Guild Wars 2

GW1 GvG camera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkittenwi7k-VU
GW2 sPvP camera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3majiZ2M1TQ

Main reason? CAMERA ISSUE & TO MUCH OVERLAY USED SPACE!

CAMERA:
Just look at this beautiful overview of every thing in GW1.
I think the main reason why GW2 tournaments, and spectating of matches will never be as popular why? due to very limited camera that did not change for ages, it simply does not provide enough information for spectator and it’s very static!

• Give us longer zoom out if target player is selected
• if you fight in objective like a house perform a Smite-Game handling of objectives ( they remove the roof and walls for easier preview or simply put 90% alfa channel to make wallas transparent)
• give us option to move camera manually but still provide collision detection
• give us more options to hop between targets then just clicking on the EYE on the map if player desires to still use static cameras
• give us option to record and rewind the match?! (smite is 3D game and has one)
• Spectator map option to make mini-map more transparent so that it doesnt cover the area ( every piece of screen matters ) !
• remove team chat window in bottom left, and remove team match score(won matches) and make an overlay smaller but still visible to the people easy to see the final result of the matches!!

I don’t watch tournaments for this reasons, if anet really want’s to get into eSports, they need to step up with camera handling, and providing more useful camera options that would make overview more interesting, less camera stuck, more free hand tracking with camera move smoothing. CMON GUYS YOU HAVE MOST BEAUTIFUL COMBAT SYSTEMS I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT!

OVERLAY:
May way of clearing the screen to provide maximum for the viewer
http://prntscr.com/8bbl34
Anets way of covering the screen hiding 30% of possible useful information
http://prntscr.com/8bbnv5

Camera isn’t the main reason, it just one of the many reasons.
Combat in this game is just awful for pvp. Fixing the camera will only let ppl see how bad it actually even more.
Gameplay means everything in game, having a good combat system is the xfactor of any sort of competitive pvp, aka eSport. GW2 does not have this.
Spam cripple, spam chill, spam vul debuff, spam bleed, spam knockdown, spam burn, aoe aoe, shadowsteps and stealths to infinity, knockdownfest, knockbackfest, spam poison, pet attack spam (lack of control over pets), spam greandes, spam turrets, spam bombs add whatever you want here … hrrr.

I agree with you Gorisek, a better camera is needed. At least allow to use a free camera. Back in the days, they said they wanted to just try out this static cameras with defined viewpoints on each node. And that they would consider to make a free camera, if I remember correctly. Maybe there was not enough “riot” when they announced this spectator mode, so they just left it this way because no more time for coding was needed

But for sure, this is not the only reason why GW2 PvP is no Esports. (Btw. GW1 wasn’t esports too, but it was more competitive Guild/Team-Wise and more fun to watch through the spectator mode.)

@Pino: Of course GW2 PvP has tactics, actually a lot of it. Especially the rotations are the difficult thing to master in Conquest.

rEaPeX.8415:

I agree with you Gorisek, a better camera is needed. At least allow to use a free camera. Back in the days, they said they wanted to just try out this static cameras with defined viewpoints on each node. And that they would consider to make a free camera, if I remember correctly. Maybe there was not enough “riot” when they announced this spectator mode, so they just left it this way because no more time for coding was needed

But for sure, this is not the only reason why GW2 PvP is no Esports. (Btw. GW1 wasn’t esports too, but it was more competitive Guild/Team-Wise and more fun to watch through the spectator mode.)

@Pino: Of course GW2 PvP has tactics, actually a lot of it. Especially the rotations are the difficult thing to master in Conquest.

Minimal tactics.
GW2 pvp is just too chaotic even on small scale.
Fix the camera all you want, won’t get your popularity up anywhere.

Gorisek.2678:

CMON GUYS YOU HAVE MOST BEAUTIFUL COMBAT SYSTEMS I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT!

Sure, the visual cluster kitten of particle effects is glorious. Clones, phantasms, minions, pets and aoe spam… it’s… it’s… just beautiful.

Edit: Oh, i forgot the kittenty downstate mechanic, it just adds additional layer of clutter.

I am surprised that some people didn’t get that the whole “esports” is just a marketing gimmick.
They are advertising gw2 as a competitive game, yet after 3 years it is lacking so much.

