How to restore GW2 to glory

[Impact.2780]

For those who want to skip to the chase, scroll past the first half of this post.

Hey, for those who think it matters for what someone says to have any weight (it doesn't) I'm ranked 30 EU at the time of making this post - I was left 6pts below plat3 when the queue bug hit us on Friday. I have friends who are stuck in silver, who I swear are better than a lot of plat players I have seen. Curious, I created an alternate account and got it to rank 20 to do ranked arenas.

I have done 4 games on the alt so far.1st: Looked promising. We had a better comp. The moment we started winning at 150pts, our scourge idled just outside base on temple. He didn't say anything, but when I targeted him he targeted me right back, and didn't move. We won 4v5, barely, admittedly thanks to RNG and 3 daggerstorms in a row where I had to 1vX stilness. He was clearly a win-trader.2nd: In short, our team just complained that holosmith was too strong to win against, and kept feeding team fights. We had a holosmith, too.3rd: The other team was extremely bad. I could even hold two dragonhunters by myself, on thief. Our team complained about the S/D CONDI thief being too strong.4th: After the first team fight was lost, despite us getting two downs that were rallied - so it wasn't exactly a complete washout - two of our guys decided it was lost, and idled just outside the base. The other team weren't terrible, but they weren't good, either. Yet, rather than try to work on shortcomings, two of our players were happier to go AFK and wait for the next game, hoping to be carried or put against people they could kill with a wet noodle.Wins: 1; Losses: 3, for a Plat 3 thief somewhere in Silver.

They told me that they were silvers. Silver "elitists" apparently. So apparently, my alt account started and is now stuck in silver, like so many I know in a similar situation. Idles, wintrading, and complaining instead of looking to improve. Why is trying to think, to improve, so unthinkable? Why is it preferable to just complain and or give up?

Rating is almost meaningless at the moment. Matches are better in plat 2+, but for every enjoyable match, there is one terrible match, supposedly containing a bunch of the players who got carried up by others trying to climb. Those.. we'll call them "bads" as a general term for simplicity... also lose to people who don't objectively belong in higher divisions, allowing them to climb, in turn. Higher divisions are poluted. These "bads" also don't know that they are bad. They are innocent, casual players, who are as much a victim of the system as anyone else. This is frustrating and makes many who actually care about this game and the competitive scene, stop queuing ranked, cease to play competitively, and or quit entirely.

Ok.

So, what can we do?

1) Now, we can't force people to try or learn to adapt, sadly. But ANet certainly can cut down on idling. I mean, you literally only need to half-step to reset the idle timer and avoid being kicked. This needs to change. It needs to require ACTIVE CONTRIBUTION to the match to reset the timer. It will at the very least spare many of us from losing points unfairly, and at most, give these people enough of a shove back into the fray to get them to keep trying.

2) The second thing that needs to be done, to address sheer laziness or inability to construct useful builds with a specific role in mind, that can adequately perform it, is to reduce build diversity. We need to allow CORE specifications ONLY in RANKED arena, possible unranked as well, but definitely ranked and the Automated Tournaments. The game will improve drastically. I miss ESL. We haven't had even a whiff of a returning, solid, competitive community on EU for years. Elite specifications should still be allowed in custom arenas, so players can organise their own matches and tournaments with their own rules as they please, but for competition, let's keep diversity restricted to core, and those core trait lines designed to make the respective classes suitable to one or two specific roles within a PvP team.

Many people don't like to think. It's not their fault they hurt the game with their cluelessness. The answer is to reduce the options available to them in the PvP scene. Do this, balance CORE specifications, and we will likely see much less idling in matches, insta-giving up, plus, cut down on idling as well with harsher requirements to keep form being kicked, and we shall see a drastic improvement in match quality, enjoyment, and maybe get some tournaments going again. There are a few teams still about, but they don't scrim. They don't see the point. They play pretty much casually, showing up for the occasional AT and the monthly, and that's it. New team can't learn in a community like this.

3) Following that, with CORE only, and specific roles in mind, ANet can add helpful tips to the PvP Build panel for players, explaining to them the roles of the class, perhaps even offering some insight as to what each individual trait line is best-suited for. Not everyone will read it, but some people do still ask questions. I've seen in. It will help this type of player, and every little helps. If the state of game takes a good leap in the right direction, we should see more players return, and more new players improve the scene rather than essentially poluting it with their inexperience, unable to improve themselves due to the environment.

