Is the PVP population shrinking, and if so, why?

[Ardenwolfe.8590]

Since I capped my achievements, I don't bother anymore, but I definitely agree with most of the opinions already given.

[Nappa.1904]

It's shrinking because we've had 1 ranked game mode for 6 years. Among of myriad other issues such as lack of frequent balance patches and constant Matchmaking problems.

Just the first point alone shows that Anet couldn't care less about pvp.

[sephiroth.4217]

> @"OriOri.8724" said:

> > @"sephiroth.4217" said:

> > I blame lack of team queue...

> >

> > It's mathematical:

> > Solo queue / Duo queue system: Max players brought into Mists = 2

> > Team queue: Max players brought into the mists = 5

> >

> > __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

> > Situations: 1 player wants to PvP with his friends, can only invite one person to play with and that person must be similar or higher skill level to reduce the risk of losing.

> >

> > With Team Queue: 1 player wants to play PvP with his friends, he asks in guild chat if anyone wants to join. He gets 4 other people to queue with him, 2 people have never played PvP before but they really enjoyed playing it with their friends and continue to come back and ask guild chat to join in.... Cycle repeats itself.

> > 1 player brings in 4, 2 stay and do the same, then we have 10+ players from 1 guild populating the mists.

> >

> > ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________\

> >

> > If only Team que could work the same as our current Duo que, stop team games at 1600 so people can still chase their ego while the rest of us can play with our friends in a MMO.

>

> Lol

>

> Some people love to blame the removal of 5 man ranked play as the reason for PvP dying, yet ANet told us that it was the _vast minority_ of people that queued up in 5 man teams back when that was an option. You're free to not believe them if you want, but they have the data to back up their statements, and yall don't, so I know who I believe on the matter

 

lol

some people don't have the comprehensive skills to understand cause and effect.

 

I don't argue with math or history.

The math is there, and history has shown us it did effect the pvp population a lot. (which is a no brainer due to the math side of it)

 

# **I believe Anet too that people who team queued were in the minority but let me go into detail as to why it was still a bad choice, using math because math doesn't lie.**

Even if it was a small percentage (or minority) it would still be better than nothing because a percentage/minority is just that, a portion of a whole so a small percentage/minority of 10,000 players is still over 1000... So for the sake of the point, losing team queue meant losing 1000 players.

 

If you're into cause and effect like I am, you would know that's the start of the downfall.... Population dropped greatly then the match making stops working properly which causes more people to leave and so the butterfly effect keeps on going.

 

__

 

 

**Then there's also personal experience**, watching PvP guilds dismember because they couldn't play together anymore, moved onto other games where they could. I still play with some of them, mostly in casual games like Left 4 Dead though.

Only reason I got into PvP was because my guild used to post in guild chat "who wants to make a team"... Meaning the only reason I ever entered the mists to begin with, was because of team queue.

Is there any such thing as PvP focused guilds anymore? Neeeerp.

 

 

I see no reason not to implement 5 man queues up until 1600 rating, it's an overall healthy decision for the game and the only reason to be against that is to protect your solo queue ~~ego~~ rating or because you don't have anyone to queue with and feel it should be that way for everyone else too.

 

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Reason I blame team queue: I'm back tracking to the source. Fixing team queue would repopulate the mists over a few months, the match making would fix itself, players would be less toxic and so on, one little change could fix several things in one hit. Sort of like killing 7 birds with 1 bullet.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

I don't expect you or many others to comprehend this, this isn't something that can be taught. You either get it, or you don't.

And before I get the response "so you think team queue would fix everything"..... No I don't, there are other issues but my response is directly aimed at

> @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

 

> * lack of team play in ranked

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

I would love to hear some of your thoughts on how to fix population issues, you have a knack of picking apart peoples responses without contributing yourself.

 

[Meteor.3720]

This so perfectly encapsulates what's wrong with the PVP scene, why it leads to a shrinking population, and why it puts people off the game as a whole.

 

Well done @"Crab Fear.1624"

[SunTzu.4513]

> I percieve that the PVP population is shrinking due to alot of well known, yet unaddressed issues. PVP is a core part of my GW2 experience, and PVP's current state demotivates me from playing the rest of the game.