Necromonger.4970:

Gorisek.2678:

CMON GUYS YOU HAVE MOST BEAUTIFUL COMBAT SYSTEMS I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT!

Sure, the visual cluster kitten of particle effects is glorious. Clones, phantasms, minions, pets and aoe spam… it’s… it’s… just beautiful.

Yep have necro, engi, mesmer and ranger in a single confined space or capzone. 3/4 of the screen or area will be filled with turrets, minions, pets, clones. Throw in the particle effects … voila, clusterfk visual wise. That’s only the beginning of it, then you look at the amount of stuffs being thrown around skill wise where there are no distinction between profession on what they can dish out.
Camera isn’t even top priority of concern for GW2 eSport to be successful.

Pino.5209:

Necromonger.4970:

Gorisek.2678:

CMON GUYS YOU HAVE MOST BEAUTIFUL COMBAT SYSTEMS I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT!

Sure, the visual cluster kitten of particle effects is glorious. Clones, phantasms, minions, pets and aoe spam… it’s… it’s… just beautiful.

Yep have necro, engi, mesmer and ranger in a single confined space or capzone. 3/4 of the screen or area will be filled with turrets, minions, pets, clones. Throw in the particle effects … voila, clusterfk visual wise. That’s only the beginning of it, then you look at the amount of stuffs being thrown around skill wise where there are no distinction between profession on what they can dish out.
Camera isn’t even top priority of concern for GW2 eSport to be successful.

Yep, the capture points are a huge reason. It is very hard to see what’s happeneing compared to say lanes that separates the game very effectively.

Pino.5209:

Necromonger.4970:

Gorisek.2678:

CMON GUYS YOU HAVE MOST BEAUTIFUL COMBAT SYSTEMS I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT!

Sure, the visual cluster kitten of particle effects is glorious. Clones, phantasms, minions, pets and aoe spam… it’s… it’s… just beautiful.

Yep have necro, engi, mesmer and ranger in a single confined space or capzone. 3/4 of the screen or area will be filled with turrets, minions, pets, clones. Throw in the particle effects … voila, clusterfk visual wise. That’s only the beginning of it, then you look at the amount of stuffs being thrown around skill wise where there are no distinction between profession on what they can dish out.
Camera isn’t even top priority of concern for GW2 eSport to be successful.

Pino stop whining, it helps no one, i find pvp decent enough, for me gw2 has amzing combat mechanics, they just need to develop new skills in more skill cap way after this expansion we will already see some of improved stuff. After all GW2 is 8 years old project, and skills back then were breakthrough.

Classes are fine, and combat is fine, we just need another game mode type and not conquest with 3 cap points. Simply increase of people to 7-8 and things will turn into way more interesting eSports game, and let the maps have lord like foefire and only one objective in center of the map with wide open space! Amen. And u’ll see over night there will be a lot of good teams desired to go in there and clash!

Simply b1*** :ng about how bad it is, won’t help anyone anywhere! You don’t need to discuss further, because this discussion is based around camera data delivery over clean screen with as little overlay as possible. This topic is not meant for GW2 combat system and class balance, ty.

Gorisek.2678:

Pino.5209:

Necromonger.4970:

Gorisek.2678:

CMON GUYS YOU HAVE MOST BEAUTIFUL COMBAT SYSTEMS I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT!

Sure, the visual cluster kitten of particle effects is glorious. Clones, phantasms, minions, pets and aoe spam… it’s… it’s… just beautiful.

Yep have necro, engi, mesmer and ranger in a single confined space or capzone. 3/4 of the screen or area will be filled with turrets, minions, pets, clones. Throw in the particle effects … voila, clusterfk visual wise. That’s only the beginning of it, then you look at the amount of stuffs being thrown around skill wise where there are no distinction between profession on what they can dish out.
Camera isn’t even top priority of concern for GW2 eSport to be successful.

Pino stop whining, it helps no one, i find pvp decent enough, for me gw2 has amzing combat mechanics, they just need to develop new skills in more skill cap way after this expansion we will already see some of improved stuff. After all GW2 is 8 years old project, and skills back then were breakthrough.

Classes are fine, and combat is fine, we just need another game mode type and not conquest with 3 cap points. Simply increase of people to 7-8 and things will turn into way more interesting eSports game, and let the maps have lord like foefire and only one objective in center of the map with wide open space! Amen. And u’ll see over night there will be a lot of good teams desired to go in there and clash!

