Guild Wars 2

I was watching replays for world finals and a couple of things occured to me.

We all know gw 2 isn’t a very Esport game in the same way it’s not a very popular pvp game.

Obvious reasons: 5v5 is hard to comment (can’t watch everything all the time) and the visual noise since HoT is out of control so viewers can barely see what is going on. I don’t think Anet will reduce visual noise (even more than they already did) because pve players (the majority) want their fireworks.

What i noticed: The casting is a problem:

It’s basically two casters commentating caps/decaps and life bars (i.e “A is getting low but it looks like he will be fine since B wasn’t able to finish the job”). They are commentating the obivous, what everyone can see.

Now if we look at other esports (for example starcraft 2): You have 2 casters and they generally divide the casting in 2: One comments the global action, One comments the more technical plays.

This is exactly what gw2 ESL casting is missing. We currently have 2 casters commentating life bars when we should have:

- One commentating the global game (caps/decaps/life bars/big bursts/big heals/cap management/…etc.) and

- One commentating the technical aspect of the game (what is being interupted and how/ jukes/ skilled condi transfers/skilled cleanses or any kind of specific description of how someone died, killed someone or survived).

Since this might be hard work for casters who, even if they are good at “entertainment talk”, do not have an in depth knowledge of the game maybe they could split between 2 casters and one observer (an ESL player/former ESL player).

I feel improvement on this matter would encourage people to watch ESL games more since, with good casting and obs, they could actually learn things and be more hyped for the skill level involved (we all know the skill level is there, but we don’t see it even less hear about it).

Game to fast for that to be commented, rason why gw1 pvp was much better than gw2 is, was needed much more team work, more general know how, ganks, spikes, pull conditions and transfer, interrups by rangers and mesmers interrupting certain almost instant skills, and had a good pace of combat to be commented.

Gw2 combat meh to spammy, to much biased on gimmicks, to flashy its a bit of a mess… not even worth watching and listening it is even worse, i tried.. seriously i tried…

Its HOT, if you go back and watch WTS 1-2 one where the Abjured won and one with ORNG you got the seperation in play calling. 1 person doing the play by play and the other commenting on the portal plays (TCG) and the effect of having a hammer guardian(ORNG).

You cant do that that because its like this alot, ohhh his health is going low they are putting down the dps and hes full health.

The addition of rebound from ele- cele avatar from druid- boost of health to warrior in the last patch on top of the crazy AOE effects of HOT make it really hard to see what is happening.

Literally 1 mesmer each team with 2-3 clones with a ele using overloads and necros who are not even traited for minions who get 2-5 minions from a shout clutters a point. Before HOT you could hear guardian/warrior/ranger shouts and a shout caster could say at that moment whether or not that was a good play. Each shout did something different, guardians had defensive ones with a shout giving protection, aegis and swiftness, condi clear and slightly healing the guardian. Warriors were offensive giving fear, vulnerability, might and fury.

Now every skill gives everything. Cele avatar heals you, allies, healing ally either gives them dmg boost or blinds enemy on next attack. Ele shouts provide protection,vigor, healing, and a aura.

How can you comment on the match when there is a million things happening at once and they will continue to happen during that fight? Just when you think a ele is gonna go down they use rebound, then ranger fully heals them or engy or a mesmer uses the F4 skill then gets a free rez. Do you blame the shout casters for this?

ESL casting is great right now and there is nothing that I think could be improved upon. Yes, they could mention the timing of skills and such, but they are the things that I quite literally do not care about. What I want from casting is an overview of the match and who is winning/losing the fights and when caps/decaps are happening. But most of all what I want are casters who genuinely enjoy what they are doing and get hyped and start shouting at exciting moments (if you want to know what I mean by that watch the end of game 2 of vermillion vs. Abjured at the season 1 pro league finals). That is what really makes watching the esports events exciting for me.

If the casters were just listing all the skills that are used and how they are timed, the pro league would be boring for me. If I wanted to see exactly how a fight was won/lost I would go back and re-watch that moment in the game, like I often do (people often complain about it being too hard to see what is going on, but I have no problem seeing exactly what each individual player is doing in a huge teamfight if I am watching them). The thing that gets me hyped for esports events like the upcoming world championship (seriously, I am already counting down the days until I get to watch it) is the exciting moments in the games and the casters’ commentary on those moments, not endless listing of skills and dodges/blocks and technical moments in teamfights with no real excitement behind them.

