Grumbles about GvG matching system

Absolutely. Being owned inside 2 minutes by a hotshot team does nothing for the morale of a newbie team. They die so fast they have no chance to learn anything. All it does is put them off GvG. We have 30-40 people in our guild who play reasonably frequently, but since our GvG humiliation a couple of weeks ago, nobody is interested in trying again.

If you could play people nearer your own level it would benefit both sides. For those who keep saying "You won't learn unless you go up against better teams", this is true, but not the whole story. If you are a newbie team playing one who would rate as expert, you learn next to nothing.

Duly, our GvG experience has vastly improved the last couple times we tried it. I don't know if that's because the ladder is finally sorting itself out, or because we made a decision to try and GvG during peak hours when it was more likely to fight non-elite teams, but I encourage you to encourage your guild to try again - just don't wait longer than 2 minutes for a match, and try to go at peak times (weekend early evenings, for example).

As long as guilds don't give up, there should be people to play.

Duly,

Keep trying. With a bit of coordination, you can easily get your guild onto the ladder. Right now >500 is like 5 or 6 good wins. Will you stay there? Not without a lot of work. But, it does improve morale to see your guild's name on the ladder.

Yeah, in the article, the ArenaNet rep actually SAID that the gvg matching was retools to allow everybody to play everybody, or something like that. our guild completely humiliates those rated near us, BUT because the new gvg matching system doesn't have any preferences, we end up getting the first team on, and since high rated guilds play more often...

lol a while back (when the ladder was reset) we wnt to GvG. we met a guild witc was actually top 10 guild before the reset. they were nice and apologised before hand. then handed our asses to us on nice silver platters.

Sikkira? their complaint is the other way around. they DON'T want to be the whupping boys of uber guilds.

Just read through this entire post and it seems everyone is blaming either

A) The horrible ladder matching system or
B) The lack of guilds playing GvG at any given time.

I think another huge issue is

C) The giant disparity in skill level between even a rank 500 guild and a rank 2000 guild.

I think it would be wise for A.Net and possibly even the community to focus more on addressing point C. Why are new guilds getting beaten so easily and soundly. Are they really that bad? I think the main problem is a lack of experience. A huge portion of your success in GvG is based on tactics and strategy. Knowing what the other team is up to, knowing how to keep or deny morale, knowing the layout of maps etc.

Take for example the popular warrior isle series of maps. Most "noobish" teams don't even run up to take their own catapult piece and hide it. They just leave it there for the other team to arm and kill them with. Is that a difficult concept that requires incredible coordination or skill on the part of your players? Of course not. It just takes a single person with the presence of mind to say "Hey ... maybe we shouldn't let the other team use that?". The sad thing is a majority of teams don't have anyone that can even come up with a tactic that basic.

Add to this lack of tactical awareness the fact that most teams run utterly horrible builds (flare spamming, no flag runners, worst monk setups ever, no spike damage etc. etc. etc.) and it becomes pretty obvious why so many people are complaining about the ladder system.

When the two options are to either A) blame myself and team for being absolutely horrible or B) blame A.net for not allowing me to play other teams of equal suckiness most people take the easy route and blame A.net.

I'm not saying the ladder system can't be improved but I think some more resources for new guilds trying to get into GvG would do a lot more good. For those of you that want to just be casual gamers and not care about rank etc. that's great too. You can still get better though. It isn't written anywhere that being a casual gamer means you have to suck at it.

Wouldn't it be nice if you were a rank 100 guild and when you faced off against a rank 500 guild you would know that the level of competition would still be good? Ditto for a rank 10 guild playing a rank 100 guild. You might still be confident of winning but at least they wouldn't be handing the win to you on a silver platter.

The question of course is what is it going to take to improve the general level of GvG ability for your typical casual guild? To start, some decent builds to run. This shouldn't even be an issue as even now if you go over to TGH there a bunch of GvG builds posted that might not be the best but are better than 90% of the stuff being run now. Second, some transfer of knowledge in regards to tactics and strategy to be used on each of the GvG maps.

A.net just recently added a guest invite feature. Why not make use of it and ask some experienced and successful GvG players to guest in a couple rounds for you. You'd be suprised at how much you'd learn in just a couple rounds with having someone that actually knows what to do tactically. At the very least you'll know what to do even if you can't get it done yet.

Anyway, sort of a rant but I think the best solution is to just improve the overall level of competition so teams at least go into GvG prepared. Unfortunately, A.net doesn't provide any resources to help guilds prepare so it's up to the community to produce said resources and as far as I can tell it has failed miserably at it up to this point.

Well said, Sarus.

I've seen people talk about (er, complain about) paying people from top guilds to join them in gvg as guests. Personally, though my guild doesn't do this (we are fairly successful, in the rank 300s atm), I think it's a great idea for guilds just getting going. Sure, you fork out a plat (or more), but you get an ongoing return on your investment, much in the manner Sarus pointed out.

Perhaps a guild leader or officer posting that "we're looking to hire X number of rank Y-Z players to join our guild for gvg, please reply with cost and times available" or such. Could be a way for the community (websites, such as this one) to help the newer guilds learn the ropes, perhaps.

It's a good point, Sarus, and accurate to a point. What I would offer in way of furthering the point is that many small young guilds, filled with "young" players (and by that I mean hours in game, not years in real life), simply don't have the skills unlocked to create very flexible team builds. That, and they're often devoted to their PvE characters, and for some reason unwilling to create PvP builds to fit a specific need. Now that's not their fault, and it's not Anet's fault - it's just the nature of a young guild.

