no longer play a successful build they enjoyed - because it's no longer successful due to a new, stronger build. Your choices are: change to the new playstyle for your profession, re-roll to something with a similar playstyle, quit now, or stick it out with your current build and quit once you're frustrated with being non-competitive.

Power creep also contributes to toxicity and match manipulation. When there's no way to learn to play better because you die to what just looks like spam to you, why keep trying if you're behind? Players are visibly frustrated and some of them just give up. And on top of the all people who quit because gameplay isn't fun, you have a much lower population making organized map manipulation more feasible.

Many other games are successful with one strong game mode. MOBAs being the most obvious example. Good new game modes would help grow the population - but only when the gameplay is healthy overall.

Queue restrictions are also killing population because people can't play with friends. The vast majority of players aren't on the leaderboard, but they're hurt because a few people think they can make it. Open up full team queue in ranked already.

[ZhouX.8742]

@"Ryan.9387" said:Give ranked a ban phase before the match starts like in mobas. Let us mitigate the bad balance by using elite spec bans to create more interesting games.

Duo herald on other team and your team lacks the comp to handle it? Ban herald and experience a fairer game.

One trick player on the other team? Ban that spec and force them to improvise.

This is actually the best way to go with matchmaking

Also, allow a "forfeit at 15" style mechanic to the match if the other team is getting stomped to speed up re-queues. Not sure where it would go and obviously would need to have some time vested intothe game before allowing it but would speed up games across the board if people know it's pretty much over.

It's copying LoL of course, but they are actually good implementations that would apply to Gw2 as well.

[Gamble.4580]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:death match is definitely the best way to save pvp. 5v5 and 10v10. have ppl vote on how many ppl they want to vs just like map vote. make unranked death match and ranked conquest. gg ezpz.

Would love to see a 10v10 death match in a new map that was not Courtyard. Maybe something more akin to Obsidian Sanctum.CY was awesome defo my favourite map

[zinkz.7045]

@ZhouX.8742 said:

@Ryan.9387 said:Give ranked a ban phase before the match starts like in mobas. Let us mitigate the bad balance by using elite spec bans to create more interesting games.

Duo herald on other team and your team lacks the comp to handle it? Ban herald and experience a fairer game.

One trick player on the other team? Ban that spec and force them to improvise.

This is actually the best way to go with matchmaking

It would fail miserably in a game like GW2 because it fails to take account of the differences between the games and the playerbases.

Players in MMORPGs are typically far more invested in a certain class than players in a MOBA are invested in a certain hero or champ, in MOBAs players are attached to the role instead. So telling most GW2 players you won't be able to play the new elite on your class in 75% of matches because it is OP and will get banned, simply won't fly, people will just go play another game / won't play PvP.

[otto.5684]

@zinkz.7045 said:

@ZhouX.8742 said:

@Ryan.9387 said:Give ranked a ban phase before the match starts like in mobas. Let us mitigate the bad balance by using elite spec bans to create more interesting games.

Duo herald on other team and your team lacks the comp to handle it? Ban herald and experience a fairer game.

One trick player on the other team? Ban that spec and force them to improvise.

This is actually the best way to go with matchmaking

It would fail miserably in a game like GW2 because it fails to take account of the differences between the games and the playerbases.

Players in MMORPGs are typically far more invested in a certain class than players in a MOBA are invested in a certain hero or champ, in MOBAs players are attached to the role instead. So telling most GW2 players you won't be able to play the new elite on your class in 75% of matches because it is OP and will get banned, simply won't fly, people will just go play another game / won't play PvP.

To add to this, MOBA has 100 + heroes. We only have 18 elites + 9 core. In addition, heroes in MOBA typically have one role and one build. One elite line has multiple roles and builds (obviously most of them are not meta).

[Turkeyspit.3965]

Well I'll share this: as someone who started shortly after POF, and who to date has done pretty much everything else except raiding, I was considering trying out sPvP, I had a few reservations about starting.

