Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to open up a post for casters that tested out the mode today to leave feedback on what they thought about Spectator mode. Overall I feel that it is very well designed but there are a few quirks/missing things that could make it even better. Ill try to update this list as people make popular suggestions. (These are all in my opinion initially, feel free to argue what should be where)

Crucial

• Health Bars above characters (nameplates)

• Having the capture bar for points show up in the UI (I believe they are already working on this, but tonight it was somewhat bothersome to have to guess the cap percentage)

• The traits and gear menu should appear to the side and not directly in the middle of the screen, in case casters want to pull it up mid fight)

• KEYBINDS! Please allow us to set keybinds for spectator, this would increase efficiency immensely. A possible scheme could work like 1-10 would be players, q – y or whatever could be the eyes, and pressing shift would bring up the trait/gear display

Quality of Life For Casters

• Make point caps more prevalent (a ping a light around the icon in the UI would be enough, perhaps a sound as well (for decap as well, not just full cap)) because at the moment it is a little hard to notice things like that if you are involved in casting a big fight

• Make deaths more prevalent. At the moment I had a few people tell me it was somewhat hard to notice when members of the team were dead on the UI. Perhaps graying their name and bar out (on the sides of the UI) when they go out would improve this.

• Possibly add the “eyes” to their own section of the UI (possibly above or below the main character UI) with small text to note it’s location. At the moment trying to find some of the eyes on the mini-map is distracting and I often found myself missing them or clicking the wrong one entirely. this may solve itself with the implementation of Keybinds

• Initial Direction the “eyes” are facing: Some of the eyes I would jump to would initially be faced in an odd direction, which could lead to me being out of the loop for 3-4 seconds while i found what I was looking for

• Temple Eyes: There did not appear to be an eye overlooking the above ground mid buff; perhaps I did not see it but if there is not one there already there should!

• Clicking on mini map icons of players should put you in their POV: Ive noticed sometimes when trying to move to something I note on the minimap that if there was no eye near it I would have to guess who was at that spot, and for teams with double classes this would sometimes lead to me moving to the wrong people.

Smaller Things to Implement in the Future

• Drawing on the game: This currently exists in DOTA 2 spectator where you can draw on the world itself to illustrate things, would be AMAZING if casters were able to do this. It’s a minor thing, but a worthy suggestion nonetheless

Give the option for the host/admins to kick spectators also. Some just watch for games on end and there is no recourse.

The only problem i see with this is being able to see traits because some people have worked hard to get there build to where it is and don’t want to publish it to the whole community.

On the topic of traits how DO you see their traits? I’ve only dabbled a little in spectator mode but couldn’t figure it out.

I think it’s click twice on the nameplate (in the UI).

LilAdrian.5936:

The only problem i see with this is being able to see traits because some people have worked hard to get there build to where it is and don’t want to publish it to the whole community.

Players have the option to play in rooms where spectating is not allowed so they dont have to worry about that issue.

Not being able to kick spectators causes a problem when say a bunch of people just spectate and leaves the room with only a couple people left, effectively killing the custom arena.

Lux.7169:

On the topic of traits how DO you see their traits? I’ve only dabbled a little in spectator mode but couldn’t figure it out.

there is an icon beside the name on either the right or left

First of all congratulations to Blu for an entertaining cast last night. It was much more fun than I thought it will be.

On the other hand I have 1 more suggestion: Brighter colors for player icons on minimap.

matjazmuhic.1649:

On the other hand I have 1 more suggestion: Brighter colors for player icons on minimap.

I think it should apply to whole PvP, not only spectactor mode. On zoomed-out minimap class icons are nearly indistinguishable. Maybe make them slightly bigger as well.

The eyes have this weird balance where they’re not far out enough to see the entire fight, but they also have far diminished detail compared to following a specific character.

For the time being I’ve found the best camera experience to be switching to focused characters during fights, and using eyes for showing team movement only.

I love how there are 3 people playing and 5-6 spectators. Makes joining games super fun.

We should be able to zoom-out more when following a player.

If you don’t want to make a free camera, we should at least be able to move the camera around the eyes.

it would be nice if it was more apparent which player you are following

LilAdrian.5936:

The only problem i see with this is being able to see traits because some people have worked hard to get there build to where it is and don’t want to publish it to the whole community.

i love these kind of posts, everytime i see someone say i don’t want to tell my build, then eventually the crack and post it, and it’s just a standard fotm build that is already well known.

