I just wanted to point out a few things about the spirit of Esports. Esports is based on regulation play, where the competitive environment is heavily regulated by well understood rules and mechanics.
While Guildwars 2 is a very complex game, there is alot of vagueness in the rules of the game and how certain abilities are supposed to work. Cleaning up the tooltips was a good start in addressing this problem, but this is not the first time the meta has been decided by certain skills and abilities that are advertised to work one way but then do something completely different.
We saw this with sigil of para pre-patch and now again with leg specialist.
The important point I’m trying to make here is that when a problem comes up in regulation sports that is not clearly reflected in the rules, swift and immediate action is taken in order to clarify, address, or fix it.
When a regulation basketball game takes place and one basket is found to be 2 feet lower than the one on the other side of the court, the game just doesn’t continue without addressing the problem.
But in Guildwars 2 it does. There is so much time alotted before broken mechanics that are working against what the tooltip says are addressed, that the competitive play in this game has boiled down into a community of “who can find the gamebreaking skills first and abused them as much as possible to win.”
In the issue with Sigil of Paralyzation, this was a publically known meta that was allowed to be abused for a long time before it was officially addressed. High end tournament games were allowed to continue without even an official peep about why this item was not working in accordance with the publish “skill facts” or “rules” of the game.
It was like watching a college basketball game go on into the final four with no referees, players were just allowed to do whatever they want and win the highest and most prestigious games using the most underhanded methods possible.
This is against the very spirit of Esports, where the most important facet about a competitive game is creating a regulated environment where all the rules are clearly understood.
However, this has not been happening and I believe it causes high end players to not be able to take the competitiveness of the game seriously. I mean why put so much effort in when winning just amounts to taking the most broken mechanic that takes no skill to abuse and pushing your way to the top with it because there is no referee to say you can’t do that?
Even just a spokesperson who states they are aware of the problem and that a certain ability is not supposed to work that way will go a long way. Regulation games need to be clearly understood and moderated. When problems like this pop up, a referee needs to come out and clarify the rules or at least officially address it and state a fix is in the works.
More communication is needed so that players can build with confidence and follow the SET RULES of how the game should be played.
You cannot host professional tournaments and call the environment “regulation” if there is no referee and no one making official statements when rules are being bent and broken for long periods of time or even entire seasons.
I think communication is key here and I’m not trying to sear anyone, I just want to bring up a serious concern that I am sure is being pondered on by many serious players who have invested alot of time into the Guildwars 2 competitive scene.
V/R,
Helmos