Guild Wars 2

What has happened to Gw2 becoming a Esport? Noone bothers even streaming spvp. The whole balancing of classes can be solved swiftly, if mods even read class forums and take into consideration some of the great suggestions provided there. This all reminds me of blizzard and their flavor of the month appeal in regards to classes. I want to know what anet has in store in regards to the whole Esport. For the love of the Charr gods give us /duel feature so we can have some actual fun in this game. Spvp duels are not alluring because of grievers.

It failed.

Sorry

You honestly expected GW2 to become an e-sport?

Let us take a look at the top three genres for e-sports. MOBAs, FPS, and Fighting games. Unfortunately, MMO’s do not fit into any of those categories. Nobody cares to watch the sPvP aspect of the game, because they would much rather be playing the game itself or doing something else. Look at the top Twitch.tv games. Do you see anyone streaming this game with more than 100+ viewers at once? Very very rarely. WoW gets more views and that is not even close to an e-sport.

The game itself has little depth. Most classes have 1-2 builds that can be successful and the amount of actual player skill is very minimal in most cases. This in combination proves to be very boring to watch for most people.

If they really want this game to be an e-sport, they have to throw a few million dollars or more to even start up and get people interested. Anything else is just half kitten attempts at making an e-sport. No e-sports organization is going to pick up a game that has a very niche audience who would rather be playing the game then watching the game.

Diviner.7405:

You honestly expected GW2 to become an e-sport?

Let us take a look at the top three genres for e-sports. MOBAs, FPS, and Fighting games. Unfortunately, MMO’s do not fit into any of those categories. Nobody cares to watch the sPvP aspect of the game, because they would much rather be playing the game itself or doing something else. Look at the top Twitch.tv games. Do you see anyone streaming this game with more than 100+ viewers at once? Very very rarely. WoW gets more views and that is not even close to an e-sport.

The game itself has little depth. Most classes have 1-2 builds that can be successful and the amount of actual player skill is very minimal in most cases. This in combination proves to be very boring to watch for most people.

If they really want this game to be an e-sport, they have to throw a few million dollars or more to even start up and get people interested. Anything else is just half kitten attempts at making an e-sport. No e-sports organization is going to pick up a game that has a very niche audience who would rather be playing the game then watching the game.

You bring up very good points, but even so 1v1s,2v2,3v3… brackets could still generate real good audiences for it. All based on how it is presented. The game has great mechanics that can make this MMORPG different from others, that would make it more viable for E-sport.

Diviner.7405:

You honestly expected GW2 to become an e-sport?

Let us take a look at the top three genres for e-sports. MOBAs, FPS, and Fighting games. Unfortunately, MMO’s do not fit into any of those categories. Nobody cares to watch the sPvP aspect of the game, because they would much rather be playing the game itself or doing something else. Look at the top Twitch.tv games. Do you see anyone streaming this game with more than 100+ viewers at once? Very very rarely. WoW gets more views and that is not even close to an e-sport.

The game itself has little depth. Most classes have 1-2 builds that can be successful and the amount of actual player skill is very minimal in most cases. This in combination proves to be very boring to watch for most people.

If they really want this game to be an e-sport, they have to throw a few million dollars or more to even start up and get people interested. Anything else is just half kitten attempts at making an e-sport. No e-sports organization is going to pick up a game that has a very niche audience who would rather be playing the game then watching the game.

We’re going to be the first MMO to hit esports then #hope #December2014

CachoDm.4639:

We’re going to be the first MMO to hit esports then #hope #December2014

GW1 was enough of an esport to make people happy.
GW2 is like kittening leaps and bounds even from that.

Wouldn’t say it is the genre holding Gw2 back. E-sports is hardly genre specific. As long as a game’s PvP aspect is done well enough it can break into the scene over time.

Now with MMO’s well PvP tends to be the lowest priority. For Gw2 this also seems to be the case so I can hardly say the PvP is living up to its potential.

Justin ODell.9517:

Personally, I think we can get there.

It’s awesome that each day I get to help move things a little bit closer to that goal than the day before.

Agreed. There are A LOT of good teams in the upcoming GF tournament with a HUGE prize pool. Also can expect lots of viewers. Those that doubt esports are upset that can’t compete in it.

The forums are obsessed with esports. The devs never have been—they usually say things like “I think we can get there” or “we’re going to keep making the game as good as we can.” In other words, they know you don’t just “make” an esport. You make a game as good as you can, and see what happens with it.

