Guild Wars 2

this thread broke you

addressing one thing would effectively address 3 out 4 of OP’s issues: too many bruisers in the meta, not enough specialists.

Relevant

Ramoth.9064:

Nexed I’d like to remind you that my issue is not with class balance or fun factor, in fact I’ve already said gw2 is a lot of fun to play.

But a fun game isnt necessarily a game that translates into a compatible for esports game. If you read my initial post it highlights all the isssues that are holding it back. I make these topics in hopes arenanet can improve in the esports scene, not to whine about class balance.

The biggest issue is that this game wasn’t a PvP centric item from the ground up like current Mobas and FPS games are. We shouldn’t compare apples to oranges; we should really compare this game to other MMORPG games in the Esports scene.

Oh right, there are no MMO games in the Esports scene, at least, not in the States.

Anet said their visual effects may get toned down, but GW2 isn’t going to completely change the game’s PvP infastructure. The Conquest gamemode will still be Anet’s flagship go-to while Stronghold will cater to the WvW, PvE and Guildies.

People play the game because it’s an MMO with darn good PvP elements. It’s balanced compared to other MMOs around (it used to be the most balanced mmo prepatch). It’s the closest you’re going to get for Esports as far as MMORPG games are concerned.

That’s not to say the game is fine… there’s still a lot of “esport” items this game needs but what you’re asking is a complete game makeover… realistically speaking, that’s not going to happen.

First, you have to define what you mean by “e-sports”. If your definition of an e-sport is a game that competes with LoL and DOTA 2, then sorry, not many games are going to live up to your expectation. Maybe CS:GO, and if you really love the game, you might throw SC2 into that category, though I’d disagree with the latter (and maybe the former, but I don’t know much about it).

I had difficulty reading the OP because of the following:

A successful Esports needs two things:
Players, and spectators. The game is actually not as important.

The concept here is so generic that I have no idea what the OP means. The game is actually paramount, because a “game” constitutes all of its components, including:

• Spectate-ability
• Depth of mechanics
• Pacing
• Ability to understand the current state at a glance
• Etc.

I also disagree that removal of the holy trinity in PvE was a good thing, because based on what I hear about raiding, the holy trinity is sort of present anyway. You have someone who tanks, support who help heal the group, and DPS who bring the boss down as quickly as possible. If you want to design meaningful and complex encounters, structure actually helps you make it more complex without worrying about silly boundary cases. It’s important for balance.

Similarly, structure in their PvP is pretty fluid, from what I can tell. All classes seem to expect to be able to be all roles, and if they aren’t, then “diversity” is a problem. If they solidified builds for classes and had a pre-game draft of various builds (for example a “Condi Necro”, a “Bunker Guardian”, a “Support Ele”, etc.), then they could probably balance PvP much better. Instead, they throw a million variables into the mix and wait to see what settles.

There are a number of reasons why GW2 might suffer as a widely popular e-sport, and many of them I don’t think are really fixable. However, can people hold tournaments and get a thousand spectators or so? Sure. Does it have to be Monday Night Football to be an e-sport when it comes to attendance? No, I don’t think so. As long as they have a competitive platform and offer tournaments/monetary rewards, I think the term “e-sport” applies.

Being an esport means $$$ for the creators of the game. That’s all it is. The more people that watch it, the more people will want to buy and play it. Unless a large number of people watch the tournaments, then this game will never be an esport game. Just watch the evolution of overwatch once it releases. It will show you how a real game should become esport and may eventually kill the “esports” scene in this game.

Photinous.4628:

Being an esport means $$$ for the creators of the game. That’s all it is. The more people that watch it, the more people will want to buy and play it. Unless a large number of people watch the tournaments, then this game will never be an esport game. Just watch the evolution of overwatch once it releases. It will show you how a real game should become esport and may eventually kill the “esports” scene in this game.

The game on the horizon is always going to “kill” the current game that is out. It hardly ever happens.

