Guild Wars 2

A-net needs more slaps to the face not less.

do you know when Jormag’s loot will be increased?

Truth being told but it could have been done in a much more professional matter.

It’s funny you all blame ArenaNET for vM’s downfall.

However … this tournament is conducted by ESL, a company that lives and breathes esports for more than a decade. They have a very specific ruleset and absolutely no room for “what if”, which is fair. I am sure every team has agreed to those terms. If they failed at reading, that’s their problem, not ESLs and certainly not ANet’s

The only thing ANet is “guilty” of is providing the incentive for the tournament (the grand prize).

Focus your hate elsewhere, ANet doesn’t deserve it, not in this particular case anyway.

To put things in perspective.

kdaddy.5431:

PowerBottom.5796:

kdaddy.5431:

Everyone is crying for a pause mode. Obviously i have no clue about online sports but real sports doesnt have the “ok lets stop everything for the hurt player”.

Many sports do, although there are about a bazillion other factors that matter when playing a game over the internet that can’t really be controlled that easily….. It’s simply a necessity to have a pause option in any game that wants to be taken serious as a competetive game.

@Topic: I really don’t watch the interviews…. I’d watch them if they’d talk about why they’ve made certain build decisions and precise strategic movements etc, but not that weird and boring fluff stuff or Helseth just being a troll. Maybe some of the interviews do offer more insight, but I don’t wanna listen to all the other stuff to maybe get some information Im actually interrsted in.

I really just dont understand the pause button factor. Its suppose to be as real and as competitive as supposedly a real sport. And no most of these sports dont just stop for the injured player. They are trying to get the player out of sight and out of mind and finish the game as quickly as possible.

The 3 worst injurys ive seen on t.v was kevin ware, andrew bogut and shaun livingston. They were not trying to pause the game. They had to stop because or a terrible injury which in all 3 cases could of been life defining.

Question, if Vermillion had a sub would they still be crying this hard? If dude paid for a legit firewall do we still have this problem?

Beyond that the guy tried to cheat on top of it? How can you claim this that and this when your just as maniacal to the person who cheated you? You literally have players from car crash (who treid to cheat) and players from vermillion getting paid to play this game and are doing everything possible to say the Esports scene is crap because something didnt go there way. Literally have single Pro player at anything has a book of the obstacles they had to overcome and we are sitting here talking about a necessary pause button on a game most people question is worthy of Esports.

Agreed it is a disgrace to want the basic esports infrastructure like a puase button. You are exactly right, playing real sports is exactly the same as playing video games. I mean video games are called esports so it has sports in the name which means all analogies with real sports are 100% awesome.

I also think it is a disgrace that in esports they dont get drugs tested for peds. I mean in real sports they do and esports is trying to be a real sport. So it must be identical in every way. And wtf are esports doing playing esports at lan events. They should all be lined up on a basketball court with a real ball flying around while they play esports. If they want to do like a real sport at least do it right kitten .

you are correct in everything you say. Post of the year

Dont understand the big deal he just says what all veteran players already knew only anouncing it to public. Everyone knew that if you want to go pro in gw2 then try to put the least amount of effort and dont sacrifice anything for it.
No other team put as much effort into gw2 as vermilion did and at the end of the day all that time is wasted because they got ddosed, the game is joke and anything can happen.
Every single tournaments outcome has been decided by something that players cant affect, be it lag on lan tournament or secret sigil nerfs or whatever else.
If the game would be about skill then a team that wins world championship wouldnt be one of worst teams next year with same players while competing against same players.

This whole esports thing is a joke. Even before this interview you had players swearing, cursing and trolling during interviews. The ‘pro’ players don’t take this seriously and the viewers don’t take this seriously. End this farce.

Leeto.1570:

Dont understand the big deal he just says what all veteran players already knew only anouncing it to public. Everyone knew that if you want to go pro in gw2 then try to put the least amount of effort and dont sacrifice anything for it.
No other team put as much effort into gw2 as vermilion did and at the end of the day all that time is wasted because they got ddosed, the game is joke and anything can happen.
Every single tournaments outcome has been decided by something that players cant affect, be it lag on lan tournament or secret sigil nerfs or whatever else.
If the game would be about skill then a team that wins world championship wouldnt be one of worst teams next year with same players while competing against same players.

Salt? :o

I lost more respect for the commentators who just moved on. Yeah, solid gold journalism there.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Leeto.1570:

Dont understand the big deal he just says what all veteran players already knew only anouncing it to public. Everyone knew that if you want to go pro in gw2 then try to put the least amount of effort and dont sacrifice anything for it.
No other team put as much effort into gw2 as vermilion did and at the end of the day all that time is wasted because they got ddosed, the game is joke and anything can happen.
Every single tournaments outcome has been decided by something that players cant affect, be it lag on lan tournament or secret sigil nerfs or whatever else.
If the game would be about skill then a team that wins world championship wouldnt be one of worst teams next year with same players while competing against same players.

Salt? :o

Much. It’s just one of the many people who live and breath GW2, but love nothing more than complaining about how they’re terrible victims of the same company they devote so much of their life to.

If it was really that bad, they’d play another game, but honestly, there’s just a lot of miserable kittens here who just like playing the victim so they can direct their disgust somewhere other than themselves.

Leeto.1570:

Dont understand the big deal he just says what all veteran players already knew only anouncing it to public. Everyone knew that if you want to go pro in gw2 then try to put the least amount of effort and dont sacrifice anything for it.
…
If the game would be about skill then a team that wins world championship wouldnt be one of worst teams next year with same players while competing against same players.

Leet0 speaks the smarts. GW2 is not a competitive game. It’s a game designed by casuals for casuals, funded by gem store dress-me-up. And I say this without any malice or criticism, because targeting casuals is not a bad thing. The casual market is far bigger than what Anet would achieve if they went after the competitive PvP segment.

The friction we see on the forums happens when competitively-minded PvPers have not yet come to terms with GW2’s casual nature and find themselves frustrated by the design direction. (BTW, I’m not talking about Argi/Vermillion here specifically, just in general.) Take the PvP seasons as an example. Anet wants everyone to reach Ruby, and Legend to be attainable for the moderately skilled through a reasonable time investment. Anet treats the PvP seasons as a reward track because that’s the game they want to build. The disconnect happens when people such as myself call for a more skill-based environment where Legend would have at least some prestige, and we have not yet accepted the reality that Anet’s vision for the game is fundamentally different from ours. Anet does not “fix” the lack of competitiveness of the ladder, because from their perspective there is nothing to fix.