Somehow, the forums have twisted those words into some kind of “promise.” It’s a goal, or a dream. Not a promise.

I’m guessing when the game got the full release, e-sports was high on the list because it started out with so much promise and a very good population. Over time it probably became clear to everyone that getting to this status was not going to be easy, if ever. I believe if anet thought e-sport was achievable then so much more resources and exposure would be poured into pvp development but its obvious this isn’t the case for a good reason.

I rather anet just work on the small details of working their way up on rewards, game modes and balance and if they make good progress before they know it e-sports might be associated with GW2.

“If you build it…they will come.”

The game is heading towards more balance and being even more fun. People will come back and new people will stick around!"

“People will come Ray (Jon), people will come”

Justin, as strange as it may sound, I really feel particle effects being over the top are holding back viewers. Some things are just so ‘flashy’ like sigil of fire, nades, many guardian/ele skills, that trying to spectate fights, is just so tiresome. Let’s not even bring up the petting zoo…

I think many skills really need to be evaluated and toned by quite a bit, just to make it easier to both play and watch. May not be much of a priority to the pvp team, but still is worth noting.

Justin ODell.9517:

Personally, I think we can get there.

It’s awesome that each day I get to help move things a little bit closer to that goal than the day before.

You guys (not to sound rude or derogatory or anything, I’m trying to speak from as objective of a standpoint as can be), you guys haven’t shown any real progress towards that goal.
Next to every top player and top team has gotten frustrated to to the point of quitting.

I’d shoot for a more casual game, that or you guys are going to have to change next to everything things about how you function (and communication is just the tip of that iceburge).
Esports really seems to be much more than is worth taking on.

So far…
GW2 has become even less of a social PvP game (team que, long que times with extremely unbalanced matchmaking since the population in it is so small, SPvP still forcing random teams)
GW2 has bounced constantly through extreme metas.
GW2 gameplay has lost depth.
GW2 gameplay is terrible to watch.
GW2 has major que/matchmaking issues.

I mean, it’s not like I have expected all of that fixed and wrapped up in the first few months after release, far from it, but I do expect some progress, I mean if you have such auspicious goals of esports and whatnot there has to be progress towards fixing those things at some point.
So far the devs don’t even seem to notice what is causing the massive fluctuations in meta… which is sad…
(no patch has even TOUCHED on it)

The major releases this year…
Leaderboards… flopped.
Custom arenas… flopped (next to no one buys them, and so they basically are just a list of old style servers)
Matchmaking… flopped (no leaver penalty will kill any matchmaking).
Spectator mode… its the most awkward I’ve seen in a game, but it’s functional’ish.

It’s not an attempt at being cruel, just kinda of a ‘what is going to change so features/releases/patches really begin to improve how the game plays??’ if you seriously think esports are possible that’s kind of a BIG question.

Dota 2 has professional gaming. I’ve never played Dota 2, yet if I watch clips for a little bit I can slowly discern moves better than GW2. Go play any class and tell me the skills are fluid, transparent and discernible.

The worst offender IMO is the engineer, their animations are so generic, fast and they have tons of skills. Ever see the difference between rifle 1 and 3? Rifle 3 makes a little sound and has a small animation but you’ll never dodge in time unless you know it’s coming. The longest activation time is the auto attack at 3/4 second…That’s 1 weapon on 1 class. Eles have traits that create instant damage when switching to air, thieves drop their biggest damage from stealth(although anet is nerfing their stealth uptime so there’s a smaller window to hit), necros have marks that all look the same(lol) and they can make them unblockable(the only way to discern differences is by the size of the mark…gg), rangers summon so much AI that it’s impossible to see through the clutter and tell what’s happening- this happens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4. How can that be enjoyable to view? Even without a ranger around the clutter and speed of a match can become unbearable to watch. Even people casting a stream lose track of what’s going on sometimes. How can GW2 be compared to professional games whether electronic or physical?

And these are just things off the top of my head which anyone can talk about. There are hundreds of skills, many with such short casts that the only ways to play are “tank it”, “evade it”, “get them before they get me”. No cast bars, no distinct movements just tank tank, evade evade, spam spam.

garethh.3518:

not to sound rude or derogatory or anything

Pro life tip: using phrases like this doesn’t actually change the nature of whatever you say next.

