As a top 10 finisher in the push season, and one of the players who really enjoyed the gamemode, I have a lot of thoughts. I appreciate you making this video, and I think you articulated a lot of points very well. I've been struggling with what kind of feedback I want to give on this mode, and you're helping me clarify some of my opinions. I wrote a much longer essay in the process, but to keep it short, I'll focus on the big picture. As you identified, low population is the primary issue facing GW2 pvp. There was a fair amount of excitement around GW2 pvp early on in the game's life, but it had none of the tools and competitive structure necessary to capitalize on that. Tragically, those tools have been added incredibly slowly, and the population has dwindled. If GW2 launched with the competitive infrastructure they have now, pvp would be absolutely glorious. *So how do we improve the population?* As you said, courting current pve players is not a great idea. If that was the only goal of Push, it's a bad idea. But what about invigorating existing and ex pvp players? As an established pvpver, I dove right in, had a lot of fun, and did extremely well. Some of my friends went kinda nuts and queued up almost constantly for the last two weeks. Many people also got excited to chase that top 250 title. However, I also saw established pvpers in my friend list who did surprisingly poorly, with 50/50 or worse winrates, and not a ton of games played. They had a lot of difficulty adapting to the mode, much like what happened with stronghold. They've spent many years learning conquest, and they like it, because honestly it's a very good game mode. So Push is not everyone's cup of tea. *But even if some of us bounce off the mode, Push did two important things:* 1. It created content 2. It showed Anet hasn't forgotten about us The beta was obviously very scrappy, but for me and my friends, it was a ton of fun. And very notably - the devs themselves had a lot of fun playing Push in their own "inhouses". I think the simple fact that the devs had fun with this is really important. If they can develop pvp in a way that focuses on that joy, I think a lot of the details will eventually fall into place. GW2 doesn't need to be an esport or capture a massive audience. It can just be a fun game that leans into what it's good at. Janthir showed how impactful that mindset can be in the open world. I think there's still a chance Anet can bring that energy to revitalize, what is in its bones, a beautiful and compelling pvp game.
This last part of your essey i find really great. As non PvP player(i suck) and non MMOROG player(just GW 2) fun is the most important, for me. I would like to learn PvP one day, and i wos hoping that this is meabe the way, but its not. Wen i get erased/killed in less than 30sec, so fast that i dont realize wtf hapened... you get the point. 🐬🐣🐬
@@MisterNo1111 It can be really rough starting out. A downside of push is that it focuses entirely on teamfights which are fast-paced and explosive, especially without enough people playing support. I think Push was actually instructive for a certain kind of mid-tier support player, but if you were newer than that, or on a squishy build, you wouldn't have time to figure out what's going on. 1v1s on a tanky build is probably the starting point that would make pvp easier to learn.
Thank you, and congrats on that top 10 finish! Fully agree with the points you made, and I think you're absolutely right that it's important that the devs themselves are having fun with it. The one thing I didn't put in the video is that I sometimes worry about how much they'll follow through after the final iteration launches. ANet has a history of abandoning new projects, but I feel that around SotO there was a management (mindset) shift change, which does give me hope that they'll keep on keeping on. It's also amazing hearing that established players liked it so much. As mentioned in the video, my review comes from an uber-casual, occasional dabbler, not someone who lives and breathes PvP. I do absolutely think that it needs to hit home with the PvP crowd first, because if people see how much fun those players are having, that'll be a bigger pull to try it out, than anything else they can do.
As someone who pvps regularly, I loved push for one reason in particular. When there’s a one-sided stomp, such as due to having an afk, I was put out of my mercy way faster
It felt really bad to me. I don't have the broadest experience when it comes to PvP, but compared to last season, the match making for me was night and day.
Aside from a brief stint in pvp back in HoT times, I came back last season, just like you. I quite like push. It's rough around the edges, sure, and the matchmaking was wonky at times. But it was fun, could snowball matches quite fast but also counter-snowball just as fast, and all in all taught me a LOT about teamfights in pvp. I also played just as many matches needed for the title, but that's because I had very limited time during those 2 weeks, and finished my title like one hour before then end of the mini-season. I think Push has a future as mini-season interludes, like 2v2 and 3v3 (and maybe stronghold if they revamp it a little). The best system imo would be to have shorter regular seasons, and have 8 mini seasons per year, 2 per mini-season gamemode. Love your ideas to add seasonal stuff like halloween or wintersday specific items though. Although I think the purists will probably hate it, so maybe keep those for miniseasons only ?