Simply b1*** :ng about how bad it is, won’t help anyone anywhere! You don’t need to discuss further, because this discussion is based around camera data delivery over clean screen with as little overlay as possible. This topic is not meant for GW2 combat system and class balance, ty.

It’s not whining. It’s called reality check. It’s subjective i know. But take a good look at the popularity, the fact speaks for itself. If you seriously think camera is the main problem, think again. Successful eSport games like Counter-Strike and LoL, etc, got their core game mechanic right, hit the sweet spot. GW2 missed miserably and it has been 3 years.
You are obviously one of the few that luvs the pvp. So there it is. Congrats being the minority i guess.

@Pino
GW2 is mainly a PvE game, while CS and LoL are pure PvP. It has its core game mechanics more or less right.

What’s wrong with PvP in GW2 is enforcing the competitive atmosphere, limitting player’s freedom while also failing to actually reach that kitten ed e-sport level, wasting manpower at wrong area. The entire e-sport concept is always created by community, not game developers. If the game is good, tournaments will suddenly appear everywhere with ‘private’ cash pool.

Meanwhile, we still don’t have easy dueling system, and simple 2v2, 3v3 arenas with ladder – core elements that keep veteran players active; and without veteran players there is no e-sport.

Pino just have l2p issues.

Pino.5209:

GW2 eSport unpopularity goes beyond camera issue like you claimed.
That youtube video link only have 8k+views … that’s beyond pathetic. If you seriously think it’s only the camera issue, then you never really truly understand what’s basically this game pvp is all about.
It’s clusterfk spamfest with minimal strategy involved. There are lack of control in this game where crowd controls are just spamfest.
Look, they can’t do it in 3 years, it’s done … they can throw money as much as they wanted @ tourney. It ain’t gonna make it become more popular.

Gorisek.2678:

CMON GUYS YOU HAVE MOST BEAUTIFUL COMBAT SYSTEMS I KNOW YOU CAN DO IT!

LOL

Still here after 3 years of hating this crap pvp and combat system?

I’m a very new player and having a blast with sPvP, indeed I will start to see many flaw in the near future but your reply sound ridicolous.

Dagins.5163:

@Pino
GW2 is mainly a PvE game, while CS and LoL are pure PvP. It has its core game mechanics more or less right.

What’s wrong with PvP in GW2 is enforcing the competitive atmosphere, limitting player’s freedom while also failing to actually reach that kitten ed e-sport level, wasting manpower at wrong area. The entire e-sport concept is always created by community, not game developers. If the game is good, tournaments will suddenly appear everywhere with ‘private’ cash pool.

Meanwhile, we still don’t have easy dueling system, and simple 2v2, 3v3 arenas with ladder – core elements that keep veteran players active; and without veteran players there is no e-sport.

Touché, on the eSport and community part. I stood by my comment on the core game mechanic in this game being a big miss. It’s spamfest zerkfest left and right. It goes on both pve and pvp.

Why am I still here? I enjoy dressing up my toons, making legendaries and playing with ppl i get along with.

oRioN.1083:

I’m a very new player and having a blast with sPvP, indeed I will start to see many flaw in the near future but your reply sound ridicolous.

Lol, did you even read what you typed? that is one awkward weird sentence there.

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. This has multiple reasons, some can be fixed others cannot. The camera and information shows in spectator mode is one of those parts that can be fixed.

The biggest problem is the gamedesign itself, which probably cannot be fixed.

The inclusion of crit bonus damage should have never happened. It’s a problem in PvE and it is one in PvP. Ferocity is a terrible stat, which add way too much damage.

But it doesn’t end there. Since that damage is so high they added the incredible sustain of other classes. Things just get jumpy here. Healbars just jump all other the place. Like in that video that was linked when the thief looses 80% of his health in like 1s, and a second later he is back to full health. It takes minutes to analyse what skills caused those jumps. It is almost impossible to visually track that much stuff if you are not directly involved in it (and it is also hard if you are involved).

That whole design philosophy is also the reason downed state is needed. If two glasscannons collide the fight is over in about 1~2 seconds. So teamfights looks like this… the DDs go in, and the one DD that gets focused better runs away as fast as possible.