Apologies for the interjection. Carry on.

data.4093:

And these are just things off the top of my head which anyone can talk about. There are hundreds of skills, many with such short casts that the only ways to play are “tank it”, “evade it”, “get them before they get me”. No cast bars, no distinct movements just tank tank, evade evade, spam spam.

I agree with you that in general, big damage cooldowns should have tells. I don’t think it reduces the game to random dodging or evade spam, though. I used to get upset when people dodged my overcharged shot, a skill that should be impossible to dodge. I finally figured out how badly I was getting outplayed—my opponents were reading me like a book. They didn’t need an animation, because they knew exactly what combos I was trying to pull on them.

Now I find I have a pretty good success rate dodging overcharged shot vs. other engineers, and I land it much more consistently. So I agree in general, but I think there’s a lot more going on than that.

From an esports perspective, that type of gameplay does make it tough for a casual observer to see what’s going on. As shoutcasters get better and better, I expect they’ll be able to provide more and more insight into mind games like this.

NevirSayDie.6235:

I agree with you that in general, big damage cooldowns should have tells. I don’t think it reduces the game to random dodging or evade spam, though. I used to get upset when people dodged my overcharged shot, a skill that should be impossible to dodge. I finally figured out how badly I was getting outplayed—my opponents were reading me like a book. They didn’t need an animation, because they knew exactly what combos I was trying to pull on them.

Now I find I have a pretty good success rate dodging overcharged shot vs. other engineers, and I land it much more consistently. So I agree in general, but I think there’s a lot more going on than that.

It’s like I said earlier in my post, you can only dodge things like this if you see it coming(or if you dodge randomly when the engi gets close). Most people do not know the ins and outs of every class, we probably understand 1 or 2 very well and that’s it.

Justin ODell.9517:

@garethh.3518 – I don’t agree with you as far as something being a flop, but I will say that the progress we’ve made so far is only part of the puzzle that we need to complete before we can consider PvP to be successful.

Cant tell if srs……

you guys had 4 million (with an M) box sales at launch prolly couple more million since

and the pvp pop is…..NON EXISTENT

if that does not scream flop i would like to know what YOU think is a flop

Edit: i forgot you guys advertised this as a PVP game LOL (ultimate facepalm)

Suzu.4193:

Justin ODell.9517:

@garethh.3518 – I don’t agree with you as far as something being a flop, but I will say that the progress we’ve made so far is only part of the puzzle that we need to complete before we can consider PvP to be successful.

Cant tell if srs……

you guys had 4 million (with an M) box sales at launch prolly couple more million since

and the pvp pop is…..NON EXISTENT

if that does not scream flop i would like to know what YOU think is a flop

The fact there is a PvP pop means it isn’t a total flop. It isn’t good, but it isn’t bad either. I think it has a long way to go before it can be called good. We’re getting there. I’m sure if we had the data on unique players that played games in pvp and the time spent by players in pvp, it would prove it wasn’t a total flop. As he said, they’re making progress.

Deified.7520:

Suzu.4193:

Justin ODell.9517:

@garethh.3518 – I don’t agree with you as far as something being a flop, but I will say that the progress we’ve made so far is only part of the puzzle that we need to complete before we can consider PvP to be successful.

Cant tell if srs……

you guys had 4 million (with an M) box sales at launch prolly couple more million since

and the pvp pop is…..NON EXISTENT

if that does not scream flop i would like to know what YOU think is a flop

The fact there is a PvP pop means it isn’t a total flop. It isn’t good, but it isn’t bad either. I think it has a long way to go before it can be called good. We’re getting there. I’m sure if we had the data on unique players that played games in pvp and the time spent by players in pvp, it would prove it wasn’t a total flop. As he said, they’re making progress.

also cant tell if srs…

so what your saying to me is out of the multi million player population in pve right now about 500-2000 (maybe up to a whopppping 4k on weekends) players that play pvp in any given hour is a raving success…

u got me guys, i admit defeat, i know when to give in to the sheer facts, your logix has overwhelmed me and to that i say adieu.

Justin ODell.9517:

Personally, I think we can get there.

It’s awesome that each day I get to help move things a little bit closer to that goal than the day before.

… no comment

esports will not happen for GW2. Anyone who thinks it will happen is delusional.

I’m not sure debating if it’s a flop or not will contribute to the situation.

