Guild Wars 2

Here is a video by Destiny, a professional SCII player, about the reasons Starcraft is struggling as an Esport at the moment. I feel this same principal applies to guild wars 2, and this only reinforces the reason why some form of ranking (NOT including the paid tournies) are NEEDED if this game is ever to be an esport, as casuals and moderates need an incentive to keep playing the game and have fun while doing so

Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7rH1C964uA

Yup. And also, this is what 90% of the users on this forum dont understand, for whatever reason. And thats why Anet HAS to react. I really really dont give a kitten about the fact that in high level tournament play, the backstab thief has no place in the meta. I get instagibbed several times a day on hotjoin pvp and that make me, a casual pleb, want to leave the game. And frankly, LoL had the perfect example with their Xin Zhao rework a few patches back. Xin Zhao was a hero that wasnt used at all in high level tournament play, but was viable in lowlevel games (which account for I’d say at least 80% of overall games.) So they didnt just straight buff the champion, because they knew that if they did that, he would become a pubstomper in regular games and thats just anti-fun. And thats just one example of how giving a kitten about lowlevel/casual gaming can save your bum not only as a developer/producer but also as a someone who wants this game to become a serious esport. (Whose arrogant and down-looking behaviour I see A LOT here)

I completely agree with this video and the comments made 100% it doesn’t matter how polished the game is, if there is no one to play it then what was the point?

The answer there isn’t I can appreciate that LoL did take a while before they finally got a competitive e-sport scene and Arena net need to realize that the main focus is to get the pvp player base actively involved in Spvp. At the moment there is no real active community. I mean the average viewers that you see even the most noticeable streamers have on twitch is 70-80 Max and overall even games like Fifa 13 has a higher viewer count.

The way this can be fixed is to give not just the pro’s a reason to play, but the rest of the PvP community a goal to work towards cause, i know that I want a laddering system so bad on this game. If you give us a reason to play PvP actively then people will want to watch the successful players on there way to the top rather then people randomly doing Tpvp to get a golden chest, ticket and get to a pvp rank which at this moment has absolutely no value.

Don’t get me wrong though i love this game and I want it to succeed, however action is needed and fast because we’re not going to wait forever so someone to once again say ‘When it’s ready’.

Thats what I tried to say few times weeks ago. If you dont give a kitten about casual game and casual players, you aint going to get your fame in esports and majority of forums “pro’s” ignores that. They laugh that sPvP does not matters, casuals need to l2p and all that stuff, well good luck with your 100 viewers when casuals leave or just feel not interested to support this game. I personally stopped giving kitten about GW2 as esport long time ago. GW2 wont be esport, at least I dont see it happen ever.

“The casual scene is what entire professional scene is built on and a lot of professional people dont kitten understand that.”

Indeed, we most badly need ladder now. That should be the major focus after giving us paid tournaments.

Braxxus.2904:

VictorTroska.3725:

“The casual scene is what entire professional scene is built on and a lot of professional people dont kitten understand that.”

I personally feel that’s not quite accurate. I believe that they do understand it, they just don’t care. It’s the narcissistic elitism and you see it run rampant throughout pvp gaming boards. People who feel they are superior to other players generally respond with replies to casual issues with glib dismissive remarks or outright bile filled aggression towards them.

“I am pro and until YOU are pro your opinion is meaningless, peasant. Shut thine mouth and L2P noob scum” etc etc (paraphrasing obviously). Hell you see that kind of crap all over these forums already and the game is still in its first quarter. The sad thing is that the behavior almost seems infectious like an internet plague.

It mostly means that without casuals, which is majority of gamers. All those pros wont get viewers, thus no sponsors, thus no big prize pools ect. No company would sponsor game that has 5000 viewers where next game on scene got 500.000. Anet devs made 8 vs 8 casual, turning it into zergfest then people say game isnt balanced around 8 vs 8. Well why the kitten you make it 8 vs 8 for casuals? If its not balanced, game will suck and casuals leave! Its like Anet does not want GW2 to be esport, all signs point towards that.

I dont really care of all those “pro’s” act superiour. They can do what they wish, just like myself but when game is made way that “pro” scene is where balance is and casual scene is where everything is upside down and “we dont give a kitten” mentality from devs and pros, then excuse me, I am going to play something else.

Speaking of making hotjoin 8v8. I could just imagine LoL making normal queue games 8v8 for the same reason (it won’t make casuals feel bad) or something like that.

8v8 Summoner’s Rift. Good or Bad Idk lol.