Firstly, I'm not particularly good at 1v1. I've always prefer large scale PvP rather than small scale (in WoW for example, I enjoyed open world group PvP and Battle Grounds, but hated Arena) and the fact you are queued up with random players made me dislike trying this mode even more. If I could join up with 4 friends, even if we sucked hard, we would still have fun and nobody would be on anyone else's case about it.

Secondly, having no knowledge of the maps, terrain or strategies therein was a bit daunting. Everyone had to start some where and learn as they go, I get that, but it doesn't build up my confidence.

Thirdly, looking at the 'meta' builds, while I play all the professions I see listed, I don't play any of the specific builds seen in sPvP. So on top of being poor at 1v1 and not knowing the maps, I would struggle as well by having to choose either a non-meta build, or struggle to play an unfamiliar meta build.

Now those 3 issues alone add up to a pretty daunting barrier to entry, all self-created, to be sure, but I was getting to the point of just saying 'ah screw it', and was going to give it a shot.

Then I started reading threads in the PvP forums. Now the usual stuff about OP builds nuking people, yeah, familiar stuff from WvW.

But then I saw multiple posts about:

• bots
• win trading
• hacking
• poor match making

The thought of zoning in to a game and getting rolfstomped 500-50 was hard enough to overcome, but when I see all this talk about the issues listed above, this mode just doesn't seem like it would be fun to learn, and I can get the same rewards from doing T4 fractals every day.

TLDR: trying out a game mode as a n00b is hard enough, but trying a game mode that is functionally imbalanced, broken, and exploited? Yeah, not worth my time.

[ZhouX.8742]

@otto.5684 said:

@zinkz.7045 said:

@ZhouX.8742 said:

@Ryan.9387 said:Give ranked a ban phase before the match starts like in mobas. Let us mitigate the bad balance by using elite spec bans to create more interesting games.

Duo herald on other team and your team lacks the comp to handle it? Ban herald and experience a fairer game.

One trick player on the other team? Ban that spec and force them to improvise.

This is actually the best way to go with matchmaking

It would fail miserably in a game like GW2 because it fails to take account of the differences between the games and the playerbases.

Players in MMORPGs are typically far more invested in a certain class than players in a MOBA are invested in a certain hero or champ, in MOBAs players are attached to the role instead. So telling most GW2 players you won't be able to play the new elite on your class in 75% of matches because it is OP and will get banned, simply won't fly, people will just go play another game / won't play PvP.

To add to this, MOBA has 100 + heroes. We only have 18 elites + 9 core. In addition, heroes in MOBA typically have one role and one build. One elite line has multiple roles and builds (obviously most of them are not meta).

Yes, I know i wanted to type that out on top of my response as one of the main reasons it prob wouldn't work but i got lazy and forgot

[witcher.3197]

Suggestions are completely pointless, so is any form of discussion. Anet higherups don't care about PvP at all, they want to make GW2 into a glorified facebook dressup game, and the current PvP team doesn't have the resources to do anything.

Even if they had the resources, the balance team is the main reason why PvP is on the brink of death and they won't start caring anytime soon.

Change is impossible at this point. If they couldn't sort things out in 7 years, they never will.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@witcher.3197 said:Suggestions are completely pointless, so is any form of discussion. Anet higherups don't care about PvP at all, they want to make GW2 into a glorified facebook dressup game, and the current PvP team doesn't have the resources to do anything.

Even if they had the resources, the balance team is the main reason why PvP is on the brink of death and they won't start caring anytime soon.

Change is impossible at this point. If they couldn't sort things out in 7 years, they never will.

Maybe we need a new competitive game mode where characters walk out on a runway and display their fashion. It could be like a monthly AT thing.

The hilarious thing is, I'm being serious.

lol

Would be the biggest gold sink possible that Arenanet could organize.