LilAdrian.5936:

The only problem i see with this is being able to see traits because some people have worked hard to get there build to where it is and don’t want to publish it to the whole community.

Dont play in arenas with observer mode… and solved.

as 4 all the nerfs of ele:

could u make the teammates healthbars visible on the field! so i can heal my mates better when needed….

All general rooms were also spectator enable? It is very sad to show all trait and skill. Eventually there will be clone every where. And since pvp gear cost 0 fee, situation will be worst than WOW and Diablo3. Can’t people just go and create their own trait instead of copying the top players? GW2 pvp now no longer unique.

kakak.2871:

All general rooms were also spectator enable? It is very sad to show all trait and skill. Eventually there will be clone every where. And since pvp gear cost 0 fee, situation will be worst than WOW and Diablo3. Can’t people just go and create their own trait instead of copying the top players? GW2 pvp now no longer unique.

Top players arent joining hotjoin…

Parisalchuk.9230:

Top players arent joining hotjoin…

You’ld be surprised.

Right now most builds are already copies. Although builds will alwyas have diffrences, you will use other skills in Hot-Join and Tournament, your traits depends on your team composition and your utility skills depends who are your enemies. This diffrences are only for one spec (i.g condition necro), but you will also have other spec as necro(wellomancer, d/d melee, minion master).

IMO showing traits in Spectator mode is great.

I think there should be an option to not show traits and gear because a lot of people are playing classes they don’t play when spectated.

Like for instance I saw caed and shangigans, do a 1v1 thief fight for kicks because they top rated so people will watch them, but I know caed mains a Mesmer so I wanted to see Mesmer fight whatever shangigans plays. Not them just play around all day with thief.

Also all I see is bunch of r20s and sometimes 30s duking it out 1v1, I see a couple r50s spectating but none of them are duking it out.

Me thinks people are scared to duke it out because there build will be revealed, and obviously playstyle.

And we all know what happens when a r50 shows his build. Everyone starts using it, aka hgh engy ostich eggs style.

However if you don’t show traits and gear, I have confidence r50s will feel more safe of actually playing there main build and duke it out and not play thieves war for fun.

They said you can opt out of showing your build.
Everyone stop posting about your build insecurities.

I’d like to see something that gives you the team name above the list of players on each side. So someone tuning in knows who ‘team paradigm’ is immediately, whether its blue or red. good feedback thread.

Blu said most of the things but I’ll like to add:
- let me click on the players character model to see their perspective, its hard to find them on the ui at the left and right
- let us lower the particle effects somehow
- tbc

It would be great if you can click the capture point icons on top of the screen between the scores. Clicking one of them would immediately change your view to that area. This would be great if a capture point is being contested, and the shoutcaster can check it out immediately.

Most of it I already discussed with you and you have in the thread, but that video is my quick overview of it.

Something I don’t know if possible is if we can customize our hide-interface. What I’m talking about is that at times, you want to be able to hide all of the interface minus the skillbar of the person you are speccing.

With this, it allows you to cast with only your keyboard and keep the obstructive mouse cursor off screen.

I agree with the need of hp bars floating above characters. It feels so necessary, at the when you’re watching a fight it’s almost impossible to see who is winning because the hp bars are not visible.

Short Term
1. When you are using the viewing eyes you should be able to target players to see their health/ boons/ conditions etc.

2. You should be able to see the target of target when clicking on a character via the eyes. Otherwise we don’t know who they are focusing, the same as if we were watching from the characters point of view.

3. Cap points shown as bars on the UI. A 3 part bar where the left side is red, middle is neutral and right side is blue. If the bar is capped by red it will start max to the left then as blue decap it slides back to the middle until it becomes neutral then progresses to the right as blue cap.

4. Make the health bars for each team much larger and downstate/ death more obvious on the bars.

5. Fix the mini-map size. Personally I find the map max zoomed out makes it hard to distinguish between player icons, particularly in a stream. However if you zoom the map into a point where the icons become easily viewable you lose sight of half the map. Can we make the area the map can be dragged to larger so we can see the whole map at a decent resolution.

6. The fight when viewed from the eyes looks like a particle party. For example in a 3v3 the player is focusing on 2-3 animations on the opposing team. The viewer/ stream is focusing on 6 animations covering the screen and it becomes a distraction. When viewed from the players view it does make for easier watching because you adopt that teams mentality and focus on 2-3 animations of the opposite team and the skills of the player. Reducing it down to 3-4 animations. This seems to be an interim solution but you lose the ‘overallness’ of the fight in doing so. I don’t have a solution for this but raising it for discussion.