Obviously, "we" are not ANet, and it is ANet who need to make the change. We, the community, can make ourselves heard. We need to push hard for the game to be developed in the direction that it needs to be successful. To be fun. The combat system is what brings me back to this game, and it is so painful to see such potential in this state.

What do you think? What do you want? What should ANet do, objectively speaking, in terms of what is best for GW2?

[insane.7506]

Hello , this season nobody play so lot of noob on leadder.

Lot of friend stuck in g3/plat 1 , game result afk and no level.

Season 16 im finished plat 3 , season 17 stuck gold 3 because lot of Times matchmaking is so bad peuple no cover point or die instant on mid and rage quit.

Anet dont work in pvp.

[Impact.2780]

The devs were once quite serious about making PvP great. I'm hopeful that something can be done to get us back to that track. If you've nothing constructive to offer, please don't bother. Thanks.

If I don't provide a rating, some will say something like "bronze player l2p" and not take it seriously. If I do, others will say "noob trying to use rating to appear good." I'm trying to hit the middle of that spectrum. Judge me by my arguments, not by arbitrary numbers, if you must judge me personally, at all.

[Math.5123]

Literally every game below plat 2 can be carried. MMR hell does not exist. Get better.

[derd.6413]

@"AngelLovesFredrik.6741" said:Literally every game below plat 2 can be carried. MMR hell does not exist. Get better.

i don't care about MMR, i just want good games that don't end in a 200-500 because those are boring whether you're loosing or winning

[phokus.8934]

GW2 is "complex" in its pvp gamemode for the individual. The three node conquest style works for group play but falls hard for the general solo queue public. This conquest mode should've been scrapped years ago in favor of CTF/KotH/Payload as it provides a clear path for victory. In conquest you have to rely on 5 people (including yourself) to either rotate, stay, +1, disengage, stall - there's just too much thinking and too much depth for everyone to be on the same page.

But honestly at this point this gamemode is not going to change much. Changing titles, adding new weapons/armor that can be uninspiring, and any other novelty isn't going to keep players in pvp.

[DoomNexus.5324]

I mostly agree with what you say but as a ~plat2 thief myself (not s/d meta tho btw) who also just made an alt account and did the same as you, I can't confirm your experiences. I've won almost every match so far and could carry most of the games pretty hard, like I had some matches where the enemy team constantly fed into me by losing 1v2 after 1v2 (like.. I killed 2 players and after recovering the next 2 came, killed them and the first 2 came again and so on) while my team was sitting comfortably at the mid point with an occasional player coming by.The reason behind my alt account btw is because I have a friend who just recently started playing GW2 (purely for sPvP btw) and I wanted to play ranked together with him without ruining my rating.That being said however, I kinda can confirm your experience when I was in ~gold2 and 3. People just give up too quickly and always blame others for it, even tho they are the ones making terrible decisions or not playing well. Apparently a lot of players simply expect to win a fight (maybe even outnumbered) by standing on the node and burning through their entire kit with a couple dodge roles sprinkled into the "rotation". Or they make very strange decisions about where they should engage.. Regrouping, searching for team mates to make an even or outnumbered with is rarely an option for your regular <gold player actually.

Regarding your 1) point. It is incredibly hard to measure this I guess. I mean if they can't simply stand around with an occasional step they'd just feed into a teamfight on a point and the game can't distinguish feeding into a fight, intentionally throwing, and simply playing bad, so yea.. I'd even say it's impossible for an algorithm to recognize this kind of throw, because you obviously make mistakes or decide badly even when playing serious.

Regarding 2) I don't think elite specs should be banned at all. They aren't the problem, I think the brokenness of elite specs is a mere sideeffect of PvE. Anet intentionally designed the elite specs with the newly introduced raids in mind like (almost) everyone got more boons to share and more stuff to enhance the team. Scrapper, Druid, Tempest and Chrono got way more support, Dragonhunter and Reaper got more (ranged) power damage, warrior got better condition output and .. thief.. got something? idk, they probably didn't really know what to do with thief and made him something gimmicky. And of course Rev, which is a bunker/support/damage machine depending on what you want to play but more importantly (I guess) what your team needs.They reworked conditions so they work better when fighting raid bosses and such but ignoring the fact that it would have terrible impact on PvP. Back then Anet also refused to split skills between game modes and I think this brings us to the real issue.. They reworked and designed everything to work for fighting against large bosses instead of actual players - small or large scale -, which is completely different.Also they don't put out smaller adjustments more frequently but rather draw the nerf hammer every now and then and change 10 things at a time, often rendering one build completely useless and bringing others (that were pretty balanced before) also in a rather 'meh'-state, while buffing other, completely irrelevant stuff to compensate, which makes some other (previously pretty balanced) builds overperforming. This has been going on for quite a while now.