As for the Pro League, the lack of competitiveness there is a logical outcome of the casual league seasons. There is no tryhard progression at the grassroots level, no path for aspiring new players to achieve bragging rights and graduate to the big leagues. The only way the Pro League could suddenly be competitive without the infrastructure to foster new players is through magic.

TL;DR Argi just disillusioned and salty as F. Casual game working as intended.

^perfectly said.

I only have to add that he has the social capability of an airdryed pear!

First of all, let me agree with Leeto on his points. +1 The second post especially is of particular beauty and touches my soul.

Now, hasn’t this game’s PvP gone in a hilariously wrong direction? I mean, come on, this couldn’t have developed into anything else given Anet’s track record of messing up. This is not simply a problem of someone cheating, of a DDoS or alting so to speak, but is rooted deeply in how bad the game was being handled for years now.

In the first season, we had bunker wars which killed interest for many, but what happened in this season so far is particularly hysterical. We had postponed matches in week 1 because servers wouldn’t work. We had a DDoS that cost one of the front-running teams their chance for qualifying to the LAN event. We saw players abandoning their teams and joining their opponents for better chances of winning money. We had forbidden subbing and a disqualification that let yet another team go. And then there are teams like Super Smash, Guns N Roses and Purple Noise that, with all due respect, get destroyed 500-0 by the two or three top teams and thus are considered free wins.

That’s Guild Wars 2 Pro League (and competitive PvP in general, for that matter). It has become a joke. The few people who watch weekly streams don’t do that for the atrociously boring games but to make fun of ArenaNet and the game in Twitch chat… You thought a chat spamming ResidentSleepers during 0-0 matches in season 1 was hilarious? You should check out people talking about >name_redacted< (a certain shooter) in the chat nowadays. To put it bluntly, barely anyone cares about GW2 PvP and the few people that do, do it only to laugh at how bad it is.

It must suck to be Mike O’Brien now. As the head of ArenaNet and the Game Director, he will ultimately have to make the decision about the future of GW2 competitive PvP. From the outside, it looks like anything short of completely burying it makes little sense from the business perspective, because paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to be a laughing stock is a poor deal by anyone’s standards.

Who’s at fault? Mostly the balance devs because the majority of issues discussed here and elsewhere, now and before, stem from poor skill balancing. It was that balancing that pushed many players out of the game, many viewers away from watching streams, and prevented the few existing teams from being fully competitive.

Let me emphasise with the utmost sincerity that this post is not aimed at attacking anyone, be it devs or players, but rather to add to the discussion about the direction in which this game’s PvP has been led.

Aereniel.7356:

Leeto.1570:

Dont understand the big deal he just says what all veteran players already knew only anouncing it to public. Everyone knew that if you want to go pro in gw2 then try to put the least amount of effort and dont sacrifice anything for it.
…
If the game would be about skill then a team that wins world championship wouldnt be one of worst teams next year with same players while competing against same players.

Leet0 speaks the smarts. GW2 is not a competitive game. It’s a game designed by casuals for casuals, funded by gem store dress-me-up. And I say this without any malice or criticism, because targeting casuals is not a bad thing. The casual market is far bigger than what Anet would achieve if they went after the competitive PvP segment.

The friction we see on the forums happens when competitively-minded PvPers have not yet come to terms with GW2’s casual nature and find themselves frustrated by the design direction. (BTW, I’m not talking about Argi/Vermillion here specifically, just in general.) Take the PvP seasons as an example. Anet wants everyone to reach Ruby, and Legend to be attainable for the moderately skilled through a reasonable time investment. Anet treats the PvP seasons as a reward track because that’s the game they want to build. The disconnect happens when people such as myself call for a more skill-based environment where Legend would have at least some prestige, and we have not yet accepted the reality that Anet’s vision for the game is fundamentally different from ours. Anet does not “fix” the lack of competitiveness of the ladder, because from their perspective there is nothing to fix.

As for the Pro League, the lack of competitiveness there is a logical outcome of the casual league seasons. There is no tryhard progression at the grassroots level, no path for aspiring new players to achieve bragging rights and graduate to the big leagues. The only way the Pro League could suddenly be competitive without the infrastructure to foster new players is through magic.

TL;DR Argi just disillusioned and salty as F. Casual game working as intended.

+10000

From the interview, it seemed like he was telling it how it is from his perspective. I mean, he has a good point.

The sad thing is, I understand how he feels. I was DDoS’d during qualifiers for the first WTS along with many others on the NA side. Grouch pretty much let the match PZ vs Radioactive go for over 13 restarts. The stream was cut and basically were told that we could either replay the matches another day, or finish it today. Everyone voted to finish it that day. Despite it basically being a 4v4 at that point, we (The Abjured) still qualified.

While it was not “fun”, the makers of the tournament saw it through in a fair way, and at the end of the day nobody had any complaints about who won. The videos of the matches were later compiled and posted on youtube.

This is MY experience getting DDoS’d, and let me tell you it is the most frustrating thing to possibly have happen, let alone if you lose a match because of it, but it was presumably handled better than Argi’s case.

I’m not particularly familiar with the circumstances, but people should actually watch the interview instead of judging him seeming “unprofessional” for talking about what was asked of him in an honest way. It’s ostensible towards the end of the season that some will lose interest, especially when they don’t win!

Ostricheggs.3742:

From the interview, it seemed like he was telling it how it is from his perspective. I mean, he has a good point.

The sad thing is, I understand how he feels. I was DDoS’d during qualifiers for the first WTS along with many others on the NA side. Grouch pretty much let the match PZ vs Radioactive go for over 13 restarts. The stream was cut and basically were told that we could either replay the matches another day, or finish it today. Everyone voted to finish it that day. Despite it basically being a 4v4 at that point, we (The Abjured) still qualified.

While it was not “fun”, the makers of the tournament saw it through in a fair way, and at the end of the day nobody had any complaints about who won. The videos of the matches were later compiled and posted on youtube.

This is MY experience getting DDoS’d, and let me tell you it is the most frustrating thing to possibly have happen, let alone if you lose a match because of it, but it was presumably handled better than Argi’s case.