I think what victor is saying (correct me if i’m wrong) is that the Casual and the pro scene need to be the same like in LoL where a causal game is 5v5 and the ranked games are 5v5.

Also for the argument if you want 5v5 do Tpvp, well some people don’t want to commit to doing a full tournament and some people just want to have a nice causal game to test there profession, build out without any commitment. With Hot-join in the state that it’s in at the moment, 8v8 is too much for the size of the maps and offers no real learning experience to the player.

I agree with the reasoning of this thread, and I’m actually afraid GW2 is starting to miss out.
The game’s reputation when it comes to pvp, isn’t all that great anymore…

No variety, no balance, no real reward for strategic play in spvp.
It might all be ‘ok’ for the top ranked pro tpvp players, but as far as the base community goes: the reputation is declining.

Thats exactly what I am trying to say Infinitus.

Not sure how it feels for you guys (and gals) but when I hot join spvp, I hardly care what happens.

If I defend I simply die without points to show for, if I join the zerg I kill players that would outplay me a hundred times. It all matters very little, as long as I either cap a point alone, or run with the herd and collect kills.
no real teamplay or individual skill seems to be important.

And in the meantime the tpvp is getting more and more a closed circuit where you have trouble finding a team.
My guess is that many are simply stopping with it alltogether, and that reflects on the active pvp scene.

I never thought I would be bored with GW2 pvp this fast.

/Waste of Thread.

This game will never be an official eSport with the downed system making it nigh impossible for a great player to 1v2 against two ‘good’ players, and strictly impossible for a top player in the world to 1v3 against ‘good’ players. eSports take skill heavily into account, and Guild Wars 2 is on the high TTK noob system of death where even noob thieves can stay alive by porting around, taking off 2-3k chunks of health by throwing pebbles at you.

The system is poorly conceptualized and even more poorly executed. Don’t look for this game to become an eSport until they give us a facet of the game where it can be taken out completely, which allows smaller, more advanced players to take on greater numbers.

Valantine.5892:

/Waste of Thread.

This game will never be an official eSport with the downed system making it nigh impossible for a great player to 1v2 against two ‘good’ players, and strictly impossible for a top player in the world to 1v3 against ‘good’ players. eSports take skill heavily into account, and Guild Wars 2 is on the high TTK noob system of death where even noob thieves can stay alive by porting around, taking off 2-3k chunks of health by throwing pebbles at you.

The system is poorly conceptualized and even more poorly executed. Don’t look for this game to become an eSport until they give us a facet of the game where it can be taken out completely, which allows smaller, more advanced players to take on greater numbers.

What does the down system have to do with casuals vs hardcores? Were discussing ANets direction in adding new features, not refining current ones

You guys are getting your hopes up, I wouldn’t expect to see anything resembling a ladder until at least 8 months to a year from now. Next week, they will have been about 2 months late in releasing paid tournaments, a feature that was in the beta! After that they have said they are working on custom servers, which will probably take 3-6 months at the pace they have set.

Just think about how long these two features are taking, then realize that these are the things that will actually earn more money from the players! How long do you think it will take for them to implement a ladder, something from which they stand to gain no additional money?

I am really disappointed with the way anet has treated PvP. Free tournaments are a joke (woo-hoo I beat 3 pugs, I win teh PVP!!), they are fixing bugs at a snails pace (obviously prioritizing new features that will bring in more money over fixing the kitten game), no central place to meet other PVPers and form groups, and the only upcoming features that could remedy the situation cost additional real money. How can this be the same Anet that did GW1?

Right now I feel like they strung us along with the promise of an e-sport, only to release a half finished game and ask us to be patient while they finish the rest of the features that we will be able to pay for shortly.

Important thing to note: The “casual” PvP has a different number of players than tPvP per team, which heavily effects the game in many places, including balance. This separation hurts the potential for an E-Sport, because the casuals are essentially playing a different game than competitive players.

Making sPvP lobbies would help cut down on zerging, foster a better environment for casual, and competitive interactions, and make the PvP as a whole easier to balance.

Great video with solid arguments from Destiny.

People won’t follow a game they can’t enjoy or feel is unbalanced. I suspect 1v1 balance in an MMO is what MANY MMO players have been waiting for years. Duels are extremely popular in primarily PvE based games like WoW, so imagine in a game targeted to PvPers. When I played WoW there were constant requests for 1v1 arena. MMO doesn’t have to mean being forced to play in teams. It should mean that you can have good and balanced solo gameplay against a variety of other players in a virtual world, and be able to get recognized for the improvement of your skills in that virtual world. This alone would draw massive interest from casuals.

shaolin.9716:

Great video with solid arguments from Destiny.