Overwatch is probably going to be no more of an e-sport than TF2, also.

Arenanet wanted to ‘go esports’ with every intention that it’d be the next DotA and LoL. Photinous pretty much explained what a successful esport is, though I thought it was quite obvious in the first place. Its got nothing to do with what my expectations are. I am here as a critic, providing my opinions on the subjective and not-subjective.

The thing is, Arenanet is running a business, making esports infrastructure isn’t going to be a cost-less process and they’d definitely want the most mileage for their money spent. I doubt they are content with throwing $400k into the scene to make little returns.

And this applies to anything really, if you are making a business venture with the attitude that ‘it won’t beat the best’ then your business failed before it even began. (ok, I’m not a business person and this comment might be an exaggeration, but the idea is there, I’m quite sure Anet wants GW2 to succeed).

Ramoth.9064:

Arenanet wanted to ‘go esports’ with every intention that it’d be the next DotA and LoL.

You know that for a fact? Where/when did they say it? I missed that part.

+1 to you. they did not say that verbatim. My apologies. But what I meant was that they wanted it to be successful, like dota and LoL. And to argue they don’t intend for this is ludicrous.

Oh there was this though: they wanted it to be a ‘major’ esport:

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=29213

Cogbyrn.7283:

Photinous.4628:

Being an esport means $$$ for the creators of the game. That’s all it is. The more people that watch it, the more people will want to buy and play it. Unless a large number of people watch the tournaments, then this game will never be an esport game. Just watch the evolution of overwatch once it releases. It will show you how a real game should become esport and may eventually kill the “esports” scene in this game.

The game on the horizon is always going to “kill” the current game that is out. It hardly ever happens.

Overwatch is probably going to be no more of an e-sport than TF2, also.

First of all, I said it will kill the gw2 esports scene, and not the game. Second of all, Overwatch has been heavily designed and marketed as an esports game by blizzard and if you look at blizzard’s history they have never failed being #1 in every category of gaming they have ever entered.

tim.1280:

I think the only real problem with GW2 is it’s complexity…. It is a cool game to watch however, it is extremely hard to understand what is happening if you have never played GW2 before and why would one watch something where they have no idea what is going on?

Guild Wars 2 is actually probably the most simplest of MMORPG. In other MMORPG, there are tons of buffs that does something.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I also disagree that removal of the holy trinity in PvE was a good thing, because based on what I hear about raiding, the holy trinity is sort of present anyway. You have someone who tanks, support who help heal the group, and DPS who bring the boss down as quickly as possible. If you want to design meaningful and complex encounters, structure actually helps you make it more complex without worrying about silly boundary cases. It’s important for balance.

Similarly, structure in their PvP is pretty fluid, from what I can tell. All classes seem to expect to be able to be all roles, and if they aren’t, then “diversity” is a problem. If they solidified builds for classes and had a pre-game draft of various builds (for example a “Condi Necro”, a “Bunker Guardian”, a “Support Ele”, etc.), then they could probably balance PvP much better. Instead, they throw a million variables into the mix and wait to see what settles.

Trinity is mandatory for meaningful raiding/PvE. Without having dedicated tanks and healers the developers cannot make PvE content hit hard enough to give the mechanics teeth.
There is a reason that GW2 has “speedrunning” rather than “progression”

I think the trinity hate comes out of WoW where blizzard took trinity to the far extreme – where tanks where neigh invincible, and DPS where glass howitzers that died when sneezed on, which naturally leads to some really obnoxious quality of play.
A better trinity model is probably Bioware’s SW:TOR which moderated the trinity, but still kept it in force.

Photinous.4628:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Photinous.4628:

Being an esport means $$$ for the creators of the game. That’s all it is. The more people that watch it, the more people will want to buy and play it. Unless a large number of people watch the tournaments, then this game will never be an esport game. Just watch the evolution of overwatch once it releases. It will show you how a real game should become esport and may eventually kill the “esports” scene in this game.