On the readability issue, to pursue with *data*’s remarks, i think you may want to consider the following improvements :

• Reduce instant casting skills to a minimum. This is especially aiming at AoEs (and cleave).
  I understand this may lead to a slower paced gameplay, but you don’t have to raise the casting time of AoE’s at 3 seconds either.
  Stepping in deadly necro marks because they weren’t there and suddenly they were (along with fighting with the camera angle itself to keep a proper view of the terrain) isn’t helping. I’m not pointing at necros in particular, this is an example.

The thief’s cluster bomb is a good example of what AoE’s should be to me, while it’s true there is no casting time, there’s a delay before it takes effect.
The sad part comes from the fact that it’s slower than most AoEs and it’s far from being the most powerful one.
Instead of buffing cluster bomb, why not tweaking most AoEs based on this one (no power creep…).
Either an AoE has a casting time, either it’s instant cast but with a delay before coming into effect.
Please, no more fire and forget 900 ranged instant deadly AoEs.

• Show what is happening under an enemy player’s red bar.
  Even if it’s an autoattack. If you get to raise the overall AoE casting/delay time i believe this is the second step toward a better overall readability.

• Then you may want to promote conditionnal stuns and knockdowns.
  Knockdown if the player is running
  Stun if the player is using a skill
  Daze if the player has X stacks of X condition on him
  … While totally remove unconditionnal ones, and nerfing Stability to be a short and precious boon rather than another fire and forget permanent buff that in many case doesn’t even have the fire part in its design.
  In short words, do something so passive gameplay and thoughtless spam becomes much less rewarding. (Like you are starting to do with the thief’s IS for instance)

• Finally, promote non spammable, smart, active counters.
  Guild Wars 1 distracting shot… Anyone… ?

I hope i’m not being too pessimistic, the new targeting system toward the AI clutter, although it has a few flaws, was a really great move toward the right direction to me, for example.

Anyway, this is just an sketch of one of many possible ways to rebalance/redesign the current state of pvp so don’t take it too seriously.
The overall point being, please, promote smart decisions gameplay as opposed to the spam feast in a 450 radius furball we currently have.

I agree with above posts that game is too random, fast and too much spam.
Here are a few situations that happen quite often to me:

Skyhammer Thief: Stealth + stand on pressure plate use scorpion wire when plate gets shattered. You basicaly have to watch those plates all the time and hope you will dodge, block in right time. And if you do, hi will just keep doing it until he gets you off guard. Maybe the pull could be slower ? so you have time to use stunbreaker atleast since it has 1200 range.

Engineer can shoot you off point/cliff with a range of skills which all look the same. You can try to pick up a pattern but in the end it is all about luck, since you try to predict when he will use them.

I think Guardian hammer skill 4 is a good example of how skill should look like. It is slow enough to see what will happen and fast enough to cast you off guard.

I also think that showing what skill player will use and increasing cast times would improve the game. Because when necro does his skills, i just have to guess dodge. Well he will cast something but I have no idea what it will be.

In GW1 almost everything had casting time of 1 sec, even interupts were 1/4s cast time. GW2 is just much more confusing and a lot of time you do not know why you died or why you got rezzed.

The only way this game could become an e-sport is if there were massive cash injections for prize funds so that it became a very lucrative game to play and enter a tournament in.

That’s never going to happen.

What we have instead is just a game. But it’s just a game that isn’t very fun, it’s built upon cheesy mechanics like spamming conditions and then chaining fear on a target so they die watching their character run into a wall.

Or building up a load of passive defences and chaining stuns with a hammer and broken traits so that you chain stun and knockdown your target till they die.

Or building a passive proc build that gets its strength from spamming a ranged auto attack while damaging conditions are applied constantly and build up to ridiculous levels for very little player skill required.

Then you have the pet spams, fighting Minionmancers, Spirit Rangers and Phantasm / Clone spamming Mesmer’s with several teleports and invisibility skills isn’t fun to play against and isn’t fun to watch.

On top of all of this you add a technicolour lightshow that blinds the screen covering everything in a luminous display of fireworks every time someone even thinks about combat.

And then we have an incredibly slow development cycle.

We are told that they want to do small balance changes – instead we get whack-a-mole style changes that thrust one or two specs into the levels of insanty compared to everything else and it dominates the meta for several months while the devs talk about having discussions about watching what happens. All the while the playerbase is screaming for changes to remove the lunacy, the development cycle responds 3 months later with a tiny change that wasn’t enough and the game continues to hemorrhage players because who wants to wait 4-6 months to see Hambow Warriors with Healing Signet nerfed?

