Twitch streams - more explanation
I think that gw2 has not enough streamers to make 2 streams of one tournament
and that the viewerbase is so little that splitting it would not be a good idea.
Remember: everyone starts as a newbie and gw2 pvp is by far not as complex as dota.
over time you’ll start to understand more and more of what and how is played.
To understand tactics: there are only a handful of those with a couple of methods to transition between them – those character movements and key moves will be pointed out by the commentators. just read one of the threads over at the pvp forums
to get a quick overview of what splitting and invading is and how important secondary objectives on different maps are.
as for skillsets: don’t really know what you mean. all the weaponskills can be found on the wiki and utilities on certain meta speccs will be the same nearly every time.
With skillsets I mean builds (weapon, sigils, runes, traits), which might have a big impact.
I think that more people would watch and get interesting when there is more explanation. There will never be enough spectators on those streams if new people aren’t attracted. It would increase not only spectators but also interest in PvP.
The Ready Up Twitch Livestream often explains things, as does the older Developer Overviews. They may or may not be informational for you.
The best way to learn the ins-and-outs of things in sPvP will be to play it yourself. You can learn how profession skills operate, and get a sense of the roles each profession is generally used for.
More than that though, you should also pay attention to what they other players are doing. For instance, you can go into some basic hotjoin matches and play people. If you end up playing against someone you think it good, try spectating that person. See what they have in their build, and follow them around and see how they play. It’s possible they might be using builds similar to what gets used in tournaments, and it can increase your understanding of things that you might not have been able to pick up on your own.
I think there’s still a bit of refinement and maturation that will happen over time as far as the whole commentator bit for the streamers go. Unfortunately there’s sometimes a ton of action happening at once (i.e. 5v5s make it tough to call out individual things), so it can be difficult for commentators to mention particular things. They’re also generally on a schedule, so they can’t always give detailed breakdowns of people’s builds before matches. The style its done in currently assumes the player has knowledge of the particular skills and traits used (at least the streams I’ve watched).
But I would encourage you to just watch and listen, even if you might find it a bit confusing at first. When I was first learning the ins-and-outs of fighting games, I watched lots of videos and streams, but it was sometimes confusing when it came to certain mechanics, terminology, or techniques that were used. However, I was able to pick these things up over time, and there were also other resources like wikis, guides, and data tables that were also helpful.
You could even try asking things on the PvP forum about some matches. For instance, maybe you watch a match and the other team gets stomped really bad, but you don’t know why. Link that match on the forums and ask people. They might give you some explanations about what caused the other team to lose so bad, be it their builds, overall tactics, or sheer skill.
I recall the official GW2 twitch channel had some kind of PvP guides for some professions up there or something… or maybe that was PvE guides. I remember watching some warrior tutorial on the skyhammer map, although I didn’t feel it was of very good quality. I think there’s some weekly 2v2 tournaments or something that are on a channel, but I forget what one (I don’t watch them).
(edited by Yamsandjams.3267)