The game on the horizon is always going to “kill” the current game that is out. It hardly ever happens.

Overwatch is probably going to be no more of an e-sport than TF2, also.

First of all, I said it will kill the gw2 esports scene, and not the game. Second of all, Overwatch has been heavily designed and marketed as an esports game by blizzard and if you look at blizzard’s history they have never failed being #1 in every category of gaming they have ever entered.

Except MOBAs, where HotS serves a casual niche in the fact of LoL and DOTA 2. They might have tournaments, but it’s a casual game.

I haven’t seen Overwatch’s marketing, but I know people in the beta (unfortunately that doesn’t include me yet). It sounds like a casual MOBA/FPS hybrid. Do you think it’ll break into the MOBA LoL/DOTA 2 scene, or overcome the CS:GO FPS scene? Or do you think the niche it carves out will be large enough to be “#1”?

I still think it’ll be a TF2 style game. Emphasis on skins (hats), fast-paced and fun gameplay, and not a real e-sports contender.

And please, show me where Overwatch is marketed as e-sports. I’m not sure i see it yet.

GW2 has tournaments, ranked seasonal ladders (as much as their design/implementation is called into question), and paid events. If nothing else, they need to work on their spectate-ability over all else. I just think it’s too late in the game to address those issues.

Its not too late at all, if anything, Stronghold shows that the pvp environment can be readily changed. Stronghold as a pvp format is much easier to understand, the action isn’t so focused on singular player vs player encounters. With a bit more refining it could be a great esports format.

Got a few comments for you, OP. First I’d like to say this is really well written and thought out, much more so than most of the drivel that gets posted here. Secondly, while I really enjoy the PvP and find it to be the most enjoyable MMO PvP, it is definitely not an esport like they said they wanted to.

You touched on several aspects of this, but one really general problem is simply that Anet has really neglected sPvP. In 3 years we finally got one additional game mode and… zero additional maps considered remotely competitive. We got sky hammer and courtyard… and lost raid on the Capricorn. Though admittedly that map wasn’t a good competitive map either.

Conquest has seen no changes, despite issues with competitiveness. I don’t think I agree about it being boring to watch, but there are certainly issues with it being competitive. The biggest thing that many have been wondering for years: why isn’t point capturing done in the standard way that works: capping speed and direction is based on the number of team members on a point. I really think this change would be a good one to make. It would curb cheese things like bunker builds holding on to points against 2 or 3 others, where they don’t even have to make kills, just survive.

On locked builds and lack of spectator skill knowledge:
For the competitive side I think this could be solved by actually showing the builds in a pregame lobby. This would also require being able to save build sets all builds child be changed around (with some limitations.)

On skill knowledge, this is a bit more far reaching, but I think Anet should really go back to the GW1 way of just displaying what skills are being used, for both spectator and player. While it was an interesting idea to want players to watch for animations, there’s problems making that work, and as you say spectators don’t know what’s happening. It worked for GW1. If you have 500 different skills x 5 races x 2 sexes = 5000 animations to learn (yes I know some aren’t that different and other exceptions.) You also have tiny asura that you can’t see, or various other things that would hinder the ability to see what a character is doing.

I cant believe I just read all of that. Very well thought out and written, and I think you hit the nail on the head here. I would be interested to read what sorts of changes that would benefit the game in your opinion.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I cant believe I just read all of that. Very well thought out and written, and I think you hit the nail on the head here. I would be interested to read what sorts of changes that would benefit the game in your opinion.

Easy.

Developers of games should stop designing specifically around esports and in stead design competitive games around being a fun and engaging experience for the majority of their players through compelling ingame reward structures at all levels of play and effective matchmaking algorithms.

They should support their esports community if it develops naturally, but they should stop wasting money trying to manufacture one if their game is not deemed appropriate as a spectator sport naturally by its community and the general public.