7. Give players the option to turn the inspection of traits and builds off. Personally I have played on some of the 1v1 servers with my own build which beat the op beastmaster builds. Unfortunately in doing so everyone in spectator mode had access to a build I wanted to keep to myself. I don’t mind the idea of people watching me play but giving up my builds to do so is stupid. I expect someone to post “play in servers that have spectator turned off”. Firstly the popular 1v1 servers all have spectator mode enabled and it defeats the purpose of new features being introduced if they are not going to be utalized. Players should have the option if they want to share such information like in every other game.

Long Term
1. Recordable functionality. Not every game can be viewed or covered live. The games should be recorded and made available to everyone or to people the participants wish to share with. This way casters don’t need to be online all day to cover a game.

2. Change the spectator cameras. The idea of following 1 person or viewing from pre-determined eyes is primitive. Take a leaf out of the newest Sim City book and adopt an over head, zoom in and rotate camera which can move freely throughout the game to give better angles and follow fights more fluidly.

Opinion for casters
Don’t just talk about what everyone can see. Eg. When discussing traits at the start don’t open each panel and say this person (Mesmer) is running 20/20/0/0/30. Everyone in the stream has eyes and is smart enough to read the numbers for themselves. Instead a better option is the explanation like this person (Mesmer) is running a shatter build which will fulfil the x,y,z role or provide x,y,z benefit for his team.

Another example don’t just call out fights as if you are a radio announcer calling the baseball before everyone had TVs. This method was adopted because the audience couldn’t see the game via the radio so it had to be explain play by play to give a mental picture. The audience can see the game and know what is going on. Provide more overall insight about the game and why decisions are being made and why people are moving around the map as they are. When there is no real content then use the skill by skill play to fill in the void spaces as idol chat.

Even as someone who has no real knowledge of “the e-sports,” I thought of a few quality of life improvements that could be made to spectator mode after viewing a couple of matches.

1. Building on the OP’s suggestion for caster keybinds, there should be an option to bind horizontal 90-degree rotation of the fixed cameras both left and right. Right now, the delay between switching to a camera and click-dragging to readjust the preset angle and view the action is simply too long.
2. Profession icons on the map and fixing the functionality of the team display went a long way toward identifying individual players, but having multiple of the same profession on a team still creates confusion and delay. A potential fix would be labeling identical profession icons with subscript numbers both on the team display and the map, just to be sure every player has a unique visual representation.
3. Similarly, the UI for build/traits should be split entirely from the team display. Currently, three major problems exist with it: it’s non-adjustable, you can only view the build for the selected player, and when you have a player selected the build icon supersedes the profession icon, which means you always have use two very separated UI elements (the team display and the skill bar) to identify a team composition.

LilAdrian.5936:

The only problem i see with this is being able to see traits because some people have worked hard to get there build to where it is and don’t want to publish it to the whole community.

The person with the most skill will play that build well.

Some people are good with theory crafting. Some people are good at actually playing.

“Open-sourcing” is the only way so it won’t be build wars.

It will be good for new players who have little experience with building. They can learn from the pros, get the right builds and improve and be at par with the top players in no time. that’s how you grow the community.

it is all good for now. no need to change it so that spectators can see the build use by the players they are watching. spectators can discover the build themselves via other ways….

one thing though. it would be nice if we could zoom in when viewing from the fixed camera position. sometimes the players seem too small……

alcopaul.2156:

“Open-sourcing” is the only way so it won’t be build wars.

It will be good for new players who have little experience with building. They can learn from the pros, get the right builds and improve and be at par with the top players in no time. that’s how you grow the community.

New players have access to ample builds and resources to assist in copying a viable build or making their own. One persons hard work, testing and understanding of the game mechanics should not be public information if they do not wish it to be. You should not be restricted in your game play or punished for using your brain to make your own builds.

If such person wishes to make the build public that is their CHOICE. Individuals should have a choice if they wish to give their work away to the masses without being restricted to playing in non-spectator mode games.

Theorycrafting is a skill, button mashing is a skill. ’’Pros’’ should be skilled at all aspects of the game, not just button mashing. Newer players can copy public domain theorycrafting and work on their button mashing skills until they want to work on their theorycrafting skills.