I’m not particularly familiar with the circumstances, but people should actually watch the interview instead of judging him seeming “unprofessional” for talking about what was asked of him in an honest way. It’s ostensible towards the end of the season that some will lose interest, especially when they don’t win!

It seems like people forget to realize that this tournament is actually ran by ESL and not ANet. I don’t get the salt here really. Yeah Grouch let you replay gazillion times … so what? It was unfair to Team PZ who had taken the necessary measures to counter the DDoS. You didn’t deserve to go there if it is how you say it. Never forget that beside money, you play for the people. That’s what sports is all about. Forcing 1-2k people to wait for your highness because you are too cheap to spend 20$ on DDoS protection is not sportsmanship.

And LOL at the “communist community” remark Made my day at what lengths people go to make themselves feel better on the internet Not everyone lives in a 3rd world communistic country mate.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Ostricheggs.3742:

From the interview, it seemed like he was telling it how it is from his perspective. I mean, he has a good point.

The sad thing is, I understand how he feels. I was DDoS’d during qualifiers for the first WTS along with many others on the NA side. Grouch pretty much let the match PZ vs Radioactive go for over 13 restarts. The stream was cut and basically were told that we could either replay the matches another day, or finish it today. Everyone voted to finish it that day. Despite it basically being a 4v4 at that point, we (The Abjured) still qualified.

While it was not “fun”, the makers of the tournament saw it through in a fair way, and at the end of the day nobody had any complaints about who won. The videos of the matches were later compiled and posted on youtube.

This is MY experience getting DDoS’d, and let me tell you it is the most frustrating thing to possibly have happen, let alone if you lose a match because of it, but it was presumably handled better than Argi’s case.

I’m not particularly familiar with the circumstances, but people should actually watch the interview instead of judging him seeming “unprofessional” for talking about what was asked of him in an honest way. It’s ostensible towards the end of the season that some will lose interest, especially when they don’t win!

It seems like people forget to realize that this tournament is actually ran by ESL and not ANet. I don’t get the salt here really. Yeah Grouch let you replay gazillion times … so what? It was unfair to Team PZ who had taken the necessary measures to counter the DDoS. You didn’t deserve to go there if it is how you say it. Never forget that beside money, you play for the people. That’s what sports is all about. Forcing 1-2k people to wait for your highness because you are too cheap to spend 20$ on DDoS protection is not sportsmanship.

And LOL at the “communist community” remark Made my day at what lengths people go to make themselves feel better on the internet Not everyone lives in a 3rd world communistic country mate.

Just to be clear: it’s not possible to stop a DDoS attack. It’s possible to prevent your ip from being resolved in the past, but there’s no quick fix to stopping a DDoS from a source that already has your ip.

This isn’t the first time they have interviewed or invited someone who gave the game a black eye publicly…..

Any other game, would have revoked their rights to shout cast.

On the bright side, you can say that it’s awesome that ANET let’s them invite people to bash their product openly. You can say it’s awesome that shout casters are allowed to encourage negative behavior.

Moving on to Argi, if he is that upset over the way Guild Wars 2 is heading PvP wise, there are more beneficial ways of making your voice heard then being a drunken slob on stream.

Personally, I say suspend Argi from tournament play for next season and move on. There’s no need for drunks to be on stream… there’s no need to advertise non-partner merchandise on stream, there’s no need to bash a game on stream.

LMFAO that was fantastic. It wouldn’t have made a difference if he was sober as it is taboo to speak about anything but praise for the game. This way at least made it interesting to watch.

Ravenmoon.5318:

Ostricheggs.3742:

From the interview, it seemed like he was telling it how it is from his perspective. I mean, he has a good point.

The sad thing is, I understand how he feels. I was DDoS’d during qualifiers for the first WTS along with many others on the NA side. Grouch pretty much let the match PZ vs Radioactive go for over 13 restarts. The stream was cut and basically were told that we could either replay the matches another day, or finish it today. Everyone voted to finish it that day. Despite it basically being a 4v4 at that point, we (The Abjured) still qualified.

While it was not “fun”, the makers of the tournament saw it through in a fair way, and at the end of the day nobody had any complaints about who won. The videos of the matches were later compiled and posted on youtube.

This is MY experience getting DDoS’d, and let me tell you it is the most frustrating thing to possibly have happen, let alone if you lose a match because of it, but it was presumably handled better than Argi’s case.

I’m not particularly familiar with the circumstances, but people should actually watch the interview instead of judging him seeming “unprofessional” for talking about what was asked of him in an honest way. It’s ostensible towards the end of the season that some will lose interest, especially when they don’t win!

It seems like people forget to realize that this tournament is actually ran by ESL and not ANet. I don’t get the salt here really. Yeah Grouch let you replay gazillion times … so what? It was unfair to Team PZ who had taken the necessary measures to counter the DDoS. You didn’t deserve to go there if it is how you say it. Never forget that beside money, you play for the people. That’s what sports is all about. Forcing 1-2k people to wait for your highness because you are too cheap to spend 20$ on DDoS protection is not sportsmanship.

And LOL at the “communist community” remark Made my day at what lengths people go to make themselves feel better on the internet Not everyone lives in a 3rd world communistic country mate.

That community that I work for takes a direct hit because I don’t join random TS’s to give away my IP anymore. Like the above said, once someone gets ahold of your IP, depending on your ISP it could take up to a day to get another! There isn’t some magical solution to DDoS’.

And reread my post, grouch didn’t let US play a gazillion times, we agreed to play even under the circumstances.

Surely you don’t understand a thing about what happened during the qualifiers, PZ was getting DDoS’d as well. Saying I didn’t deserve to go is a joke too. If you believe that it’s alright for viewers to have a tournament ruined by a DDoS, I don’t have anything further to point out.

As far as I can tell, nobody has provided proof of being DDoS-ed and until then I think all of this DDoS talk is utter B.S. I feel like DDoS claims shouldn’t even be allowed unless you have proper proof. If you’re too computer illiterate to figure out how to set up a proper network monitoring system to actually log attacks then you shouldn’t be making claims that you’re not even sure of. For all you know, John Doe broke into your network and is using it to download the new episode of Game Of Thrones.

However, if the server itself on which the pro-league game is currently being hosted is under a DDoS attack and ArenaNet didn’t reset the matches or postpone it then that is B.S. as well.

