The State of PvP

[Meledelion]

As most of you are aware I like being competitive, be it through min-maxing in dungeons or PvP I just like weighing my skill.
Due to dungeons not having gotten much love from A-net most of my friendslist has become surprisingly desolate so I no longer can do dungeons so I've been focusing more and more on PvP.

Due to there being some interest in PvP the last couple of weeks and a new article on tenton-hammer, I decided to make a new post to voice my opinion on issues and fixes for the game we all like. A lot of this will be the same as what I've said before but I'll try to flesh it out even more.

The Problems:

1. Balance
2. Leaderboards
3. Teams
4. Tournaments
5. Game-modes
6. Rerolling

Balance:

There is no such thing as PVP in an asymmetrical system being balanced. Nor is balance relevant to any game in active live development.

The question is inherently faulty to the design and operation of Guild Wars 2 and all video games in active live development that feature a mode of play based on asymmetrical player vs. player game types.

This quote struck a cord with me for various reasons. My response is relevant but not a required read hence the spoiler tag.

First off is saying there's no balance in any asymmetrical system, the thing is that games should look asymmetric while being symmetrical. An example is Rock-Paper-Scissors, while the game isn't balanced on it's own if you look at parts of it, it is balanced due to there always being a counter. Balance in asymmetrical games comes from having an answer for a certain problem. You just want a mesh where everything beats something but also gets beat by something else.
Second even symmetrical games aren't balanced 4 in a row has been solved(=one player is bound to win in a game where both players play perfectly) as has checkers and many others, even Chess favors white thanks to having the initiative.
Third all games are still being "developed", there's notions in chess to step away from the fixed starting positions for example and since there is an advantage to white there are setups of play orders (white, white, black, black, white, black,...) and then there's time control, something people are still working on very hard in the current chess environment. The point is that all games are under development in a certain way, abolishing balance due to this is in my mind thinking backwards.
Fourth it's because the game can be adjusted that balance should be important. Checkers is not popular for "pros" because it's not balanced and it didn't get balanced because people didn't want to achieve balance. Once you say the game is finished it's impossible to change it.

Balance is important because you want to measure the skill of the players facing off. When two teams play against each other you want the best team to win, that's what balance is about, you can not have skill without balance. So let's get into the nitty gritty of GW2 imbalance.

Passive play: A big part of 'skill' is knowing when to use skills, this means that if you bring a skill the objective should be to use it. Skills like Healing Signet, Signet of Restoration, Signet of Malice, Signet of Vampirism, Water Spirit,...
Are all examples of "boring" skills in that you don't need decision making when using them, you equip them and don't really think about them after that. While I understand that Signets are meant to be different and have a passive element to them you can make them fun, a good example is Signet of Resolve. While the passive is undoubtedly strong the important part is the active. Many signets are fine as long as the Active is stronger than the passive (or the CD isn't incredibly long), sadly this isn't the case for a few and the fix is simply numerical either through a CD decrease or a bigger buff to the active. An example of a boring skill is Signet of Renewal, it's obvious that the active is really strong, the problem here is the 60s CD making it so people (almost) never use it.

Companions are another example of passive (and thus boring) play. It doesn't take skill to drop your turrets, summon your minions or cast phantasms. You summon them and then don't really care about them anymore. The exception is the ranger pet but even there the amount of skill required is minimal. While "the community" asks for all builds to be viable you have to keep in mind the audience. Sports are only exciting when people can display skill, golf has special lay-outs on each course and not just straight greens for exactly this reason.

Runes are another big offender, Rune of the Nightmare is probably the most noticeable example in that killing or being killed can be decided purely by an effect which nobody has any control over and then there's also the offenders on both companion and rune level thanks to Rune of the Privateer/Ogre. On the Sigil Side Air and Fire, while the RNG is seen by many as the problem the real issue is that they don't require decision making. Other (more powerful) runes still make you decide on if you want the effect now or not I'm thinking of Sigil of Doom/Intelligence/Energy/Hydromancy/... Granted people circumvent the decision making by putting the same sigil on both weapon sets but they lose on flexibility in doing so.