(as an outsider) I could definitely see Push working as a mini-season, and love the cadence you're proposing. The event ideas were indeed only for a very short stint, maybe even in unranked, again if those gam emodes actually have the player base to support them.
Haha, thanks. The whole idea hinged on people not dealing well with engi grenades, and it turned out my assumption was right. Could've gone the other way really fast as well.
PVP will fail because of its toxic player base. The same reason its hard to get WvW numbers. Turns out people play mmo's to just...play. When you start raging and blaming and insulting, people click the log out button.
I gotta say, the moment I see someone losing their mind, I just turn off chat as well. Not ideal for team communication, but I too like to chill when playing. A "silence" feature (where consistent flamers would be muted by ANet) would probably be a great first step. That wouldn't fix griefing, though, but it'd be a start.
I love how anet keeps throwing % instead of numbers. so 10% of players in unranked (200 ppl) played stronghold. I think that if they released actual daily pvp player numbers ppl would realize how mega dead this mode is. i remember playing 3 years ago and i played with 50 ppl over and over in plat 3. imagine mm now.
PvP is honestly a lost cause in this game, so much that i understand people saying they should just scrap it entirely. (Only PvP, not World vs World) My experience in PvP is the WORST i ever had in any game in my life. Matchmaking putting you, in your silver rank, against world league pro, is just pure garbage. The level of intelligence of some player in lower rank is so atrocious, i would prefer to trust a bronze 5 league of legend player with my life, rather than play with pugs. Some of them don't even know how to count properly and even write at all. I've also met bots which just spawn, autorun to the middle of the map and wait for being killed, just so the user can farm reward track. Balance is non existant, players are going for the same build for the same classes (Mostly mesmer, thief and necromancer. Sometimes guardian) leaving everything else to rot in a corner. Between the ragequitters, the AFKs, the bots, and the low IQ vs the pro, it is just pure madness. Even the lobby is full of players insulting each other at every second. Last time i was seriously playing PvP was years ago, and it was enough to make me fall in depression for a week after the 1st match.
I think PvP in any predominantly PvE game is bound to struggle, but I would really love to see some polish on the basics. The matchmaking is probably one of the most infuriating things indeed, although I'm genuinely concerned it's a population/numbers problem, and therefore a real easy fix is out of reach.
@@Gw2PVPKillspve is amazing a big beautiful World with amazing things … i love to run with my mounts overall and kill some bosses its feel good. But WvW is also nice
@@Gw2PVPKillsPvE has so much more… i love to run with my Mounts in this beautiful Open World.. make some Missions and chilling around and kill some bosses but loves WvW to. Each mode is unique in its own way
In NA WvW in the last few weeks its not rare to see 2 or 3 or even 4 maps queued in prime time. (im not talking about wvw rush today, ofc all maps are queued then)
Oh, that's interesting! EU I mostly see EBG queued on weekends or some evenings, but not even all. The scene over there definitely going stronger than over here then.
I found pvp, wvw, fractals and raids absolutely awful to play. It’s a shame that players like me take so long to do enough points on the wizards vault.
that 10% stronghold is only because it doesnt give you a choice not to play it. every time i play stronghold its because it auto picked it and we didnt get a vote choice
As 5k win matches and 11 year player, I Really enjoyed Push, was Just refreshing play a new PVP map. My matches were all fine, i think its a good mechanic.
Awesome! Heard some other positive feedback from predominantly PvP players, which I do love. As mentioned in the video, my view is that from a mid-gold, uber-casual PvP dabbler. I think that if the basics felt right to players like you, that's actually the most important thing. I'll occasionally queue up for an event here or there, but they gotta get it right for the people who actually will be playing.