We were told that GW2 would never have diminishing returns on CC because the devs never wanted to introduce enough CC so that anyone could be chained by CC and lose control of their character until death.

Well devs, do you realise just how many Fears a Necro can chain together, or how many stuns a Warrior with a Hammer or Mace Shield can link together, not to mention the Utilities both of these classes have offering even more CC spam.

The game isn’t fun, the development cycles are far too long to do anything about fundamentally changing it.

Ranged Condition spam is such an easy form of gameplay, why is it so powerful and rewarding compared to melee damage that requires thought, positioning, reactions and wading through all the AoE and condi spam to get there.

Looking at the December patch of 2013 when we are slowly seeing some things fixed that have existed since the beta weekends, it all seems too little too late for GW2.

As usual (Pretty tired bout writing always same things) you CAN’T make a pvp game for esports AND casuals….casual friendly is the opposite of competitive so you must pick one and forget the other already anet. Stop trying to please everyone cause you’ll just end up screwing up both competitive and casual players..just let casual stick to pve and focus on competitive pvp (tpvp) or just get rid of tournaments already and lose (the few) competitive players who are still here…

Justin ODell.9517:

@garethh.3518 – I don’t agree with you as far as something being a flop, but I will say that the progress we’ve made so far is only part of the puzzle that we need to complete before we can consider PvP to be successful.

Teamqueing leads to facing people that arent even on the leaderboards becomes everyone quit, we still havent gotten anything from having been the best at the game since gokitten release now aside from 400ish in dollars. Not a single top player, regardless of skill or charisma can get anywhere close to a twitch partnership due to how abyssmally viewed this game is.

EU couldn’t get the bloody tech oturnament going because it couldnt even get enough teams to play for it, and they looked everywhere and would accept bad teams. They’d also accept pugs.

Every single feature, from matchmaking to custom arenas to your absolutely hilarious leaderboards (azhene enjoying that r1 man) are completely broken beyond belief or extremely sub par even when compared to indie games.’’

Fact is, even with all the technical issues to the games mmr etc we’d never hit an esport status on the games worth alone because the balance don’t understand the game well enugh to do their job which leads to the frusterating gameplay and insanely low skillcap we have today =).

Could you repeat that pvp isnt a flop after reading this and you see us reaching an esport?

Justin ODell.9517:

Asuka Shikinami.5462:

I really feel particle effects being over the top are holding back viewers.

Many of us have the same opinion, though I’m not sure which team has that as a work item, and at what priority.

IMO, it’s downed state. Downed state is IMO game-breakingly bad on numerous levels, not least of which being that it’s a complete departure from PVP norms & adds nothing to the game but problems.

DS has spawned hundreds of hate threads since BWE1, sure the frequency has died down a lot but very clearly it’s a major PVP turnoff. It’s still the main reason I won’t touch sPVP in this game with a barge pole.

The general lack of player choices/build diversity is bad but it’s secondary to a PVP mechanic that I truly hate.

garethh.3518:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Gw2-and-the-state-of-Esport/first#post3160107

What most of what you’re saying is true, but that is not because the developers have done nothing. They have done a lot of balancing and they gave us spectator-mode as well as custom arenas, they even hosted their own tournament.
With that said, the reason the game still went in the direction you described, was because Anet failed in their priorities.
Their approach to balancing and bringing new features was off. The main reason GW2 did not evolve into a competitive game was and is still, because of the small gap between the skill floor and the skill cap. Even if you have played this game for a year non-stop, you will have trouble dealing with an average gamer that started one week ago, granted he uses a meta-build.
This is due to various things such as too powerful auto-attacks, too low CD’s on skills in general, and the fact that support is almost non-existant. There are other reasons, but these are some of them. The faster Anet realises this, and stop decreasing cooldowns to buff “bad” classes, the faster we can talk about GW2 as a competitive game.
Simply put; There needs to be punishment for bad decisions, and skills have to be difficult to land. I believe this was the intention when GW2 launched (the reason there are vector-abilites), but they never really pushed that direction.
Skills like Berserker Stance should not grant 8 seconds immunity, but rather 3-4 seconds where all incoming conditions would be copied to the caster. If people then choose to continue spamming conditions, they will be punished.
I know that people won’t read this if the post becomes too long, so I’ll cut it here.