People won’t follow a game they can’t enjoy or feel is unbalanced. I suspect 1v1 balance in an MMO is what MANY MMO players have been waiting for years. Duels are extremely popular in primarily PvE based games like WoW, so imagine in a game targeted to PvPers. When I played WoW there were constant requests for 1v1 arena. MMO doesn’t have to mean being forced to play in teams. It should mean that you can have good and balanced solo gameplay against a variety of other players in a virtual world, and be able to get recognized for the improvement of your skills in that virtual world. This alone would draw massive interest from casuals.

Yes please.

I don’t understand the aversion against 1v1 balance. Even in tPvP games, 1v1 happens a lot, and when one class soundly trumps another in those situations, that feels bad. Yes, you do want to keep team fights reasonably balanced, avoiding a situation where a class that’s decent in 1v1 is godlike in team fights because of AoE buffs, heals, and attacks and what-not, but it’s much easier to avoid those situations by starting off from a decent 1v1 balance and moving up from there.

For example, shouts could give a larger bonus to the casting character and a lesser bonus to allies, increasing their 1v1 viability while leaving their team fight potential unaffected. Same thing with auras. There shouldn’t be too many such interactions anyway – it gets very messy and very confusing when everyone on the team is casting some kind of AoE buff or debuff.

As it is, the game just feels bad in those 1v1 situations, where some classes are just soundly trounced by others, even regardless of what build they’re running (cough guardians cough thieves hackwheeze). That’s never fun, and it really calls into question the viability of certain classes when they can’t function on their own properly.

Anyways, this is kind of off-topic, so I’ll say that I support this thread wholeheartedly. The casual players must be engaged or there is no viewership, and without a viewership there is no e-sport. I mean, really, it’s bloody obvious, so why is this so hard for AN to grasp?

All units in Starcraft or the characters in LoL are 100% balanced in 1v1 ? :P
Even in Age of Empires 2 , Franks* Calavry have 20% more hp :P

Actually, Starcraft is a good example in that 1v1 match-ups across all three races are fairly balanced, as in you have very close to a 50/50 chance of winning regardless of what race you’re playing and what race you’re facing if you’re equal in skill level to your opponent. Using units as the basis of comparison, however, is completely disingenuous as that’s just not the type of game it is (units in Starcraft being much closer to the various abilities you get in LoL or GW2). Remember, we’re talking 1v1 between players, not units.

Characters in LoL are reasonably balanced in 1v1 situations, assuming a similar gold level between opponents. The nature of the game, however, means that there are some character types that simply counter others very hard (for example, sending a melee character mid against a caster can backfire tremendously). The difference is that there are very few characters in LoL that are outright unviable, as opposed to GW2 where there are many builds across most classes that are completely useless in any situation. That needs to be fixed.

What I find interesting is how people think casuals want the same game mode as pros, while on the same breath referencing Destiny’s recent SC2 remarks. I read the reddit version (I’m going to assume it’s similar to the video, please correct me if I’m wrong and I’ll watch the vid. I don’t have much time at the moment), and one of the big points I grabbed from it was how discouraging playing SC2 was on account of the notion that 1v1 was the only way to play.

I think deep down, casuals realize they’re casual. They want to have fun with the game, not play competitively. Who goes and tries to play local football competitively? Or soccer? Or basketball? You play pick-up games because of your love for the sport, and those games are often glaringly different from the actual game (unless you happen across 5s in pick-up basketball or something).

If anything, ANet’s focus on the casuals should be around more “fun” content. WvWvW isn’t for everyone, but it’s a step in the right direction. More game modes and perhaps more emphasis on fun game modes (keg brawl’s a thing, isn’t it? I have no idea where to do it though), even if they aren’t geared for e-sports, will provide a conduit for people to have fun while not being competitive. You want to maintain interest in the game in general for people to follow the e-sport.

The dilemma then becomes: how do people follow the e-sport and appropriately understand it enough to stay interested while not actively participate in the same game mode? You can’t balance GW2 like you can MOBAs. MOBA hero complexity is a dust particle compared to the classes in GW2, and the amount you can do with your one hero in GW2 eclipses that of a MOBA hero as well.

I personally think MOBAs are the future of e-sports, because they hide the complexity of the game under a layer of heroes that are pretty simple to understand. If you press all 4 of your buttons, odds are you’re positively contributing to your team, regardless. Also, you’re free to blame your team for being terrible even if you die repeatedly, while in GW2, people watch themselves die to someone over and over and instead blame the game. Once the game starts being blamed and not the people, it’s a downhill spiral.

