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Why PvP in Gw2 will never reach the level of other games


Zodi.8932

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After a 2 year break playing ESO I just returned to Gw2. I’m mostly a PvPer and before my break I spent every season in Plat 2/3. I mained Rev but took over on DH after Rev got nerfed to oblivion. Now I’m back I jumped back on to DH, realised the meta is still pretty similar to before and after 10 games I felt like my skill level was only slightly worse than before I left.

 

I got placed in Gold 3 which I totally expected. However across the course of the season I didn’t move up to plat as I expected, after 100 games I have finished in Gold 1. This weekend my games I feel like I’m playing against people far below my skill level, most games I have won more 1 vs 2 fights than ever before and I’m finishing the games with all top stats whilst the rest of my team seem to be completely new PvP. It’s left me feeling frustrated and made me realise that Gw2 PvP is just not on the same level as ESO or other mmos.

 

The problem here? I see Gw2 PvP as having 2 huge problems which keep it from being as good as other mmos for the foreseeable future. First the game mode of capturing points has literally been the only game mode in PvP for years, only deathmatch existed alongside it and that was short lived. This game mode does not really allow much individual skill to effect the outcome. It relies so heavily on a team playing well as a team together and rotating effectively. The second problem is the matchmaking, it is horrendous so much of the time. Streaks are absolutely a thing and people who have been winning will go on a 5-10 game losing streak where bots or bad players are constantly placed in your team and the games are in unwinnable.

 

Don’t get me wrong the best players are still at the top and the worst players are still at the bottom however Gold division still finds itself full of players who should be bronze and at the same time players who should be high platinum. With the poor match making a Plat player can find themselves in a team of 4 bronzes playing against a team of 5 Plat/Golds. This clearly shows a problem.

 

I love Gw2 and I want to see it succeed but I’m a huge PvPer and Gw2 PvP frustrated and saddened me more than any other mmo, that’s why I make this post and want to see if anyone agrees with me.

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If you are constantly in teams with players below your skill level and face teams that are more balanced, then 9 out of 10 players in your matches are getting what they deserve (5 get a deserved win, 4 get a deserved lose ... and then there is you).

 

So the matchmaker is working 90% correctly. Pretty good result.

 

/logic

 

But I agree with you. The mechanic in GW1, where you were just thrown together with a bunch of randoms and could decide after a win whether you want to continue with this team or not, worked way better and was a lot less frustrating. I never understood why ANet didn't implement something like that in GW2.

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> @"Ronald McDonald.8165" said:

> You are obviously not as good and impactful as you believe you are. If you deserve to climb out of Gold you will. Gold is pretty get easy to get through if you are decent at the game.

 

Spoken like someone who isn’t very experienced in PvP. I’m carrying teams as hard as I can and if I can keep winning fights 1vs2 then i personally don’t deserve to lose that game or have it affect my record. I remind you I was Plat 1/2 in every season before I left and trying to push into the top 100 so ending up stuck here in Gold 1 is definitely not where I belong.

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Conquest works because having to play with an objective puts to use more aspects of the game than any sort of TDM. Having a capture the flag would be terrible and I don't want to imagine how awful everything else would be.

 

Conquest is just the best design for GW2, Stronghold can work but people prefer Conquest.

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> @"Zodi.8932" said:

> > @"Ronald McDonald.8165" said:

> > You are obviously not as good and impactful as you believe you are. If you deserve to climb out of Gold you will. Gold is pretty get easy to get through if you are decent at the game.

>

> Spoken like someone who isn’t very experienced in PvP. I’m carrying teams as hard as I can and if I can keep winning fights 1vs2 then i personally don’t deserve to lose that game or have it affect my record. I remind you I was Plat 1/2 in every season before I left and trying to push into the top 100 so ending up stuck here in Gold 1 is definitely not where I belong.

 

As someone who picked the game back up in April after not playing since launch and solely playing and solo queueing as Mirage and Chronomancer (the consensus worst classes in the game) and was able to comfortably carry myself into Plat rather comfortably, I am 100% in my right in telling you that you are doing something wrong.