Are the replays on the GW2 youtube channel or somewhere else? I haven’t been able to find them

OriOri.8724:

Are the replays on the GW2 youtube channel or somewhere else? I haven’t been able to find them

they are on the gw2twitch channel

suffish.4150:

ESL casting is great right now and there is nothing that I think could be improved upon. Yes, they could mention the timing of skills and such, but they are the things that I quite literally do not care about. What I want from casting is an overview of the match and who is winning/losing the fights and when caps/decaps are happening. But most of all what I want are casters who genuinely enjoy what they are doing and get hyped and start shouting at exciting moments (if you want to know what I mean by that watch the end of game 2 of vermillion vs. Abjured at the season 1 pro league finals). That is what really makes watching the esports events exciting for me.

If the casters were just listing all the skills that are used and how they are timed, the pro league would be boring for me. If I wanted to see exactly how a fight was won/lost I would go back and re-watch that moment in the game, like I often do (people often complain about it being too hard to see what is going on, but I have no problem seeing exactly what each individual player is doing in a huge teamfight if I am watching them). The thing that gets me hyped for esports events like the upcoming world championship (seriously, I am already counting down the days until I get to watch it) is the exciting moments in the games and the casters’ commentary on those moments, not endless listing of skills and dodges/blocks and technical moments in teamfights with no real excitement behind them.

I agree with you on the excitement matter from the castors.

But dont you think for people not knowing all the skills of each class it can become a issue? When you watch sports center and they break down the NBA finals or Super Bowl they can literally pick 3-4 moments and break down what happened.

For instance when the spurs last won in 2014 they kept showing clips of the passing and cutting and you got those cliche comments such as the ball is faster then any defense. So a old team won a championship on being playing with better ball movement and player movement. They beat 2 teams who were more talented and had the better player. How would you break down the new matches?

I received criticism for saying that I (as well as the castors ) that toker had no effect on the games. If we had game break downs from these castors that showed actual crucial moments it would bring layers of understanding to the game to those just curious about the game. Supercutie tried to do that but he picked moments that really didnt matter for the most part but i respect that he had a actual notebook out and brought up actual plays during the match.

I agree with you about the excitement but when you can get intelligent people who know the game like the troy aikmens who now is a broadcastor, phill simms, doug collins, jeff van gundys. These people making comments about the game have huge impacts on things such as rule changes.

For Guild Wars to be a successful Esports game you need both. If we had castors who said things and didnt make it pg like huerix and simply say necro and thief are not good enough to have a impact on these games it would at least put the pressure on Anet to balance PvP.

The issue isn’t the casting. I think they do a pretty good job.

The problem is the marketing group at ANET is quite poor. They need to ramp up more excitement, get people passionate about certain teams. Right now, they just post a bunch of articles the week before a big tournament and then hope people come watch it.

kdaddy.5431:

OriOri.8724:

Are the replays on the GW2 youtube channel or somewhere else? I haven’t been able to find them

they are on the gw2twitch channel

Oh ewww. Thanks

kdaddy.5431:

I agree with you on the excitement matter from the castors.

But dont you think for people not knowing all the skills of each class it can become a issue? When you watch sports center and they break down the NBA finals or Super Bowl they can literally pick 3-4 moments and break down what happened.

I received criticism for saying that I (as well as the castors ) that toker had no effect on the games. If we had game break downs from these castors that showed actual crucial moments it would bring layers of understanding to the game to those just curious about the game. Supercutie tried to do that but he picked moments that really didnt matter for the most part but i respect that he had a actual notebook out and brought up actual plays during the match.

I agree with you about the excitement but when you can get intelligent people who know the game like the troy aikmens who now is a broadcastor, phill simms, doug collins, jeff van gundys. These people making comments about the game have huge impacts on things such as rule changes.

For Guild Wars to be a successful Esports game you need both. If we had castors who said things and didnt make it pg like huerix and simply say necro and thief are not good enough to have a impact on these games it would at least put the pressure on Anet to balance PvP.

I am not saying that there should be no analysis whatsoever because it is important for people to understand exactly what is being done. However I do not think that this should happen while the game is actually going on. Adding the analysis of skills to commentary would just take away from the excitement and hype.

When this analysis should take place is after the game has ended, which is why I think that the season 2 finals were perfect because replays of important moments were brought up and the analysts talked about exactly what was going on. This is much better for me because it is interesting to see what the analysts have to say about specific moments and gives me an opportunity to watch the best moments again without it taking away from the excitement and unpredictability of the games.

What I am saying is that talking about specific skills and technical moments should happen, but it should never happen when a game is in progress.

The casting is not really a problem per se. But I think people kindof don’t really get your point.

In the S02 finals, they actually did their first attempt at analysing some of the more key points in a match, which is a really good step into the right direction. Obviously you cannot expect GW2 casting to be on par with say League of Legends casting. They are years apart, in terms of time casters had to practice.