[MyPuppy.8970]

I think the cause of powercreep is harder pve content, and since there is no real differenciation between PVE and PVP skills and traits, the powercreep is simply transposed. I agree with OP, too much of everything, not enough drawbacks/choices/sacrifices. The manifesto did not want trinity, now meta builds are all-in-one builds.

[Exedore.6320]

@MyPuppy.8970 said:I think the cause of powercreep is harder pve content, and since there is no real differenciation between PVE and PVP skills and traits, the powercreep is simply transposed. I agree with OP, too much of everything, not enough drawbacks/choices/sacrifices. The manifesto did not want trinity, now meta builds are all-in-one builds.PvE isn't harder though.

[Gaming Digi.9741]

@MyPuppy.8970 said:I think the cause of powercreep is harder pve content, and since there is no real differenciation between PVE and PVP skills and traits, the powercreep is simply transposed. I agree with OP, too much of everything, not enough drawbacks/choices/sacrifices. The manifesto did not want trinity, now meta builds are all-in-one builds.

It isn't that hard to split between gamemodes. They did it already - and can still do it rather easily.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Just wanted to add this,

The match maker is reaching so far down the leaderboards lately, that really good players are going against really new players and that is not helping us keep player base. If a 1500 goes against an 1800, the 1500 knows his class well enough to be able to actually learn from that engagement. But when a 1350 goes against an 1800, he gets trashed so fast that he isn't learning anything at all. People around 1350 would learn more from fighting the 1500, when they can survive for awhile and be able to pay attention to what's going on during the engagement.

Anet seriously needs to address this problem. Right now we have new players who come into the mists with the attitude of: "Oh cool I'm gonna try out some pvp" and then after a couple games of being trashed by the forever endless queueing top players who are streaming all day, they leave with the attitude of: "Why even try?" and they don't come back. The population is so low that these higher rated players are in everyone's games now, and it really is pissing a lot of lower/mid tiered players off, such to the point that they are giving up entirely on ranked ques. It's creating a snowball effect that is very quickly killing the population of the game mode.

It's one thing to lose a match or even get clearly out played by someone, but when they join a game and can't go anywhere or do anything without immediately dying before even getting to contribute, it feels bad man. Nobody likes to get raped. And we aren't even talking players with 200 or less games who play silver. No, I'm talking like Gold 2/3 players who have been around for awhile, maybe have a couple thousand games played, who have a relatively decent understanding of the game. Even Gold 2/3 players get immediately curb stomped vs. 1800s or even 1600s.

I can see interesting things reflected in the leaderboards this season. Players who normally play 1600 -1700, are beginning to play more around 1550 -1600. This effect will worsen as seasons go on and population continues to decline, because players cannot avoid the endless queuing of these people who are playing 1700-1800+. It's creating a weird rating rhythm this season in the leaderboards. To even get through the 1600 barrier, you have to begin que dodging these guys. Whether you want to believe that the current rank 1 player with a 1916 rating - 106 wins - 9 losses, is doing it for real or not, the fact of the matter is that these players are winning games with a 90% or greater win rate. Since the population is low, if you hit 1600 and que without dodging, you get cool matches like this - RED: (YOU 1600) 1550 1500 1450 1450 vs. BLUE: 1900 1800 1500 1500 1450 because you're the next highest rating standing around queuing, next to the 1800+ duo, which really is getting to be very unfair for the large majority of our player base for several reasons:

1. The match maker needs to be putting much lower rated players with the 1800+ duo, rather than stacking them with similar rated players to what the 1600 gets.
2. Being repeatedly bumped out of plat 2 because you cannot avoid players who mysteriously play with 90% win rates "however it may be that they are pulling that off!" is starting to feel like rating doesn't even matter. Like really this time, it's completely irrelevant when there is a top 10 duo against you in every other match. We're all playing in legendary division now.
3. To even get fair clean match making past about 1600, you have to que dodge these guys and that is starting to feel very unfair as a consumer who purchased a product right? Like if I have an hour or two to sit down and play, I don't want 30 to 60 minutes of that time to be used on watching my contacts list, to see if 90% or greater win rate players have entered a match or logged off, before it's safe to que. <- This is really starting to even piss me off to be honest. And aside from people leaving the game mode due to this stuff, that just encourages people to NOT que ranked beyond 1 match per 3 days to avoid decay, and only 120 games if they want to be on the leaderboard.
4. These very high rated players aren't even queuing against each other like what should be happening. These guys que dodge each other and stay out of each other's way. This is making the problem worse, because they rotate time schedules, so they are never in que together like they should be, but are always online queuing against much lower rated players. <- This bozo shit needs to stop. Is this not a form of match manipulation? I'm not saying they should be suspended or anything for this, but come on man, that's gaming the leaderboard in organized fashion. And we aren't even talking about the usual suspects of organized in-match manipulations yet.

^ All of this is why the population is leaving the game mode, all class balance issues aside. So we aren't even talking about "players who need to be punished" or "what can we do to satisfy the player base?" no this is much deeper and more critical than that. Now we are talking about keeping the game mode & glicko even functional at this point, and its survival in general.

I would like to keep playing Guild Wars 2 ranked pvp. It would be great to see a solution for some of these problems.

[insane.7506]

I have lot of time 6 min on q

For what ? Loose because mm silver plat gold leg in same game is just bad

10 looses and 10 wins .

Good luck for ladder because most afk boter ans match manipulation.

Anet use match manipulation with him matchmaking lot of my friend stuck in g3 plat 1 , also other season all plat 2/3 .

And one player is legendary on eu other season at same période 8 or 9 player in legendary

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Just had a terrible terrible terrible god awful bogus dirty match, again.

Match ended around 10:00 am eastern, must have started around 9:50 am eastern, on 7/1/2019. It was in Eternal Coliseum.

First game of the day, wish I would have recorded this one. I pushed far and had 2 players on me for about 75% of the match, the other 25% of the match I had 3 players trying to kill me, and I did not die once. I kept 2 to 3 players tied up at the far node for the entire duration of the game. My team was 4v3 and sometimes 4v2 advantage on home and mid, yet they were getting farmed. I also had the far node neutralized for about 50% of the game. I lost the ranked match 500 to 220. I lost -19 rating from that crap. Don't believe me? Ask this guy, he was there at the far node trying to kill me the entire match, as he watched this happen. He even commented on it himself -> @"cambolski.2031"

The last game I queued before it about 24 hours previously, was a 500 to 74 loss, where I again had a team of ambient creatures with me who couldn't attack, wo died instantly when struck by anything. But somehow the other team had all players who played at my level, who could actually engage me 1v1 and apply pressure.

@Ben Phongluangtham.1065 What's going on here lately? Is this just bad match making or am I running into a lot of match manipulation? If it's just bad match making, why am I always on the receiving end of the bad matches so often? I mean you can't carry a match any harder than 1v2ing & 1v3ing the far node the entire game and not dying. Why would the algorithm place me into that situation where even when I am 1v3ing, my team is still losing 4v2? Why would the algorithm be expecting me to find some kind of a way to 1v4 so that my team can 4v1? What is this, and why is it happening when I am approaching bottom plat? Seriously man, I should be getting somewhat realistic matches at now only 1539 rating. Gonna be hitting gold soon if I keep getting impossible to win matches like this. Maybe an even better question is, why aren't top rated players getting match quality like this? Why are they not forced to god carry and still lose, in the same way the algorithm apparently expects me to have to do? It's a good question, might want to look into it. Are they getting easier matches than me or is something going on where they are somehow avoiding this stuff or maybe creating it? I mean realistically if these guys were getting the same kinds of match quality that I am getting, they wouldn't be playing anywhere even near 90% or greater win rates, come on man. These aren't even top players I'm losing to, it's just random games full of random accounts I've never seen before, and my team is always full of by far weaker players than what is on the other team. Go ahead and look that match up if you don't believe me, or are curious at all as to what's going on in the matches lately.

