Guild Wars 2

Seen this topic raised quite a lot recently in a varied assortment of threads and got to wondering what peoples thoughts are on GW2 as an E-Sport and Anets continued and on-going push for this to be a “thing”?

(Get out my loading screen with the twich ads please.kthx)

At the risk of repeating myself I’ll just post my comments from another thread that kinda got me thinking about the whole issue.

fireflyry.7023:

Qugi.2653:

Anet goal for GW2 is Esport.

They really need to give up on this pipe-dream and stop dumping money and resources into it. It’s just too imbalanced, broken and overly complicated to be in any way considered marketable as an e-sport. If GW1 taught them anything it’s that PvE is their cash cow, so throw your money at it.

E-Sport is moba territory.

It’s only chance of garnering any semblance of long term success and relevance is if it’s actually enjoyable for an audience to watch, more so those who don’t actually play the game. That is the core foundation of a successful “sport”, but watching any GW2 PvP game is enough to give non-epileptic viewers seizures and it’s just a giant indecipherable cluster-kitten to your average non-player.

I mean look at the success of mobas, CS, Starcraft. etc.

Easy games to get the gist of, most can be explained in under a minute, not overly complicated but extremely hard to master at the top tier. Most importantly due to their simplistic foundations they make great spectator e-sports. I’ve had many non-gamers watch tournies with me and really get into it, if not start playing the game after watching such footage.

Great “e-sport” games are first and foremost easy for the layman to understand.

GW2 will never get there. It’s just do bogged down by MMORPG mechanics.

I’m surprised ESL keep going with it.

Now don’t get me wrong. I loved the PvP in this game. It’s pretty much all I did for the first two years and only stopped due to burn out, a few nerfs to my main, and yeah…PvP burn out :P

In saying I never thought this game was E-Sport worthy. I struggle to think of any MMORPG that is. The genre just seems way to mechanically complicated, niche and imbalanced to ever garner the popularity of actual E-Games like Dota, CS, Starcraft, etc.

I’m down with Anet having their own tournies and that kind of thing but this whole push for the PvP to be taken in any way seriously as a top tier E-Sport seems like a waste of time and resources that could be spent on more pressing issues.

Thoughts?

Well it won’t be an esport while they completely kitten up their systems and infrastructure the way they are doing with the league.

I say nay, they should have not even bothered. While they say it was something the Marketing team came up with, I feel that money could have gone to oh I dunno.

Hire more modelers to model armor that drops in HoT
Hire more coders to balance the classes
Hire more people to focus on fixing WvW

I dunno it just gives me a bitter taste in my mouth.

Colin said that the marketing team said that the esport thing brings in new players and that it is pretty successful at doing that. If that is true I have nothing against it, more players is good.

Regardless of what has been said about the issue, I honestly do believe that they are making these decisions based on pursuing their goal of making GW2 an eSport, and hurting the game as a whole because of it.

And I don’t say this with a smile, either. I want nothing but the best for this game, but recent decisions have left me wondering what’s actually going on at Anet… and where the game I came to love is heading…

Hopefully everything will work out. I’m certainly not quitting the game, but I’m going to sit out for a bit and see how this plays out.

Nay, definitely nay. it’s been three years, and they still haven’t hit that balance sweet spot, not for lack of trying, but trying to balance a game for both PvE and PvP is just near impossible. Add in the fact the elite specs are like dropping a boulder into a pond and it’s going to be a long long while. I wish them the best of luck, but I just don’t see it happening.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3h3opz/wise_words_from_exceo_of_ncwest_about_esports_in

Points from Chris Chung, ex-CEO of NCSoft:

- Have been seeing more and more new developers pitching their new game as e-Sports title.
- My thoughts: 1. E-sports is a byproduct of successful competitive game 2. It’s a way to give back to the community
- Make an awesome competitive game first, your community will make it an E-sports title.
(From the twitter links in the reddit link…)

In his second point he brings up something that’s probably being overlooked, and that is: “E-sports is a byproduct of successful competitive game”

Having a game become an eSport isn’t really something that could be forced… Which is what they’re trying to do currently with sPvP and leagues, and w/e it is they’re doing to push GW2 into being an eSport.