 

My first season I was stuck in Gold as Mirage, confused like you are as to why I am not climbing. In almost every match I would have top damage and top kills. It was the season after that I learned where I was on the map and when I was there was more MUCH more important to winning a match than fragging out. That is when I climbed to Plat and stayed there pretty easily. This was also with a build that wasn't even considered meta for Mirage.

 

The next season after that I played only as Condi Chrono, which is considered much worse than Condi Mirage (so much worse that I never once ran into another Condi Chrono that entire season). I was again able to solo queue my way to Plat and stay there very comfortably unless I experimented with new builds and would drop to Gold 3 where I would end up carrying myself back to Plat. And I know about getting bad teammates and how hard that can be. I started that Season in the top Silver 2 as I had horrible teammates where I placed in Gold 1 and then lost my first 5 games or so where the rating varies much larger. I then won around 90% of my games to Platinum. If you are a Plat player, you should feel like a raid boss until Gold 3 where players start to become somewhat decent.

 

So yes, I understand that you can have bad players on your team. But the enemy team is just as likely to have them too. So if you are telling me that after 100 games you are in Gold 1, you are well past just having a few chunks of bad games due to bad players. You are telling me that there is something you are doing fundamentally wrong that is keeping you there.

 

 

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The main problem of GW2's PvP is the lack of support. If you take a look at any of the top 25 most followed games in twitch, most of them are competitive and get patch support at least once a month, oftenly even every two weeks, and they shuffle the meta very often. GW2 has a balance patch at most 4 times a year, but oftenly skills and traits which are considered too weak or too strong remain unchanged for over a year. With no developer support, the game stagnantes, and people end leaving it, and the decrease in population reach numbers that make the matchmaking system unable to work, which is what's happening lately...

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> @"KrHome.1920" said:

> If you are constantly in teams with players below your skill level and face teams that are more balanced, then 9 out of 10 players in your matches are getting what they deserve (5 get a deserved win, 4 get a deserved lose ... and then there is you).

>

> So the matchmaker is working 90% correctly. Pretty good result.

>

> /logic

>

> But I agree with you. The mechanic in GW1, where you were just thrown together with a bunch of randoms and could decide after a win whether you want to continue with this team or not, worked way better and was a lot less frustrating. I never understood why ANet didn't implement something like that in GW2.

 

Because then 5 top players will try to snipe in one match and perma accept continue.

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I quit summer of last year and came back for the most recent PvP league. I placed in Bronze 3 and now I'm plat 1 after ~60 games. It's not entirely possible to carry every game and sometimes you get bad luck streaks but I literally just spend my entire games sitting on mid and killing people and winning that way.

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> @"Filip.7463" said:

> Because then 5 top players will try to snipe in one match and perma accept continue.

You don't know how the game mode worked, do you?

 

First of all this wasn't some leaderboard game mode, so you did it only for fun and couldn't abuse it for some leaderboard manipulation like it is possible in duo queue for years now. This game mode would be a replacement for unranked and to me this would be far more enjoyable than playing ranked.

 

You were placed with 5 random players in a game against 5 other random players. After 10 wins you proved yourself to be too good for random encounters and were placed only against premade teams. Premade teams did face only other premade teams or random teams that won 10 games in a row.

 

Since GW2 matches are far longer, the number of wins should be lowered from 10 to 5 or even 3.

 

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Don't listen to the get gud crowed or the its working fine crowed as their full of it. We've all been there where the other teams horrible and u go the whole match without a death or 1 death tops while winning most 1v2's or at least stalling them for mins at a time while somehow ur teams dying to them at every fight and losing the map constantly even when their outnumbered the enemy team and u lose the match cuz no matter how many kills u get ur teams fed way more and no matter how many nodes u cap u can't keep up to a team that actually wins fight and rotates lol. Regardless of what people say there are definitely teams that can't be carried.

