Guild Wars 2

I’d like to start a dialog regarding the esports potential of GW2.

I haven’t played LOL, but from what I read, Lol is free to play with a cash shop available to soup up your character. This model gives easy access to gamers who wants to get in on the competitive scene or play the game for entertainment.

When you port to the Heart of the Mists, it really feels that ANet may have a plan to open the heart for F2P. If that’s the case, it would help GW2 get to the right path as an esports title.

I’m just speculating, and I’m aware that GW2 has a long way to go since there’s no ranking system in place yet. Thoughts?

EDIT as of 21:47 10/17/2012:
So here’s an idea, a hypothetical, of what F2P offers:

• Full PvP Access
• Gem Shop Access
• No PvE Access
• No WvW Access
• No BLTC Access

Do you mean making the game F2P only for Spvp? But WvW/PvE off limits?

If so, that sounds sort of interesting. Not sure how that would sit well with people, especially those that bought the game intending to ONLY play Spvp.

Also to play LoL competitively you still have to level up and grind out your runes and unlock a small array of champions, so it’s not as instantly accessible as this game.

Yes. Limit it to sPvP. PvE and WvW would require purchase of the game. If they don’t want that, they can only have 1 or 2 char slot and would require purchase for additional slots.

Regarding players who bought it for PvP, I’m not sure how they could assuage them — if they get kitten’d off. I bought the game because I also wanted to PvP after hitting 80. Currently, I’m just wandering around the world and making alts left and right. But I would like to see where the eSports, or competitive play, is headed for this game.

It would be a boon for current PvP players too since game servers will be packed and long. And hey, once the custom arenas are implemented, a PvP community may potentially grow from there — from dueling, scrimming, trash-talking.

I like this model very much. LoL, HoN and Dota 2 are all very popular because they’re F2P.

Make sPvP F2P. However, for the sake of maintaining fair and healthy E-Sport, in no way can F2P players have restrictions on them for sPvP. You can’t cap them at Rank 20, or any other restriction.

If the player wants to try PvE, WvW, or go beyond level 2 — they’ll need to pay for the game.

One problem is that to even get into The Mists at level 2 you must complete the introduction instance that is PvE. They can either skip this for F2P players, or — what I would prefer, they let you join The Mists starting from level 1. I hate rolling new alts and having to wade through the introduction instance just to get to The Mists. I’ve seen it all a hundred times.

I can see it now.

One man.
One Computer.
Five Free Accounts.
Five Mesmers/Thieves.

Does anything in the cash shop affect sPvP?

If not, ANet get all the costs involved in hosting servers and maintaining & updating the game without any income from any of the F2P players.

I don’t see it as a good move personally. As it is someone who buys the game and only cares about sPvP won’t pay anything more than the price of the game, if you remove even that then it’s 100% pure loss for ANet.

free access to sPvP sounds interesting, but I think Anet sees it the other way. Make sPvP so “good” that people buy the game even if only interested in sPvP (like starcraft did)

Nah, 7-Day free trial. Limit it to days, after that you need to pay for it. Also put an IP restrictor on it, so that they can’t make another one from the same IP. Yep…

IP blocking is almost entirely useless in this day and age.

With dynamic IPs (quick reboot of the router = new IP, the IP you are using now could have been used by someone else before and gotten blocked after they used it, etc) and proxies there’s very few people unable to change their IP (not much technical knowledge required to unplug & replug a router).

Jestunhi.7429:

Does anything in the cash shop affect sPvP?

If not, ANet get all the costs involved in hosting servers and maintaining & updating the game without any income from any of the F2P players.

I don’t see it as a good move personally. As it is someone who buys the game and only cares about sPvP won’t pay anything more than the price of the game, if you remove even that then it’s 100% pure loss for ANet.

They talked about “renting arenas” for teams to practice privately and cosmetic upgrades are but a few lines of code away.

Forgot to add that they could simply slash the price for the sPvP component only, they did this for GW1. Though right now they cost the same at some point the PvP access kit cost less than the full game.

In my opinion, if they open sPvP as F2P, they’ll cast a huge net for apprehensive gamers and competitive players. Who knows how much they’ll get with this model? And think of the possibility of the F2P players purchasing the game for PvE and WvW.

From what I remember and had read, the SC1 scene started when South Korea was in the slumps. SC1 was released around that time and was a cheap entertainment. Eventually the competitive scene was built from there since everyone was playing it and everyone knew the mechanics of the game.

I had followed SC2 earlier this year and the year before that, and its crowd was bigger than LoL. Nowadays, LoL has overtaken and the audience is larger compared to SC2 (caveat — my opinion/observation). Why is that? The barrier to entry is free or cheap compared to SC2.