In the earlier days of my guild, when we were just beginning GvG, there was actually very little we could change about our team build: everyone had one or two classes somewhat unlocked, and felt comfortable playing one or maybe two roles - we just did the best we could with what we had.

Now that many of us have been around a lot longer, and have actively been working toward UAS, we have a great deal more flexibility in creating true 8-man builds. Our guild is still too small to allow GvG except on certain predesignated nights, but we are, I believe, getting better and working on learning more.

For those of us truly motivated to learn more, though, I wish there were an easier way to guest with other guilds. As "pvp officer" of my guild, I consider it my duty to learn what's out there and teach it back to my guild, but sometimes I feel the best way there is to do that would be to leave my guild and join another, which rather defeats the purpose. If only there were a school or training ground or something for those of us who are new to PvP in general and specifically in Guild Wars to learn the ropes....

I have to agree with you, but i think alot of it falls to the fact that the "learning period" for the game has largely came and went and it is falling to the shock of the new versus the old. Some of the "horror stories" ive heard from friends and strangers leads me to believe that many instances there is no real opportunity to learn given the circumstances when a bad mis-match occurs. This can partly fall to the arguements of old with the UAS and others, allowing people access to experiement without grinding. However, for the basic map learning and organizational skills, there is no play versus AI or solo option to work out the kinks durring the learning period. Its all trial by fire similar to a FPS game, but on a more tactical level. With equal learning abilities between players the "casual" are always at a disadvantage, because they simply havent put in the same time that the more devout have. As a consequence they are at the basic disadvantage that you outlined here, where they dont know many of the "common sense" things that someone more experienced would come to accept, but are forced to play against the more experienced at times. They may not always be common sense in those newer situations as the focus of attention may be on other things, while trying to adapt.

I dont think A-NET can really solve the above "issue", but i think they can continue to try to address the "why am i doing this" issue to try and draw in more people into the gvg crowd. The learning obstacle, combined with competing against the old, in addition to the player number requirement i think are the sum of the hurdles needed to be crossed by the player base unfortunatly. The guest invitations help open the door more for the player number requirement, but it just seems like that if guests are really needed in order to compete, the more logical solution would be to merge the guilds involved as the players already are comfortable enough with each other. GvG is rather rigid in structure and doesnt allow for the ad-hoc measures that can be found in tombs and team arenas with the "random groups". Granted not many of these groups can really stand up to a well seasoned team, due to coordination, but it still yields experience to each player to help close the gap between the experienced and the non-experienced.

While the guest idea has merit, it does seem more like a charity issue between the older and the newer players that happen to make lasting contact with each other. Why would the experienced player waste time with non-guild members improving their game, when they could be playing with their own guild furthering their own goals? Everyone does play in the manner which suits them best, but if people were close enough to really help out like that it would make more sense to make it a more lasting situation instead with a greater player pool to draw from, since this game only operates in instances.

Community to improve competition within a competitive game generally doesnt pan out past immediate relationships within the game and outside of it. I guess asking for more of a tutorial might help for the very basic things, but that still wouldnt help with builds, how to use them, and coordination factors inherent to a small scale team game like this. Just like the initial time investment to bridge the gap between the haves and have nots can seem daunting, when forced to compete against each other; the association of awareness and learning of the tactics that makes the things work becomes difficult as well.

Sure, obviously more experienced people have to be willing to help out but unless you're in Nu and GvG 24 hours a day most guilds have set times when they GvG. If you catch some of their players on while they aren't doing anything with their guild I'm sure most people would be willing to run a couple matches. That is of course assuming you have a build ready to go and people that are at least familiar with their individual roles. You can't expected to bring in a Te member and have them work wonders for you if you haven't even taken the time to develop a decent build. They can however, assuming they are experienced enough (even the top guilds have "inexperienced" members) help your team stay focused and "play tight" even if the end result is a loss. Furthermore, I think it's a lot less demoralizing to know that you're doing the right things but you just need to execute better rather than "I have no idea if this is how we should be playing and we just got spanked in 5 minutes." The "top" PvP guys guest all the time as far as I can tell usually with other top 100 guilds. I'm sure they'd be willing to guest with a lower ranked guild if they aren't busy at the moment. After all, they have nothing to loose and everyone likes getting the ego stroked every now and then.

Granted, but the newer player also has to know the person in question prior to the guest invite. I doubt many would accept a blind guest invite, regardless if the team in question was prepared or not. At times its hard enough getting a random person to fill the last spot in a pve situation, never mind the right random person for a pvp situation. This is why i felt that the guest feature is a nice idea, but wont change alot in the long term as newer people will not know the long standing veterens within the game. To a lesser degree it also falls to an issue of trust. Again these are things that A-NET cant change directly.

GW is one of the more unfriendly formats for informal player gatherings ive experienced. This is partly due to being an instanced game, but it does also lack any kind of tools for class finding and listings beyond spam and direct visual searching through the sea of people in some cases.

Aye we guest 1-2 people all the time, otherwise we wont get to play GvG. My guild isnt elite or anything but we are doing ok rank 100-200 (Varies).

About the matching system.. 3 out of 4 games involve facing guilds Rank 1000 - 4000+, we even apoligise to them having to play us because we just know they gonna be spanked tbh.

Most take it well and say gg, unfair but gg.

Oh and 80% of these guilds dont bother getting flagstand, its like they just waiting to lose or they dont have much exp in gvg?