This “byproduct” has already happened once in GW2 actually. GvG’ing. Players made it, because they wanted it to be a thing. ANet came out and made it possible to GvG in guildhalls. The thing is, even if ANet hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t doubt that the GvG’ing community would continue on with it’s thing in WvW. It’s player made. Hell, even DoTA (think back to WC days) was player made (two (?) guys popped open a map editor…).

In a funny way, I could see GvG’ing become an eSport faster than sPvP/Leagues… That is if that community keeps going at it.

That’s at least the high-level issue of GW2 becoming an eSport. There are lower-level issues like ease of spectating, balancing, and promotion (which, would be spread by the players themselves if they want it…).

1) They need to fix Warrior. Not Berserker, Warrior.
2) Keep their kitten “balance fixes” out of PvE.
3) Stop shoving this crap in our faces. I give precisely zero (0) kittens about who is what rank where.

So, no, I’d rather not have them focusing on e-sports until they can actually balance something.

I think GW2 has the best support for E-Sports! Teams like Abjured are only so good because they’re smart mechanically and they know so much about their own class and other classes.

The combat is amazing, you can dodge stuff all the time!

Classes are so fun to play and each have their own roles, this game is very well balanced. I think sharing balances between PvE and PvP for the sole purpose of making a connection is absolutely a great benefit to how well balanced this game is. People complain all the time, but this game is extremely well balanced! I don’t know how ESL can not fit in this game!

Kappacino123 mochaccino cappuccino

E-Sport my agate orbs. What a ridiculous concept. We need a game geared toward the player base, not a few ‘elite’ players that we get the ‘privilege’ of watching. I bought this game to play it, not watch others do so.

It would be great if gw2 becomes a successful esport. With a lot of money coming in from external sponsors and event organizers maybe arenanet can then afford to stop their money grubbing gemstore practices and give us good bug-free content for once.

Having said that, I’m not sure how many people will find gw2 more entertaining to watch compared to the likes of LoL and Dota2

Can it be an eSport? Well…yes. Technically, any PvP game can.

Is it a good one? Well, no. No, it’s not.

(Disclaimer: I’ve not watched the twitch streams or anything. My observations are based on what I’ve seen in-game of PvP. If I’m wrong on a point, please feel free to correct me.)

I think that part of the problem is that the game is too complex. There’s too many traits and builds, to the point where an observer doesn’t gain much by knowing that this character is a guardian or that one a thief. Different builds can play so differently that it’s hard to keep track of.

Then there’s all the buffs, debuffs, and conditions. Most non-players are going to have a hard time keeping track of all of them, and they can fly pretty fast in combat. Will the casual observer know the difference between a stun and a daze? Will either one last long enough for them to even realize what just happened? A lot of times, the answer to that is ‘no’.

Finally, there’s how the characters look. I hate to say this, but that’s actually a possible problem here. I have four rangers, for example, and NONE of them look anything like each other. Even if I put matching builds onto them, you’d be hard pressed to look at them and tell that they’re all the same class without the pets being out. And that guy next to them wearing leathers and fur? Sorry, that’s a warrior in Braham’s armor. This makes it very hard for people to keep track of what’s on the field, and who’s who. I figure it’s only a matter of time before a team exploits this by making the entire team run identical characters. You can get past this by using standard models, but that brings other problems.

Others are more qualified than I to talk about the balance issues, so I’ll not go over those.

Nay

That ship sailed 3 years ago.

if people still think pvp can become an esport after several years i don’t know what to say

No it will never be a success as an esport, I can understand why they want it to be and why they are trying to make it so, but the reality is that its never going to happen, the game is 3 years old already and only pulls in 10k viewers max to watch tourneys.

I hope that soon they will realise that throwing large amounts of prize money at it will not change anything, there are to many reasons for it to fail, the fact that anet cant balance when they say they are going to balance, that every patch comes out with a million bugs that take ages to get fixed and to be quite honest just the fact that watching spvp is actually pretty boring 99% of the time, the only time its remotely worth watching is the finals of WTS and even then its not that great. GW2 pvp is just not exciting to watch, that’s the bottom line.