That said, you are right. And it is in part why LoL was so successful is that they realised its a spectator sport, so improving specator mode and casting pushed them miles!

I do think our spectator mode needs more of an overhaul than our casting. But it is true that our casting is a bit too far on the play by play side and could use a more technical caster. This is not to be confused by just breaking down every situation. But just shedding some light in the mechanical ongoings of what is being watched can help a ton in hyping up the audience. But the idea behind this style of casting is also that you do not miss any of the epic encounters/fights/mechanical plays. So replays and simultaneous cameras need to be come a thing too.

style.6173:

The issue isn’t the casting. I think they do a pretty good job.

The problem is the marketing group at ANET is quite poor. They need to ramp up more excitement, get people passionate about certain teams. Right now, they just post a bunch of articles the week before a big tournament and then hope people come watch it.

How do you get people amped about certain teams? If you can give an example of how you would go about doing that, then I’m sure Anet would be more than happy to do that.

In reply to the OP:

The casters try to do everything that you say and in many cases they do. Maybe you watched a few matches where they didn’t do it as often?

The problem isn’t the shoutcasting.
The problem is the game mode.

Conquest is fun as hell to play but it’s terribly difficult to track during a broadcast. You simply can’t watch all three nodes at once or comment about what is happening on each individual node, all at once. When they try to do this, it becomes hectic. If they stopped trying to do this, the match wouldn’t make any sense so it’s a situation where they are stuck between a rock & a hard place with: “Talk faster and cover more which is confusing to some people? or Slow down to be less confusing to understand but miss more of the plays?” I personally don’t think anything can be done better than what they are doing now, concerning Conquest footage.

What needs to happen is a new match type that is designed for spectators to watch. Of course it needs to be competitive and fun but as a priority, make sure it has synergy and strong dynamic with the purpose of it being aired live for viewers to watch and understand.

What is it that people REALLY like to see? Easy, combat prowess – epic moments
Imagine this:

• 5 people in a team.
• Two teams go against each other
• Red team & Blue team list their players by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• Match starts with five different small arenas within the map. Each arena has different terrain. Some arenas may reward stealth play, others direct engagement with no LoSing, others provide strong LoSing ect.. ect..
• In the first round, in arena one, Red 1 and Blue 1 go against each other. In the second arena, Red 2 and Blue 2 go against each other. You see where I’m going with this. It’s 1v1s but it’s a team game.
• When all team members are finished with their duels, it then rotates them to face a different opponent from the opposing team so there would be 5 rounds total.
• At the end of the 5th round, the team with the most 1v1 wins, wins the entire match.

It is important to note that this match type could allow each player 60-120 seconds before each round starts so they may swap gear/traits/utilities but not class. This would promote a game type that would encourage a “non-meta” type of excitement. As in 1v1, depending on what you are against specifically, encourages many many different types of build structures to engage optimally or simply to surprise someone if you think you know what they are using and wish to counter it. This would not result in the same builds being used over and over. It would highly encourage the use of options that are outside of the Conquest meta. This is what people want in gameplay and it is what people want to watch.

If this exact idea was not to be used, consider my points made about “devising something that is designed for spectators to watch” and cook up something new for us. Something that encourages builds outside of Conquest meta.

Most people don’t seem to understand that it isn’t that “there is no build diversity” it’s that Conquest requires certain things out of the builds being played there so that they are effective at that game type. But if you started giving us different game types “such as 1v1 oriented type things as an example” They’d see reason to use some of these “useless options”.

Best way to improve ESL viewing experience (IMO) is to STOP JUMPING from player to player every 5 seconds. That combined with the insane spamming visual effects is dramatically increasing my chances of having an epileptic fit.

With regards to the casters themselves…i cant comment since it feels like gibberish when they also change commentary every 5 sec due to the camera viewpoints continually changing.

style.6173:

The issue isn’t the casting. I think they do a pretty good job.

The problem is the marketing group at ANET is quite poor. They need to ramp up more excitement, get people passionate about certain teams. Right now, they just post a bunch of articles the week before a big tournament and then hope people come watch it.

Yeah, it’s run by a guy who were on QA 2 years ago.

One of the biggest problem of the IT industries is the principle of peter:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

It’s seems too hard to take people from a “profession” and give them “responsibilities”. They think that upgrading some hard worker is the best way to do, he can LEARN on assignment.

Wrong. Marketing is a profession. Profession are those kind of works that you need to get at the BIG school to have the bases. Then, you could try to get better…

Everyone have great things to say about how QA is like a swiss cheeze?