As far as using Teamspeak to get people’s IP addresses, that’s why everyone should switch to Discord. There’s no way to get anyone’s IP address directly via Discord, not even by the people who created the servers. Additionally, Discord servers use cloud hosting and have automatic fail-over if your server goes down or falls under attack. I’ve had this experience and it took about 10-15 seconds before Discord had my server back online. So far my experience with Discord has been great. No issues and it just keeps improving so if you’re having issues with all this DDoS crap or anything similar, I’d highly recommend switching to Discord. It’s also 100% free and supports 5000 (i think) users per server.

Of course, there are always other ways (arguably, easier) to get an IP Address, but that’s really a different topic.

im still not 100% on what happened. watched the interview. to the best of my knowledge vermillion got ddosed and anet didnt let them have a rematch? if so, yeah lol, gw2 esports are a kittening joke. they should seriously abandon the whole thing and focus on gvg/ wvw.

Stand The Wall.6987:

They should seriously abandon the whole thing and focus on gvg/ wvw.

I doubt the Pro League will continue past the current season, unless Anet secures additional investor funding to keep it going. I don’t think there is a business case to justify it, other than as a PR spend with a negative ROI. It’s hard to see how the current season could have met any of the performance metrics Anet has set for it.

To come back to what Leman and Leet0 have been saying in this thread, the Pro League and the core PvP experience are so opposed in ideology that the pairing of the two feels disjointed and even illogical. The design aims are completely different. On one hand we have the core PvP, which is a non-skill intensive and casual experience where all things are attainable for all people, and game design leans towards passive traits and spammable AoE skills. The best builds play themselves and participation is rewarded. A socialist utopia, as Leet0 put it. On the other end of the spectrum we have the Pro League, which should be a very skill-intensive and exclusive affair where only the very best can compete.

It’s not hard to see the issues when the two are combined. The Pro League receives no support from the core game, because the core game’s design is geared towards a totally different audience. Anet is trying to marry a participation-based ladder to a skill-based tournament, which is not unlike putting trousers on a fish. Funny but completely pointless.

To recap what I wrote in a previous post – the Pro League won’t be competitive unless the core game also supports competitive play. Until that happens, the Tokers, Phantarams and ROMs of the scene will continue to rake in easy dough, because there is nobody to challenge them. If Anet wants a competitive Pro League, the core game’s infrastructure has to support fostering new talent that comes in and makes the old guard sweat for their money. At the moment, those guys are not sweating one bit.

Stigas.9378:

I lost more respect for the commentators who just moved on. Yeah, solid gold journalism there.

Well they are not journalists. Argi started talking about another game and didn’t give an actual interview about the actual game instead he had to complain to two commentators who have no way of even discussing that. Argi was either just bummed or very drunk because he also behaved very childish or like a teenager who think he is cool and the best in the world. He starts his interview with saying ‘have you tasted this bear?’ I mean as a commentator on a tight schedule I wouldn’t want to waste time on a kid who is so salty so he gets drunk during a game that many of us find serious.

Now I didn’t cheer for either CC or vM and I never cared for Argi, his name was nonexistent too me, so good work getting more umm… popular.

I don’t know if GW2 e sports is dying or not, I know that I like to watch it and I do hope it continues. What I hope for in the future though is that different classes and build will be more viable, not fun to see the same classes clash all the time.

Aereniel.7356:

Stand The Wall.6987:

They should seriously abandon the whole thing and focus on gvg/ wvw.

I doubt the Pro League will continue past the current season, unless Anet secures additional investor funding to keep it going. I don’t think there is a business case to justify it, other than as a PR spend with a negative ROI. It’s hard to see how the current season could have met any of the performance metrics Anet has set for it.

To come back to what Leman and Leet0 have been saying in this thread, the Pro League and the core PvP experience are so opposed in ideology that the pairing of the two feels disjointed and even illogical. The design aims are completely different. On one hand we have the core PvP, which is a non-skill intensive and casual experience where all things are attainable for all people, and game design leans towards passive traits and spammable AoE skills. The best builds play themselves and participation is rewarded. A socialist utopia, as Leet0 put it. On the other end of the spectrum we have the Pro League, which should be a very skill-intensive and exclusive affair where only the very best can compete.

It’s not hard to see the issues when the two are combined. The Pro League receives no support from the core game, because the core game’s design is geared towards a totally different audience. Anet is trying to marry a participation-based ladder to a skill-based tournament, which is not unlike putting trousers on a fish. Funny but completely pointless.

To recap what I wrote in a previous post – the Pro League won’t be competitive unless the core game also supports competitive play. Until that happens, the Tokers, Phantarams and ROMs of the scene will continue to rake in easy dough, because there is nobody to challenge them. If Anet wants a competitive Pro League, the core game’s infrastructure has to support fostering new talent that comes in and makes the old guard sweat for their money. At the moment, those guys are not sweating one bit.

Pro League won’t be competitive unless ArenaNet serves us more competitively minded core-pvp?

PL’s competitiveness is completely out of ArenaNet hands, ball is in the ESL court.

I would put that down as a nice to have, not something that’s even remotely close to affecting how competitive the PL is. It’s not quite the problem you’d think.

Creating pro league teams from core PvP isn’t the goal. You’re seeing a marriage where the isn’t one between ArenaNet core PvP and ESL PL. Even if new teams formed, they would very unlikely be top 4, who are also getting better together at the same rate.

There are plenty of players that have, or could have the mechanical/rotational skill at a pro league level. They honed their abilities in the fiery pits of core-pvp just fine, but they just don’t have the desire/drive/skills to succeed at a much harder goal: creating and maintaining a social structure like a team.

Hypothetically, to pose a solution for the problem you are suggesting, ArenaNet could provide infrastructure for players to naturally form into teams, getting players used to socially seeking out players and playing the game as five players.

So again, hypothetically, abolishing dynamic queue, bringing back solo and team queue (slightly higher league rewards for team), would work best.

Right now, core PvP is highly antisocial, all about single player content, or playing co-op with your best friend.

The average player is getting zero experience with 5 man PvP content on VOIP, which is purely what pro play is.

PL success is so dependent on super good voice communication, being able to maintain high energy, and theory crafting as a team. If the core PvP incorporated these things, currently incorporating zero, we’d no doubt have a few more PL teams. For the reason I said before, it wouldn’t even be a big change.

