Guild Wars 2

Right now I don’t think our twitch views are reaching levels (for live streams at least) that they are capabible of. Sometimes we’re even lower the star wars the old republic shivers.

What are you ideas to maybe get audiences to be more involved and connect to fights?

I find with most popular streaming games audiences are often connected to players because of how they play the game and what not. You got “big” plays in LoL and Mobas, you got big combos in fighting games, i find in popular MMOs like WoW the pvp is centered around a lot of micro management of allies and enemy players.

What do you think this game’s pvp needs to get the audiences more involved and excited while watching streams?

Balance between classes/skill wouldn’t hurt. Half the problem is that so many people run the exact same builds/styles – sadly, usually whatever requires little skill beyond mashing ones face into a keyboard and hoping for a decent outcome.

If there was more variety in workable builds (there are variances of course but they tend to be few and far between once you get serious) and possibly more ways to ID the more PvP focused players from the herd you might also get more views. But with everyone using similar skills, similar looks and no real identifier aside from a small name tag.. it’s hard.

If they brought in capes or something as in GW it might help as well. Watching two big guilds go at it for gold trim was always fun to watch/play.

There needs to be a few things:
1) Realistic investment. What I mean is that you need to feel that every second of the game is worth watching. You see the score board at 400-200, and yet you know that if the one team just does this one big play, they can still pull it out. That is something that League has, and it means that in most games there is always a sense of “if we just play well enough we could win this any time”, and that translates to the viewers. They stay invested the entire match, instead of seeing “well its 400-200, this game is over”.

2) There need to be more ways to make big plays, and they need to be noticeable and meaningful. As it is right now, this really only comes in from stomp/res mechanics, and a few very rare ways to make awesome plays on a secondary mechanic. Other than that though, there aren’t nearly as many big plays. Whereas again, a game like league can have amazing play after amazing play.

I think there is a deeper difference. Many of the people I know who watch MOBA or other streams (myself included) do so while doing something else. Every minute of gameplay isn’t make-or-break, so it is something that can be flipped to when the action heats up. I can check my bank statement and listen to the commentator. GW2 isn’t like that, WvW has enormous stretches of downtime and sPvP has almost none. A WvW stream is often dull because of the build-up to real action (for a viewer, watching a supply run is Zzzzz), whereas a PvP stream requires way more investment because of the constant changing action. If you flip away from a PvP stream and flip back, you have missed way more than flipping away from a few last hits in a MOBA or a scout dying in an RTS. You lose context very quicky if you leave the stream for any reason and it becomes noise.

The killer is that instead of investing myself 100% in a stream like that, I would rather just be playing.

I personally think the issue with this is the game format. Perhaps the game itself. Its just boring to watch.

The way the game is played is pretty much the same throughout the match. Once you’ve seen one teamfight, you’ve pretty much seen them all.

There is no real Early-game/Mid-game/Late-game phases of a match, so there’s no real progress during the match.

How would anet introduce a game mode with different strategies for Early/Mid/Late game? I’m honestly not too sure.

As for what we can do now, well with the patch coming up Dec 10, there are bound to be a few more people trying out PvP, and we just need to captivate them somehow.

Reikou.7068:

How would anet introduce a game mode with different strategies for Early/Mid/Late game? I’m honestly not too sure.

Temple of the Silent Storm. Ironically it is by far the best map for viewing because of the buffs, but is never played. It is the one map that I think has a good chance of being an interesting watch, with Foefire being the only other that has potential.

The new changes will bring more ppl in PvP which eventually will increase the interest for livestreams, thats the best solution for that currently more ppl in PvP more viewers… and of course some good commentators are essential

Bhawb.7408:

Reikou.7068:

How would anet introduce a game mode with different strategies for Early/Mid/Late game? I’m honestly not too sure.

Temple of the Silent Storm. Ironically it is by far the best map for viewing because of the buffs, but is never played. It is the one map that I think has a good chance of being an interesting watch, with Foefire being the only other that has potential.

This is true. Temple and Foefire kind of have this in them, but even then, Temple is not really “Early/Mid/Late game,” but more plays to a timer…

These are also exceptions.

Build template system.