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Sometimes you can win games and some times your team will make you lose, you can for example hold far win all your 1v1, 1v2 and kite 1v3 but your team gets farm and lose both nodes, right bow is an rng you have to be lucky you get competent team mates to climb up the ranks because population is low and most of the times if ur gold 3 you will be march with silver 3.

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> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> Don't listen to the get gud crowed or the its working fine crowed as their full of it. We've all been there where the other teams horrible and u go the whole match without a death or 1 death tops while winning most 1v2's or at least stalling them for mins at a time while somehow ur teams dying to them at every fight and losing the map constantly even when their outnumbered the enemy team and u lose the match cuz no matter how many kills u get ur teams fed way more and no matter how many nodes u cap u can't keep up to a team that actually wins fight and rotates lol. Regardless of what people say there are definitely teams that can't be carried.

 

Sorry, but after 100 matches it isn't RNG that is keeping you where you are.

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@"Zodi.8932"

 

You know what, I'll save you the full explanation tonight which I could write a thesis on. In short, there is way too much cheating going on in ranked nowadays, both hack use and match manipulation, and now a lot of bots which people use for multi windowing and synch queueing, so the bots throw games for them for easy wins.

 

You're not the only one who was once a solid p2+ that is now stuck in g3. If you are still trying to play fairly, achieving even between 1500-1550 solo queue now, is the equivalent of reaching 1600 - 1620 two or three years ago.

 

Look, ranked as of this previous season 25 is truly botched and ruined. You can no longer take the ranking seriously for so so so many reasons. If you want real games, you need to play ATs where you can still form a 5 man team comprised of actual humans that you know are not bots, who are not throwing the match on you. ATs is the only way to get good fair competitive play anymore. That or play unranked, no one gives a shit to cheat in unranked.

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> @"Zodi.8932" said:

 

> The problem here? I see Gw2 PvP as having 2 huge problems which keep it from being as good as other mmos for the foreseeable future. First the game mode of capturing points has literally been the only game mode in PvP for years, only deathmatch existed alongside it and that was short lived. This game mode does not really allow much individual skill to effect the outcome. It relies so heavily on a team playing well as a team together and rotating effectively.

 

This is basically one of the main things I warned about when Anet decided to take the **"Just increase the cooldowns"** route ( https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/97262/why-increasing-cooldowns-does-not-reduce-spam-and-can-even-make-spam-worse#latest ).

 

Increasing cooldowns across the board just makes rotating and +1ing significantly more impactful than it needs to be, and thus leads to "zerg-meta". And the important takeaway here is that this is not just some random opinion, **it is a mathematically demonstrable fact.** When you rotate to +1 someone, the chances of the +1 being successful come down entirely to whether or not your targets defenses and other cooldowns are up or not. Say you take a game balanced around an average cooldown of a defensive ability between most classes being 20, and increase that average to 40. Doing this is going to increase the chances of cooldowns being denied when the +1er comes around by roughly 50%. If you do it again and increase the average CD to 60, again to 80, 100, etc, each time you are going to incrementally give a higher chance of two sidenoders being out of cooldowns when a roamer +1s the fight. It's not some weird or difficult to understand theorycrafting mumbo jumbo I am talking about here, it's literally basic math lmao.

 

This is why zerging down single targets feels so absurdly easy to do right now, despite the fact that they nerfed damage so hard in last years Feb 2020 balance patch. WvW is arguably in a better spot balance wise than sPvP now simply because they keep going with sweeping problems under the rug with dartboard cooldown increases, and all it does is further encourage outnumbering as a mainline strat. It's just not a sustainable balance method.

 

At some point, Anet is going to have to either accept that they need actual changes targeting actual design flaws, or watch the population of this game go down the drain when Riot games releases their next-gen PvP-MMO competitor.

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There are multiple videos and posts explaining everything wrong with ranked pvp. It's not exactly a secret anymore (except, I guess, to some people who think everyone else just needs to gid gud?).