KrisHQ.4719:

Their approach to balancing and bringing new features was off. The main reason GW2 did not evolve into a competitive game was and is still, because of the small gap between the skill floor and the skill cap. Even if you have played this game for a year non-stop, you will have trouble dealing with an average gamer that started one week ago, granted he uses a meta-build.

No. If we’re talking about a 2v1 then yeah, Anet set this game up so many encounters are won by numbers and noobies can win with spam. Otherwise, no. Skill cap and skill floor and terms I’ve only heard in relation to gw2, I do not believe skill is “complicated moves” which are really just attack patterns. 2 warriors fighting can be much more skillful than 2 engineers as animations are easier to recognize and have greater cast time.

Sorry if im being harsh..
But after a year and some months, this game actually loses competitive players, the viewers in twitch are dropping, the tournaments have less and less viewers..

I mean if this isnt a fail what it is?
What do you expect to happen to be sure that “yes,we failed”..
Ppl to stop playing pvp at all..?Cause right now ppl are just playing pvp casual and without any competition..Who cares in climbing up in the leaderboards?

I will still play the game, and i hope that pvp will become fun to play..

But saying that we are going for esports is either a flat lie or you try and you cant do it..
Im dont want to be offensive in any way.Im just trying to be realistic..Facts are facts..Words are words…
The facts are that this game since release is losing the esports battle..

Not to mentioned that you know that this meta is bad, you know that top players are leaving for a long time now..
Saying we aim for esports and not doing something for these problems for 5 months is a fact..
So the “saying” will remain just “saying”

data.4093:

KrisHQ.4719:

Their approach to balancing and bringing new features was off. The main reason GW2 did not evolve into a competitive game was and is still, because of the small gap between the skill floor and the skill cap. Even if you have played this game for a year non-stop, you will have trouble dealing with an average gamer that started one week ago, granted he uses a meta-build.

No. If we’re talking about a 2v1 then yeah, Anet set this game up so many encounters are won by numbers and noobies can win with spam. Otherwise, no. Skill cap and skill floor and terms I’ve only heard in relation to gw2, I do not believe skill is “complicated moves” which are really just attack patterns. 2 warriors fighting can be much more skillful than 2 engineers as animations are easier to recognize and have greater cast time.

Well. Nowhere in my post I’m describing exactly what I believe define the terms skill-cap and skill-floor, so I find it a little weird that you just assume I’m somehow talking about “complicated moves”? I don’t even know what you mean by that.
Because exactly what you are describing about the warriors having longer cast times and better telegraphed skills, will allow for purposeful interruption etc.
An experienced player should win over a new player with ease. There will never be a competitive environment if you remove that skill-difference. It’s like that with every single competitive game and even sport. A good table-tennis player will ALWAYS win against a bad one. I know that GW2 is a team-game, but a large part of the game consist of duels and smaller skirmishes.
A game should be easily approached by a beginner, but allow for a good player to take advantage of a bad one. Surely it will be frustrating for the new player to feel completely helpless when facing an experienced player, but that’s simply how the world works.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again:
A very basic rule of thumb when creating a competitive sport is to ask: Will there be any montages and showcase videos?
It should be easy to spot when someone does something that is extraordinary, and it should be motivating for beginners.
This is the case for pretty much every single sport and e-sport, and is most definitely not the case with GW2.

PS. I’ve killed people at my skill-level simply by auto-attacking, and I’ve lost to a lot of people simply spamming their skills as well. And yes, even under “controlled” environments, where I knew the players personally.

Hyxorcisten.5786:

Justin ODell.9517:

@garethh.3518 – I don’t agree with you as far as something being a flop, but I will say that the progress we’ve made so far is only part of the puzzle that we need to complete before we can consider PvP to be successful.

Teamqueing leads to facing people that arent even on the leaderboards becomes everyone quit, we still havent gotten anything from having been the best at the game since gokitten release now aside from 400ish in dollars. Not a single top player, regardless of skill or charisma can get anywhere close to a twitch partnership due to how abyssmally viewed this game is.

EU couldn’t get the bloody tech oturnament going because it couldnt even get enough teams to play for it, and they looked everywhere and would accept bad teams. They’d also accept pugs.