The 3 major things I’ve noticed about this spectator mode patch:

Frequent lag spikes, about half of the spvp matches I’ve joined so far have major & constant hiccups, this doesn’t seem to be the case with tpvp, so I’m assuming it’s linked to the spectator mode

Class icons on the map should be a little larger and much brighter

Player totals are usually not properly displayed in the spvp browser, nor do they update when you click refresh.

Perfect.1274:

alcopaul.2156:

“Open-sourcing” is the only way so it won’t be build wars.

It will be good for new players who have little experience with building. They can learn from the pros, get the right builds and improve and be at par with the top players in no time. that’s how you grow the community.

New players have access to ample builds and resources to assist in copying a viable build or making their own. One persons hard work, testing and understanding of the game mechanics should not be public information if they do not wish it to be. You should not be restricted in your game play or punished for using your brain to make your own builds.

If such person wishes to make the build public that is their CHOICE. Individuals should have a choice if they wish to give their work away to the masses without being restricted to playing in non-spectator mode games.

Theorycrafting is a skill, button mashing is a skill. ’’Pros’’ should be skilled at all aspects of the game, not just button mashing. Newer players can copy public domain theorycrafting and work on their button mashing skills until they want to work on their theorycrafting skills.

I agree, plus if you find a build through hours of testing & tweaking which can be consider strong, someone shouldn’t just be allowed to copy it and make it the new FOTM until it gets nerfed next month.

Not everyone runs the meta builds, and usually they tend inspire players to try new things and different builds. it feels good seeing players trying to duplicate your build because you know they are going through the same thing that you went through with all the test & tweak which is fun, and personally I don’t mind helping them. but i will never be like the build is exactly this this and that.. that just makes builds feel cheap

Feedback: All streams need more Grouch.

Give the players in spvp the option to hide/show their gear/specs. I worked my kitten off on my build and i don’t want anyone to see it.

we need a jerry lawler and Jim Ross of GW2!!! go watch those guys cast pro wrestling for ur inspiration

As a host of a custom arena I would like to see some interface that allows me to see the server population in the arenas I have up, say in the PVP tab somewhere. It’d let me manage them better from out of the mists.

Also I’d like to see the ability to make people admins of the server, like in the guild interface. One host cannot keep all the trolls/afkers out 24/7 and being able to delegate the responsibility would help keep the integrity of the servers imo.

Can you consider showing the “Eyes” (Static views) on the game map itself (not only the minimap) so we could move to them by checking the game instead of the minimap? In the same way Capture Point’s icons are shown hovering above the game plateau.

After watching a few casters, I think it’s hard to quickly get to that view you want when you have to always go back to the compas.

google.3709:

Perfect.1274:

alcopaul.2156:

“Open-sourcing” is the only way so it won’t be build wars.

It will be good for new players who have little experience with building. They can learn from the pros, get the right builds and improve and be at par with the top players in no time. that’s how you grow the community.

New players have access to ample builds and resources to assist in copying a viable build or making their own. One persons hard work, testing and understanding of the game mechanics should not be public information if they do not wish it to be. You should not be restricted in your game play or punished for using your brain to make your own builds.

If such person wishes to make the build public that is their CHOICE. Individuals should have a choice if they wish to give their work away to the masses without being restricted to playing in non-spectator mode games.

Theorycrafting is a skill, button mashing is a skill. ’’Pros’’ should be skilled at all aspects of the game, not just button mashing. Newer players can copy public domain theorycrafting and work on their button mashing skills until they want to work on their theorycrafting skills.

I agree, plus if you find a build through hours of testing & tweaking which can be consider strong, someone shouldn’t just be allowed to copy it and make it the new FOTM until it gets nerfed next month.

Not everyone runs the meta builds, and usually they tend inspire players to try new things and different builds. it feels good seeing players trying to duplicate your build because you know they are going through the same thing that you went through with all the test & tweak which is fun, and personally I don’t mind helping them. but i will never be like the build is exactly this this and that.. that just makes builds feel cheap

There are so many combination of builds that some how give some uniquity to players. By cloning builds, GW2 PVP become degraded. For new players, they were already given a default build. To help them grow and be fun, just create few newbie servers that only lv 1 to 9 can join. Players should have a ‘disable trait and skill to be seen’ check box to op out.

There’s one thing I noticed – while spectacting there’s no way to tell which team put down combo fields, timewarps etc. Having a team-colored stroke around them would help here.