So what does ANet do? I have no idea. I’d like to see GW2 become an e-sport, but it doesn’t seem like the style of game that’ll really make it. At best, I see a niche community creating smaller-scale tournaments. You don’t need 200k viewers for a tourney to be profitable, and I’d personally be happy with that.

I guess we’ll see.

Also, if a game tried to be balanced in 1v1, it would be the most extremely FOTM game ever, and I don’t think the MMO community can handle that. The Fighting genre already covers the 1on1 arena.

I admit it, it’s too late and I’m not reading all of the above. Based on the thread title, there is no in hell this game will come close to Esport. Who wants to watch people 2 hitting others or CC locking people down until they are dead? Or, the M A J O R difference in the downstate skills from class to class? Actually, who the hell wants to see someone actually get someone down and then…have to finish them off vs. OP downstate skills?

N O…O N E.

@ Zatria, I want the down state what do you have to say now? The downstate stops bads from 1v2’ing people. I 1v2 and win against people even witht he downed state, don’t always go for the stomp mate, sometimes aoe is the answer

LoL , people forget that the biggest thrill of pvp is to outplay your opponent. fullstop. Down sytem is fine but the direct link , RALLY system is not . You cannot have a system in place whereby there is no null effect for not actively doing anything different but bash the enemy, and your teammates will resurrect.

This also thus lead to never being able bask in the joy of out skilling with tactics as no matter what you do ,you will face a break wall when fighting different odds. Its like a bunch of friends say 5v5 are playing , and one of their teammates gets downed by your team. All of a sudden , god comes into play and says, wait u are not dead, you are just downed… ok … then god says.. carry on people just kill one of theirs and ill magically resurrect him, dont worry about bandaging him or anything, CONTINUE!!!

What are you talking about Kazzuki? downed state is balanced, both teams can stomp/rez and assist, simpel as that.

yes, down state is balanced, bar some uniformity in the abilities (ie ele’s).. RALLY is not.

Rally system promotes unimaginable consequences to the field of balance in terms of meta tactics, it is actually the reason why players feel down state is imbalanced in the first place though due to the inconsistencies of abilities during down state, most casual players get the perception of what is unfair, wrong.

Rally system means simply, that by not actively doing anything “different” for my fallen teammate, i can still help him. If we look at it in terms of aggresive or defensive tactics: Rally allows a team to consistently be aggressive without worrying about the consequences. Its like saying we can still continue to focus burst a target , and save our teammate without actually physically rezzing /protecting from stomping / combo curing … etc etc

This lack of consequences is what makes 1v2 very tough , because the 2nd player has an overwhelming advantage from his ally even down-ed, a piece of mind that he can still be aggressive and his player will magically stay alive .. bar distance as long as the downed player has tagged the enemy . Too complicated? it basically means , haha dont worry about healing fallen player, just pelt stones and give me 5k more damage in 10 seconds, which is on average 25-30% a players hp, while u have already lost 95% of all your abilities .. and get ready to be saved by god when ive killed one of their teammates.

The more imbalanced the downstate abilities are.. the more ruthless the rally system becomes. This is also why people complain about mesmers and thieves abilities the most, not because they are special in some way or another, but it ultimately lets teammates do whatever they want for the LONGEST time, before they get rallied.

Rally system means MINIMAL defensive meta play and rewards, attack attack attackkkkkkk mentality. AKA .. skill-less dry, horrible pvp groundwork.

You know, on this topic of casuals versus competitive style gamers, they need each other to exist.

Anet created, in GW1, a game that was not very casual friendly. It was a game with high barriers of entry and was difficult to begin playing. This prevented an influx of new players to watch GW1 pvp and as a result, the community slowly died. I think Anet learned from this aspect of their game but completely over reacted to it. Instead of just lowering the barriers of entry to their game, they concluded the best technique was just to lower the over all skill cap and to make the game just simpler on all levels.

If you ask my opinion, I would say the best technique is to maximize skill cap while making certain the game is easily accessible. The way I find it easy to improve this is to add things to the game that complicate it and ask something a long the lines of, “does this cause any kind of detriment to new comers?”

In regards to SCII, what I hear of heart of the swarm is that that game looks to make the over all game far more complicated by adding a large number of restrictions to what you can do. The idea is to raise the over all skill cap of the game. That is a novel idea, however in doing so you leave all your casual fans stranded. I think a game like SCII could benefit by changing handicaps based on what rank you’re in.