Yeah push really highlighted the problems with PvP, it's how it's all structured. Having a team of 5 inherently puts more pressure on each player and makes the mode more competitive You can't match-make as a full stack, so you can't really form a comp with your team The rewards and content in PvP are just stale For me, Anet leans too much into the 'Evergreen' content idea, you can't just abandon the mode otherwise it'll never grow. No new maps, mechanics or event hosted tournaments by Anet or sponsored. I enjoyed the new mode and PvP is really fun, but it just feels empty. It needs some serious focus and restructuring.
I agree, PvP started off so strong as well (back in 2012/2013) with all of the tournaments, but that's been over a decade now. Putting our hopes on creators like Teapot isn't 100% healthy either, so I wish a push for more dev-run content would be good, but not necessarilyin the form of new modes.
Lol my rank experience is the same if your team wins inicial middle fight opponent team starts some out of points fights ignoting targets, some players go afk and so on. If your team loses inicial middle fight they act accordingly... There is nothing new in push mode. Most time players ignore scores and doing whatever...
Near the end my whole strategy was to try to catch someone out in the first few seconds, that usually meant the win indeed. It was nice to get those last few points, but not great for the game of course.
That'd definitely make sense, esp with the possible size of a squad. I looked everywhere, but the only mention of the cap is on the forums, with a dev basically stating that it's big enough, but that they can't say how big.
I played fairly amount of pvp, have pvp leggy backpack but I couldnt access that beta. I cannot wrap my mind how people with higher ranks couldnt understand objective of this mode. Do you play on us or eu server?
I play on EU, and yeah, I was astounded that just running the node all the way to the enemy base was a strategy regardless of the rating I was at (I assume during placements I got a bit of everything). To me that feels like a population problem, i.e. they can't find enough similarly ranked players, so they're starting to chuck in both higher and lower ranked ones in the same games.
Congrats for enduring Push. I have over 10k matches in GW2's PvP, of which less than 10 were in Stronghold, and I only was able to play 5 in Push before getting bored. I think is slighly less worse than Stronhold, but 2 v 2, Conquest and 3 v 3 are nuch better. As I did with Diablo IV (which I didn't bought after playing the beta), I won't play Push in the future.
Yeah, I really think Push is a bit of a lose-lose for most people who prefer Conquest. Unless they only make it unranked, in which case it begs the question whether it's worth releasing in the first place.
I think pvp and wvw is stuck in Limbo, already too far gone to entice PVE players into it, they've been catering to a tiny vocal minority and ignoring the majority of players for over a decade. I gave up trying to give feedback YEARS ago.They never listened to us. Dev's/Execs are stuck in denial and too afraid to change it to make it fun for PVE players. We asked for a PVP underwater map during the original Beta, we got it, they removed it at launch. We told them we didn't like the stun mechanics, they stayed. We said we wanted the builds to work the same in all game types, we said we wanted a lot better and faster rewards. They also kept listening to bots, So players eventually quit bothering to give feedback and the cycle has continued.
Yep, Limbo is probably the best way to describe it. I do think it's good they're trying out new stuff, but at this point, sitting down with the players might do more good than coming up with yet another new map.
I honestly think there could be a place for them, but they really require a dedicated team and a proper separation. I didn't mention this in the video, but as a (previous) Thief fan (in PvE), I hated change after change for Specter Shroud bc they couldn't balance it right in PvP.
@@phandrel Yup. We've seen another set in the recent balance patch, with unique class mechanics being removed because they don't like how it works in WvW. And not to mention mechanics to force PvE players into competitive modes like the Gifts and Legendaries. I just wonder what they could have built if they had spent the dev time on open world and group content.
@@ferawyn_ They recently added a feature to make skills work different in wvw / pvp vs pve so they can change stuff with out touching it in the other modes now
Join the Phamily! discord.gg/JGdQ6Hjny9
As a top 10 finisher in the push season, and one of the players who really enjoyed the gamemode, I have a lot of thoughts. I appreciate you making this video, and I think you articulated a lot of points very well. I've been struggling with what kind of feedback I want to give on this mode, and you're helping me clarify some of my opinions. I wrote a much longer essay in the process, but to keep it short, I'll focus on the big picture.
As you identified, low population is the primary issue facing GW2 pvp. There was a fair amount of excitement around GW2 pvp early on in the game's life, but it had none of the tools and competitive structure necessary to capitalize on that. Tragically, those tools have been added incredibly slowly, and the population has dwindled. If GW2 launched with the competitive infrastructure they have now, pvp would be absolutely glorious.