Now if you watch the GW1 sample, you can see that kills aren’t just everyone collapsing on a single target. Everyone in the team has a different role. You need players to damage the target, but you also need someone to distract/disturb the monks and other support, aswell as healing through the damage your DDs take. Maybe even interrupt the DD from CCing you DDs. At the same time everyone on the enemy team has some way to help the focused target.

And while there is also jumpy healthbars, you can a follow the incoming damage abilities because they are shown at the side and it are far less. And the only two high value heals are either the extremly visible Word of Healing or Infusion of Life, which while not having a massive visual effect causes the infusion monk to loose half his health. Nothing short of the old Vow of Strength + Unsuspecting Strike assassin could cause that much damage to an infusion monk. So you immediatly know what caused that health spike.

Damage across the board is too high and with that comes too high damage. An engineer who can deal 7k damage from a simple pistol shot because of the conditions he applies does not make for a nice viewable experience. People want group fights that last a while in which they can follow what is going on.

And sadly that will not happen with the current design.

Varonth.5830:

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. This has multiple reasons, some can be fixed others cannot. The camera and information shows in spectator mode is one of those parts that can be fixed.

The biggest problem is the gamedesign itself, which probably cannot be fixed.

The inclusion of crit bonus damage should have never happened. It’s a problem in PvE and it is one in PvP. Ferocity is a terrible stat, which add way too much damage.

But it doesn’t end there. Since that damage is so high they added the incredible sustain of other classes. Things just get jumpy here. Healbars just jump all other the place. Like in that video that was linked when the thief looses 80% of his health in like 1s, and a second later he is back to full health. It takes minutes to analyse what skills caused those jumps. It is almost impossible to visually track that much stuff if you are not directly involved in it (and it is also hard if you are involved).

That whole design philosophy is also the reason downed state is needed. If two glasscannons collide the fight is over in about 1~2 seconds. So teamfights looks like this… the DDs go in, and the one DD that gets focused better runs away as fast as possible.

Now if you watch the GW1 sample, you can see that kills aren’t just everyone collapsing on a single target. Everyone in the team has a different role. You need players to damage the target, but you also need someone to distract/disturb the monks and other support, aswell as healing through the damage your DDs take. Maybe even interrupt the DD from CCing you DDs. At the same time everyone on the enemy team has some way to help the focused target.

And while there is also jumpy healthbars, you can a follow the incoming damage abilities because they are shown at the side and it are far less. And the only two high value heals are either the extremly visible Word of Healing or Infusion of Life, which while not having a massive visual effect causes the infusion monk to loose half his health. Nothing short of the old Vow of Strength + Unsuspecting Strike assassin could cause that much damage to an infusion monk. So you immediatly know what caused that health spike.

Damage across the board is too high and with that comes too high damage. An engineer who can deal 7k damage from a simple pistol shot because of the conditions he applies does not make for a nice viewable experience. People want group fights that last a while in which they can follow what is going on.

And sadly that will not happen with the current design.

Pretty much disagree with everything you wrote. The issue currently is that the sustain is too high. Who wants to watch a dd ele fight against a dd ele? That is about as boring as possible.

Oh look, another GW1 nostalgia thread. You can take off the rose-colored glasses now.

I played GW1 about 5 years ago. I watched the GW1 video, but couldn’t tell what was happening besides two people slapping each other and a giant ball of text and numbers. No different than GW2, but at least with Conquest, I know who’s in the lead at any given time.

I think the downside to pvp in gw2 is that it’s so fast. In gw1 and other games there’s healers that keep you from dying in 2 hits the majority of the time. You could follow it easier when people aren’t dying so quick.

To make a game an esport it needs to be something that is watchable, even to those who do not even play the game.

Gw2 is simply not watchable. I play this game, i play mostly WvW and get into hectic fights all the time but i have trouble following whats happening during a tournament match. What chance does someone completely unfamiliar with the game has?

It’s just a chaotic mess with healthbars jojo’ing all over the place. The flashy plays are all on a second, or less. And with fights happening across the map on potentiall three different points you will miss a lot of the action.

Casters don’t help because they cannot keep up in explaining whats going on, nor does the gameplay give enough room for downtime for play-by-play analysis or to allow much of the caster’s personalities to shine through. A good caster carries.