That last comment can be brought to GW2 and I can reference Cogbyrn for inspiration here. You absolutely need a simple version of the game for casuals to get into. They need to be able to play the game at a lower level, have fun, not feel overly competitive, and still feel like they’re playing the same game the top players are playing. I think this could be achieved by fun little extra games which aren’t significantly competitive.

@ Kazzuki- I completely agree that a problem with downed state is rally. But you have to keep in mind that a more engaging game model will be a more aggressive one. I can see your point, and it is indeed a valid one, to say that it promotes essentially saying “screw the downed guy let me just keep fighting and he’ll be ok.” But even in the end, its not that simple. Certainly in a 2v1 that may be the case since that one person won’t be able to get them up. But in most even side battles, the teams that win are the teams that can revive their allies from downed state. So it becomes essentially to respond to a downed ally immediately and sometimes this means defeating an enemy. But keep in mind, among higher players, they defeat someone with the downed player in mind. Perhaps without that player there, they might just let that player sit on the ground and bleed out. The only thing that really needs fixed (imo) for rally is only 1 for 1, not 1 for everyone.

Oh, and attempting to appeal to god as an argument isn’t really effective. Technically none of them are dead and to rally is a thing of moral. Essentially you are fighting for your life and the thrill of getting a kill on an enemy boosts your adrenaline so you can stand and continue to fight and get healed back up. But, in general, attempting to claim something is bad because it doesn’t make logical sense in a video game is just a bad strategy.

I can give a couple of examples of esports games which ARE doing very well because they have a better philosophy: LoL and DotA2.

LoL is unbalanced at the high level and always has been with only 15 or so out of the hundred champions being viable for top level games. However, at the casual level it is quite balanced and they routinely nerf champions with “one-shot” combos or that the community does not think are fun to play against (e.g. tryndamere).

DotA2 is also unbalanced at the high level where most of the heroes never see the light of day in comp games. Yet icefrog still nerfs heroes that pubs complain about (lycan/ursa/huskar) to the point of being utterly worthless in comp games. In pub games all heroes have about 50% win rate.

Both these games are thriving because people are actually able to play them. Anet should follow this same route – games these days HAVE to be casual friendly. Anything else is simply not an option.

Woah.
Honestly, I’ve been one of the players that have said ’’l2p’’ to people whining about stuff that isnt op on a high level, seeing this perspective makes me feel pretty foolish.

I really do think that arenanet did a huge blunder in making the hot join 8v8 instead of 5v5 strictly because casuals that play nothing but 8v8 wont be able to relate at all with 5v5 play.

I mean, casuals in league of legends get to play 5v5, and even if they’re not even rank 30 players they’re able to appreciate the high level play that is being done. Hotjoiners that will watch streams and tournaments of 5v5 wont get that, it’s a completely different game in 8v8, and a far inferior one at that I might add.

I truly hope arenanet removes 8v8/adds 5v5 and promotes it far more in hotjoin than they will with 8v8

ehtom.5047:

I can give a couple of examples of esports games which ARE doing very well because they have a better philosophy: LoL and DotA2.

LoL is unbalanced at the high level and always has been with only 15 or so out of the hundred champions being viable for top level games. However, at the casual level it is quite balanced and they routinely nerf champions with “one-shot” combos or that the community does not think are fun to play against (e.g. tryndamere).

DotA2 is also unbalanced at the high level where most of the heroes never see the light of day in comp games. Yet icefrog still nerfs heroes that pubs complain about (lycan/ursa/huskar) to the point of being utterly worthless in comp games. In pub games all heroes have about 50% win rate.

Both these games are thriving because people are actually able to play them. Anet should follow this same route – games these days HAVE to be casual friendly. Anything else is simply not an option.

DotA 2 also recently made a CM change to allow for a much different dynamic at the competitive level. Heroes are constantly being bumped up a bit from the bottom, and a larger variety keep seeing more and more play. It appears as though he’s trying to diversify the competitive scene.

Also, the changes in that game are minor things from a game that has been developed for what, 7+ years now? Further, Lycan was a bad example, since pros were banning him in basically every game as well.

Sure, Icefrog may make a change that helps pubs. However, did GW2 not do the same with the recent Assassin’s Signet change? Now all the damage isn’t front-loaded, but Backstab wasn’t a problem for top tier teams anyway as far as I could tell.

Are LoL and DotA doing well because they have a design philosophy that you think is different, or are they doing well for other reasons that we haven’t analyzed yet?

Any transcript of what he said?

Also, what’s his definition of a casual player. Because 99% of people are wrong in their definition of this group. They label them as “bad” when being casual has nothing to do with being bad OR good at a game.