 

This sums it up pretty well. For me it just feels like ANet don't give anything about pvp/wvw.

[MoonCrash.6713]

Spvp is bad because:

1)not enough updates (but this is mainly because they've given up, so it's a consequence of the already bad situation)

2)conquest gamemode is boring and there were complaints since release:

-Players play pvp to fight and kill others, running around capping point (especially if empty) isn't fun

-This gamemode causes a lot of unbalanced fights (1 vs 2, 1 vs 3, ... )

3)The combat system is bad, and this is probably the number 1 reason. It certainly feels fluid, fast paced and fun, but there are flaws that applies especially for pvp only:

-Too much damage and burst, fights are too short, and when it's too short there's no skill involved. Most people don't even know the classes, skills and abilities of their opponent, they jump in smashing 5 buttons and voilà he's downed. There's a low amount of strategy in fights and a lot of rng cause dodges (because most people just spam dodges). This happen even in higher ranks (less of course), but the point is that the best players in gw2 are not representative of what spvp in gw2 is or should be, if you want a healthy environment you need a lot of players, often bad players, and they're not having fun because the actual spvp is not satisfactory enough.

-No variety for gear, the only amulets you can get are dps ones, most defensive sigils and runes are disabled aswell. In this way you're keeping out of spvp most people that enjoy mainly to play tanks or healer builds. Clearly they've done this because bunker can get problematic, but they should have nerfed bunkers not amulets (killing a lot of fun builds/experiments for other classes). Also bunkers are a problem because there's no resource system, like mana, so you just can keep going forever, and this can't easily be fixed.

-No variety of builds. Burst or bunkers, you can't often afford to play something in the middle like a bruiser, because a burst build would kill you faster and you wouldn't be able to kill a bunker anyway.

-Builds that are hard to kill and have insane damage. What???

-Chaining dodges/invuln and blocks. When you have so many is it really a skill based combat? Dodges should be limited to 2 as it was initially by design, and maybe thief could get 3 with traits. Vigor has to go in pvp, block should consume endurance but last longer, invuln should only be on elites and/or have high cooldown.

-Too much conditions, buffs and spam of those. Most players can't keep track and the combat feels like a mess. It's not enjoyable to not have control or understand what's going on.

-As long there are more than 2 people in a fight it's a mess, a lot of fluffy effects and you'e downed before you realize, but i guess you all know about this already.

 

In other words it's too much of a mess, it can't and will never be fixed

[Chorazin.4107]

Having 5 man Q's is not going to fix the problem, it would probably exacerbate it. You have some bunch of top 20's-50's make a 5 man team and said group of friends playing for fun get 500 - 50'd. After about 3 rounds of this friendsies group logs off to go do something else as the only other 5 man group they can play against are all top ranked PvP players.

 

By the same token you can't expect a bunch of solo Q's to be matched against a 5man team for the exact same reasons. So your 5 man teams sits waiting for other 5 man teams to Q that may be on your skill level. That could literally be 30 mins, I guess the matchmaker could try to group them against a much higher ranked trio and duo?

 

The balance is terrible, it seems 0 testing is done from a balance perspective before release. I suspect the only testing that does get done is "does it cause the game to crash?", no? Ok pack it up for the next patch. Anets balance team need to play the game at a competitive level, not tick off items on their burn down charts and attend their 15 min daily scrums. Yay i hit my monthly KPI's!!!!111

[Kraitan.8476]

TLDR: same maps for 6 years, new titles/prestige rewards introduced mean nothing due to wintrading, conquest is cancer and promotes aidsy builds, sometimes months of shit balance before anything is done.

[Lordrosicky.5813]

> @"Elmo Benchwarmer.3025" said:

> I have steadily reduced my play time since the June 23rd 2015 specialisation patch. The bloated abilities and traits we have since then hurt the combat system a lot.

 

That patch was when the game died. The original trait system was designed by a bunch of people who are top level game designers. I don't know why the current anet staff decided to undo all the work these people did. They are like a bull in a china shop and just did stuff because it would be "cool". Look at traits like the guardian meditation trait. That used to be 3 separate traits. But now you can take it all in a single trait and just use the rest of the traits to take more stuff. The literal definition of power creep. This trait patch cannot and will not ever be undone. So the game is dead from a pvp perspective. Anyone hoping for a change is crazy as they cannot undo this trait patch.