1. bigger community
2. better rewards and more connection to pve (which they are working on)
3. more maps with different objectives than just capture point (flag carry for example could work)

Immensus.9732:

The new changes will bring more ppl in PvP which eventually will increase the interest for livestreams, thats the best solution for that currently more ppl in PvP more viewers… and of course some good commentators are essential

I think a big thing they should do is give the option to choose to spectate ranked games and what not. It will help immensly for new players who want to figure out good strategies.

1] They make things more complicated than they need to be. They add all these gimicky game changing mechanics that will only drag it in to deeper waters. The addition of skyhammer clearly shows they have no idea what they are doing in terms of esports.

Conquest isnt very intuitive for new pvpers either. Where something like a moba pigeonholes you in to the area youre supposed to be fighting, new players in GW2 often run around aimlessly attacking random targets.

2] On top of that GW2 is hard to watch due to the animation style and strain
on your system. So less people are able to stream it (with good fps) = less streams. Standard graphical settings give it that typical greyed semi blurry look. Looks great in game but horrible on stream. Using Sweetfx makes it a bit better….but most dont even know that exists.

First and foremost, before every and any viewing issue anyone has listed here…
.—SHORT RESPONSE—
To have a good number of twitch viewers, a game has to have a good number of players.
GW2 doesn’t, so can’t.

.—LONGER RESPONSE—
GW2 already had millions of people playing it and the best hype I’ve ever seen… if the game couldn’t manage to hold onto a decent sized population after that… the game can’t hold onto a twitch population. That leaves a need for large and well done gameplay fixes before it ever even has a shot at getting a sizeable playerbase and so a shot at having a sizeable twitch fallowing.

These devs are hardcore into ‘doing it their own way’ and that is waiting, shaving and minor counter-productive tweaks to skills… so that means with the current way of things the game literally can’t get what you want.

I wouldn’t be surprised if NCSOFT bailed on GW2 ages ago (like in beta) and put everything into WildStar, it’d explain the dog slow pacing Anet has been forced to take.
Kinda tragic, so much potential in this game.

Main priority should be to create a good competetive pvp mode. Something that is super intuitive, easy to get in to but hard to master.

The entire MOBA trend shows exactly what designing a good pvp mode can do for your game.

Locuz.2651:

Main priority should be to create a good competetive pvp mode. Something that is super intuitive, easy to get in to but hard to master.

The entire MOBA trend shows exactly what designing a good pvp mode can do for your game.

They’ve talked about some ideas concerning the lord and that MOBA design. One example was making the lord go up over time in terms of its points so that even if someone is off by 200 points, they can still make it if they can kill their lord.

Another suggestion I thought up is maybe making respawn times last longer as the game goes on so that dieing has a much larger punishment. Similar to what they do in MOBAs when the respawn rate I think is decided by your level. I mean imagine being off by 100 points, you win a teamfight, boom you are now back into a close game because the team you just killed is waiting to respawn. This kind of on your edge of your seat instances could really help improve the watchability of this game.

Deified.7520:

Locuz.2651:

Main priority should be to create a good competetive pvp mode. Something that is super intuitive, easy to get in to but hard to master.

The entire MOBA trend shows exactly what designing a good pvp mode can do for your game.

They’ve talked about some ideas concerning the lord and that MOBA design. One example was making the lord go up over time in terms of its points so that even if someone is off by 200 points, they can still make it if they can kill their lord.

Another suggestion I thought up is maybe making respawn times last longer as the game goes on so that dieing has a much larger punishment. Similar to what they do in MOBAs when the respawn rate I think is decided by your level. I mean imagine being off by 100 points, you win a teamfight, boom you are now back into a close game because the team you just killed is waiting to respawn. This kind of on your edge of your seat instances could really help improve the watchability of this game.

Although I hate the idea cause I hate waiting to respawn that may actually be a good idea. So that when you kill someone you actually “defeated them” and won’t have to worry about that person while capping a point rather than defeating him at his home point and then next thing you know he pops up again when you’re at 3/4 health from the last fight now having a disadvantage and the cap being pointless. Although I think the best idea would be MORE GAMETYPES lol. CTF, attack and defend, team death match, 1v1 dueling arenas. That are all on leaderboards. And more maps.