The fix for most of these issues is rather simple: reduce the effectiveness of the passive and buff the active part (or reduce the CD on the active); sadly this doesn't work for Runes/Sigils so they simply have to be removed. Another possible fix is to weaken the passive even more but let it continue when the skill is activated.

Leader-boards:
The leader-boards are meaningless. They measure games played while greatly ignoring results, of course this effect is intensified by the merging of Team and Solo Que. If you look at the scoreboard you notice that the top player has >800 games played, nr 2 has >600, nr 3 >600, nr 4 >580, ... There's an obvious pattern here however if you look at win % there's no relation to be found 52.53%, 67.91%, 59.97%; 76.78%.
This is a huge problem because Leaderboards should show who is the best and not who plays most. In tennis the player at the top of the WTA-rankings isn't the one who played most, it's the person who wins and that's the way it should be.

Having a meaningful leader-board is important because you need to be able to match people up correctly. If I organize a tournament I can make the brackets 100% random or I can make sure that "the best" don't get all the easy teams in a row IF there's a way I can see who's best.

The fix here is two-fold and not easy to implement, first off you need to split TQ and SQ again, then you need to make teams register so that the LB show teams instead of people, that's the easy part. The hard part comes from making the LB meaningful on it's own. The underlying scoring system doesn't work due to it rewarding points quite liberally your score can be -1,0, +1 when the teams are balanced. The funny thing is when your team scores >400 points (but still loses) you get 0 points. If the system works and teams are balanced on team will always get +1 and the other 0, this seems balanced but there's a flaw here in that just playing games will always reward you even if you lose a lot, if you play an infinite amount of games with a 50/50 winrate your score should be 0, with this system this will never be the case.
You need to make it more rewarding to win and more punishing to lose, the two ways of doing this are: give -1, +1 with no room for "ties" or make it -X, 0, +1 in a balanced situation (where X = >1), I prefer the first system since determining X can be an issue on it's own.

Teams:
You should never, ever mix random people with teams. This seems so obvious to me that I can't really express just how stupid this is so I can't elaborate further, good thing there's more on my mind in regards to teams.

Team-play is important, it should be obvious that if one team communicates/plays better with eachother than their adversaries that they win. This isn't the case due to how points are generated. In GW2 the main scoring system is due to holding areas. Each area gives 0.5 point/second (you get points each 2s) which is fine and an arbitrary number, the only thing this determines is game length. The problem comes with how you get control of an area. Capping an area goes slower than decapping an area. The reasoning behind this is to increase the reward for being mobile, sadly due to this the opposite happened and being immobile(or my favorite word passive) is rewarded. Let's say two even teams are duking it out, they are so even that both have their "home" area (close to their base, far from the opponent's base) and are in stalemate over the middle area. The players who grabbed the points aren't incentivised to leave their area since if an opponent decaps it the opponent is taking the lead very easily.

Another issue is that teams aren't made with a team build in mind. In PvE a team is built around ensuring that you have might, vulnerability, fury,... and working together. So you may bring (in theory) a condition ranger with fire fields and a hammer ele with constant blasts to keep up might and vulnerability and then you add other classes accordingly. In PvP this isn't the case and instead of looking for inter-profession synergy people look for substitutes within a preset pattern of build roles (roamer/bunker/burster/1v1/...) this makes teams incredibly generic and quite stale. It doesn't matter (much) if you bring a bunker guardian or a bunker warrior, the rest of your team won't really change play styles.

Tournaments:
The biggest issue is that there simply aren't any tournaments and when there are tournaments the brackets are so lopsided that everybody knows who's going to be playing who in the end. It's so sad that the latest tournaments basically are on-invite. This can not change unless people get to make their own tournaments.
Sadly the biggest issue is that nobody is interested in watching a game that isn't balanced so this is more of symptom than a core issue.