The Pro League is highly competitive outside of a few anomalies. I’d argue it would be more competitive with a pause feature and limiting the number of teams a player can ever represent in a season to 1, subs discluded.

Disconnects and team swapping definitely trivialize the EU PL’s competitiveness.

NA PL hasn’t had any interference by those sort of things, and we have a bunch of teams who have shown the ability to take games off of each other.

I’d say it’s clear what the important issues are, ESL rules should be priority tweaked to ensure the results maintain integrity for competitive PL.

ArenaNet should just focus on build diversity in PvP, and improving spectator mode.

Fay.2357:

Ravenmoon.5318:

Ostricheggs.3742:

From the interview, it seemed like he was telling it how it is from his perspective. I mean, he has a good point.

The sad thing is, I understand how he feels. I was DDoS’d during qualifiers for the first WTS along with many others on the NA side. Grouch pretty much let the match PZ vs Radioactive go for over 13 restarts. The stream was cut and basically were told that we could either replay the matches another day, or finish it today. Everyone voted to finish it that day. Despite it basically being a 4v4 at that point, we (The Abjured) still qualified.

While it was not “fun”, the makers of the tournament saw it through in a fair way, and at the end of the day nobody had any complaints about who won. The videos of the matches were later compiled and posted on youtube.

This is MY experience getting DDoS’d, and let me tell you it is the most frustrating thing to possibly have happen, let alone if you lose a match because of it, but it was presumably handled better than Argi’s case.

I’m not particularly familiar with the circumstances, but people should actually watch the interview instead of judging him seeming “unprofessional” for talking about what was asked of him in an honest way. It’s ostensible towards the end of the season that some will lose interest, especially when they don’t win!

It seems like people forget to realize that this tournament is actually ran by ESL and not ANet. I don’t get the salt here really. Yeah Grouch let you replay gazillion times … so what? It was unfair to Team PZ who had taken the necessary measures to counter the DDoS. You didn’t deserve to go there if it is how you say it. Never forget that beside money, you play for the people. That’s what sports is all about. Forcing 1-2k people to wait for your highness because you are too cheap to spend 20$ on DDoS protection is not sportsmanship.

And LOL at the “communist community” remark Made my day at what lengths people go to make themselves feel better on the internet Not everyone lives in a 3rd world communistic country mate.

Just to be clear: it’s not possible to stop a DDoS attack. It’s possible to prevent your ip from being resolved in the past, but there’s no quick fix to stopping a DDoS from a source that already has your ip.

Let’s face it … huge chunk of people have dynamic IP addresses. ISPs can change IP addresses for a price. You can have a “second line”. And you actually can prevent some types of DDoS. I made a thread in this specific forum.

It’s not like you can play the victim 100% of the time. Why isn’t Helseth being DDoSed on tournaments? He’s been on the competitive scene since it existed. Why hasn’t he been DDoSed when it mattered? I’m sure he has fair share of haters that would love nothing more than seeing his team fail. Why can’t they get to him.

DDoS is full of kitten attack surrounded with a lot of drama by the media and advertised as something really strong. It isn’t.

I had gigabit DDoS attacks on one of my servers, the hosting provider threatened to cut my internet, I dealt with the attack for free. Most of it was mitigated by banning China.

Hey FiveG, how’s Australia treating you? Raejay let you leave the house yet?

Chaith.8256:

Creating pro league teams from core PvP isn’t the goal. You’re seeing a marriage where the isn’t one between ArenaNet core PvP and ESL PL. Even if new teams formed, they would very unlikely be top 4, who are also getting better together at the same rate.

Don’t be a silly goose, of course there’s a direct connection between the core PvP progression ideology and ESL PL. Where are the new aspiring PL teams supposed to start from if not from core PvP? Is it magic – one day you wake up and realise you’re Red Levin in a team with four other ballers? No, the core game has to have an infrastructure that promotes both individual progression and team-formation.

Chaith.8256:

Hypothetically, to pose a solution for the problem you are suggesting, ArenaNet could provide infrastructure for players to naturally form into teams, getting players used to socially seeking out players and playing the game as five players.

That’s exactly what I meant when I wrote about PvP infrastructure supporting competitive play. My point is that Anet does not seem willing to advocate either skill-based game design or a competitive infra, because they don’t have a business model for either, nor do they seem particularly keen to figure one out. We had in-game automated tournies (frees/paids) perfect for community-building already in 2012. Fast forward to 2016 and we have PvE loot boxes and a participation-based ladder, which we call a league but is actually a reward track. Whether that can be viewed as progress depends on which side of the fence you are standing.

My bottom 5 cents? I honestly don’t see how the ESL PL fits into the direction GW2 is heading both in terms of skill design and infrastructure, other than as a pure marketing / PR effort. Anet wants to build a casual game where skill is secondary to participation (which is perfectly fine). Pants on a fish, man.

well in light of all the trolls who thought this system of pvp was perfect even though I said endlessly that the SPvP is a joke and that so many changes are needed, especially to the pip system/ranking/esports rules.

I’m gonna say getting DDoSed is a L2P issue and he ended up ranking where he belonged. Kappa

Total Announcer fail. Nothing more

Trigonhoras.7042:

Did anyone lose respect for Argi with his interview or do you think that because of the situation it is justified? I can understand the salt from what happened, but the way he conducted the interview, In my opinion, made ArenaNet look bad since it took place during a Pro League broadcast. What is you opinion of what transpired.

I felt bad for what happen to Vermillion but this interview, it’s like don’t burn your bridges. You don’t know when you may run into an Anet employee in the future. Also, he’s blaming Anet for things that they had no control over. I thought, he would have realized that by now.

If they let them rematch then they would have to let everyone rematch for getting hit off. So why wouldn’t I just pull the plug every time things start going south to restart?

There is no way for Anet to verify that a DDOS actually happened. All anet (and us) have for evidence is a video recording of somebody yelling that their being DDOS’ed and then disconnecting.

If Anet gave rematches every time someone claimed DDOS then the obvious play would be for losing teams to be like “oh noes DDOS!” and then disconnecting themselves.
———
If you’re a famous streamer or proleague player you need to have all the DDOS protection you can get and you should take all precautions with your IP. In this age being internet famous means it’s a question of “when” not “if” you’ll be targeted.