For me, it does not matter if GuildWars2 is an esport or not.
Aren’t you tired of waiting 3 years of it?!
Aren’t you tired of 3 years for waiting concept and mechanics balances?!

I can not say I enjoy the game, because it’s not fun for me to PvP in fast 1-2-3 skills. I can however enjoy the idea of 200.000$ prize promises, and people wanting those promises. I wish good luck to all players watching those games hoping for money.

As a side note, I think ArenaNet should have put this 200.000$ prize to first 10 players completing an extremely hard PvE Raid or Dungeon. In my opinion this would have been a much better financial investment and marketing publicity. But, then again, I am just a player and customer, what do I know?!

OP raises some good points.

I’m a huge support to GW2 in many forms of the game. Lately though I haven’t even touched PvP due to just how… toxic ankitteny it can make me feel when I’m playing it. I’ve some friends that are in the same boat.

I like PvP, it’s fun and engaging at it’s best. But for it to be an e-sport? No… that’s not going to get ANet nearly the attention they may believe they will get.

This topic is really good and needs to keep going, I want to see ANet at least let us know their thoughts on the points brought up in this thread. Would help the relationship with their customers.

Honestly, I think the biggest issue is Conquest. If you take a look at monday’s proleague games, even at the highest levels of play from a spectator’s point of view the group combat is still just a garble of animations, with very little discernible actions. The commentators have to resort to commenting on general things happening, someone getting pressured, someone bunkering for a long time. Only once in a while do you hear about a specific skill from the commentator. Theres just too much visual garbage and ‘sustain’ that theres no distinct moment where you see an engagement, meaningful uses of cooldowns, then the result. Most of the action is still people blowing cooldowns, failing to kill someone, then watching the fight reset.

Anyone rememberAspect Arena? In terms of spectator sports, those were much more successful, skill usage was succinct, scoring was exciting, and even the maps were more interesting. True, it might be less fun to play, because its less mechanically complex, but it works much better in terms of spectating.

I personally enjoy watching gw2. But I agree with most of your comments.

The combat is very fast-paced. In 10s, a lot of skills have been used. The problem is not the visual mess: things go too fast anyway.

I did have a look at a few other e-sport games. For example, in MOBAs, I felt that there is very little fighting, and when the fighting happens, it is very short. As a spectator, what you see is mostly players slowly building their game, and a few intense burst of fights. This changes of pace are what makes things interesting.

In conquest, the game starts and after 20s, everybody is fighting. And the fighting will continue pretty much up to the end. It is very hard to see if an amazing play has been done because you would need to know the game for that. To a large extent, what saves the day in terms of spectating interest is the downed state mechanics. Having someone down usually puts an interesting pressure on both teams and open for potential snowball effects. But this is not helped by the fact that most fights are just sustained for very long time with HP barely moving.

Seeing a sustained 5v5 is not interesting. There is a lot of skills involved, lot of coordination etc, etc.. but it’s boring to watch. Yet this is what most of the match ends up being.

As OP said, the best moments of a game outside of these short times when someone is downed: the creature/lord mechanics. Because they create a change of pace. Suddenly everyone is holding their breathe. Honestly, the creature/lord is not something I like as a player, but I do agree that this makes viewing more interesting.

Maybe they need to design PvP maps the same way they designed PvE raids: the mechanics has to change at some moments to create a change of pace. Temple already has something like this with the buffs at fixed time, stronghold also. But this just tend to pull the sustained fight there, and thus does not really create a change of pace.

They really need to separate balance between the game modes of PvP and PvE as balancing only around PvP is detrimental to other game modes (WvW is largely harder to become OP in due to being able to counter certain builds in one way or another with some person in your group).

As long as they keep nerfing around PvP the viability of classes in other content will suffer, this is going to be very concerning as you look at the raids that are released and what is required in them.