But we have to ask ourselves, do we even want this? Because for a game to be an esport it would mean it has to be catered towards the viewer and not neccesarily the player. Also just look at how long we’ve had only one single playmode in spvp. More than three years on just conquest mode! All because the devs wanted a specialized pvp community to push the conquest playstyle forward the actual enjoyment of pvp seems to have come second.

Top all of this off with blatant issues in balance that tournaments have to amend rules just to try and compensate for them.
I said it before and ill keep saying it. Gw2 is not, nor will it ever be, an esport.

Huge +1 to the transparency stuff, I don’t think gamemode or the fast paced combat is really an issue. If you watch dota for example I can’t tell whats going on for the most part. All I see is people destroying towers and randomly running and from time to time just whole team dies in a second and I’ve no clue what happened. Guild Wars 2 isn’t that hard to understand. Its basically kill people, win the nodes by standing on them while the enemy team isn’t on it. The instant bursts and the skills people of course will not understand but you can’t really understand what a skill does by just looking at it being casted, same way with all skills in all MMO’s. I think some animations on ele and engi mortar f5 should be reduced to allow people to see whats going on more clearly because sometimes it just takes up the whole screen, same with the GUI, lastly the casters aren’t exactly on the level of dota casters ect, they don’t neceseraly know how the game works truly so they can not point out some interesting plays which people don’t notice. We need casters with great rotational knowledge. That is why for example dota is easier to understand → the casters explain things better. Lastly I think allowing <18 y/o players to be able to compete in WTS, this will allow a lot more competitive players to go to WTS, making the competition bigger, more teams ect.

style.6173:

Varonth.5830:

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. snip.

Pretty much disagree with everything you wrote. The issue currently is that the sustain is too high. Who wants to watch a dd ele fight against a dd ele? That is about as boring as possible.

You can disagree, but he is not wrong.

Unless you are an avid pvp player in gw2, watching a tourney on stream is going to leave you saying “oh , cool sparkles and flashes, I have no idea whats going on, everythings moving fast, fights are all over the place. Time to go watch something else on twitch that I can actually understand”

There is reason why the WTS finals barely reached 10k viewers….Outside of Gw2 PvPers, no one is watching.
Not the MMORPG/Gaming community in general, not even the majority of the community in GW2 cares or watches.
Its because its not an entertaining watch, hard to follow for the avg outsider, unbalanced, same mode for 3 years, and it doesn’t appeal to anyone outside our own GW2 PvP community.

SkiTz.4590:

style.6173:

Varonth.5830:

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. snip.

Pretty much disagree with everything you wrote. The issue currently is that the sustain is too high. Who wants to watch a dd ele fight against a dd ele? That is about as boring as possible.

You can disagree, but he is not wrong.

Unless you are an avid pvp player in gw2, watching a tourney on stream is going to leave you saying “oh , cool sparkles and flashes, I have no idea whats going on, everythings moving fast, fights are all over the place. Time to go watch something else on twitch that I can actually understand”

There is reason why the WTS finals barely reached 10k viewers….Outside of Gw2 PvPers, no one is watching.
Not the MMORPG/Gaming community in general, not even the majority of the community in GW2 cares or watches.
Its because its not an entertaining watch, hard to follow for the avg outsider, unbalanced, same mode for 3 years, and it doesn’t appeal to anyone outside our own GW2 PvP community.

Reread what I said and tell me how I am wrong? You quoted something from him that wasn’t even the main part of what I said.

Go ahead and tell me that you think this is a DPS meta. It is not. It is all about sustain.

style.6173:

Go ahead and tell me that you think this is a DPS meta. It is not. It is all about sustain.

I think you guys are talking about completely different things. A lot of people are learning how to really play their classes and are realizing how fast you can get skills to come out when you do it in the right order. Things like that are satisfying to pull off on a player level, but they are terrible for spectators.

This is a game of big splashy particle effects attached to meaningless abilities and little to no animation for quite a few of the things that actually down people…

In a moba when teams cross each others or gank happens it is over in seconds and there often is clear winner.

In gw2 on point fight may continue minutes without any progress or special moments.

Gw2 is a player’s game when a moba is more viewer friendly.

GW2 is fast paced, it’s an action combat MMO. It is indeed a bit harder to follow for the audience. But there’s a niche playerbase that enjoys faster paced gaming, so I don’t think GW2 wants to slow combat down at all.