 

@OP - I really do wish Anet supported their pvp modes more. It's really unfortunate but it's been years and there doesn't seem to be any indication they have the slightest interest in doing so. I still enjoy the modes and hop on occasionally, but I no longer hold to the hope that they'll ever do more with it beyond what they've been doing.

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> @"KrHome.1920" said:

> > @"Filip.7463" said:

> > Because then 5 top players will try to snipe in one match and perma accept continue.

> You don't know how the game mode worked, do you?

>

> First of all this wasn't some leaderboard game mode, so you did it only for fun and couldn't abuse it for some leaderboard manipulation like it is possible in duo queue for years now. This game mode would be a replacement for unranked and to me this would be far more enjoyable than playing ranked.

>

> You were placed with 5 random players in a game against 5 other random players. After 10 wins you proved yourself to be too good for random encounters and were placed only against premade teams. Premade teams did face only other premade teams or random teams that won 10 games in a row.

>

> Since GW2 matches are far longer, the number of wins should be lowered from 10 to 5 or even 3.

>

 

Then play unranked.

 

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> @"Ronald McDonald.8165" said:

> > @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> > Don't listen to the get gud crowed or the its working fine crowed as their full of it. We've all been there where the other teams horrible and u go the whole match without a death or 1 death tops while winning most 1v2's or at least stalling them for mins at a time while somehow ur teams dying to them at every fight and losing the map constantly even when their outnumbered the enemy team and u lose the match cuz no matter how many kills u get ur teams fed way more and no matter how many nodes u cap u can't keep up to a team that actually wins fight and rotates lol. Regardless of what people say there are definitely teams that can't be carried.

>

> Sorry, but after 100 matches it isn't RNG that is keeping you where you are.

 

I got to plat 2 and stayed there for multiple days on a make shift un meta splbr build like 7 times this season all solo q but have also been in silver 3 and obviously all levels of gold.

Sry but anyone who says the match making is working are 1- duo q'rs only, match manipulators, or trolls that just want to argues hidden behind their screen, which one r u?

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> @"Ronald McDonald.8165" said:

> > @"Zodi.8932" said:

> > > @"Ronald McDonald.8165" said:

> > > You are obviously not as good and impactful as you believe you are. If you deserve to climb out of Gold you will. Gold is pretty get easy to get through if you are decent at the game.

> >

> > Spoken like someone who isn’t very experienced in PvP. I’m carrying teams as hard as I can and if I can keep winning fights 1vs2 then i personally don’t deserve to lose that game or have it affect my record. I remind you I was Plat 1/2 in every season before I left and trying to push into the top 100 so ending up stuck here in Gold 1 is definitely not where I belong.

>

> As someone who picked the game back up in April after not playing since launch and solely playing and solo queueing as Mirage and Chronomancer (the consensus worst classes in the game) and was able to comfortably carry myself into Plat rather comfortably, I am 100% in my right in telling you that you are doing something wrong.

>

> My first season I was stuck in Gold as Mirage, confused like you are as to why I am not climbing. In almost every match I would have top damage and top kills. It was the season after that I learned where I was on the map and when I was there was more MUCH more important to winning a match than fragging out. That is when I climbed to Plat and stayed there pretty easily. This was also with a build that wasn't even considered meta for Mirage.

>

> The next season after that I played only as Condi Chrono, which is considered much worse than Condi Mirage (so much worse that I never once ran into another Condi Chrono that entire season). I was again able to solo queue my way to Plat and stay there very comfortably unless I experimented with new builds and would drop to Gold 3 where I would end up carrying myself back to Plat. And I know about getting bad teammates and how hard that can be. I started that Season in the top Silver 2 as I had horrible teammates where I placed in Gold 1 and then lost my first 5 games or so where the rating varies much larger. I then won around 90% of my games to Platinum. If you are a Plat player, you should feel like a raid boss until Gold 3 where players start to become somewhat decent.

>

> So yes, I understand that you can have bad players on your team. But the enemy team is just as likely to have them too. So if you are telling me that after 100 games you are in Gold 1, you are well past just having a few chunks of bad games due to bad players. You are telling me that there is something you are doing fundamentally wrong that is keeping you there.

