Thoughts on pvp post patch.

[Deleted]

Post your view of whether the patch has improved/degraded the experience of pvp

Just for curiosity, also post your experience/rank pre-patch

[Smitzelplix]

The patch has got me interested in pvp. I was mostly ignoring it before the reward tracks were implemented. Before the patch I was around rank 6-8 in rabbit, now I'm almost done with deer rank as of this post. I mostly stick to hot join spvp, which has a two tier daily cap on reward track progress, so once I reach that I usually go do something else like progress in the WvW season meta.

Post on custom arena reward track daily cap

[Rivellana]

I've been doing solo queue arenas since the patch...I didn't play around much in sPvP before it because I didn't really see any point. Now that reward tracks are in, I have a reason to do it (I don't run dungeons).

Pre-patch I was rank 8, now I'm rank 18.

I'm enjoying it quite a bit, although I really REALLY hate the Skyhammer map. I think the cannon is way too powerful and hits too hard.

[Meledelion]

Detest PvP now, too many noobs join arena.
The new players aren't to be blamed it's just that a-net's pvp support is horrible so there's no MMR to speak of so I get to play with brand new players who literally just found out there's PvP.
Instead of fixing this they decided to no longer show ranks in PvP, like it's not obvious when you're playing with noobs.

[Deleted]

Detest PvP now, too many noobs join arena.
The new players aren't to be blamed it's just that a-net's pvp support is horrible so there's no MMR to speak of so I get to play with brand new players who literally just found out there's PvP.
Instead of fixing this they decided to no longer show ranks in PvP, like it's not obvious when you're playing with noobs.

This is a little....flavorful, but its pretty much my experience. For all the good that has been done, the matchmaking system is killing the experience, at least for me.

Yes it did used to be the same faces again & again in solo + team arena but at least everyone knew what to do/was actually trying to win. No match felt like a waste of time trying, no match felt like a given win. Right now? Most matches are ending 500-100 or something similar, people do not discuss or listen to tactics and play like it's hotjoin.

Could be way better with some decent matchmaking but for now it's horrible.

That and the fact that people worse than me in pvp were given the first pvp legendary skins. That probably sounds more big headed than I mean it, but rank 1s with sunrise hacks me off, legendary pvp items should have been at launch, pvpers got slapped in the face with that one. Pvp certainly has gone down for me.

[Rivellana]

This is a little....flavorful, but its pretty much my experience. For all the good that has been done, the matchmaking system is killing the experience, at least for me.

For every day I've had where I won literally all day long, I've had one where I lose so many matches in a row I start screaming at my monitor and quit for the rest of the day.

[Deleted]

In my experience things are much more stable as you progress into the higher mmr, less people disconnect, everyone is sound on the basics. It wasn't perfect but it wasn't the circus that things are atm

[Meledelion]

There is no MMR, that's the thing.

[Deleted]

I thought there was and it was just hidden?

EDIT: yeah they used glicko, did they cancel it? Why would they do that?

[Meledelion]

Oh there's mmr according to a-net, I just call bullshit since it's impossible that in one match I'm playing with/against top 200players and the next match I'm playing with ppl that are in the top 80%.

I've been everywhere on the leaderboards, top 200, top 400, top 600 and anything higher.

Here's a good example. If you go back further in that thread you'll notice I have more screenshots like that one even detailing everyone's rank.

[Litharium]

Detest PvP now, too many noobs join arena.
The new players aren't to be blamed it's just that a-net's pvp support is horrible so there's no MMR to speak of so I get to play with brand new players who literally just found out there's PvP.
Instead of fixing this they decided to no longer show ranks in PvP, like it's not obvious when you're playing with noobs.

Im not an Spvp noob but I got put against a team that had 2 dragon ranks im not even remotely close to that rank it was absolutely the worst game I have done they virtually 2v5d us.

[Rivellana]

On a side note, it seems like the number of trash talkers I've seen in there recently has gone up.

I never do it because I know that I if I trash talk my own team I may end up against them next match where they beeline for me if I was a jerk, or if I trash talk the other team they might end up on my team the next round. That and I'm generally a nice person until someone is a jerk to me.

I actually had a match today where someone on the other team decided to trash talk my GUILD of all things. When I asked why he was so obsessed with what guild I was in, the response was that we were "rally bots", and that we all "suck". Then of course, he'd poked the bear, so I started asking him if he was on a server whose butt we were kicking and the like, and when I said "Oh, you must be on "insert server""...he finally shut up. Never imagined people having their panties in a bunch about WvW would carry over to tPvP.

[Meledelion]

I trash talk a lot but it depends on the situation. I won't just call people bad from the get go, I will call people bad if they say do stupid things, I tell them not to do them and they keep doing it. Basically, if you're not listening I might as well insult you anyway since you won't hear it.