It would be interesting what ANet will do from here on out regarding their road to eSports. I haven’t watched an SC2 stream for a while, and the current state of HotS is disheartening. I scoffed at LoL since it didn’t make sense to me on my first time viewing… and it was cutting in on my SC2 barcraft.

Once again, this is pure speculation.

As long as they can find a way for it to still be profitable I have no objection.

Anet repeatedly stated that they wanted to appeal to esports scene somewhat, so this might have it’s merits and I too could very well see them implementing it soon. At least limit it to pvp and free tournaments / the first 10 levels of pve only or something among this lines, basically bigger demo without a time limit would be cool.

GW2 sPvP needs to get GW2 back onto the front page of Twitch. Twitch is basically the de facto benchmark for popular E-Sport games. If you’re not the front page, you’re not relevant. It’s also a great way to get publicity for the game and get ArenaNet more sales. F2P sPvP would probably help increase Twitch viewers and streamers.

Sure, paid games like SC2 have an easy time maintaining front page status because — face it — it’s Starcraft and the game has a legacy. GW2 however is still largely unknown.

Gilgamesh.2561:

GW2 sPvP needs to get GW2 back onto the front page of Twitch. Twitch is basically the de facto benchmark for popular E-Sport games. If you’re not the front page, you’re not relevant. It’s also a great way to get publicity for the game and get ArenaNet more sales. F2P sPvP would probably help increase Twitch viewers and streamers.

Sure, paid games like SC2 have an easy time maintaining front page status because — face it — it’s Starcraft and the game has a legacy. GW2 however is still largely unknown.

I agree. The problem with the current streamers is their credentials (ladder rank/grade). Also, the lack of spectator mode limits the kind of streams available.

But, GW2 is still 2 months old. Who knows when they’ll go full eSports mode. And I don’t think they’re not running out of time. Those who had stopped playing will eventually come back if they want to play competitively. But it would be great if a large player base, coming from F2P-PvP, would come to make it even more competitive.

GW2 pvp is not watchable enough to be a popular e-sport. Its very difficult to tell what is going on even when you are the one playing, most spectators are not going to be able to follow the action.

@ Crazy
With some tweaking, spell animations could be limited to make it watchable and not be overwhelming. But with 5v5, I don’t think it would be a big problem since you don’t have 10 or 20 players beating down on one location.

And it would be accessible enough because of the skill animations. For the uninitiated, a warrior twirling around with axe in hand is obviously not a good thing for anyone around him. But the caster’s job is to get into details and specifics.

Suits me fine tbh. I don’t spvp and I’m not an e-sports fan but seems like there’s a lot of potential to open up a solid revenue stream through people who do play that way. I’m struggling to see how it would impact people like me tbh.

If we get more constructive topics like this cropping up, I might start liking this forum again.

As much as I try to love the game… GW2 will never be an esport.

GW1’s pvp was really really good, it is 10 times better than GW2 pvp, GW1 had the potential to be an esport.

If you compare real esport games to GW2 spvp you would know that it will never ever be able to compete.

-sPvp is just not watchable for spectators , you will hardly know what is going on. Most skills are just too ‘flashy’ when used and in a team fight when everyone unleashes their skills you just don’t know wth is going on (ie. Fighting at the ‘Keep’ at the start)

-All the classes are absurdly imbalanced, Elementalist’s go down by one Warrior Combo, Guardians never die + their annoying knock backs, Necro’s additional Hp pool when their about to die, then there’s the Thief dominating all classes in sPvP right now… awesome esport there…

-Lack of longliveity – I don’t know but somehow the sPvP just feels really boring after a few matches. The point capping is just too repetitive. You go in, unleash all your skills in the frenzy of all the confusion, you die then you wait for ages to respawn and repeat. Dying in this game is just too common, most eSport games enable players to avoid dying too much, ie. LoL where you can get 16 kills 1 death.

Never is such a strong word. But GW2 does have esports potential. Spell animations can be limited or simplified. But since the match ups will be 5v5, spell animations will not be that overwhelming.

It’s true that imbalance will cripple the game, but with dedicated teams of ANet on the esports side, the future of GW2 is safe. Maybe.

There are clutch moments on the capture point maps. In my opinion, the current maps would be watchable and easy to understand from a spectator’s POV. Team play would be interesting to watch depending on their skill and teamwork.

Yet again. I speculate. But I’m excited.

they gotta earn some bucks, guise.

i would see it happening though but the free to play version will be kittened. like warriors can only use swords and mace. or anything of that sort.