Guild Wars 2

So, it’s 07:30PM pst on a Sunday Night and I decided to look at what’s happening on Twitch. Let’s compare game viewers.

-Guild Wars is sitting at ~325 viewers.

-Warframe (a f2p 3rd person PvE shooter)~ 730 viewers.
-Vainglory (iphone/ipad moba) ~360 viewers.
-Summoner’s War (iphone game) ~500 viewers.
-Blade and Soul (f2p mmo. beta for NA live for Korea) ~1500 viewers.

Now, why does any of this matter?

Anyone paying attention to the Devs will know that Anet really really wants wants GW2 to be e-sports and wants the pro leagues to push GW further into that direction. In fact a huge amount of money is even being offered as an incentive to lure more players into the game. This sounds wonderful, but in reality they have only managed to push the game further from that goal.

How have the managed to further distance themselves from this goal? Here is simplified list.

• Empty promises and over-hype.
  -When the Pro Leagues were announced, there were post that stated that balance was going to be a HUGE priority and that frequent balance patches would take place. When in reality, HoT was released followed by knee jerk hot fixes, followed by nothing. We currently have a terrible meta with nothing being done about it. The only info we have received was a indirect apology on a third party forum.

• Silent Devs
  -First of all, I do not blame the Devs for their silence. I blame the policy makers that are forcing them to be quit and not allowing them to speak about anything happening internally. At the moment, we literally have no idea what they are thinking or if they think if it needs changed. Hot-fixes have stopped and we do not know if anything new will be coming.

• Easily Manipulated Leagues.
  -Since day one, leagues have been manipulated. Here are some examples: Tanking MMR by losing, Tanking MMR by taking low MMR players with you, creating multiple guild teams to flood the leader board, and win trading. The current league system screams of poor implementation and being pushed out to fit a deadline.

• Pro Teams Unprofessionalism
  -Any one on NA knows what I’m referring too. PZ and The Abjured completely cluttered the Guild Challenger Board. The top 25 spots are filled with them making teams over and over. What this does it push ~10 other potential teams out of gold ranking. Players who would be gold are now silver. This demoralized players who want to see their names up there, but know that they cannot compete with the Pro League players. These same teams have also been spotted grabbing random pugs to tank their MMR to receive faster matches and to farm pugs. These are supposed to be our community leaders, but they’re only encouraging other players to manipulate their way up the ladder.

• People DO NOT want to watch this meta.
  -A big part of “E-sports” is the viewers that the game draws. Currently more people are watching cell-phone games then GW2. This meta is so devastating and slow pace, that it becomes very unentertaining. In fact the most exciting part about gw2 is the current drama that occurs in twitch chat. Not to mention, the big name players are constantly commenting on how bad the game is. For example, let’s talk about O-Eggs. Love him or hate him, this guy is a rockstar to the community. People love to watch him and people love to listen. However, watching him recently and listening to him really shows players how bad the meta is. If a new player heard him talking, they would quickly be demoralized and not want to waste their time with this game. Streamers are not happy which translates to viewers not being happy.

This post is very scatter brained and full of poor grammar, but I really do want this game to improve. As a 10 year customer, I can only see this game going down him. I don’t know who is making the decisions for the company right now, but they need to pull their head out of the sand and let someone else make choices.

Another person on these forums (I’d give credit, but can’t recall their name) said it best a couple days ago: Game companies don’t make Esports, the players do. In other words, if the game is well balanced, fun to play and watch and has a good competitive community, it will become an Esport eventually. Lacking those factors, no amount of effort or spent resources on the part of the developers will make it an Esport.

A-Net should get back to the basics of balancing and growing a once-healthy MMO, in my opinion, and drop this Esports jazz like a bad habit (which is pretty much what it is).

Game is great, it just forces you to queue up 5man stack or be forced to play with ppl that shouldnt EVER get thier rank.

There is nothing that represents player skill, so even if someone good starts straming i wont know about him cuz hes just noname for me.

Ranks seems to be about beeing the best from the worst in your elo. If your too good you will get better enemies and still rank up same speed as bad player vs bad player. I know we shouldnt punish bad or new players but still THERE SHOULD BE SOME INDICATOR that someone has LOTS to learn… I see ppl on RUBY that know nothing about rotation. They dont know who they can 1v1 and who they cant, they cant play as team and strive for epic DUELS offpoint. There should be rly system that would point out thier mistakes so they will ever fix them, just like Team that speaks after match what they could do better and what they couldnt. If we leave newbies alone there will be 80% Minionmaster necro and DH player base…