Personally I think they should put more focus into other game modes to attract new players, when GW2 first released I was attracted by the fact this game was at the time very different to other MMO’s, sadly they seem to have moved back to becoming a standard MMO, with raids and fixed events, this game used to break the mold, they should try breaking it again.

It could have been a great title for e-sports if the game had been designed from the start to be one. But we have a game that was designed as an MMO with pvp as a side note. Pvp in GW2 is a game mode that was put in for the players to have something to do other than grind dumb shi* mobs or story. I think of spvp in gw2 as the play spots in McDonald’s. You don’t go to McD’s for the play spots.

Nay, it is too late and it is an MMO. It is inherently not well suited to being an esport.

At all times, both casual viewership and tournaments the turnout is very poor. With a peak of 3.5k to 4k during a tournament that is just further evidence that you are straight up irrelevant. Even if you were to take the viewer count on the 2014 tournament for GW2 on Youtube which is clearly not an accurate number of concurrent viewers but rather the number of times the video was watched it is still pitiful numbers.

Even Fighting games which are about mid-tier esport games in terms of viewership surpass it easily.
Guilty gear Xrd (A NEW GAME AT THE TIME) got 131k at EVO
Marvel vs Capcom 3 (A game that has zero hope for a sequel due to Disney and has faced criticism for severe imbalance due to loops) – 177k
Mortal Combat X (ANOTHER NEW GAME) got 190k peak viewership

SUPER SMASH BROTHERS MELEE (I actually have nothing bad to say about this game, it is amazing to play and to watch.) – had 211k peak viewership beating out almost every other game at the event including the newer Super Smash Bros 4 and came in second for peak viewership only behind Street Fighter 4.

This is a 14+ Year old game people, FOURTEEN. It has survived this long because it is a very deep game with a very passionate community that actually wants to support it being an esport. Everything is grassroots as Nintendo won’t even support Melee as they want to sell Smash 4 to people. You have rivalries, exciting plays, a lot of visual and audio cues to see what is happening and commentators who at the very least try to explain what is going on to the untrained eye. Not to mention a playerbase and viewerbase that actually gets excited both playing and watching the game.

The key takeaway from this imo is…You cannot force Esports. Your community has to want it and if they don’t you cannot force it upon them as they are the ones who are playing the game. It doesn’t matter how much money you throw at the problem.

Obviously I left out games such as Mobas which have immense viewership that boggles the mind. They are in a whole different tier of successful esport games all together.

If it helps ANet to sell more games, it doesn’t bother me other than the slight clutter on the main UI when a tournament is going on, telling us on the load screens is good enough IMO.

Is it currently, no.

Is its capable and on the track to being there, yes.

People tend to use LoL as the prototypical example and seemingly fail to realize that even LoL used to struggle to bring in 20k viewers for major tournaments while some of their popular streamers going back to season 1 days were pulling 8-10k easy. GW2 used to have on average 400 viewers for any major tournament, now ESL is roughly pulling in 4k at anytime. The growth is happening, and if it is given proper support and balance patches frequently it can eventually be on par with what people consider traditional eSports. It may not grow as big as LoL/DoTA2/CS:GO/SC2 but it will still be there.

Zero Day.2594:

Having a game become an eSport isn’t really something that could be forced… Which is what they’re trying to do currently with sPvP and leagues, and w/e it is they’re doing to push GW2 into being an eSport.

Agreed.

A game becoming an e-sport should just be a natural evolution due to popularity and genre like it has been with other games. I don’t get Anets fixation on this. Sure Colin says it’s a marketing department decision that has zero impact on the rest of the game and is “great for everyone!” but I trust him as far as I could throw him.

Wahaha.7938:

Colin said that the marketing team said that the esport thing brings in new players and that it is pretty successful at doing that. If that is true I have nothing against it, more players is good.

Well, he’s certainly not going to say it’s been a total fail and that they’re throwing good money after bad even though by all indications that is the case.

E-sport is not my thing but I have no problem with ANet exploring that stuff. It broadens the appeal and makes more people aware of GW. Almost all gaming companies are experimenting with e-sports, trying to figure out what works and what does not. The real e-sport success will come with the next generation of games. Gaming companies that are not experimenting with it now will probably not be around in a few years.

http://www.mmo-central.com/2015/05/15/blood-and-sand-or-oil-and-water-why-mmorpgs-just-dont-work-as-esports/

Lets just say for the past 4 days, GW2 has been neck and neck in viewers with MapleStory and Pokemon Omega Ruby.