*So how do we improve the population?*
As you said, courting current pve players is not a great idea. If that was the only goal of Push, it's a bad idea. But what about invigorating existing and ex pvp players? As an established pvpver, I dove right in, had a lot of fun, and did extremely well. Some of my friends went kinda nuts and queued up almost constantly for the last two weeks. Many people also got excited to chase that top 250 title. However, I also saw established pvpers in my friend list who did surprisingly poorly, with 50/50 or worse winrates, and not a ton of games played. They had a lot of difficulty adapting to the mode, much like what happened with stronghold. They've spent many years learning conquest, and they like it, because honestly it's a very good game mode. So Push is not everyone's cup of tea.
*But even if some of us bounce off the mode, Push did two important things:*
1. It created content
2. It showed Anet hasn't forgotten about us
The beta was obviously very scrappy, but for me and my friends, it was a ton of fun. And very notably - the devs themselves had a lot of fun playing Push in their own "inhouses".
I think the simple fact that the devs had fun with this is really important. If they can develop pvp in a way that focuses on that joy, I think a lot of the details will eventually fall into place. GW2 doesn't need to be an esport or capture a massive audience. It can just be a fun game that leans into what it's good at. Janthir showed how impactful that mindset can be in the open world. I think there's still a chance Anet can bring that energy to revitalize, what is in its bones, a beautiful and compelling pvp game.
This last part of your essey i find really great.
As non PvP player(i suck) and non MMOROG player(just GW 2) fun is the most important, for me. I would like to learn PvP one day, and i wos hoping that this is meabe the way, but its not. Wen i get erased/killed in less than 30sec, so fast that i dont realize wtf hapened... you get the point. 🐬🐣🐬
@@MisterNo1111 It can be really rough starting out. A downside of push is that it focuses entirely on teamfights which are fast-paced and explosive, especially without enough people playing support. I think Push was actually instructive for a certain kind of mid-tier support player, but if you were newer than that, or on a squishy build, you wouldn't have time to figure out what's going on. 1v1s on a tanky build is probably the starting point that would make pvp easier to learn.
Thank you, and congrats on that top 10 finish! Fully agree with the points you made, and I think you're absolutely right that it's important that the devs themselves are having fun with it.
The one thing I didn't put in the video is that I sometimes worry about how much they'll follow through after the final iteration launches. ANet has a history of abandoning new projects, but I feel that around SotO there was a management (mindset) shift change, which does give me hope that they'll keep on keeping on.
It's also amazing hearing that established players liked it so much. As mentioned in the video, my review comes from an uber-casual, occasional dabbler, not someone who lives and breathes PvP. I do absolutely think that it needs to hit home with the PvP crowd first, because if people see how much fun those players are having, that'll be a bigger pull to try it out, than anything else they can do.
As someone who pvps regularly, I loved push for one reason in particular.
When there’s a one-sided stomp, such as due to having an afk, I was put out of my mercy way faster
Definitely made the grind for that title way faster, too.
I'm so out of the loop with PvP that I clicked on this video thinking it was going to be talking about the ability to CC in PvP.
push was not fun bc of balance in player ranks
It felt really bad to me. I don't have the broadest experience when it comes to PvP, but compared to last season, the match making for me was night and day.
Aside from a brief stint in pvp back in HoT times, I came back last season, just like you. I quite like push. It's rough around the edges, sure, and the matchmaking was wonky at times. But it was fun, could snowball matches quite fast but also counter-snowball just as fast, and all in all taught me a LOT about teamfights in pvp. I also played just as many matches needed for the title, but that's because I had very limited time during those 2 weeks, and finished my title like one hour before then end of the mini-season.
I think Push has a future as mini-season interludes, like 2v2 and 3v3 (and maybe stronghold if they revamp it a little). The best system imo would be to have shorter regular seasons, and have 8 mini seasons per year, 2 per mini-season gamemode. Love your ideas to add seasonal stuff like halloween or wintersday specific items though. Although I think the purists will probably hate it, so maybe keep those for miniseasons only ?