Game-modes:
Bringing in various game modes isn't important if the one game-mode you choose is maintained well. GW, WoW, LoL, HS, SC and many other games only have one game-mode but due to the games being (relatively) balanced people still play that one mode and enjoy it.
The problem with the game mode in GW2 is that it's unbalanced due to the design of GW2 and then the additional inter-profession imbalance makes it a mess. There isn't a single game-mode you can implement in the current state of the game which would make people happy. TDM is hated by all PvPers even though it's new, if you'd implement CTF in this environment people wouldn't be happy either because guardians/engineers can chain blocks and run virtually immune for 80% of the distance.

Conquest is IMO by far the worst option for MMO games though since they aren't fast paced enough to keep up the excitement, unlike FPS/TS games. I personally prefer KOTH/TDM due to the dwindle down nature behind those game-modes. You pressure teams until they snap and then you just rip them to shreds. To achieve this effect you need to make teams matter, you should need someone who gives might, heals, bursts and what not. To achieve this you need to decrease certain effects and make lower everyone's stats, fights tend to just end abruptly due to squishies being picked off insanely fast, a fix for this is make squishies less vulnerable (and in return less powerful) and make area healing more effective.
Not having a trinity greatly impacts the game since it makes people ignore the team aspect.

Rerolling:
Another problem is not being able to reroll (change character after you Q'd), while I agree teams shouldn't have the possibility to reroll endlessly, there's still something to be said about having multi-class skill. Predicting what the enemy team is going to use is a part of the game, if you're not good at it you should build your team so that it's good vs everything.

For SQ rerolling is needed a lot. It's silly that when I get a team with 2others of the same class (or less depending on the class in question) I'm punished for sacrificing my enjoyment (I Q as a certain prof for good reason).

This is easy to set straight, make MMR account bound again and then enable rerolling.

[Lazuli]

I don't even care about balance, as long as fun is to be had. I can only handle so much of conquest, even when I play with excellent players and win until it just becomes the same as farming events in queensdale. At high MMR you face the same. fucking. teams. 24/7, and class-based MMR is a terrible idea imo. So I am forced to go against a bunch of scrubs and get shit team mates because I decided to play my mes instead of thief? Good god man...

WoW has always had atrocious balance, but the pvp was also always fun to me especially 3v3 arenas. And it's no surprise that AV & isle of conquest was my favorite BG (lord type deal).

I just don't see conquest as competitive, now GvG I could get behind. That's all I'm waiting for as far as pvp goes. In other words I gave up on pvp a long time ago. Sitting on r80 with no incentives, piss poor rewards and who gives a fuck about leaderboard? Play more than everyone else, get highest ranking it's just a joke and so is matchmaking.

For pve at least fractal 50 is less mind numbing than spamming CoF or AC, but ye that and WvW are completely forgotten. I can't even play the game anymore by myself, teamspeak and friends required at this point. They should put that on the box...

GW2 pvp tournaments are hilarious btw, it's like the same 3 teams facing each other every time. Easy money rofl

All your points are reiterated a thousand times on the official forums but they don't give a shit, even that place has become desolate, at some point you gotta give in.

[Deleted]

Your points;

Passive play ☑
Zerker specs ☑
Team play ☑
Tournies ☑
Balance ☑ [It is absolutely crucial for any pvp game, it was very shocking to see someone actually try to say otherwise]
Leaderboards ☑

New game modes though, idk man. As much as I loved GVG I don't even want to imagine the abuse thieves could cause in a game mode where stealth isn't a hindrance. The balance bat needs to swing before anything like that gets introduced.

at some point you gotta give in.