However the rules of the gameplay, that’s where it can use a bit more excitement. It’s always more fun when you watch your teams score, be it rl sports or in games. The scoring method isn’t as exciting as someone carrying a flag to score a point. Also it’s not as exciting watching someone sustain on point, because killing is simply more exciting.

Just think of all the exciting moments where crowd got really into it, those were moments where they had big team brawls. Cheers happened when certain players died. But the way you’re supposed to score, you want to avoid big brawls and sustain on point. If they alter the gameplay a bit so teams would brawl more often, then the tournaments would be more exciting. If they add in easy to understand scoring mechanics such as capture the flag, and allow teams to escort and again…brawl in big team fights, those would end up being very exciting to watch.

Death brings cheers, people want to watch people kill each other in these games. They want to see players brawl in group fights, not just stand on point by themselves. Simple alteration of the gameplay can do great things to bring more excitement for people watching.

Very exciting and fast paced gameplay… ResidentSleeper

http://www.twitch.tv/jebrounity/v/14269751?t=1h52m25s
almost 7 minutes into the game and the score is 59-71

Very valid point, especially on the UI.

I don’t think anet have very good UI people to be honest. A lot of their designs are very out dated and not good uses of space.

bit of a necro i think but:
i think properly the biggest reason pvp doesnt have more success in gw2 is this:

The biggest and main problem of pvp.

For pvp to be truly good and enjoyable, it needs to be based on player skill.
Meaning that the better player will always win.
Now how is this possible? By being predictable.

With predictable I mean that the player knows what to expect.
When meeting class A, the player knows that when playing Class B he needs to react in a certain manner, and use skills in a certain way.

Now this is normally done by the predictability class setup.
Each class plays in a specific way and got a specific skill playstyle.
Meaning you will never see an Assassin that do high long ranged dps, or one that is super tanky.
You know that when you meet an assassin it will mean a few things:
Lets take Aion as an example: if you meet an assassin you know that it will mean it’s initial burst will most likely start out with stuns, or the stun will be a follow up at your first gap creator, meaning you need to have an anti stun and a gap creator ready for that.
It means big spike in the dps for the first 30 seconds, so you need to simply kite/cc/def for that timespan.
You know it got 1 high disengage so you need to close gap when it gets reasonably low.
Etc. etc. etc.

In short you know what it will do very precisely, there is very little moment of something you couldn’t have predicted and trained against. And since you know exactly what is coming BEFORE it hits you, you can prepare the strategy and the style of combat that you need to do, you can also train these effectively.

If you look at every high success pvp game then they all have the same thing in comment, every encounter is very predictable in what it needs to do to win. It knows this before the encounter even starts.
Equally you always got the tools to do what is needed if you got the RL skills to play correctly.
It comes down to who plays their class/character best, not who had the best build, who were just lucky or who got the jump on the unknowing opponent.

Now when all that is explained here comes the problem in pvp in GW2, it is almost 100% unpredictable.
When you meet an enemy in GW2 you cannot know what builds they are running, how their playstyle will be, or how to counter it. These things you can’t figure out before the engagement is well on its way and by then the entire point of “predictability” is gone.
(you won’t notice weapon sets and build etc. before you are already attacked).

Equally, every class can play as any role, so meeting a specific class got no counter playstyle.
This means you can’t effectively train to play against certain classes.
You will need to train your build against every class in every role, which makes it impossible to truly set up strategies for encounters, and it becomes much more of a “figure it out on the fly”.
On top of that you also have hard build counters, which means even if you did your homework perfectly if you meet the wrong build you just can’t ever win (equal skilled players).

All this makes the encounters very chaotic and it lacks the entire base of Good pvp play.
That you can predict that meeting a certain class (which is very easy to see/acknowledge/notice which opponent am I fighting),
means fighting a certain role (which means you instantly know which strategy and playstyle to fight with, and you can effectively train to an extremely high skilled RL skill lvl to make it pure RL skill focused more then anything else),

ofcouse there is other mechanics in the pvp of GW2 which is not optimal, but those are more of a “design discussion for or against” then you can say it is elementary for ALL good pvp foundation.
Of other area’s I think is hurtfull for the pvp scene is “downed mechanics” (which is promoting specific builds and playstyle over others, and is rewarding worse RL skilled players that are better at communication over players that are better RL skilled but doesn’t communicate; which is hurting everyone and overly rewarding premade groups with ts/etc),
spvp’s “extra help mechanics” (stuff like trebuchet, lightning cannon, etc. that takes away actual combat RL skill needed to win).
Lack of clear roles on each class, which includes clear knowledge of stats points distribution and easily overview of abilities choosen (as mentioned).
Pvp map setup and camera view (lots of the spvp maps are made badly depending on how the camera works in this game, meaning it becomes a “clusterF***” very easily especially in closed inviroments).
They way capture points are caught and hold (it promotes specific playstyle and builds over others. Also promote very stale games with everyone in tanky builds.)