Sorry man, trying to choose my words carefully and not be annoying. Just this problem really is getting very bad.

[insane.7506]

Same problème man

[Reikou.7068]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

@"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" What's going on here lately? Is this just bad match making or am I running into a lot of match manipulation? If it's just bad match making, why am I always on the receiving end of the bad matches so often? I mean you can't carry a match any harder than 1v2ing & 1v3ing the far node the entire game and not dying. Why would the algorithm place me into that situation where even when I am 1v3ing, my team is still losing 4v2? Why would the algorithm be expecting me to find some kind of a way to 1v4 so that my team can 4v1? What is this, and why is it happening when I am approaching bottom plat? Seriously man, I should be getting somewhat realistic matches at now only 1539 rating. Gonna be hitting gold soon if I keep getting impossible to win matches like this. Maybe an even better question is, why aren't top rated players getting match quality like this? Why are they not forced to god carry and still lose, in the same way the algorithm apparently expects me to have to do? It's a good question, might want to look into it. Are they getting easier matches than me or is something going on where they are somehow avoiding this stuff or maybe creating it? I mean realistically if these guys were getting the same kinds of match quality that I am getting, they wouldn't be playing anywhere even near 90% or greater win rates, come on man. These aren't even top players I'm losing to, it's just random games full of random accounts I've never seen before, and my team is always full of by far weaker players than what is on the other team. Go ahead and look that match up if you don't believe me, or are curious at all as to what's going on in the matches lately.

Sorry man, trying to choose my words carefully and not be annoying. Just this problem really is getting very bad.

The problem is that you are solo queue.

"Top rated players" duoqueue at dead hours and try to manipulate it such that they are the only good players in the match.

While as @Exedore.6320 has pointed out, balance and power creep is indeed terrible, I believe that the current state of matchmaking is even worse basically making it such that balance is basically irrelevant.

Game balance only matters when players of similar skill are matched with/against each other.

Right now matches are thrown together so haphazardly (due to no population) that many matches are simply unfun to play in. This further compounds the no population issue as more people won't play a game that isn't enjoyable (duh) and more people quit pvp.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

@Reikou.7068 said:people won't play a game that isn't enjoyable[.]

I'm just lurking right now and opting out of continuously whining about this and that and the other, but it would behoove everyone that has something to lose, whether it be developer or player alike, to remember the above. You can do or advocate whatever you like in terms of mechanics, but if the thing you're building is not enjoyable for all parties involved on some level, it will fall apart eventually.

Eventually, people will question why they put up with X and Y and decide not to. That's the natural course for most people.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

@Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

@Reikou.7068 said:people won't play a game that isn't enjoyable[.]

I'm just lurking right now and opting out of continuously whining about this and that and the other, but it would behoove everyone that has something to lose, whether it be developer or player alike, to remember the above. You can do or advocate whatever you like in terms of mechanics, but if the thing you're building is not enjoyable for all parties involved on some level, it will fall apart eventually.

Eventually, people will question why they put up with X and Y and decide not to. That's the natural course for most people.

I don't see much whining lately, as much as I see honest to god feedback. Players are actually taking their time to well explain what is happening, and they are asking for Arenanet to at least attempt to solve these issues.

People want to play the game mode. They just want it to be fair and make sense while playing.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:I don't see much whining lately, as much as I see honest to god feedback.

Oh nono, I agree with this. There wasn't any implication behind my use of the term 'whining' apart from my personal jaded view of my own forum complaints.

[Swagg.9236]

Honestly, you will never fix this game without just outright culling and revamping 90% of skills and stat bonuses (i.e. runes, amulets, traits, sigils) until you end up with actual class roles with independent support presences and approaches to combat. If you can't fix this game, it will never see increased play; only degeneration. I remember making a thread outlining what fair and varied combat would look like in GW2, and everyone basically replied with "but this wouldn't be GW2." The truth is that nobody who actually still plays this game wants it to change for the better at all. You are a broken playerbase with no mind for anything but what you have already experienced within this franchise's latest section of its thoughtless developmental pipeline.