It irks me that they’ve never learnt their lesson about spammy passive plays that are dumb to watch; they did acknowledge that the presence of S/D thieves and their petting zoo ranger/full signet warriors approach from a year and half ago was the wrong way to go; yet flash forward to the present, we have a Tempest/Herald/Reaper rock-paper-scissors meta that relies on Diamond Skin and passive Herald boons

The AoE spam in team fights is still bad with the heavy amounts of AoE CC; it’s at least better than the EarthShaker hambow spams from before but different professions, same mistakes.

And of course the feel that they are spending HoT money marketing the broken crap instead of fixing things (I know that funding development doesn’t really work that way but still).

zencow.3651:

It irks me that they’ve never learnt their lesson about spammy passive plays that are dumb to watch; they did acknowledge that the presence of S/D thieves and their petting zoo ranger/full signet warriors approach from a year and half ago was the wrong way to go; yet flash forward to the present, we have a Tempest/Herald/Reaper rock-paper-scissors meta that relies on Diamond Skin and passive Herald boons

The AoE spam in team fights is still bad with the heavy amounts of AoE CC; it’s at least better than the EarthShaker hambow spams from before but different professions, same mistakes.

And of course the feel that they are spending HoT money marketing the broken crap instead of fixing things (I know that funding development doesn’t really work that way but still).

ArenaNet will proudly disagree:
http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE

I’ve already made tons of threads regarding why Guild Wars 2 cannot be an Esport unless certain things are fixed and changed.

If ArenaNet actually took a step back and said, “We won’t be an Esport until it’s ready” will help them become an Esport. ArenaNet stop being tryhards and start taking Esports seriously.

Harvey.7820:

NeXeD.3042:

I’ve been playing pvp mmos since 1998. GW2 pvp is one of the best pvp experiences I’ve ever had. The others are Ultima Online, DAoC, and Darkfall. GW2 is the only game I’ve played that comes close.

It seems to me most people who think this is a failing esport are the ones who just couldn’t cut it, and they attempt to spread this Esports is a failure idea. They complain about OmG why would they spend 400k on a pvp competition when “I” think they should spend it on balance because the game is clearly imbalanced because I didn’t make it to pro leagues! Dunning kreuger.

You must be an EXTREMELY slow learner if you’ve PvPed from 1998 and still cant recognize class imbalance. Maybe you’re one of those players that plays FoTM classes on every patch release.

No it means I’m an extremely good judge of balance. You probably play a warrior or theif so I do feel bad, but you are now what rangers and necros used to be.

I’ve mained a necro for like 3 years during the good and bad and I don’t always play a meta build yet I’ve maintained a 58% winrate in ranked/unranked.

So much thought put into elaborating hurt feelings when your neighbour gets something and you can’t deny it.

Very well written. Thanks for the read OP.

Nova Stiker.8396:

zencow.3651:

It irks me that they’ve never learnt their lesson about spammy passive plays that are dumb to watch; they did acknowledge that the presence of S/D thieves and their petting zoo ranger/full signet warriors approach from a year and half ago was the wrong way to go; yet flash forward to the present, we have a Tempest/Herald/Reaper rock-paper-scissors meta that relies on Diamond Skin and passive Herald boons

The AoE spam in team fights is still bad with the heavy amounts of AoE CC; it’s at least better than the EarthShaker hambow spams from before but different professions, same mistakes.

And of course the feel that they are spending HoT money marketing the broken crap instead of fixing things (I know that funding development doesn’t really work that way but still).

ArenaNet will proudly disagree:
http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/?xid=soc_socialflow_twitter_FORTUNE

I’ve already made tons of threads regarding why Guild Wars 2 cannot be an Esport unless certain things are fixed and changed.

If ArenaNet actually took a step back and said, “We won’t be an Esport until it’s ready” will help them become an Esport. ArenaNet stop being tryhards and start taking Esports seriously.

That article is actually really interesting, as I also think GW2 has a lot of work to do before it becomes any kind of big e-sport to invest in.

Also, I can’t help but read your last comment as “stop being tryhards and start trying hard.” To claim they aren’t trying is just disingenuous. I think they are just being misled by someone in a position of power that someone doesn’t deserve. Which is unfortunate.