A sad but true point

[Deleted]

→ Balance

It's not only PvP thing. Balance is screwed in the whole game. Since launch there are best builds for each prof you use in almost every situation. And ArenaNet isn't really active in this aspect. The only memorable balance changes are the nerfs of the best builds that in most cases still remain the best because all the rest suck. Having permanent weapon skills and only a few usable utility skills & traits (many traits are oddly placed by the way..) is what hurts the most. It's not only boring but well, poorly handled and unbalanced. More skills & traits would result in more builds and strategies being viable. Even currently sucking skills could find a home in a new type of builds.

I don't understand the part about Rune of the Ogre. Do you complain about Rock Dogs being random?

I agree that passives are in most cases better (and so is AoE vs Single Target in WvW & PvE for example) than actives and that should be balanced so both and their mix are equal in power but provide different gameplay.


→ Teams

I enjoy randomness. A lot of people do. RA was and still is the most popular mode in GW1.

The easy fix to please both is to add... Team Arena. You could choose if you want to be mixed with random people against other random people or to group with friends / guildies against other pre-made groups.


→ Game Modes

I disagree with a statement that GW, WoW and LoL have only one game mode. I haven't played Starcraft so can't tell but why is Hearthstone here? Unless you mean Heroes of the Storm. Either way, CCGs =/= MMORPGs =/= MOBAs and shouldn't really be compared.

The problem is... GW1 had many PvP options to choose from while GW2 has only WvW which is all about that zerg, SPvP which is just boring (mostly because of all the maps being Cap&Hold) and Obsidian Sanctum which is always empty. There's not even a duel option which would come in handy during some RP sessions.


→ Rerolling

I absolutely hate such mechanics. It's the thing I'm the most worried of in recently announced Overwatch. It's abusive and causes confusion. And it's not entertaining at all to being forced to switch playstyle during a match because someone else got bored and changed the build to a copy of mine.

In a well balanced game, such mechanic is pointless.

With Team Arenas, it's pointless.

However I'd happily accept a true "weapon swap" redesign. Why can't we have something like upgraded Diablo 2 system? Two separate slots for a full equipment but with an addition of separate 2nd slot for skills and traits. This way you could switch not only your weapon but also utility skills, traits and armor(!) on a reasonable cooldown in combat and with no cooldown out of combat.
Example:
Mesmer's Main Slot: Sword/Sword, Zerker Armor, Mantra of Recovery, Mantra of Pain, Mantra of Distraction, Mantra of Concentration, Polymorph Moa, 6/6/0/0/0 Traits
Mesmer's Swap Slot: Staff, Dire Armor, Signet of the Ether, Signet of Domination, Signet of Inspiration, Signet of Midnight, Time Warp, 6/0/6/0/0 Traits

Of course with finally added templates to save them all.

[Meledelion]

New game modes though, idk man. As much as I loved GVG I don't even want to imagine the abuse thieves could cause in a game mode where stealth isn't a hindrance. The balance bat needs to swing before anything like that gets introduced.

I don't think stealth really is an issue. If it proves to be one in another game mode, a simple fix would be to change it much like the warriro F1 skills were changed: "On attack lose stealth (adrenaline in case of warrior)" instead of "on

1. I don't understand the part about Rune of the Ogre. Do you complain about Rock Dogs being random?

I agree that passives are in most cases better (and so is AoE vs Single Target in WvW & PvE for example) than actives and that should be balanced so both and their mix are equal in power but provide different gameplay.

2. I enjoy randomness. A lot of people do. RA was and still is the most popular mode in GW1.

3. I disagree with a statement that GW, WoW and LoL have only one game mode. I haven't played Starcraft so can't tell but why is Hearthstone here? Unless you mean Heroes of the Storm. Either way, CCGs =/= MMORPGs =/= MOBAs and shouldn't really be compared.

The problem is... GW1 had many PvP options to choose from while GW2 has only WvW which is all about that zerg, SPvP which is just boring (mostly because of all the maps being Cap&Hold) and Obsidian Sanctum which is always empty. There's not even a duel option which would come in handy during some RP sessions.