You know, those Esport giants of the gaming world… lol

For a game to be successful as an e-sport, many factors have to aligne favorably.

1.) First and foremost, I have to agree on what was said about “make a good competative game first, worry about e-sports second”. No matter how much I enjoy GW2, it’s not a good competative game. It’s not even half decent. Balance is somewhere between pve, spvp and wvw. Terrible for an e-sport game.

2.) Ease of view. As is, GW2 spvp makes absolutely no sense to someone who is not invested in spvp. Something GW1 was great at by the way with it’s game streaming and better gvg game mode.

If you want to attract a wide viewership the game needs to be easy to follow and semi interesting to watch. Animation times and a couple of second skills are hard to follow, not to mention the boons/conditions. Let’s compare to successful e-sport titles:

- LoL/Dota – probably leading e-sports titles currently on the market next to CS:GO and Starcraft. Both games have established metas where different players get different roles. It’s not quite as important to understand the skills that get used (even though the inetersting ones (elites/ultimates) are on long cooldowns) but the role a person plays. Even on the most basic level, you see a back and forth and see land gain or loss.

CS:GO (Halo, etc.) – very simple, it’s a shooter. You see, you shoot. Understanding the deeper tactics and positioning is not needed to follow the usually very short games.

GW1 – teams of usually 8 players with distinctive front-, middle- and backline depending on which step of the meta we are in over the last few years. Classes once again fullfill different roles, territorial gain is visible and an ultimate goal is in place (kill that lord). Plus you have a competition between guilds and players going on.

3.) Fun. I’m putting this as third, because competative e-sports games, if played profesionally, aren’t always fun. We are talking 10-14 hours of practice for pro gamers per day. It’s mechanics and muscle memory and enough depth to be able to improve far enough to distinguish ones self.

At the same time, the game needs to be fun enough for casual players to enjoy themselves so that a big enough player base developes. This is probably one of the hardest aspects to get right in an MMO. Most successful e-sports games are designed around the gameplay. Something that is severly limited in MMOs due to the nature of the game.

Even the most successful (known to me, I don’t follow MMO e-sports) MMOs to do e-sports World of Warcraft, is mediocre at best. And let’s be honest, a big part of the viewers is due it being Blizzard. There is a ton of better pvp MMOs out there which get a fraction of the attention this 10 year old giant gets (again, huge playerbase).

Some things I think could be improved upon in GW2:

- first and foremost map design and spvp game modes.
- ingame tournament streaming

The things I don’t think will be easy to fix:

- game mechanics. I don’t think the huge amount of short duration boons/conditions and hectic action paced combat make for easy to follow viewing. Remember, the aim is to make stuff understandable for viewers not familiar with the class/game
- the establishment of roles. HoT has been a slight step in this direction, but the open combat nature of GW2 is here at a disadvantage balance wise (at least with pve and wvw to balance around). This could be slightly balanced through intelligent map design, but never completely corrected.

It does not impact me in the least. I do not participate in PvP, if they want to use that as an advertising method good on them.
Getting twisted out of shape by things that you don’t do is a waste of time.

Yargesh.4965:

It does not impact me in the least. I do not participate in PvP, if they want to use that as an advertising method good on them.
Getting twisted out of shape by things that you don’t do is a waste of time.

Except it does impact you. The money and dev time required to support sPvP and esports could have gone towards creating content that perhaps you do participate in.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Yargesh.4965:

It does not impact me in the least. I do not participate in PvP, if they want to use that as an advertising method good on them.
Getting twisted out of shape by things that you don’t do is a waste of time.

Except it does impact you. The money and dev time required to support sPvP and esports could have gone towards creating content that perhaps you do participate in.

I guarantee they are spending less than going through a marketing company with international experience.
This is actually a very inexpensive route to take.

DoctorDing.5890:

The real e-sport success will come with the next generation of games. Gaming companies that are not experimenting with it now will probably not be around in a few years.