Every single feature, from matchmaking to custom arenas to your absolutely hilarious leaderboards (azhene enjoying that r1 man) are completely broken beyond belief or extremely sub par even when compared to indie games.’’

Fact is, even with all the technical issues to the games mmr etc we’d never hit an esport status on the games worth alone because the balance don’t understand the game well enugh to do their job which leads to the frusterating gameplay and insanely low skillcap we have today =).

Could you repeat that pvp isnt a flop after reading this and you see us reaching an esport?

BADUUMMMM TSSSSS

Hyxorcisten for president !!!

Problem is the Devs are amateurs. This is not an insult I just I don’t think they’ve ever done this stuff before. Which is why they’re getting better at balancing and cranking out new features. Sadly, most of us are onto other games due to snail’s pace progress.

KrisHQ.4719:

data.4093:

KrisHQ.4719:

Their approach to balancing and bringing new features was off. The main reason GW2 did not evolve into a competitive game was and is still, because of the small gap between the skill floor and the skill cap. Even if you have played this game for a year non-stop, you will have trouble dealing with an average gamer that started one week ago, granted he uses a meta-build.

No. If we’re talking about a 2v1 then yeah, Anet set this game up so many encounters are won by numbers and noobies can win with spam. Otherwise, no. Skill cap and skill floor and terms I’ve only heard in relation to gw2, I do not believe skill is “complicated moves” which are really just attack patterns. 2 warriors fighting can be much more skillful than 2 engineers as animations are easier to recognize and have greater cast time.

Well. Nowhere in my post I’m describing exactly what I believe define the terms skill-cap and skill-floor, so I find it a little weird that you just assume I’m somehow talking about “complicated moves”? I don’t even know what you mean by that.

It’s been said many times in the forums that “high skill cap” classes have many skills and rotations like eles and engineers. I was referring to that definition of skill and belief that those classes should beat “simple” ones(warrior for example).

data.4093:

KrisHQ.4719:

data.4093:

KrisHQ.4719:

Their approach to balancing and bringing new features was off. The main reason GW2 did not evolve into a competitive game was and is still, because of the small gap between the skill floor and the skill cap. Even if you have played this game for a year non-stop, you will have trouble dealing with an average gamer that started one week ago, granted he uses a meta-build.

No. If we’re talking about a 2v1 then yeah, Anet set this game up so many encounters are won by numbers and noobies can win with spam. Otherwise, no. Skill cap and skill floor and terms I’ve only heard in relation to gw2, I do not believe skill is “complicated moves” which are really just attack patterns. 2 warriors fighting can be much more skillful than 2 engineers as animations are easier to recognize and have greater cast time.

Well. Nowhere in my post I’m describing exactly what I believe define the terms skill-cap and skill-floor, so I find it a little weird that you just assume I’m somehow talking about “complicated moves”? I don’t even know what you mean by that.

It’s been said many times in the forums that “high skill cap” classes have many skills and rotations like eles and engineers. I was referring to that definition of skill and belief that those classes should beat “simple” ones(warrior for example).

Ah. I get what you mean, but I can assure you that I’m not on their team.
DOTA has a high skill-cap and a low skill-floor but each hero is limited to 4 skills +/- a few and of course items with active abilites.
There is no hero that is OP if played badly, which there is in GW2.
So.. Which class is that, you might ask? All of them.

Fanboys that insist their class takes skill to master, bring it on! I’m ready!
I’ll just spam my keyboard and hope I come up with a good argument

Sorry for the harsh tone again.My goal is to be realistic and as clear as i can not offensive.I like this game

The thing is that more and more ppl are leaving the already small pvp community..I dont know what numbers are saying but i can see it cause i play this game everyday..I see it on twitch goodbye streams..
I dont know if devs are seeing numbers of newcomers increase but its obvious that they wont stay for too long..
If ppl like Teldo, Caed etc left this game after all the time they invest on it ppl like me and other casuals will leave earlier and more easy…
Its ok that this is the way you designed the game and its ok that you try and work on it everyday but its kinda frustrating to come and say “we are taking steps forward esports”…

It like saying we(pvp community) are stupid or something..Like you are making fun of us..Like we are not seeing the facts. Do you want us to turn a blind eye on them?I never did and ill never do it..I accept the truth no matter how hard is it.Im expecting for you to do the same..

Or we must consider “progress” that top players leave and twitch has 100 viewers average?