Wolfey.3407:

This isn’t the first time they have interviewed or invited someone who gave the game a black eye publicly…..

Any other game, would have revoked their rights to shout cast.

On the bright side, you can say that it’s awesome that ANET let’s them invite people to bash their product openly. You can say it’s awesome that shout casters are allowed to encourage negative behavior.

Moving on to Argi, if he is that upset over the way Guild Wars 2 is heading PvP wise, there are more beneficial ways of making your voice heard then being a drunken slob on stream.

Personally, I say suspend Argi from tournament play for next season and move on. There’s no need for drunks to be on stream… there’s no need to advertise non-partner merchandise on stream, there’s no need to bash a game on stream.

Let’s start from the top:

1.The game was made in Direct X9 despite it being very old even by the standards of when the game was made.

2.Serious balance issues taking too long to resolve.

3.Lack of a PvP/PvE split.

4.Homogenization of roles and obsolescence of classes.

5.Too many safety nets for classes

6.Too many charged interrupts and too long precasts so by the time air focus 5 procs the opponent will heal up despite you having the twitch reactions and instinct to stop him. On thief distracting daggers has too long of a precasts but is otherwise a great skill and an example of a potential step in the correct direction, but within the context of too many blocks and passives it falls flat.

7.Other skills aren’t telegraphed well enough.

8.While AoE and CC have their place they need to be cut down across the board. More stability access is just a bandaid on a broken bone.

I gained respect. Anet has been treating their game terribly. Mike O’Brien is helping, he fixed a lot of critical pve issues, which I understand are more crucial as it has a higher player base, and fixed skyhammer & spirit watch which are now actually playable.

Argi didn’t really say much though other than he didn’t care about gw2 and a lot of players were leaving it and that should raise red flags for the devs. Cause there is no reason to spend time and in between seasons there is zero reason to even try to be good with unranked aka TEAM DEATHMATCH cause people play like they’re in hotjoin. As the pros have been saying, especially Chaith, there isn’t an incubation for new teams in place right now. Like why would you try to get good if youre in an antisocial environment that’s been designed to be antisocial?

I think you people saying Anet needs “a slap in the face” need a little reality check. You wanna slap them for sponsoring a pro league of their game? You wanna slap them for the cash prizes they are giving out with most likely very little return? You wanna slap them for at least trying to make this work?

How about slapping that unprofessional crybaby instead.

And no, I’m not really an Anet fanboy considering the state of class balance right now but they’ve done more to bring PvP to a grander level than any MMO dev I’ve seen.

Crowley.8761:

I think you people saying Anet needs “a slap in the face” need a little reality check. You wanna slap them for sponsoring a pro league of their game? You wanna slap them for the cash prizes they are giving out with most likely very little return? You wanna slap them for at least trying to make this work?

How about slapping that unprofessional crybaby instead.

How bout kids l2g?

Learn to grow up.

He didn’t say anything bad. He was just speaking his mind. Someone hosed his internet, his team lost, and there is no more any way for them to win. He is angry and is not trying anymore. Yeah, that’s what we should expect. No respect lost.

He feels robbed and was angry nothing was done to correct the matter. Maybe in the future they will add a forced pause if someone DCs. And give each team a timeout they can use for those kind of things. This will take time and money for ANet to build. It is good he expressed his frustration. Nothing will change for the better if people don’t speak up.

Ravenmoon.5318:

It’s not like you can play the victim 100% of the time. Why isn’t Helseth being DDoSed on tournaments? He’s been on the competitive scene since it existed. Why hasn’t he been DDoSed when it mattered? I’m sure he has fair share of haters that would love nothing more than seeing his team fail. Why can’t they get to him.

I believe I can answer this I remember him mentioning during a interview that he uses another internet connection during his league plays.

Equating a DOS attack to an injury is just stupid. It is like having a player on a team get shot by a fan and then not allowing the team to sub them out. Then blaming the player for not providing adequate protection for himself even though he is forced to play in a public arena. ESL is a joke if they don’t play the matches on a LAN.

Be that as it may it could be just as likely that he was running a rogue application to give him an advantage at the game that happened to have a back door in it.

Varezenem.2813:

Ravenmoon.5318:

It’s not like you can play the victim 100% of the time. Why isn’t Helseth being DDoSed on tournaments? He’s been on the competitive scene since it existed. Why hasn’t he been DDoSed when it mattered? I’m sure he has fair share of haters that would love nothing more than seeing his team fail. Why can’t they get to him.

I believe I can answer this I remember him mentioning during a interview that he uses another internet connection during his league plays.

He also has, from what I gather, been DDoS in the past in tournaments. He had a stream up not long after the whole Frostball incident where Helseth mentioned how no-one gave a fluff when he got DDoS’d in the past and said he had to sort it out himself so he didn’t care too much about what happened.

He even went through a simple way you can protect yourself by having your mobile phone act as a hotspot and you connect to your phone from your PC. You can then play on your phones internet which for the most part is just as reliable and fast as it needs to be.

apharma.3741:

Varezenem.2813:

Ravenmoon.5318:

It’s not like you can play the victim 100% of the time. Why isn’t Helseth being DDoSed on tournaments? He’s been on the competitive scene since it existed. Why hasn’t he been DDoSed when it mattered? I’m sure he has fair share of haters that would love nothing more than seeing his team fail. Why can’t they get to him.

I believe I can answer this I remember him mentioning during a interview that he uses another internet connection during his league plays.

He also has, from what I gather, been DDoS in the past in tournaments. He had a stream up not long after the whole Frostball incident where Helseth mentioned how no-one gave a fluff when he got DDoS’d in the past and said he had to sort it out himself so he didn’t care too much about what happened.

He even went through a simple way you can protect yourself by having your mobile phone act as a hotspot and you connect to your phone from your PC. You can then play on your phones internet which for the most part is just as reliable and fast as it needs to be.

Yep the 4G connections are sick fast and offer more than you could ever need in an online game Low ping too if your reception is good. Lucky for me there is 4G tower in proximity to my house. Currently considering getting an unlimited data plan and cut the LAN internet. Extra bonus is that when a thunderstorm hits I won’t fear about my router, it’s all wireless

Wolfey.3407:

Moving on to Argi, if he is that upset over the way Guild Wars 2 is heading PvP wise, there are more beneficial ways of making your voice heard then being a drunken slob on stream.