That’s a really valid point I’d never really thought of, although I don’t see not being involved in E-Sports being a nail in the coffin for many, if any, game companies. I’d probably be less caustic if I thought Anet were just testing the waters to see what happens though, maybe as a blueprint for future projects?

In saying it’s really a case of picking what you want to be. Imho Anet is trying to hard to be to much to everyone. Not enough butter, too much bread.

Across the board I think the MMORPG format is just terribad in regards to transitioning to a popular E-Sport. It’s way to convoluted and inaccessible for the public to be an enjoyable watch. As previously stated great “e-sport” games are first and foremost easy for the layman to understand.

MMORPG PvP is anything but.

Humm i like the idea of it…but as an e-sports fan, played a lot of HotS, play a lot of hearthstone. But for mmos…i don’t know, it’s a little bit more complex than FPS and MOBAs.

The new pvp maps introduced in heart of thorns brings the feeling of competition and its fun!

I don’t care the slightest about e-sports. Never watched it, I don’t know any of the famous pro gamers or teams and probably have never heard of the names before nor bothered to inform myself.

That being said, I’ll vote with “no,”not as long as Anet is not able or refuses(?) to balance PvE (yes, even againt brainless mobs, “we” prefer balancing) and PvP separately.

DoctorDing.5890:

E-sport is not my thing but I have no problem with ANet exploring that stuff. It broadens the appeal and makes more people aware of GW. Almost all gaming companies are experimenting with e-sports, trying to figure out what works and what does not. The real e-sport success will come with the next generation of games. Gaming companies that are not experimenting with it now will probably not be around in a few years.

Good point, but only true for e-sports games and probably a big chunk of multiplayer games.

As is, standalone single player games are doing just fine. Look at Witcher 3, Fallout 4, etc.

Not every gaming company will try to enter the e-sports market. Those that do though, I agree with you. Not to mention, the current generation of teenagers and below growing up on smartphones and tablets.

Wahaha.7938:

Colin said that the marketing team said that the esport thing brings in new players and that it is pretty successful at doing that.

the marketing team

the marketing team

THE MARKETING TEAM

Never trust a Vulcan…
…or the marketing team.

Also, NAY.

EvE online’s dev team is notorious for chasing the next big thing – currently virtual reality – and it never does them any good. GW2 seems to have the same issue with Esports and it worries me how much prize money is being thrown out there when it could instead be put into development of the game itself.

A game is, or it is not an E-Sport.

For me for a game to be an E-Sport it needs to come down to skill alone, not what currently over powered class you are playing. Until the game is correctly balanced, it will never get to that point.

Cyninja.2954:

As is, standalone single player games are doing just fine. Look at Witcher 3, Fallout 4, etc.

Yes, doing fine today but the days of big-budget standalone single player games are ending. The genre will become niche and I doubt Bethesda would even consider starting development of Fallout 4 in that form today. The gaming companies will follow the money and e-sports is one thread of that.

I can understand the general dislike of e-sports in GW but I don’t think it is necessarily accurate to say that it is stealing development time from the other aspects of the game. Most of the money and resources being invested in e-sports will be “new” money – an investment in an enterprise that they hope will give good returns in the future.

Off topic: I loved the gameplay of Fallout 3 but after a while that unrelentingly bleak landscape just got to me. I’ve made a firm resolution to not retire to a grim post-apocalyptic desert.

DoctorDing.5890:

Cyninja.2954:

As is, standalone single player games are doing just fine. Look at Witcher 3, Fallout 4, etc.

Yes, doing fine today but the days of big-budget standalone single player games are ending. The genre will become niche and I doubt Bethesda would even consider starting development of Fallout 4 in that form today. The gaming companies will follow the money and e-sports is one thread of that.

I can understand the general dislike of e-sports in GW but I don’t think it is necessarily accurate to say that it is stealing development time from the other aspects of the game. Most of the money and resources being invested in e-sports will be “new” money – an investment in an enterprise that they hope will give good returns in the future.

Off topic: I loved the gameplay of Fallout 3 but after a while that unrelentingly bleak landscape just got to me. I’ve made a firm resolution to not retire to a grim post-apocalyptic desert.

While I do agree that online and social gaming will take a bigger and bigger chunk of the market, the death of single player gaming has been forseen for ages now.