The reasons why I dont watch:

1, Battlefield clutter – spirits, pets, minions, clones, turrets, etc etc. Like watching a football match being played with 40 a side and 3 balls.

2, Effects are too pronounced – it is hard to see anything because all the effects are so loud. Like watching a football match on a foggy day.

3, Characters are too small – it is impossible to see anything really with these tiny characters. The first two points really exaggerate this. Like watching ants play a football match.

Solutions:

1, Nerf all AI specs. Make spirits, minions, turrets and phantasms weaker and buff the active parts of these classes if necessary. These specs shouldnt be viable in pvp above a basic level.

2, Reduce all the effects on spells

3, Ban asuras or buff their size like in the super adventure box. The minimum size really should be a small human.

4, Also shrink large norns too. Norn mesmers are frustrating.

Until they fix these issues there wont ever be people wanting to view this game.

Although rewards will help as more people will play (way way more imo) and this will bump up the audience.

Cush.4063:

Deified.7520:

Locuz.2651:

Main priority should be to create a good competetive pvp mode. Something that is super intuitive, easy to get in to but hard to master.

The entire MOBA trend shows exactly what designing a good pvp mode can do for your game.

They’ve talked about some ideas concerning the lord and that MOBA design. One example was making the lord go up over time in terms of its points so that even if someone is off by 200 points, they can still make it if they can kill their lord.

Another suggestion I thought up is maybe making respawn times last longer as the game goes on so that dieing has a much larger punishment. Similar to what they do in MOBAs when the respawn rate I think is decided by your level. I mean imagine being off by 100 points, you win a teamfight, boom you are now back into a close game because the team you just killed is waiting to respawn. This kind of on your edge of your seat instances could really help improve the watchability of this game.

Although I hate the idea cause I hate waiting to respawn that may actually be a good idea. So that when you kill someone you actually “defeated them” and won’t have to worry about that person while capping a point rather than defeating him at his home point and then next thing you know he pops up again when you’re at 3/4 health from the last fight now having a disadvantage and the cap being pointless. Although I think the best idea would be MORE GAMETYPES lol. CTF, attack and defend, team death match, 1v1 dueling arenas. That are all on leaderboards. And more maps.

They could just make kills worth 15 points each or something. 5 points is irrelevent which leads to stagnant combat based around unkillable dudes smacking each other pointlessly. It is frustrating and dull. Having 15 points for a kill would reward more risky strategies and would appeal to way more people as people loving kill stuff but most people hate standing on point waiting for it to go red.

Step 1. Make the game better, people have repeated over and over how to do this. This will not be enough to bring people back by itself but it needs to happen before the next steps.

Step 2. Something to grab peoples attention to make people come back/get new blood. This could be anything from an absolutely huge patch advertised like an expansion, or an expansion itself, to some kind of regular tournament that pays out money people can compete for. The patch has to have something to do with Spvp obviously.

I think that is it really.

I mean a big step they should do is fix the combat. Sure it may be fun, but from a compettive stand point it is soo badd. THey really dropped the ball on this in an attempt to make PvE more appealing to casuals. I mean this is by far some of the worst combat I’ve seen in a pvp game that wants to be “esports”. It doesn’t promote player skill/active player nearly enough to be interesting to play or interesting to watch.

1. AoEs. By the six everything is a dam AoE. Really reduces the overall skill required to do anything

2. No Roles. This means there isn’t a whole lot of teamwork. All teamwork that happens in this game is primary passive play. Not directly doing anything for each other ,they just automatically do it. I thought combo fields would take over this problem. Nope. You guys made the combo fields effects not matter that much and they’re just spammed none stop.

3. No skill punishment. If its an skill you activate, people are probably spamming it. Conditions, anytype of AoE, dodges, defensive skills.

4. Animations. This combined with no skill punishment the overall gameplay from a watchers perspective becomes a confusing mess of what appears to be players just mashing buttons randomly. On top of this you make the entire counter play to some skills is spotting their animations. That sure seems like a good thing to do when you have a midget class and enough animations on your screen that it is easily mistaken for a downtown nightclub.