A suggestion for a solution:

“premade roles with premade builds for pvp”.
Meaning when signing up for pvp you choose your role and a premade build for that role will be used.
An interface marker will be added which instead of just showing class of an enemy it will show the Role+class of it.
In this way you could +- fix the problem (and you could purposefully create builds which was equally powerfull)
:)

As a last note the balance between, melee vs ranged, dps vs tank is utterly and completely broken in this game, some builds just straight out CRUSHES other playstyle 100% of the time. Devs need to recheck their excel numbers because they are utterly and completely off when it comes to the balance between roles playstyle.

The meta has a pretty big part on how interesting any game of gw2 is. If you try to find VoDs of games from mid 2013 they’re about 20x more interesting than most games that have occurred in the past year. When the teams (ie Paradigm, old school TCG with Hyxorcisten still on roster and MiM) were still investing a lot of time into the game and when you could actually run one of the old comps where spike bursting was still possible you could see some pretty impressive displays of teamwork. Those days are long gone however.

Beyond that there’s quite a few issues with the spectator side. Firstly there are essentially no spectator tools in the UI to help someone who is at a new or casual level of the game figure out what is going on in the grand scheme of things. This leaves about 90% of the explanation and clarity to the shoutcaster/producer which has it’s own set of issues. Simple things as highlighting players in game (this is actually already in but you have to turn up post processing which looks like but in PvP) or giving visual/audio ques when important abilities/events happen could increase the watchability of the game dramatically. For instance if the game could somehow detect when someone actually makes a clutch play (ie someone dodges/blocks abilities that would kill them, gets a large spike on a player, etc), then things like this could be detected by casters/production more easily than having to fish it out from the 10 people fighting in any given 3-4 fights that could be happening at different spots on the map at once. Having autodirector (the camera automatically moves to important places) could also be pretty sweet but that would require having replay functionality working which is a whole other issue as well.

Another problem lies with the core game though and it’s the fact that it has literally 0 pacing which makes it nigh impossible for anyone not already familiar with the game to follow. For Conquest, there is constantly combat occurring, never any downtime, and because of this casters have to guess at which fights are important enough to hype up and which to glance over so some analysis can be performed mid game. Every caster, player, and anet employee has different opinions on the method of how this should be handled (which fights are important, when should you hype, how much should you hype, and the same for color/analysis mid game) so there is no consistency between any two events on how the presentation is handled. I think ANet wanted to fix this with stronghold but they kept the general timing of the game the same so the pacing is probably going to remain just as chaotic if not worse since the game mode has more complexity to it.

TL;DR:

• Meta/inactive scene has dulled the excitement surrounding games over the past 3ish years
• No artificial spectator assistance for a game that is extremely chaotic and unpredictable
• 0 pacing and no agreement in the community on the manner of how the game should be presented leads to inconsistency and a large problem with bringing in viewers who do not already play the game.

I’d say it’s a result of the stale balance currently festering in the game.

As it is right now, you can literally just look at the teams composition and you’ll know who’ll win based on the classes they’ve got.

It’s not a mistery for example that a 2vs2 game is really more enjoyable instead of a lot 5vs5 games.

I watched this evening the EU final 2vs2 between ROM/Kervv vs Misha/Zan and Rom did easily 600+ viewers on top.

This occurred for several reasons:

- in 2vs2 you have always the camera on the main action and at the same time you see always the pov player
- fight is small and is in open field, so less confusion and it’s easier to understand what’s going on.
- Games was really equilibrated and intense, both of teams had sustain compositions but with different mechanics (a lot of stealth for misha/zan, more regen/heals for rom/kervv). A lot of come backs with different ress from both of sides.
- the streaming quality was really enjoyable, ROM is a really good player/streamer

Basically this stream explains the gw2 pvp potential and how much a different game mode or better tools for viewers can really have a huge impact of pvp growth.