 

Essentially the gameplay sucks and that is why pvp is in decline.

[Crab Fear.1624]

> @"sephiroth.4217" said:

 

> > @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

>

> > * lack of team play in ranked

> _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

>

> I would love to hear some of your thoughts on how to fix population issues, you have a knack of picking apart peoples responses without contributing yourself.

>

 

> @"Crab Fear.1624" said:

 

> Some of the reasons I have seen **others** say made them leave PVP are:

 

 

My perception of the "shrinking population" issue is being processed by my skritt sized brain. So I decided an issue of this caliber probably needs to be attacked by the whole community rather than just my view, and so I asked about others feelings. You have made compelling arguments from your standpoint. Also I enjoy how you format your post as you respond to people; it makes it easier to read for me.

 

I will defend my main class without fail even if I am utterly wrong, because sometimes I am not.

 

Edit: How would I address PVP population? (lets just assume any of these are possible):

* actively engage the community even more, constantly acknowledging feedback in some way

* fix issues with a large consensus of importance

* offer more frequent tournaments, or introduce a tournament league with a leader board

* as I fix issues, create content to show off the game mode and stream as well

 

[Aza.2105]

> @"Lordrosicky.5813" said:

> That patch was when the game died. The original trait system was designed by a bunch of people who are top level game designers. I don't know why the current anet staff decided to undo all the work these people did. They are like a bull in a china shop and just did stuff because it would be "cool". Look at traits like the guardian meditation trait. That used to be 3 separate traits. But now you can take it all in a single trait and just use the rest of the traits to take more stuff. The literal definition of power creep. This trait patch cannot and will not ever be undone. So the game is dead from a pvp perspective. Anyone hoping for a change is crazy as they cannot undo this trait patch.

 

 

Exactly right.

[jalmari.3906]

Players are not leaving spvp they just probably were not into it at first place. They just go play for legendary armor coz it's pretty much only half decent way to get one unless you are into pve raids.

 

Also power creep. Not very interesting to play when you have only few really viable builds. I guess classes were balanced around some really small "esports" scene, but guess what most people are not playing like that. There has always been better or worse classes but less like this. i'm putting up druid as an example. Everyone should get it.

 

Game mechanics used to be interesting before specializations but nowadays you need to dodge every second hit since it's likely to be one shot kill which leads into dodge spamming and just feels a lot of random button smash. To be honest. Even though it probably isn't but still so many big hits or stuns incoming you just need to rotate skills and evade dmg.

 

I also find it odd they removed solo que and team que both were fine, kind of? I think it's annoying to get 2 very bad players together in team or if enemy has 2 very good ones it's also annoying.

 

Anyways I do think people only stop playing pvp coz they've already seen all new stuff or got their legendaries and moved to some other game. or both/all of those.

 

 

 

 

 

[BMW.2951]

Guys it's easy just give in and join the Chrono Mesmer meta and you will be plat in no time. Hahahahaah. All is fair since everyone else is doing it.

[Vagrant.7206]

> @"Aza.2105" said:

> You can't have a competitive game based around 100 - 0 the opponent within a couple seconds. I don't think I've seen any game that does that be successful .

 

It can work in games like CoD, where the mechanics are relatively simple (point and shoot). But in an MMO where you can have 20+ skills, 100-0 is entirely inappropriate.

[Allarius.5670]

There is a thread on Reddit that asks some different, but perhaps related, questions.

 

 

There are certainly some major trends that come up.

 

(1) Balance

> It looks like most players expect a healthy level of imbalance, and even accept large balance deviations as part of the design process. What they find disagreeable is the slow speed of balance iteration or lack of hotfixes.

 

> Many players also find disagreement with the trend in gameplay and are driven away from PvP due to increased pace and ability effectiveness (spam and power creep) that came with the expansions. These components diminished the fun aspect for these players.

 

(2) Barrier to Entry/Learning

> New players feel completely lost and the onus is on the player to learn the ins and outs of all aspects of PvP on their own.

 

> Build variety for the player and opponents are overwhelming to new entries.

 

> Conquest overwhelms new players with complexity of combat, nodes, map rotations, secondary objectives, etc.

