Guild Wars 2

1. Arena Net’s GW2 youtube channel has more hits than any of the casters. Most of the hits are about half of normal GW2 videos off the main site. Some PvP related videos are about 10%.

2. Looks like EU has the lead in terms of viewership off the Anet site than NA. However it’s clear that EU play is more apt to be competitive than the NA matches.

3. When reviewing the personal channels for streamers or players, how to play a class is 10x more interesting than a PvP match. Hollts, who I don’t see post often in these forms, has some of the highest viewership for PvP play. Jebro’s guides also have 10x more viewers than his PvP events.

4. When reviewing the ESL official Youtube channel, there is nothing about gw2. You’re more apt to get better viewership if your videos are posted there, in my opinion, where it can get more exposure.

So why are “play guides” better viewed than PvP matches? My assumption is that when people want to actually play the game, these are the things they search for first and that gets hit. It’s much easier to follow one person through PvP than an entire team.

I think that you need post play match guides. The shout casters do a great job but even they can’t speak to where the exact place was where a match gets turned around and why. A good back cap or a good wipe, those are easy but with the amount of particle effects going on, you need to be able to slow it down and look at the coordinated play to see what was effective. For new players, you need someone to explain why it was effective.

Just my .02

It’s simple, in guide videos you see something, you are oriented on what you see and don’t get lost in it and as a bonus you can learn something.
In pop matches. You can’t catch up, casters are moving quickly around the map, cuz the game is fast progressing, while you can’t notice how pro players are using the strategies with their hero. Most of the time watching ESL doesn’t bring you anything to you. Because you just get lost in this whole chaos of fights. In dota you can catch up and learn cuz there analysts fewer options for players than in GW2.

I watch ESL a lot, but most of the time it’s just a waste of time. So why ppl should get over of something which is actually more beneficial?

One thing that keeps me away is there is never a true show of personal skill at high level play.
In Gw2, its every second of the game. 2v1 3v2 4v3 5v4, very rarely is there a fight outside the inital teamfight. The game is then decided by rotations and numbers. And that bothers me.

Never mind Fay literally explains everything better lol.

The primary problem is that GW2 is just not a good spectator sport, for a lot of reasons. There’s one really huge thing though:

No Buildup

In mobas and SC2 (which covers about 95% of esports) the matches have a very clear progression from start to finish. You start with building strength, manouvering, developing strategies. Then you progress into execution, realization of the initial strategies, more manouvering for endgame, and then finally the climax of huge fights and game-winning or game-losing decisions.

GW2 pvp starts out as a muddle of teamfights and rotations, continues as a muddle of teamfights and rotations, and ends as a muddle of teamfights and rotations. Very rarely do big plays happen, very rarely is there one spectacular moment, never is there a broad strategy developed over 15 minutes and finally executed flawlessly.

There’s nothing to keep you watching, nothing to really keep you engaged and locked into a match, and that means people will tune in, watch a teamfight or two, and then tune out without any sense of wanting to stick around for more.

I honestly don’t know how this could be fixed, because it’s a really fundamental problem with how the PvP in this game was built, but it’s an explanation as to why.

Question then: What if instead of streaming the matches with commentary, the matches were recorded and then the casters were able to stop, replay, continue matches to give people more information on why something worked?

I personally know that when we hear things like “Elementalist vs Elementalist, this will take awhile.” seems like a throw away comment. So perhaps if games were broken down into key moments, it might be better.

Thiefz.3695:

Question then: What if instead of streaming the matches with commentary, the matches were recorded and then the casters were able to stop, replay, continue matches to give people more information on why something worked?

I personally know that when we hear things like “Elementalist vs Elementalist, this will take awhile.” seems like a throw away comment. So perhaps if games were broken down into key moments, it might be better.

I would actually love to watch something like that.

The thing is, I have tried watching the streams (for EU) today/actually yesterday by now (the german as well as the english one), but didn’t stick around for very long; not even for a full match. The broadcasters tend to switch scenes and players quite quickly, and talk about player x and then you’re suddenly at the other end of the map and there’s player y and z fighting a, b and c of the other team, and then player w is being focused somewhere else… and you can’t possibly keep up with who is who unless you actually know all the players and their teams very well, and also know how their characters look like. Trying to read the nametags just doesn’t really do the trick. Another problem is, that for example there was an 1vs1 happening on another capture point and I would have found it very interesting to see that, but I actually didn’t get to, since the broadcasters switched to two or three different locations while said 1vs1 was happening. Which is sad, but kinda understandable… can’t show everything. But ya, if they switch cameras, the screen also zips over the map quite fast (guess it has to), which almost hurts the eyes. Then what I also found is, that even though I play PvP kinda frequently and daresay I know the maps quite well by now, I sometimes was confused as to where exactly the camera is right now (usually when it’s not on a capture point)… I tried checking on the minimap, but couldn’t spot any indication of the current camera-location.

All the necessary zipping around makes the whole thing appear to be quite chaotic and confusing at times, and you can’t possibly keep up with everything. You are also bound to miss stuff, unless maybe you’re one of those gifted individuals who can cut their fingernails while reading a newspaper, talking on the phone and eating lunch at the same time. However, I’d love to be able to watch recaps of matches, where key-moments and other interesting stuff are shown, and things are explained like how x leads to y and how that influences z.