Honestly i think that for a 2vs2 game mod is necessary an admin and some restricted rules, so implementing it directly on the game, with really a lot of different variables, it would be difficult. But for sure Anet could add a different arena for small TDM (Courtyard is not great at all).

But Spectator experience can really be improved a LOT with the right tools.

open team screen. count eles on each side, the side that has more of them wins. so only equal ele fights are worth watching. but i get upset at ele balance way before that match comes and close the stream. or to be really honest, i never open the stream in the first place cause i know ill get upset at how broken ele is.

fix d/d ele, then go from there.

SkiTz.4590:

style.6173:

Varonth.5830:

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. snip.

Pretty much disagree with everything you wrote. The issue currently is that the sustain is too high. Who wants to watch a dd ele fight against a dd ele? That is about as boring as possible.

You can disagree, but he is not wrong.

Unless you are an avid pvp player in gw2, watching a tourney on stream is going to leave you saying “oh , cool sparkles and flashes, I have no idea whats going on, everythings moving fast, fights are all over the place. Time to go watch something else on twitch that I can actually understand”

There is reason why the WTS finals barely reached 10k viewers….Outside of Gw2 PvPers, no one is watching.
Not the MMORPG/Gaming community in general, not even the majority of the community in GW2 cares or watches.
Its because its not an entertaining watch, hard to follow for the avg outsider, unbalanced, same mode for 3 years, and it doesn’t appeal to anyone outside our own GW2 PvP community.

I think you are right in that only GW2 pvp’ers are watching but the 10,000 viewer count is low because right now anet is proactively driving people away from playing GW2 PVP. Think about the matchmaking balance issues, no soloq, no visible MMR or ranking system, etc… LOL wouldn’t have 25m players if they had all these shortcomings.

If anet wants more eyeballs and wants gw2 to be a serious esport, they have to start with the basics. People can complain about D/D ele all they want but if each team each had 1 D/D ele and those 2 were of equal skill, the complaining would be less relevant. Instead we get 1 good premade team fighting 5 people of whatever class is on the daily reward list and it ends 500 to 50.

TorsoReaper.8530:

SkiTz.4590:

style.6173:

Varonth.5830:

The reason why GW2 isn’t enjoyable to watch is because you cannot follow what is going on, especially if you aren’t the player. snip.

Pretty much disagree with everything you wrote. The issue currently is that the sustain is too high. Who wants to watch a dd ele fight against a dd ele? That is about as boring as possible.

You can disagree, but he is not wrong.

Unless you are an avid pvp player in gw2, watching a tourney on stream is going to leave you saying “oh , cool sparkles and flashes, I have no idea whats going on, everythings moving fast, fights are all over the place. Time to go watch something else on twitch that I can actually understand”

There is reason why the WTS finals barely reached 10k viewers….Outside of Gw2 PvPers, no one is watching.
Not the MMORPG/Gaming community in general, not even the majority of the community in GW2 cares or watches.
Its because its not an entertaining watch, hard to follow for the avg outsider, unbalanced, same mode for 3 years, and it doesn’t appeal to anyone outside our own GW2 PvP community.

I think you are right in that only GW2 pvp’ers are watching but the 10,000 viewer count is low because right now anet is proactively driving people away from playing GW2 PVP. Think about the matchmaking balance issues, no soloq, no visible MMR or ranking system, etc… LOL wouldn’t have 25m players if they had all these shortcomings.

If anet wants more eyeballs and wants gw2 to be a serious esport, they have to start with the basics. People can complain about D/D ele all they want but if each team each had 1 D/D ele and those 2 were of equal skill, the complaining would be less relevant. Instead we get 1 good premade team fighting 5 people of whatever class is on the daily reward list and it ends 500 to 50.

i think it has more to do with a balance issue amongst the playstyle/roles then anything else.
most large esport games didnt even have spectator systems when they became HUGE esport successes.
it is a question about having good very well balanced pvp that people find easy to learn, hard to master and which equals out to have a RL skills as the primary deciding factor.

i think the issue is primarily in the balance of the TTK.
as i explain here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/PVP-basic-game-design-TTK-time-to-kill/first#post5472267