tl;dr – I’m writing this out of fear of the GW2 competitive scene being over taken by better scenes. There’s a market for players and viewership, and GW2 has lost me to better experiences (in my opinion), and I would like to want to be more invested as I really appreciate this game. I don’t know what needs to change, but I point out what interest me from other games below.
I fairly recently have transitioned out of playing Guild Wars 2 with any regularity, and the same goes for watching it. So I thought I’d share some thoughts from one who played the game for a while on what pulled me away.
In short it can be summarized into viewership quality and scene potential being too low. Playing however is super fun. That said, in watching other games such as DoTA2, HoTS, SSB4, SSB Melee, SV5, and most recently Pokken I found the viewership experience to be much better.
I watched last year’s International, and I have to say DoTA suffers from build and mechanics complexity in the same way GW2 does. But it’s much easier to view at a macro level than GW2, I wouldn’t have watched the DoTA2 International if it weren’t for the size of the scene.
I watch Heroes of the Storm fairly frequently, and I am much more impressed with HoTS than DoTA2 or GW2 from a viewer perspective. I really like how important positioning is and how you can body block to make plays. The MOBA genre gets more and more interesting as time goes on in a match, whereas GW2 in comparison is pretty much the same throughout, which can make some matches very stale. HoTS has really well done comeback mechanics, that make matches interesting through to the end.
Regarding the 4 fighting games, viewership is very simple. For a sports comparison, it’s like watching wrestling or a boxing match. Additionally in the Smash Bros. series there’s a doubles competitive format, which is very interesting. The thing I really enjoy most about the fighting games is seeing reads happen that result in really flashy looking combo’s or finishes. The mind games you see happening are very entertaining. And the fighting game scene is carried by the community, especially the Smash Bros. games, there’s some really interesting history there.
I’ve been to a few Smash Bros tournments to compete and watch, and it’s super intimidating at first, but if you can open yourself up a little bit socially, it’s a really great experience. Fighting games are just really easy to view, and for me very interesting, and entertaining, then the fact that the scene not only has so much potential, but realizes that potential is amazing. During the Genesis 3 tournament Super Smash Bros Melee had 200,000+ viewers on Twitch for a tournament that was entirely community driven. That game came out in 2001, that’s unreal.
In summary, as fun as GW2 is to play, I don’t have as much fun watching it as other games, and as a result of seeing other games that were more entertaining to watch or have more scene potential, I’ve shifted my playing time to those games. So if anyone from the ANet competitive team reads this, I would hope you can address some of the high level things to improve the viewing experience. Removing that bunker meta was a really good move, but honestly that was a big part of driving me away, but I hope the hurt from that meta doesn’t have too much of a lasting effect. I believe this game can be more fun and bigger, and that ANet can make it happen. I’ll be watching from the shadows, as I happen to be a thief.
#BelieveInAnet
Sylvari Elementalist – Mystree Duskbloom (Lv 80)
Norn Guardian – Aurora Lustyr (Lv 80)
Mia A Shadows Glow – Human Thief (Lv 80)