 

> Players appear to struggle to adapt to shifts in META due to a culture of adherence rather than experimentation. There seems to be an unwillingness to embrace new ways of playing the game. Part of this looks like it may stem from the amount of investment that goes into a single game: queue time plus a long game time, even for a blow out loss. There is no queue supported mode that encourages experimental iteration and learning.

 

(3) Player Behavior

> First and foremost is everyday player interactions that are interpreted as salty and/or outright toxic. Even if a player agrees that blocking chat and chat bubbles is an option, it is not viewed as viable due to the team nature of the game. They feel forced to deal with it, be subjected to it, and instead decide not to play so they don't have to deal with it.

 

> Win trading and cheating is perceived to be an issue. Even if it may not impact many players, it looks like perception informs their reality. Players perceive this to be a large problem with no effective punishment and choose not to play.

 

(4) General Preferences/Perceptions

> Even if unranked and automated tournaments support team queueing, the perecption is that you cannot play with your friends. Playing with friends seems to be a key component of what helps to make the experience enjoyable for these players.

 

> Any gamemode that is not queue supported looks to be interpreted as not worthwhile. It creates a barrier to access that gameplay that players do not want to deal with.

 

> Conquest as the gamemose of choice. Many players appear to have some issue with conquest for any number of a variety of reasons: complexity/simplicity, pressure to perform, match length, low personal enjoyment, artificial limitation on beneficial player actions or forced limit on rewarding actions or playstyles, etc. There is the perception of low variety, and especially low overall enjoyment.

 

> Another case of perception is reality for some players, the PvP gamemode is seen as having little developer investment so as to actually make it enjoyable or worthwhile to these players. If it is not pereceived as having value for the developers, these players interpret it as having no overall value for them or the game as a whole.

 

I'm sure I've left something out, but these are some of the major trends I recall.

[bLind.6278]

Honestly not sure why people still give Anet feedback - it's not like they read it, and absolutely don't do anything to address issues.

[MoonCrash.6713]

Fixing pvp would mean changing core mechanics of the game and completely rework specializations, so that's not gonna happen.

[choovanski.5462]

> @"bLind.6278" said:

> Honestly not sure why people still give Anet feedback - it's not like they read it, and absolutely don't do anything to address issues.

 


[SkyShroud.2865]

A lot of new games while anet continue to focus on the same old living story without much innovation on other areas.

[Rufo.3716]

People are sick and tired of not having their skill mean anything anymore. You have players stuck in silver that should be in plat. You have players in plat that should be in silver. And because of this RNG fest as to if you have a good enough team or not, many of the top players and streamers quit. Why play something if your skill means nothing?

[Kraitan.8476]

You know what allowed many players to play thousands of games in GW1 without getting bored as fuck? It was A. a deathmatch, no circlewars and B. we had build templates so swapping between classes/builds was extremely easy and creating & sharing builds created a community that very much liked that part of the game. I know its 6 years late but I still want build templates even though the hype for pvp personally kinda died for me 3 seasons ago

[Nova.3817]

logged in just to answer why i left gw2 bc i couldn't play with friends in ranked killed all fun and a sense of a community in my eyes..... cheers

[Highlie.7641]

Player skill level is at an all time low. It makes for a very boring game. there is no professional diversity between tiers anymore. you used to see old meta builds in the lower tiers now its all meta specs just like the top tiers, the only diffrence is the top tier players know how to use there PVE spec.

 

I'm still having a few games now and then but i will probably go on another break soon. I've been asking myself "do you really want to put in 100's of games, just so you might get a decent opponent?"

[Malediktus.9250]

I am trying to reach 5k PvP wins, but I always stop earlier than planned because the balance is unbearable. Too much of everything.

[Aza.2105]

> @"Kraitan.8476" said:

> You know what allowed many players to play thousands of games in GW1 without getting bored as kitten? It was A. a deathmatch, no circlewars and B. we had build templates so swapping between classes/builds was extremely easy and creating & sharing builds created a community that very much liked that part of the game. I know its 6 years late but I still want build templates even though the hype for pvp personally kinda died for me 3 seasons ago

 

A build template would be sort of pointless in gw2, since non meta builds don't really do well vs the meta ones. Unlike in gw1 were you could make a intelligent build that could compete with the meta ones.