“Since it switched to free-to-play in late August, Guild Wars 2’s monthly active user base has doubled to 3.1 million (October 2015)”

Then why the hell do I see the same 10 people in every PvP game I enter?

Photinous.4628:

“Since it switched to free-to-play in late August, Guild Wars 2’s monthly active user base has doubled to 3.1 million (October 2015)”

Then why the hell do I see the same 10 people in every PvP game I enter?

kinda noticed that as well. Funny is nt?

I just hope that someone is seriously taking into account this feedback.

As much as I enjoy playing the game,it just isn’t fun to watch.
On the other hand I don’t enjoy playing MOBAs,but I can watch
them for hours and even understand what’s happening in terms
of combat and strategies to a limited extent.
In GW2 this is not possible.
I don’t see how a player who isn’t familiar with this game can understand
anything combat related through all the clusterkitten of spells spamming.
Even I find it hard to follow.
I watched a match of the latest pro league for like 2 minutes.
The casters where talking about spells and rotations,and I was like
wtf rotations,there’s 20 spells/sec spammed here.
Furthermore,camera work was very busy and hectic.It moved from one poi to another every few seconds.It didn’t allow for me time enough to get involved and concerned
about an encounter.It was more akin to a general quick review of a already played match than a live game.
Everyone looked the same.Same models,all human,all classes looked the same,and the only way to differentiate them was the skill bar.This only added to the confusion for the watcher,especially the inexperienced one.

Call me crazy,but the closest Anet has come to creating a valid Esports format is with
some of the various seasonal mini games.The Wintersday snowball fight,Dragonball etc.I’m not saying that these games are Esports ready,just that their format is closer to
what a Esport game should be.
Limited skills per class that make using each skill a significant event.Maps with objectives that are fun to watch as they are to play,and give room for the deployment of strategies that can be clearly visible to the spectators.

Call me absolutely,completely insane beyond insanity but the only way I see for this game to have any chance at Esports is to completely separate PvE and WvW from PvP.
No only in terms of class balance.
Overhaul the classes specifically for PvP,limit the abilities,traits,stat combos available per class,and remove conquest maps from official games.
Make each class clearly distinct and easily recognisable from the looks only.
Either this or start over with a new dedicated Esports game.
Given it’s ups and downs GW2 is a great MMORPG.
It can’t be a great Esport at the same time.

A car and a truck.
A fighter jet and a passenger plane.
Vegetables and bacon.
Something has to give.

P.S For those last four lines of wisdom and poetry,I’m sure you’ll be thankful forever.

@Aenaos: As much as you might think you’re crazy, I agree with many of your points.

An eSport, in my opinion, cannot survive simultaneously with the personal attachment that an MMO brings.

Without very easily understandable goals, people will become disinterested. Take a moment to think about how to explain the goals in major sports (basketball, football, soccer, etc.), then try to explain Conquest. You’ll most likely see the issue immediately. Conquest takes multiple sentences to really explain. Most other popular sports require one short sentence to get the idea.

Pacing is also an issue in GW2. Usually fights/plays are the exciting part of games. With nonstop fights and plays that require knowledge of how the game mode tilts, you can’t necessarily intuit something that someone else might know is really, really good for a team in GW2.

In other words scrap the whole Esports ambitions to keep sPvP fun for the players. Abilities are already limited enough. I can’t take all of my utilities, only 5 including the healing skill and elite. Contrast with WoW when I can bind every ability to my keyboard and know when to use said abilities. Garrote and expose armor weren’t really “good” skills compared to some of the others, but I used them anyway because I knew there were situations they’d be useful. Venom use was fun but the problem in Gw2 is you can’t use venoms since you’re giving up better skills. In PvP thief is underpowered whereas in PvE anything that requires more skills to kill will be immune to CC and be poison stacked already.