Justin ODell.9517:

@garethh.3518 – I don’t agree with you as far as something being a flop, but I will say that the progress we’ve made so far is only part of the puzzle that we need to complete before we can consider PvP to be successful.

Brave words, no dev I’ve seen has really touched the ‘E’ word with a ten foot stick in the past few months, nonetheless responded to something contrary about it.

You DO seem like a nice person, which is great that you’ve got that going for you, so don’t take all this kitten at all personally, the forums become unbearable if you do, but, if it’s possible (company guidelines as much as personality), being a wee bit more realistic on the subject would be cool.

I don’t expect you to fall into the whole ‘woe is GW2 esports deal’, just, when you make a claim like ‘GW2 can be an esport’ have some discussable revelation or reason to it.

Yes the matchmaking/leaderboards/custom-arenas are good things to have in a game, and they can be improved to be helpful.
So far they are all utterly useless, detrimental, or not taken seriously.
Leaderboards were probably the biggest success, but just because nostalgia, leaderboards are great parts of some other games, that ‘great part’ moved to GW2 would be, well, great, but they didn’t end up playing out well, like at all…

Again, they can be improved to help the game.
But it’s kind of hard to see that happening when all the features released so far are useless when they aren’t sub-par, detrimental when they aren’t ignored, if you know what I’m saying.

Balkanwarrior.5132:

esports will not happen for GW2. Anyone who thinks it will happen is delusional.

Furthermore with current development of PvP, I think the whole PvP section of the game will never be popular. ( It might be fun to play at some time in the near future – 2015, but it would be treated like a side thing to do)

And the devs being so happy about what the have acomplished so far, and how bright will be the future, are just hilarious.

PS: I’ve always been a PvP player, played GW1 PvP for many years. I had huge hopes for GW2 PvP and waited patiently over a year after launch for PvP to be exciting, rewarding and fun. I’m realy glad I’ve gave up on PvP few months ago and moved on.

I think GW2 can be an ESport, but I think it’s inherently a tough thing to pull off with an MMO. Already, they have a good foundation laid by not requiring a gear grindfest to be competitive. However, I think that the small map style GW2 has right now makes it tough to produce a really interesting game from a viewer’s perspective. Sure, the small maps throw players into the fights, but there’s a lot less room to really watch the strategies play out.

I think this is why watching games in GW1 was so much more interesting than GW2. You had people running flags, setting up for spikes, feigning attacks, etc. all going on, whereas GW2 seems to be all about squabbling over capturing points with the occaisional extra objective.

Our hope is that with the rewards updates, matchmaking improvements, and various other updates on the horizon we can begin to cultivate a more competitive, engaging, and fun version of Structured PvP.

Cheers..
Hope it will be something significant.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

We agree that PvP isn’t where we want it to be

This is first step to make something happen, too bad its way too late.

you can’t create a game for e-sport.
you must earn the rights to be.

and gw2 is far from earning it

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

but it will ultimately be up to the community to take the competitive scene one step further.

Hugh “Nightmare” Norfolk
PvP Designer

True, BUT the community will be competitive if and only if the game will have the possibility to be competitive.
And with the current skill floor, it isn’t (on long term).

I think it’s easy the reasons why gw2 isn’t an esport.

First of all, the esports thingy is already too crowded, there maybe some little spot for a weird action-rpg-pvp mmo, but it can’t be too big.

Second, pvp it’s not the focus of this game, this game isn’t very good at pvp, wvw or pve, because it can’t, and it can’t because the game has to focus in 3 things at the same time. There is no way you can have an amazing pvp unless you say, we will use most of the resources and balance patches for pvp and everything else will be delayed and secondary. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad, i believe it’s the best mmo ever for the amount of money you pay (and i mean it, the best mmo u can buy), but it’s not a pvp mmo.

Third, hype is already dead, you can’t maintain the hype just with dreams, but you need the hype to become an esport. And hyping the same people for the same game, it’s hard as hell, maybe with an expasion with improve leaderboards, match-making, etc. But even then, you already failed them once.

Fourth, and this is maybe the worst, it’s not fun to watch, it’s really really hard to follow what is happening, it’s really really hard to see nice things like counter play, there is too much skills used per second (even in 2 vs 2) to see what is happening. And it’s probably because the game is too much fast-paced and there is too much teleport, stealth, and immune stuff that negates position and counter play.