4. I absolutely hate such mechanics. It's the thing I'm the most worried of in recently announced Overwatch. It's abusive and causes confusion. And it's not entertaining at all to being forced to switch playstyle during a match because someone else got bored and changed the build to a copy of mine.

In a well balanced game, such mechanic is pointless.

With Team Arenas, it's pointless.

However I'd happily accept a true "weapon swap" redesign. Why can't we have something like upgraded Diablo 2 system? Two separate slots for a full equipment but with an addition of separate 2nd slot for skills and traits. This way you could switch not only your weapon but also utility skills, traits and armor(!) on a reasonable cooldown in combat and with no cooldown out of combat.
Example:
Mesmer's Main Slot: Sword/Sword, Zerker Armor, Mantra of Recovery, Mantra of Pain, Mantra of Distraction, Mantra of Concentration, Polymorph Moa, 6/6/0/0/0 Traits
Mesmer's Swap Slot: Staff, Dire Armor, Signet of the Ether, Signet of Domination, Signet of Inspiration, Signet of Midnight, Time Warp, 6/0/6/0/0 Traits

Of course with finally added templates to save them all.

1. It's two fold: 1) I don't like that the ogre pops randomly meaning that if you 1v1 someone and he doesn't get it it's really simple to kill him but when he does it becomes a lot harder. 2) I don't like that the rune doesn't do anything skill wise. The same person can just hide in stealth/los/... and be a lot stronger (and thus win a fight) by not improving his play, the pet (which you don't have any control over) does the work.

2. RA is fine but nobody looked to ever make RA competitive, it was something where people tested builds (sometimes) and killed time/had fun.

3. The only competitive game-mode (where people had lan-tournaments and cash prizes) were GvG, Arena, Basic RTS, Constructed, ... I'm comparing the competitive nature of games and that all "E-sports" only focus on one game-mode regardless of if the game is an MMO, RTS, TCG or Moba.

No, GW only had GvG that ever came close to being an E-sport, all others are forms of PvP but weren't seen as truly competitive (No leaderboards/MMR in HA, TA,...)

4. To me the way it was before was fine. You have a 1m timer before the game starts, in that 1min you can change your build all you want or even change toons. You can still change your builds but it's no longer possible to change toons which is annoying.
If you Q as necro and see a team full of warriors it doesn't matter what build you pick (there only really is one anyway) but you'll get trained down every time and die. It's no fun at all and a game shouldn't be decided by something like that.

I don't like your suggestion because you can easily abuse it which doesn't take skill. There's something to be said about being smart enough to not pick fights you can't win. A ranger who can change between condi bunker and gc power is super strong because literally nothing can beat both. It also takes away from the skill in communication/movement. If everyone can be a bunker + roamer you can just endlessly run to points and not be worried because anyone who rezes can go bunker mode and hold close.

[Deleted]

I don't like that the ogre pops randomly meaning that if you 1v1 someone and he doesn't get it it's really simple to kill him but when he does it becomes a lot harder. 2) I don't like that the rune doesn't do anything skill wise. The same person can just hide in stealth/los/... and be a lot stronger (and thus win a fight) by not improving his play, the pet (which you don't have any control over) does the work.

Oh, I see now. I've always thought that the main reason behind choosing this rune is 4% boost to damage tho xD

2. RA is fine but nobody looked to ever make RA competitive, it was something where people tested builds (sometimes) and killed time/had fun.

I agree that the biggest factor behind RA's popularity was fun. But not only. It was a great way to farm Balthazar's points (+ Zaishen Coins and Strongboxes later). You could make more money from it than from PvE farm. Or you could convert it to Zaishen Keys and grind Friend of the Zaishen title and emotes. RA, after TA was removed, was the only way to gain Gladiator title, also.