Enemies will always get trashtalked, I have a 1v1 build if you go full aggro on me you're playing in my hand which is nice and part of PvP in general.
People seem to forget that mind-games are part of competition.

[Deleted]

There`s nothing wrong with a bit of trash talk, it`s part of the psychological fun that`ll get folk playing the proper part of the wars.
I recall I used to wind up 2,2,2,2 spammers all of the time to which they`d keep trying to get me & fail, only to keep coming back.
Other times I`d hint to rangers that rooting someone & then immediately using knockback, defeats the point of using the root in the first place & so on.
tbh I used to get chatting to enemy players & we`d often swap tips, even partner up in the following matches (which was easy considering how few seemed to play at some times)
Oddly, they refuse to let folk chat in WvWs, because it may lead to trash talk, but then they willingly let it happen in the bgs? Go figure....

As for the PvErs entering badly geared, traited & not knowing wtk to do. It wouldn`t take long to ask guildies etc for hints or even entering empty maps to find out what is what. Would make their life a lot easier when the substance hits the fan.
You can`t really blame PvPers for ranting though, they`ve been doing this for nth amount of time & now having the dragon slayers coming in & screwing up a little/lot, this has an effect on everyone`s score/rep etc.

One small amount of time learning builds etc would lead to things like the following not being common place...

http://www.twitch.tv/bringyourfriends/c/4078079

After that, the ele returned, died again just as fast & said something along the lines of "I know why I died so fast the first time, there was a thief."

Erm, it was a mesmer & guardian...

[Karizee]

• Megaserver in the PvP lobby is awesome, it's wall to wall players in there. More players are forming teams.

• Queues are instant, there's a lot more players running PvP for the track rewards

• Hot join is still a hot mess since there is no stratification by MMR. It's good for a new player to learn the maps I guess, or for a veteran player to test out a new build without affecting their rank.

• Haven't seen this huge increase in trash talking, but ANet is still just as strict as ever with suspending verbal abusers.

• New Grandmaster traits - seems odd to have strictly PvP players hunt the open world for the new traits. They can always buy them with gold but I'm still not sold on the idea. I'd rather see them earned with the tracks. However there is lots of testing of new builds, it's really fun. Lots of theorycrafting, lots of chat in the lobby about builds.

• The new map is really cool, no scoring or anything but great fun to test things with - ultimate deathmatch. Too small for GvG (it just gets crazy) but insanely fun for smaller groups. Some are already calling for ANet to roll it out as a regular map, will be interesting to see how they do it.

[Smitzelplix]

On a side note, it seems like the number of trash talkers I've seen in there recently has gone up.

I never do it because I know that I if I trash talk my own team I may end up against them next match where they beeline for me if I was a jerk, or if I trash talk the other team they might end up on my team the next round. That and I'm generally a nice person until someone is a jerk to me.

I actually had a match today where someone on the other team decided to trash talk my GUILD of all things. When I asked why he was so obsessed with what guild I was in, the response was that we were "rally bots", and that we all "suck". Then of course, he'd poked the bear, so I started asking him if he was on a server whose butt we were kicking and the like, and when I said "Oh, you must be on "insert server""...he finally shut up. Never imagined people having their panties in a bunch about WvW would carry over to tPvP.

Yeah I had a person in a hot join match on my team just a short while ago who was trash talking us saying we were bad even though we ,his own team, were winning by a large margin. I just couldn't understand his reasoning behind that trash talk, didn't make any sense to me. It would be understandable if he was trash talking us for losing badly, but when we're actually winning, it makes no sense.

[zed zebes]

There's more people playing it, but I am not sure the increase in players will last more than a week.

Courtyard can be fun, at least to me. There should be more wide open areas like the middle of Foefire for a DM map though. There could be a godo 5v5 or 6v6 or even 8v8 'thing going, but lack of official support will never get it anywhere.

The spvp itself is the same lame Conquest muck and matchmaking still has issues.

[barackopala]

Was testing courtyard last week with my guildies on training 1v1's, the cirlce arena in the middle is good but doesnt have a enough open space for various 1v1 skirmishes. I dont know how I feel about the arena itself.

[Meledelion]

The rewards are also quite lackluster, I was hoping for an alternative way of getting obsidian shards but getting 500obsidian shards at this rate is simply retarded.

[Karizee]

The rewards are also quite lackluster, I was hoping for an alternative way of getting obsidian shards but getting 500obsidian shards at this rate is simply retarded.

...

There's so many ways to get them now, how many ways do we need? I'm positively swimming in the darn things, have started making clovers with them for the failed attempt T6 mat rewards.