>

>

 

Having bad players on your team doesn't happen occasionaly, having players close to your actual rating is the rare occurance and this has been an ongoing problem since they **nerfed the matchmaking system after season 3** and this is something I don't understand why it never get brought up during these conversations.

 

From season 2 to season 3 **a dev whose name I can't remember** implemented a matchmaking system where you were placed in a team of players of similar rank to you : it was a fair system ....but ofc those unable to drag themself out of bronze division started to complain, there was nobody to hold their hands and win the matches for them and that's when Anet decided to revert back to **average rating system** which translates to "You have a high rank..so you can carry 3-4 people to victory" and the enemy team rating will based on the highest rated player of the your team....YOURSELF:

 

Team A Team B

You- 1200 Y-500

X- 300 Y-500

X- 300 Y-500

X- 300 Y-500

X-300 Y-600

 

This means that even if you win vs2 or stall 3 people...your team will get farmed all over the map and you lose anyway, this is a system **that screws over people with the oldest rating** and the only ones benefeting from it are new players as they come by...only for them to replace the vets who left PvP out of frustration and who end up complain likewise

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

 

Look at the code, the minimum number of matches required for new players to join your team is a mere 500 where you already played thousand of games by that time, on average you will start losing games against opponents you could win 1vsX and hence the frustration starts

 

I feel for the OP and maybe you had the patience to endure but not everybody does..I didn't...I decided not to stress myself over a gamemode where I fight and win/hold 2-3 opponents and meanwhile my entire team get farmed by a single individual on the other side of the map

 

The PvP in this game started to disentegrate when they decided to make it so inclusive....forcing victories for individuals who didn't not learn yet to earn them on their own

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> @"Zodi.8932" said:

> It’s left me feeling frustrated and made me realise that Gw2 PvP is just not on the same level as ESO or other mmos.

 

ESO has terrible PvP, even by the low standards of MMOs, not least because for some bizarre reason they went with 3 teams in a match rather than 2 teams, which basically renders battlegrounds busted on a fundamental level. ESO also has the magnificent achievement of despite being 2 years younger than GW2 of having even less players still playing Cyrodil than this game has in WvW, which tells you how bad that is.

 

And I hate to break it to you, but PvP in MMOs is basically a failure anyway. I guess as a weird niche for psychotic accountants EVE Online does its thing quite well, but the small team instanced PvP that laughably gets described as skilled or competitive, is an utter joke across the board compared to team based shooters, RTS, MOBAs, etc, which is why hardly anyone plays PvP in MMOs.

 

> This game mode does not really allow much individual skill to effect the outcome. It relies so heavily on a team playing well as a team together and rotating effectively.

 

Which is the reason their implementation of conquest is one of the few actual skilled PvP game modes in MMOs, because if you remove rotations, map awareness, the extra teamwork, etc then you are basically left with the combat and teamwork related to that and nothing else, which is not particularly skilled.

 

I realise the typical MMORPG player thinks the combat = skill, but the reality is the combat in MMORPGs (even "action" ones) is not hugely skilled, for example it does not require high levels of mechanical ability like an RTS, fighting game, decent shooter, etc. Then add balance is generally terrible because they are "balancing" for instanced PvP, mass scale PvP, dungeons, raids, etc, so cheese carries very, very hard (ESO is next level bad in this regard). And then perhaps most importantly of all, because the PvP playerbase is so small in these games you have players in the same match who would never face each other in a MOBA, shooter, RTS, etc, which clueless MMORPG players confuse with "skill".

 

If anything GW2 is one of the only MMOs that at least at some point had PvP with some level of meaningful skill / competition about it, ESO (or most MMOs) never has.

 

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GW2 is perfect, bots dont exist, cheaters dont exist, matchmaking issues dont exist. Conquest is just brilliant game mode, after 8 years its still awesome, no need for any further updates. And balance...what can I say, I wish real life was as balanced as gw2 is.

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