I also don't think the powercreep is THIS bad, I mean I honestly like the time to kill, it's just that stuff like ranger lb#4 into #2-burst or rampage is really stupid. Like you get CC'd and unless you have a stunbreak you are 100% guaranteed dead. Your entire kit could be completely fresh but if you don't have this one stunbreak, you're done without any counterplay. AoE CC's should also be like 1/4 seconds max so they only interrupt and no class should be able to spam interrupts as frequently as mesmer can atm for example.

[Skotlex.7580]

One possible way to help good players climb out of awful matches is to reward personal performance more. Rather than have your rating be changed entirely by the result of the match, have personal statistics also count (highest kills, lowest deaths, most time holding a mode, most captured points) and have each one award rating points.

Currently there's too much weight given to the outcome of the matches, thus players prefer afking when there's no hope to win.

[White Kitsunee.4620]

Randoms who afk because they're 100 points behind is an unfixable problem. I haven't played any team based competitive games where that isnt a problem.

A core only mode would be cool but there are some serious problems with it.1.Matching PvE for PvE players who want to try PvP2.Being 'easier to balance' doesn't mean balance will come.3.Likely only a temporary fix, a different problem will come up.

4. Stagnation. Devs will have to come up with something else besides elite specs to spice up PvP every couple of years. And yes that's possible but we've seen how slow they are to add anything besides balance updates to PvP.
5. Will require a massive rebalance to execute correctly.

Like I said it's a cool idea and I'd be down for trying it but I dont think it's a magic bullet that will fix pvp.

[Vague Memory.2817]

Answer: GW3.

[witcher.3197]

@Vague Memory.2817 said:Answer: GW3.

GW3 won't have PvP.

GW2 only has PvP because the GW1 Anet team started the project.

[DoomNexus.5324]

@"Vague Memory.2817" said:Answer: GW3.

While it is an answer, GW3 is almost never the correct answer tho. Only exceptions are questions like "which game should never be released" or "what would kill the Guild Wars franchise faster than the lack of balance and updates in GW2".

[Adamixos.6785]

They could begin by swapping Herald Major Trait #4 with Major Trait #7. Major #8 also has to be swapped with Minor #3.

[Burnfall.9573]

@DoomNexus.5324 said:

@"Vague Memory.2817" said:Answer: GW3.

While it is

an

answer, GW3 is almost never the

correct

answer tho. Only exceptions are questions like "which game should never be released" or "what would kill the Guild Wars franchise faster than the lack of balance and updates in GW2".

Guild Wars is deeply rooted and it stands alone as its own franchiseLet all those come to passGuild Wars remains

[witcher.3197]

@Burnfall.9573 said:

@DoomNexus.5324 said:

@"Vague Memory.2817" said:Answer: GW3.

While it is

an

answer, GW3 is almost never the

correct

answer tho. Only exceptions are questions like "which game should never be released" or "what would kill the Guild Wars franchise faster than the lack of balance and updates in GW2".

Guild Wars is deeply rooted and it stands alone as its own franchiseLet all those come to passGuild Wars remains

The hypercasual majority of the game will forget about GW beetween the announcement of GW3 and the release of it.

The GW1 fans who quit GW2 in the first months won't even bother clicking on a GW3 trailer.

Those who still hang onto GW2 because of their time investment in the franchise will likely not go either jsut to experience this shitshow again.

[Iozeph.5617]

If you want to restore Guild Wars Two to glory it's simple. Just shut down the servers. Cancel all service with no explanation. Don't follow it up with anything. Then wait for a decade. By then everyone will be singing its praises- even people who never played it.

This works with terrible movies. Films that were often regarded as absolute rubbish in their times somehow end up gaining an additional star or more as years pass. I see no reason why this shouldn't apply to computer gaming now that the hobby is more firmly established in popular culture.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

pvp is beyond fixing. its only going to get worse

[JTGuevara.9018]

Though, I mostly agree with you, first off:

gw2 never even had glory days. gw1, now those were the glory days. gw2 simply doesn't hold a candle to it. In the core days, gw2 was ok at best, mediocre at worst. It certainly wasn't the dumpster fire it is today. gw1, on the other hand, was designed in a specific way, it facilitated pvp. Thousands of skills, multiple counters, multiple builds, structured movement, strategy. It was tailor-made for pvp. gw2, although fun at times...is simply not built for an spvp environment. The action-based free movement of this game does not really mesh with the skill system with respect to spvp.