Agemnon.4608:

In other words scrap the whole Esports ambitions to keep sPvP fun for the players. Abilities are already limited enough. I can’t take all of my utilities, only 5 including the healing skill and elite. Contrast with WoW when I can bind every ability to my keyboard and know when to use said abilities. Garrote and expose armor weren’t really “good” skills compared to some of the others, but I used them anyway because I knew there were situations they’d be useful. Venom use was fun but the problem in Gw2 is you can’t use venoms since you’re giving up better skills. In PvP thief is underpowered whereas in PvE anything that requires more skills to kill will be immune to CC and be poison stacked already.

In League of Legends for the first 10 minutes of every game you play you are only pressing 4 buttons. Quality over quantity.

You can’t make every playing card equal, you can make every playing card appear equal.

Guild Wars 2 biggest problem with PvP is it is a big mess. Everything is a mess.

I think we forget that what made Guild Wars 1 such an amazing game was the complexity. And complexity can be a good thing. I can remember when I met my first MM enemy which where 2 or 3 people comiting suicide before the match started by self damaging skills so the other necros could create a kitten load of minions. Then after the 1 minute “prepare for match” where over they would rush lord and kill it in a mather of seconds. And that exact reason was where I loved Guild Wars 1 pvp for. Maybe it was not an E sport. But it was extreamly compedetive. I dont see why Guild Wars 2 has to become an esport, that does not mean it can’t be extreamly fun to watch and extream compedetive . It was just so much fun seeing new builds all the time till they got nerved, then people would go think about other ways to win, which was a part of the fun. For example spirit bomb, who remembers that one? 1 guy had a bit more hp then the rest of his party his entire party would die when the enemy team was getting lose and you got a chain reaction that wiped out the entire map, except this one player cause he had a bit more HP.

For a spectator, Conquest looks like a bunch of players whacking each other with wet noodles over points. It’s not visually interesting and the fun relies on you actually playing so you can notice the more subtle effects that are happening that are invisible outside of looking at player buff bars.

I’ll keep it short: Steve Fowlers decisions completely are the opposite of how I see Gw2 and what’s good about it. Hopefully someday he stops, or gets a call from the boss to finish what he’s doing. Steve fowler doesn’t know how to control a budget of money, and how to invest it properly. If he had a company of his own he would already be bankrupt because he gives more money out then he earns.

Who is Steve Fowler?

NeXeD.3042:

Harvey.7820:

NeXeD.3042:

I’ve been playing pvp mmos since 1998. GW2 pvp is one of the best pvp experiences I’ve ever had. The others are Ultima Online, DAoC, and Darkfall. GW2 is the only game I’ve played that comes close.

It seems to me most people who think this is a failing esport are the ones who just couldn’t cut it, and they attempt to spread this Esports is a failure idea. They complain about OmG why would they spend 400k on a pvp competition when “I” think they should spend it on balance because the game is clearly imbalanced because I didn’t make it to pro leagues! Dunning kreuger.

You must be an EXTREMELY slow learner if you’ve PvPed from 1998 and still cant recognize class imbalance. Maybe you’re one of those players that plays FoTM classes on every patch release.

No it means I’m an extremely good judge of balance. You probably play a warrior or theif so I do feel bad, but you are now what rangers and necros used to be.

I’ve mained a necro for like 3 years during the good and bad and I don’t always play a meta build yet I’ve maintained a 58% winrate in ranked/unranked.

Well said. As someone who mains a thief and plays a Necro as a secondary class I feel like Thief being at a low point is only fair after being in the meta consistently since the game was released while others have been out of it for long periods of time. With ANet’s desire to shake up the meta every quarter thief and warrior will be back in it one day. For now I still play Thief and enjoy it and keep playing hard. When I feel like being more of a presence in team fights and not so much in the roll of rotating constantly I switch it up to Necro.

The 200k couldve done a lot of good, make better pvp game modes for one. Strongholf could really work with some tweaks and better maps