It’s quite simple really, there is a huge group of gamers of all ages (but let’s focus on 30+) that have a significant smaller timeframe or opportunity to game, least spend hours per day. For these gamers, casual friendly or well designed singleplayer games remain the main draw.

Also high quality, high budget single player games are still being developed and made, just mostly for consol (I guess due to pirating issues on pc) and I haven’t seen this trend decline. What has declined though is:

- throwing tons of money at great grafiks, craapy gameplay tripple A titles
- throwing tons of money trying to make the next WoW MMO. Even Blizzard caned their project titan
- a vast growth of indie games both multi- and singleplayer which focus on fun and unique gameplay

The inevitable and “taking it’s time creeping up on everyone” future is indie-games.

Redfeather.6401:

The inevitable and “taking it’s time creeping up on everyone” future is indie-games.

Sad, but probably true.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Redfeather.6401:

The inevitable and “taking it’s time creeping up on everyone” future is indie-games.

Sad, but probably true.

The bad thing about that is sifting through legions of games that fell short for one or more reasons, just to find the gems. But the gems are precious. Dealing with subject matter or mechanics no publisher would back only because it couldn’t be proven that the industry had already done it, and done it successfully.

Yargesh.4965:

It does not impact me in the least. I do not participate in PvP, if they want to use that as an advertising method good on them.
Getting twisted out of shape by things that you don’t do is a waste of time.

Actually, if you don’t PvP/WvW, it still affects you. ANet’s affection for this e-sports thing is going to futz with game balancing on the PvE end. Because what’s right and just to do to an AI enemy would make turn PvP into QvQ very quickly.

Nay. 200.000 $ could have been spent on more developers

GW2 an esport? No, that’s obvious. Is the sPvP in GW2 an esport? Yes, again pretty kitten obvious. There are competitions where people compete and win money. That’s pretty all the qualification needed.

It’s a fun game, too bad there’s no way to spectate like in GW1. Would you believe I used to watch GW1 GvG while eating lunch or dinner?

HaxTester.9816:

It’s a fun game, too bad there’s no way to spectate like in GW1. Would you believe I used to watch GW1 GvG while eating lunch or dinner?

I used to spectate the recorded tournament matches while chilling in outposts. And everyone spectating could chat while watching. It was one of the coolest things.

Nay.

GW2 doesnt have the right competition mechanics for e-sports.

Extreme.8350:

Nay. 200.000 $ could have been spent on more developers

hell yes

While gw2 pvp is better then many pvp, an E-sport it will never be. Admitting that is the first step to true succes.

What admitting no E-sport isnt that game over? not by long shot. You can make a fun, and still competitive game without being a true e-sport. Before Celestial meta, gw2 was pretty much that imo, good but not great. now it’s all over the place, and the wate of money (300 000$ on tournement) has never geen bigger. That when the team of pvp devs/designers is almost as new as it could be (most left the company last year). Worst business decision ever.

I hope they stop these bad decisions soon, cause Anet can’t take much more.

PS if these decisions come from Anet leader (Mike) or Ncsoft, you guys should apologies and stop this big mistake (my opinion).

@ Vulcan Iagree Marketing 90% of time sucks. I’m always weary if i see marketing driven stuff. “What do they have to hide now again?” is always my first though. Truly good brands don’t have to proof themself with marketing, the good name will make the promotion around. And guild wars 2 team, well seems like they don’t know what to do, and so come up with the most crazy idea’s just to get a feeling ‘aha we did well’. Without cohesion, and a product to proof how good you are, marketing is bad. Especially not very clever organized marketing money.

Patience seems aso not a strong suit of the marketing team (doing the correct advertisment at right time, is like lesson 1 i think in marketing, and they failed it so many times).

Yes but a game dose not need to be that big to be an e sport and truly the smaller games tend to be better e sports then the overloaded e sport games out there. Its a question of fun to play vs fun to watch. If a game is fun to play often its hard to watch becuse there a lot going on that if you do not understand the game it dose not seem like much is going on (something GW2 has a problem with). If it easy to watch that becuse there is not much going on making it less fun to play but over all an more popular e sport.

Nay.

I won’t even bother to get my daily’s done as I don’t want to contribute to the data for this game mode.