]3. The only competitive game-mode (where people had lan-tournaments and cash prizes) were GvG, Arena, Basic RTS, Constructed, ... I'm comparing the competitive nature of games and that all "E-sports" only focus on one game-mode regardless of if the game is an MMO, RTS, TCG or Moba.

Oh, I didn't figure out that you're talking about that only, my mistake.

However, I, as a non-hardcore PvPer, would prefer ArenaNet to focus on making GW2's PvP bigger (I mean varied), balanced and most importantly - FUN for all kind of players first. Then they can try to make E-sport a thing. Not the other way around like they planned to and failed. GW1's PvP was awesome (however removing Heroes' Battles and TA [TA to a lesser degree] was a mistake... that can always be fixed via returning them). It's surprising how the same studio could screw it up in GW2.

No, GW only had GvG that ever came close to being an E-sport, all others are forms of PvP but weren't seen as truly competitive (No leaderboards/MMR in HA, TA,...)

Well... maybe it's not a Leaderboard but Hero title was a very prestigious thing. It was kind of an event to see someone using Phoenix' emote in Kamadan, not to mention the Dragon's one.

AB/JQ/FA (if you label it as a PvP) was a great way to farm Luxon / Kurzick points (before MQSC and other speedclears [and even after] JQ was the most effective way to do so) that could make your guild control an outpost. Controlling House zu Heltzer or Cavalon meant something back in the days.

I want to mention Rollerbeetle Racing here too. It's not a typical PvP but it had own leaderboard and a reward.

Basically all PvP modes had titles (even the event ones) and all helped with grinding Zaishen rank.

Of course I understand your point but it's not entirely correct. Both GvG and HA were equal in prestige and both could work as E-sports. Currently, when you can use 7 heroes in HA, you are correct tho. But hardly anybody does PvP outside of RA and JQ nowadays.

[Meledelion]

Oh, I see now. I've always thought that the main reason behind choosing this rune is 4% boost to damage tho xD

If that were true they'd use scholar since it's simply better

I agree that the biggest factor behind RA's popularity was fun. But not only. It was a great way to farm Balthazar's points (+ Zaishen Coins and Strongboxes later). You could make more money from it than from PvE farm. Or you could convert it to Zaishen Keys and grind Friend of the Zaishen title and emotes. RA, after TA was removed, was the only way to gain Gladiator title, also.

Money etc have nothing to do with PvP, it's the same reason why the reward tracks don't matter nor does the gold for wins in GW2

However, I, as a non-hardcore PvPer, would prefer ArenaNet to focus on making GW2's PvP bigger (I mean varied), balanced and most importantly - FUN for all kind of players first. Then they can try to make E-sport a thing. Not the other way around like they planned to and failed. GW1's PvP was awesome (however removing Heroes' Battles and TA [TA to a lesser degree] was a mistake... that can always be fixed via returning them). It's surprising how the same studio could screw it up in GW2.

I agree that the core has to be good before you focus on being an E-sport, I simply think that before you can add new game-modes you have to make the existing one(s) work.

Well... maybe it's not a Leaderboard but Hero title was a very prestigious thing. It was kind of an event to see someone using Phoenix' emote in Kamadan, not to mention the Dragon's one.

Of course I understand your point but it's not entirely correct. Both GvG and HA were equal in prestige and both could work as E-sports. Currently, when you can use 7 heroes in HA, you are correct tho. But hardly anybody does PvP outside of RA and JQ nowadays.

I was one of the first people to reach r6 and after that I just stopped caring since it was just a measure for games played and nothing more. A fond memory of mine is using my bambi in Droknar's Forge and lots of people running to see wtf just happened .

The prestige came from people thinking the emote was cool, skill wise the only people with prestige were the ones who held halls a lot which usually were good GvG guilds as well.

That said HA wasn't really balanced, there were lots of tricks to farm points and then there also was a divide between the people who wanted to reach/win Halls and those who wanted rank points.