(as an outsider) I could definitely see Push working as a mini-season, and love the cadence you're proposing.
The event ideas were indeed only for a very short stint, maybe even in unranked, again if those gam emodes actually have the player base to support them.
getting gold 2 right off the bat from never playing pvp is impressive, phandrel you are amazing
Haha, thanks. The whole idea hinged on people not dealing well with engi grenades, and it turned out my assumption was right.
Could've gone the other way really fast as well.
PVP will fail because of its toxic player base. The same reason its hard to get WvW numbers. Turns out people play mmo's to just...play. When you start raging and blaming and insulting, people click the log out button.
I gotta say, the moment I see someone losing their mind, I just turn off chat as well.
Not ideal for team communication, but I too like to chill when playing. A "silence" feature (where consistent flamers would be muted by ANet) would probably be a great first step.
That wouldn't fix griefing, though, but it'd be a start.
I love how anet keeps throwing % instead of numbers. so 10% of players in unranked (200 ppl) played stronghold.
I think that if they released actual daily pvp player numbers ppl would realize how mega dead this mode is.
i remember playing 3 years ago and i played with 50 ppl over and over in plat 3. imagine mm now.
PvP is honestly a lost cause in this game, so much that i understand people saying they should just scrap it entirely. (Only PvP, not World vs World)
My experience in PvP is the WORST i ever had in any game in my life.
Matchmaking putting you, in your silver rank, against world league pro, is just pure garbage.
The level of intelligence of some player in lower rank is so atrocious, i would prefer to trust a bronze 5 league of legend player with my life, rather than play with pugs. Some of them don't even know how to count properly and even write at all.
I've also met bots which just spawn, autorun to the middle of the map and wait for being killed, just so the user can farm reward track.
Balance is non existant, players are going for the same build for the same classes (Mostly mesmer, thief and necromancer. Sometimes guardian) leaving everything else to rot in a corner.
Between the ragequitters, the AFKs, the bots, and the low IQ vs the pro, it is just pure madness. Even the lobby is full of players insulting each other at every second. Last time i was seriously playing PvP was years ago, and it was enough to make me fall in depression for a week after the 1st match.
I think PvP in any predominantly PvE game is bound to struggle, but I would really love to see some polish on the basics.
The matchmaking is probably one of the most infuriating things indeed, although I'm genuinely concerned it's a population/numbers problem, and therefore a real easy fix is out of reach.
It's Funny I only play this game for PvP sometimes WvW, PVE is full off NPC and pointless to collect Starts, and achievements.
@@Gw2PVPKillspve is amazing a big beautiful World with amazing things … i love to run with my mounts overall and kill some bosses its feel good. But WvW is also nice
@@Gw2PVPKillsPvE has so much more… i love to run with my Mounts in this beautiful Open World.. make some Missions and chilling around and kill some bosses but loves WvW to.
Each mode is unique in its own way
In NA WvW in the last few weeks its not rare to see 2 or 3 or even 4 maps queued in prime time. (im not talking about wvw rush today, ofc all maps are queued then)
Oh, that's interesting! EU I mostly see EBG queued on weekends or some evenings, but not even all.
The scene over there definitely going stronger than over here then.
I found pvp, wvw, fractals and raids absolutely awful to play. It’s a shame that players like me take so long to do enough points on the wizards vault.
that 10% stronghold is only because it doesnt give you a choice not to play it. every time i play stronghold its because it auto picked it and we didnt get a vote choice
First 3 games during the rush, I feel I that trap. Doing it 3 times in a row is on me though...
As 5k win matches and 11 year player, I Really enjoyed Push, was Just refreshing play a new PVP map. My matches were all fine, i think its a good mechanic.
Awesome! Heard some other positive feedback from predominantly PvP players, which I do love.
As mentioned in the video, my view is that from a mid-gold, uber-casual PvP dabbler. I think that if the basics felt right to players like you, that's actually the most important thing.
I'll occasionally queue up for an event here or there, but they gotta get it right for the people who actually will be playing.
Yeah push really highlighted the problems with PvP, it's how it's all structured.