Second, gw2 was never competitive. gw1 simply just blew it out of the water. This community can throw all the tournaments they want. ANet can throw all the esport money they want. Streamers can yak all they want trying to push this game. It won't amount to jack. gw2 pvp is still a side thing. gw2 is full of spam and faceroll mechanics. Do you all want to know the difference between gw1 and gw2? A dedicated balance team and viable pvp combat That's gw1.

That being said, gw2 should at least be made more playable. It's like...have some respect...have a little bit of care for your own game. Take out the elite specs, monitor the games more for afkers, wintraders, etc. See, this is why I stopped playing spvp except for daily ranked and unranked with my guild. If ANet, as a company, doesn't even care enough to ensure that spvp is playable then why...should...I...support...it?

[JTGuevara.9018]

Also, gw2 tried to go for both the pve and pvp audiences and it backfired. The pve audience ended up getting the lionshare of support.

[JTGuevara.9018]

@JTGuevara.9018 said:

@JTGuevara.9018 said:Though, I mostly agree with you, first off:

gw2 never even

had

glory days. gw1, now

those

were the glory days. gw2 simply doesn't hold a candle to it. In the core days, gw2 was ok at best, mediocre at worst. It certainly wasn't the dumpster fire it is today. gw1, on the other hand, was designed in a specific way, it facilitated pvp. Thousands of skills, multiple counters, multiple builds, structured movement, strategy. It was tailor-made for pvp. gw2, although fun at times...is simply not built for an spvp environment. The action-based free movement of this game does not really mesh with the skill system with respect to spvp.

Second, gw2 was

never

competitive. gw1 simply just blew it out of the water. This community can throw all the tournaments they want. ANet can throw all the esport money they want. Streamers can yak all they want trying to push this game. It won't amount to jack. gw2 pvp is still a side thing. gw2 is full of spam and faceroll mechanics. gw2 is still balanced every 3 months--which doesn't cut it for a game that wants to be "competitive". Do you all want to know the difference between gw1 and gw2?

A dedicated balance team and viable pvp combat

That's gw1.

That being said, gw2 should at

least

be made more playable. It's like...have some respect...have a little bit of care for your own game. Nerf or take out the elite specs, monitor the games more for afkers, wintraders, etc. See, this is why I stopped playing spvp except for daily ranked and unranked with my guild. If there is basically almost not enough support to ensure that spvp is playable then

why...should...I...support...it?

[ZeroTheCat.2684]

@witcher.3197 said:

@Vague Memory.2817 said:Answer: GW3.

GW3 won't have PvP.

GW2 only has PvP because the GW1 Anet team started the project.

Unfortunately I also believe GW3 won’t have pvp. So it will be a game I never will play.

[Burnfall.9573]

@"JTGuevara.9018" said:Though, I mostly agree with you, first off:

gw2 never even had glory days. gw1, now those were the glory days. gw2 simply doesn't hold a candle to it. In the core days, gw2 was ok at best, mediocre at worst. It certainly wasn't the dumpster fire it is today. gw1, on the other hand, was designed in a specific way, it facilitated pvp. Thousands of skills, multiple counters, multiple builds, structured movement, strategy. It was tailor-made for pvp. gw2, although fun at times...is simply not built for an spvp environment. The action-based free movement of this game does not really mesh with the skill system with respect to spvp.

Second, gw2 was never competitive. gw1 simply just blew it out of the water. This community can throw all the tournaments they want. ANet can throw all the esport money they want. Streamers can yak all they want trying to push this game. It won't amount to jack. gw2 pvp is still a side thing. gw2 is full of spam and faceroll mechanics. Do you all want to know the difference between gw1 and gw2? A dedicated balance team and viable pvp combat That's gw1.

That being said, gw2 should at least be made more playable. It's like...have some respect...have a little bit of care for your own game. Take out the elite specs, monitor the games more for afkers, wintraders, etc. See, this is why I stopped playing spvp except for daily ranked and unranked with my guild. If ANet, as a company, doesn't even care enough to ensure that spvp is playable then why...should...I...support...it?