[Twilight Tempest.7584]

Great topic and good points as usual.

I used to secretly care about climbing the LB, hoping to reach the upper levels of ranked. But this, and comments like it from high level players, have made me realize how meaningless the LB is and how unpleasant upper-tier life is.

I'd rather have fair, competitive matches than anything else, and I think those are most possible at levels where, no surprise, most of the player base resides, as that's where the bulk of the remaining population is. The top of the bell curve has the most players for the matchmaker to work with, resulting in relatively more balanced matches and shorter queues. It seems like the competitive sweet spot that's the last refuge in a dying mode.

My last 10 matches are about 80% close games with less than 100-point margins, a number of them with alternating leads. Can't complain about that, win or lose. Sure there are the occasional blowouts, but they're inevitable. Maybe I've just been lucky this season. Either way, I really feel sorry for people stuck in divisions completely lacking decent matches.

I've suggested before that one way to address the low population and resulting matchmaking issues might be to do away with separate ranked and unranked queues. It would be a single, universal queue for the entire sPvP player base. Casual play and testing could still be done in custom arenas.

I prefer separating solo-q from team-q (of any size), so the new universal queue would be solo-q only (which also has the benefit of being more resistant to match-manipulation). Along with this change, increase AT frequency, add 2v2/3v3, and/or implement Swiss Tournaments to satisfy teams. Have separate LBs for each match type. I think these changes would be more technically feasible than merging NA and EU servers, while at the same time, uniting what's left of the sPvP population and satisfying both solos and teams.

[Rouien.5234]

I'm not really all that optimistic about sPvP and all that. It's undeniably going down hill at a constant rate. Regardless of the reasons, the lack of drastic changes, updates, skill changes, passive deletions/additions ETC ETC and the speed of how these updates come out has shown the ANET's team doesn't really like sPvP or want to keep it around.

If you just compare the amount of updates and just pure coverage PvE and WvW gets by the official anet team compared to sPvP, you can tell which gets the most work down to it..

I've been locked in the heart of the mists since 2013, making friends and sPvPing all the time and, as much as I don't wanna say it, I wouldn't be surprised if they ultimately take it out or just stop messing with it. Not saying they will, but this is just making an educated guess from how things have been going.

[Exedore.6320]

@Reikou.7068 said:While as @Exedore.6320 has pointed out, balance and power creep is indeed terrible, I believe that the current state of matchmaking is even worse basically making it such that balance is basically irrelevant.

Game balance only matters when players of similar skill are matched with/against each other.

Right now matches are thrown together so haphazardly (due to no population) that many matches are simply unfun to play in. This further compounds the no population issue as more people won't play a game that isn't enjoyable (duh) and more people quit pvp.

Bad matchmaking at high rating is caused by low population.Low population is caused by poor gameplay.Poor gameplay is caused primarily by excessive power creep.

However, this gets into a feedback loop situation. When gameplay gets bad, people quit, which causes matchmaking to become worse, which causes more people to quit.

[Reikou.7068]

@"Exedore.6320" said:

Bad matchmaking at high rating is caused by low population.

Bad matchmaking has spilled over from just "high rating" to all ratings now, which is what I am trying to emphasize.

Bad matchmaking mechanics have always been around though, even back when the population was higher, so this isn't new.

But yes, its not an isolated issue. Fix the bad matchmaking, balance issues will become glaring. My contention is that even if all balance issues were solved matches would still feel unfair/unfun to play in because of the spread of player skill in the match.

For example; it doesn't matter how balanced the game of chess is if average players are constantly pitted against grandmasters. Might be acceptable once in a while (like for an exhibition match or something,) but right now in gw2 its a constant occurrence.