Having a team of 5 inherently puts more pressure on each player and makes the mode more competitive
You can't match-make as a full stack, so you can't really form a comp with your team
The rewards and content in PvP are just stale
For me, Anet leans too much into the 'Evergreen' content idea, you can't just abandon the mode otherwise it'll never grow. No new maps, mechanics or event hosted tournaments by Anet or sponsored.
I enjoyed the new mode and PvP is really fun, but it just feels empty. It needs some serious focus and restructuring.
I agree, PvP started off so strong as well (back in 2012/2013) with all of the tournaments, but that's been over a decade now.
Putting our hopes on creators like Teapot isn't 100% healthy either, so I wish a push for more dev-run content would be good, but not necessarilyin the form of new modes.
Lol my rank experience is the same if your team wins inicial middle fight opponent team starts some out of points fights ignoting targets, some players go afk and so on. If your team loses inicial middle fight they act accordingly... There is nothing new in push mode. Most time players ignore scores and doing whatever...
Near the end my whole strategy was to try to catch someone out in the first few seconds, that usually meant the win indeed.
It was nice to get those last few points, but not great for the game of course.
wvw map cap per side is 70 maybe 75 but not more
That'd definitely make sense, esp with the possible size of a squad. I looked everywhere, but the only mention of the cap is on the forums, with a dev basically stating that it's big enough, but that they can't say how big.
I played fairly amount of pvp, have pvp leggy backpack but I couldnt access that beta. I cannot wrap my mind how people with higher ranks couldnt understand objective of this mode. Do you play on us or eu server?
I play on EU, and yeah, I was astounded that just running the node all the way to the enemy base was a strategy regardless of the rating I was at (I assume during placements I got a bit of everything). To me that feels like a population problem, i.e. they can't find enough similarly ranked players, so they're starting to chuck in both higher and lower ranked ones in the same games.
What was minimal rank requirement to participate?
@@kwadrol4238 You had to be able to queue ranked, which I think unlocks at rank 20
ok and now you have to do the WvW event! GoGoGoGoGo
Close to finishing a GoB, I might wanna stock up on at least 1 extra
@@phandrel now your WvW Arc has begun
Congrats for enduring Push. I have over 10k matches in GW2's PvP, of which less than 10 were in Stronghold, and I only was able to play 5 in Push before getting bored. I think is slighly less worse than Stronhold, but 2 v 2, Conquest and 3 v 3 are nuch better. As I did with Diablo IV (which I didn't bought after playing the beta), I won't play Push in the future.
Yeah, I really think Push is a bit of a lose-lose for most people who prefer Conquest. Unless they only make it unranked, in which case it begs the question whether it's worth releasing in the first place.
I think pvp and wvw is stuck in Limbo, already too far gone to entice PVE players into it, they've been catering to a tiny vocal minority and ignoring the majority of players for over a decade.
I gave up trying to give feedback YEARS ago.They never listened to us. Dev's/Execs are stuck in denial and too afraid to change it to make it fun for PVE players.
We asked for a PVP underwater map during the original Beta, we got it, they removed it at launch. We told them we didn't like the stun mechanics, they stayed. We said we wanted the builds to work the same in all game types, we said we wanted a lot better and faster rewards.
They also kept listening to bots, So players eventually quit bothering to give feedback and the cycle has continued.
Yep, Limbo is probably the best way to describe it. I do think it's good they're trying out new stuff, but at this point, sitting down with the players might do more good than coming up with yet another new map.
PvP and WvW should be entirely removed from the game. They should never have been added in the first place.
🤡 Clownwyn 🤡 ladies and gentlemen.
I honestly think there could be a place for them, but they really require a dedicated team and a proper separation.
I didn't mention this in the video, but as a (previous) Thief fan (in PvE), I hated change after change for Specter Shroud bc they couldn't balance it right in PvP.
@@phandrel Yup. We've seen another set in the recent balance patch, with unique class mechanics being removed because they don't like how it works in WvW. And not to mention mechanics to force PvE players into competitive modes like the Gifts and Legendaries. I just wonder what they could have built if they had spent the dev time on open world and group content.
@@ferawyn_ They recently added a feature to make skills work different in wvw / pvp vs pve so they can change stuff with out touching it in the other modes now
Imagine if they applied the resources to PVE how much better it would be.