5. No roles means that each class is trying to achieve the same thing. This is insanely boring. Only exception to this are bunkers and that is even a more boring role to watch. Watch as I run in circles around a point doing none stop CC, damage negators, and just staying alive. They just spam that crap.

6. AIs. A game about watching models and animations, it sure is easy to spot what an asuran is doing in a teamfight when there are 15 models on my screen and a ton of animations.

Like honestly with this whole new reward system I think the population may go up for like 2 weeks or till the next big LS patch. Your mechanics and game mode just…suck for pvp. The only way you’ll be able to get people back into spvp with the current mechanics is to start offering unique skins.

Lordrosicky.5813:

The reasons why I dont watch:

1, Battlefield clutter – spirits, pets, minions, clones, turrets, etc etc. Like watching a football match being played with 40 a side and 3 balls.

2, Effects are too pronounced – it is hard to see anything because all the effects are so loud. Like watching a football match on a foggy day.

3, Characters are too small – it is impossible to see anything really with these tiny characters. The first two points really exaggerate this. Like watching ants play a football match.

Solutions:

1, Nerf all AI specs. Make spirits, minions, turrets and phantasms weaker and buff the active parts of these classes if necessary. These specs shouldnt be viable in pvp above a basic level.

2, Reduce all the effects on spells

3, Ban asuras or buff their size like in the super adventure box. The minimum size really should be a small human.

4, Also shrink large norns too. Norn mesmers are frustrating.

Until they fix these issues there wont ever be people wanting to view this game.

Although rewards will help as more people will play (way way more imo) and this will bump up the audience.

I agree, with all of these points. For character size i suggest a general option where, if flagged, people can watch every enemies like a standard human model.

These are general points, in addition, i think conquest mode is really more fun to play instead of watching, because it’s not easy follow the action when the action is splitted in more points at the same time and there are no many screen infos that can help spectators to follow better the match.

I had the experience to cast some gw2 match for national tournaments and it’s really another story when you can chose internally which camera you want to use and which pov you want to follow.

When you have the regia in your hands you can watch the game like you want and this incredibly help in a conquest mode.

There is a real big difference between watching a gw2 conquest mode on twitch and watch the same match in spectator mode.

• Shoot all the pets…. Complicates the game and makes it much harder to understand. Huge price to pay to give some players a false sense of accomplishment.

• Tone down particle effects… the “plays” are being overshadowed by the pretty stuff

• Easier to understand … “Look at all the condis”, " I think someone went down", “did ress spirit die” shouldn’t be the only thing standing out enough for people to notice.

• More diversity… SoloQ is painfully boring to watch and it’s rare to find anyone doing organized TQ, Promote more scrim steams

sell the IP to Disney?

Needs to be interesting to watch. Stream personality helps but only goes so far if your mono gaming a channel.

Proper balance would be better for skirmishes, you’d have intense well played fights instead of knowing the outcome based on counters and basic context.

Tone down effects, but make the cast animation more clear.

Less A.I. Really unless your a mesmer or necro you shouldn’t have more than one A.I. companion.

Add fun game modes. Only masochists like to watch boring conquest that GW2 has.

tbh i dont mind in streamview numbers anymore.
i was watching many streams for a long period of time and then realised again that it is just much more fun playing myself. maybe most other streamviewers thought the same.

i too dont get how it could be any entertaining to watch a moba. i tried to and most of the time i see people fighting mobs and minions/creeps, there may be a netto pvp fighting time of 10% tops as i experienced it, rest is pve imo – just to lvl up and get more gold to buy stuff, which again is pve. it is much more boring to watch than conquest mode and i dont get how anyone can call this “real pvp” compared to gw2’s pvp.
for sure i would love to see more gamemodes, but this is for my gaming experience and entertainment.

besides that, i think a majority of the viewers like the streamer, not the game he/she plays.
so if you as a streamer want more views, be more entertaining (or be a good-looking girl – that sure helps as well as most gamers are megahorny puberal boys).

i would still watch major tournaments though, but there aren’t any at this time

This game’s pvp is in a very bad state. Why would anyone watch this mess? It’s really sorta hilarious that despite being a high budget AAA title with successful PR and there being excellent pvp in Guild Wars 1, this game’s pvp is plain trash and very unpopular. How is that even possible without someone kittening up pretty majorly?