Then please enlighten us all which more beneficial way is still left untouched.

The whole tournament was just between the top 3 teams and who will gain a spot at the wts. If there occurs a problem in one of the matches between those three teams, then you have to do a replay. There is – from a completely objective pov – no other option to handle this properly.

The problem was voiced in every possible way AND still ArenaNet did not react.

Personally, I say suspend Argi from tournament play for next season and move on. There’s no need for drunks to be on stream… there’s no need to advertise non-partner merchandise on stream, there’s no need to bash a game on stream.

I suggest you do your job properly too and tell ArenaNet that the pvp forum community calls ArenaNet out for doing a bad job at handling those ddos problems AND not intervene with Argis freedom of speech.

He, in fact, did not ‘bash’ the game. He did not call it any names what so over, he just said the plain and obvious truth. Just because you personally would like that the truth is different, you are definitely not allowed to behave like a dictator -.- come on, think it truth what you are demanding.

As for the interview: Aliud clausum in pectore, aliud in lingua promptum habent

Regarding general state of PvP, combat system and GW2 overall, I won’t repeat after Leman, Aereniel and others.

Cheers loves, the cavalry is nearly here!

Teutos.8620:

Wolfey.3407:

Moving on to Argi, if he is that upset over the way Guild Wars 2 is heading PvP wise, there are more beneficial ways of making your voice heard then being a drunken slob on stream.

Then please enlighten us all which more beneficial way is still left untouched.

The whole tournament was just between the top 3 teams and who will gain a spot at the wts. If there occurs a problem in one of the matches between those three teams, then you have to do a replay. There is – from a completely objective pov – no other option to handle this properly.

The problem was voiced in every possible way AND still ArenaNet did not react.

Personally, I say suspend Argi from tournament play for next season and move on. There’s no need for drunks to be on stream… there’s no need to advertise non-partner merchandise on stream, there’s no need to bash a game on stream.

I suggest you do your job properly too and tell ArenaNet that the pvp forum community calls ArenaNet out for doing a bad job at handling those ddos problems AND not intervene with Argis freedom of speech.

He, in fact, did not ‘bash’ the game. He did not call it any names what so over, he just said the plain and obvious truth. Just because you personally would like that the truth is different, you are definitely not allowed to behave like a dictator -.- come on, think it truth what you are demanding.

That thing that many people seem to forget these days, and older people like to blame the millenials for the lack of it – professionalism

You didn’t hear Michael Jordan trashtalking basketball on ESPN now did you? If you are old enough to know about the legend…

“Freedom of speech” isn’t on trial here, he is free to say whatever he wants. But just like the poster above me says, there is an issue of professionalism. It’s called Pro League, not whiny kids league. I’m all for people displaying their “colorful personalities” and all that but this is just beyond what can be considered acceptable behavior and a reason why a lot of people think esports are a complete joke.

If esports are to be taken seriously then the so-called professionals need to act as such and lead by example – this is the exact opposite of that. I for one would dearly like to see GW2 evolve and grow as an esport into a larger competitive scene but behavior like this does a lot to damage that.

Ravenmoon, what is this? Are you really accusing a generation of young people currently entering their adult life of their lack of professionalism? It makes no sense whatsoever.

It’s not Millennials, it’s GW2 players and its competitive PvP community that have been acting unprofessionally. It’s just that, not some generational problem (although I would agree that it has come for Millennials to live and grow up in tough times, and they have their issues).

I won’t juggle names but the fact is that there have been just a few completely professional GW2 players. I am not trying to hurt anyone, but that’s how it is, and it’s coming from someone who has been around long enough to see that. Whoever played this PvP in high MMR and got to know this community, knows that it has never been ‘pretty’. Is it worse than in other games? It’s hard to say, but alting, using DDoS attacks, throwing accusations and variour other forms of nastiness have been around ever since real money came into play.

As one poster put it in some other thread – most of those competing are adolescents (not always physically, but very often emotionally) for whom this amount of money justifies the means. No matter how you look at it, we don’t have professional players of the caliber of Kripparrian, or Trump, or some League or Dota pros.

Maybe it would be easier to maintain a community that isn’t memorable only for all the dirt if the game were more successful, so that players could gain some income from streaming. As it is now, I presume some of them were banking large portions of their lives on their performance in GW2. With stakes so high and no immediate alternative in form of other games or streaming revenue, it’s not surprising the scene has been witnessing situations that are considered unacceptable in the ‘real world’ and would lead to total alienation at a workplace, or in a relationship.

Saddening, really, and it can even impact some people who try to distance themselves; after all, if you want to be a part of this community, you have to play by its rules. Sometimes, I would personally fall for it and act like a total kittenbag and then spread that onto other players who didn’t deserve it. That magical word ‘drama’ comes to mind. Shameful, when I think about it. Felt really bad, man.

Bottom line is, that’s hell of a weird community. It’s not necessarily different from other big ‘e-sport’ communities (>implying that this is an e-sport), but it’s also much smaller and hence everything bad is much more pronounced.

leman.7682:

First of all, let me agree with Leeto on his points. +1 The second post especially is of particular beauty and touches my soul.

Now, hasn’t this game’s PvP gone in a hilariously wrong direction? I mean, come on, this couldn’t have developed into anything else given Anet’s track record of messing up. This is not simply a problem of someone cheating, of a DDoS or alting so to speak, but is rooted deeply in how bad the game was being handled for years now.

In the first season, we had bunker wars which killed interest for many, but what happened in this season so far is particularly hysterical. We had postponed matches in week 1 because servers wouldn’t work. We had a DDoS that cost one of the front-running teams their chance for qualifying to the LAN event. We saw players abandoning their teams and joining their opponents for better chances of winning money. We had forbidden subbing and a disqualification that let yet another team go. And then there are teams like Super Smash, Guns N Roses and Purple Noise that, with all due respect, get destroyed 500-0 by the two or three top teams and thus are considered free wins.

That’s Guild Wars 2 Pro League (and competitive PvP in general, for that matter). It has become a joke. The few people who watch weekly streams don’t do that for the atrociously boring games but to make fun of ArenaNet and the game in Twitch chat… You thought a chat spamming ResidentSleepers during 0-0 matches in season 1 was hilarious? You should check out people talking about >name_redacted< (a certain shooter) in the chat nowadays. To put it bluntly, barely anyone cares about GW2 PvP and the few people that do, do it only to laugh at how bad it is.

It must suck to be Mike O’Brien now. As the head of ArenaNet and the Game Director, he will ultimately have to make the decision about the future of GW2 competitive PvP. From the outside, it looks like anything short of completely burying it makes little sense from the business perspective, because paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to be a laughing stock is a poor deal by anyone’s standards.

Who’s at fault? Mostly the balance devs because the majority of issues discussed here and elsewhere, now and before, stem from poor skill balancing. It was that balancing that pushed many players out of the game, many viewers away from watching streams, and prevented the few existing teams from being fully competitive.

Let me emphasise with the utmost sincerity that this post is not aimed at attacking anyone, be it devs or players, but rather to add to the discussion about the direction in which this game’s PvP has been led.

Lol well said although i dont blame the balance team. They go a good job. They have to balance for pve first because that makes them money.

Its hilarious they actually pay 400k to be a laughing stock. They think its marketting, but they might as well put up a sign that costs 400k and says their game sucks. Not all publicity is good publicity in the gaming world. Gw2s rep is dirt now and part of that is the pro league marketting showing how poor the game is from a pvp perspective. They probably put off way more people than they attracted with the pro league because it is a complete shambles

Chaith.8256:

Aereniel.7356:

Stand The Wall.6987:

They should seriously abandon the whole thing and focus on gvg/ wvw.

I doubt the Pro League will continue past the current season, unless Anet secures additional investor funding to keep it going. I don’t think there is a business case to justify it, other than as a PR spend with a negative ROI. It’s hard to see how the current season could have met any of the performance metrics Anet has set for it.

To come back to what Leman and Leet0 have been saying in this thread, the Pro League and the core PvP experience are so opposed in ideology that the pairing of the two feels disjointed and even illogical. The design aims are completely different. On one hand we have the core PvP, which is a non-skill intensive and casual experience where all things are attainable for all people, and game design leans towards passive traits and spammable AoE skills. The best builds play themselves and participation is rewarded. A socialist utopia, as Leet0 put it. On the other end of the spectrum we have the Pro League, which should be a very skill-intensive and exclusive affair where only the very best can compete.

It’s not hard to see the issues when the two are combined. The Pro League receives no support from the core game, because the core game’s design is geared towards a totally different audience. Anet is trying to marry a participation-based ladder to a skill-based tournament, which is not unlike putting trousers on a fish. Funny but completely pointless.

To recap what I wrote in a previous post – the Pro League won’t be competitive unless the core game also supports competitive play. Until that happens, the Tokers, Phantarams and ROMs of the scene will continue to rake in easy dough, because there is nobody to challenge them. If Anet wants a competitive Pro League, the core game’s infrastructure has to support fostering new talent that comes in and makes the old guard sweat for their money. At the moment, those guys are not sweating one bit.

Pro League won’t be competitive unless ArenaNet serves us more competitively minded core-pvp?

PL’s competitiveness is completely out of ArenaNet hands, ball is in the ESL court.

I would put that down as a nice to have, not something that’s even remotely close to affecting how competitive the PL is. It’s not quite the problem you’d think.

Creating pro league teams from core PvP isn’t the goal. You’re seeing a marriage where the isn’t one between ArenaNet core PvP and ESL PL. Even if new teams formed, they would very unlikely be top 4, who are also getting better together at the same rate.

There are plenty of players that have, or could have the mechanical/rotational skill at a pro league level. They honed their abilities in the fiery pits of core-pvp just fine, but they just don’t have the desire/drive/skills to succeed at a much harder goal: creating and maintaining a social structure like a team.

Hypothetically, to pose a solution for the problem you are suggesting, ArenaNet could provide infrastructure for players to naturally form into teams, getting players used to socially seeking out players and playing the game as five players.

So again, hypothetically, abolishing dynamic queue, bringing back solo and team queue (slightly higher league rewards for team), would work best.

Right now, core PvP is highly antisocial, all about single player content, or playing co-op with your best friend.

The average player is getting zero experience with 5 man PvP content on VOIP, which is purely what pro play is.

PL success is so dependent on super good voice communication, being able to maintain high energy, and theory crafting as a team. If the core PvP incorporated these things, currently incorporating zero, we’d no doubt have a few more PL teams. For the reason I said before, it wouldn’t even be a big change.

The Pro League is highly competitive outside of a few anomalies. I’d argue it would be more competitive with a pause feature and limiting the number of teams a player can ever represent in a season to 1, subs discluded.

Disconnects and team swapping definitely trivialize the EU PL’s competitiveness.

NA PL hasn’t had any interference by those sort of things, and we have a bunch of teams who have shown the ability to take games off of each other.

I’d say it’s clear what the important issues are, ESL rules should be priority tweaked to ensure the results maintain integrity for competitive PL.

ArenaNet should just focus on build diversity in PvP, and improving spectator mode.

I find it hilarious that you people still insist pro league league pvpers are so great mechanical players. It simply isnt true. Gw2 has zero talented gamers. Anyone with a crazy click per minute or micro skill or great timing or reflexes would not play gw2 because its a joke.

And you know how i know this? I never tried in this game, ever. Often played with my cousin just having a laugh and kittening around both in game and on the forums. And i never played against anyone i thought was doing something amazing. And i played vs everyone highly rated . If i go to play the multitude of fps games i play there are people there who are so kittening skilled it blows my mind.

Crowley.8761:

“Freedom of speech” isn’t on trial here, he is free to say whatever he wants. But just like the poster above me says, there is an issue of professionalism. It’s called Pro League, not whiny kids league. I’m all for people displaying their “colorful personalities” and all that but this is just beyond what can be considered acceptable behavior and a reason why a lot of people think esports are a complete joke.

If esports are to be taken seriously then the so-called professionals need to act as such and lead by example – this is the exact opposite of that. I for one would dearly like to see GW2 evolve and grow as an esport into a larger competitive scene but behavior like this does a lot to damage that.

You do realize most pro athletes would act the same way if they weren’t under contract to maintain a sense of decorum right?

Don’t get upset just because you suddenly have to face the reality that “pro gamers” act just like regular gamers with a massive ego inflation.