On a sidenote (off topic), English sometimes really gives me a headache. I swear I wanted to translate the german word “Zusammenhang” or “Zusammenhänge” in plural, and the dictionary gave me like 10 options… and a person from the USA I asked told me maybe there exists no such word in English…

I don’t really tend to watch the tournaments, sPvP isn’t really my thing.

GW2 Tournaments don’t really get many viewers as the comments above have pointed out pretty decently.

However, from my first impressions of a long-drawn out viewing session I can say one thing:

The casters – whilst they do a good job, you can’t deny them that – they don’t seem very… Excited. It’s very monotone, both EU and NA. It’s almost like they’re trying to be too professional. Several times there where situations where you could go absolutely HYPETRAIN mode on specific mini-plays, but all you get is a slightly louder “whoa~”. It’s not very engaging to me, the viewer. If the casters getting hyped, then I’ll start getting hyped.

Also, their style of commentating is okay, but it’s very bland. I’d suggest adding more play-by-play ability casting. Whilst making play-by-play ability casting isn’t everyones cup of tea, but it may add a little bit more to the flow of the game and increase hype. It works very well if you can speak clearly and fluidly (which the casters can already do) to keep up with one or two players or a 1v1 fight on an isolated capture node. Obviously you can’t PBP Cast a 4v4 teamfight, but the 1v1’s certainly.

It takes skill to cast a fast paced game like GW2, and the current casters certainly have the skill, but I believe it requires a much more hype-style of casting to keep the audience hooked. The majority of the viewers are most likely hardcore sPvPers and people who’ve stumbled across it from the “Browse Channels” page. I don’t think I could get my friends to watch the stream because it’s hard to follow, it’s hard to see the skill in the teamfights, it’s hard to understand the clustkitten going on. It’s on the casters to translate that to us.

YouTube has a lot more viewership than Twitch. I personally prefer YouTube Gaming a lot more than the slow interface from Twitch.

I still don’t understand ANet decision to not stream the tournament on YouTube nor keep their page over there up to date. That’s a lot of publicity wasted.

Fay.2357:

The primary problem is that GW2 is just not a good spectator sport, for a lot of reasons. There’s one really huge thing though:

No Buildup

In mobas and SC2 (which covers about 95% of esports) the matches have a very clear progression from start to finish. You start with building strength, manouvering, developing strategies. Then you progress into execution, realization of the initial strategies, more manouvering for endgame, and then finally the climax of huge fights and game-winning or game-losing decisions.

GW2 pvp starts out as a muddle of teamfights and rotations, continues as a muddle of teamfights and rotations, and ends as a muddle of teamfights and rotations. Very rarely do big plays happen, very rarely is there one spectacular moment, never is there a broad strategy developed over 15 minutes and finally executed flawlessly.

There’s nothing to keep you watching, nothing to really keep you engaged and locked into a match, and that means people will tune in, watch a teamfight or two, and then tune out without any sense of wanting to stick around for more.

I honestly don’t know how this could be fixed, because it’s a really fundamental problem with how the PvP in this game was built, but it’s an explanation as to why.

I personally think this is a big part of it. There isn’t any sort of match progression. No “Early game/Mid game/Late game” thing. Except for maybe Foefire, which has the lord thing at 350. Even Temple’s buffs are just a huge scramble that happens over and over. Perhaps having the buffs scale and becoming more powerful as you go? 1130 Stillness, 830 Tranq, 530 Supertranq (All buffs + Tranq AND stillness,) then maybe 230 you just outright win the game.

Why is it clear that EU will be more competitive than NA?

To be honest I found the caster quite amazing on this ESL so far. They did a great job following where the most important action was and I felt hooked to watch the NA ESL since the casting felt much more alive than previous casting of gw2 pvp. As for the EU ESL qualifiers, it was not so much the caster fault as to the match beign totally one sided for the most part. Maybe it does indeed feel a little too restrained at time, but it is clearly more entertaining than it was once.

I wish I could hear some more outburst when a great play comes to be. My all time favorite caster in the gaming industry : TobiWan from the Dota 2 caster team https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61nnXWbnYfY Enjoy and make sure to adjust the volume since your ears may break upon his enthusiasm!

The match between Zero Counterplay and Auto Correct were my favorites match so far. The casters actually did get hyped at the many plays and fights happening and in return it got me hyped.

Last night the casters did great job on ESL matches, I enjoyed it quite well. But the thing is as many above mentioned. You got lost in it, in fights, in rotation. You can’t see what skills players are using since it became one big chaos. And most of the time they don’t point camera on whole fight, from start to beginning. Since it will get boring, most of the time players are bunkering on the cap point. But that’s the problem of the concept of gw2. I bet the Anet and casters squeezed maximum from casting tournaments. I like to watch while I can learn something. Here you don’t have such options like in other games.

Browrain.7346:

Why is it clear that EU will be more competitive than NA?

I watch the EU ESL very often. It is clear that at the top of EU, there is more than just 1 team which is dominant. However, in the NA, there has not yet been a team to beat Abjured. The EU ESL showed that TCG is competitive with Orange Logo. Now when we talk about middle or low tier, it can be blow outs too. EU certainly has it’s own games of 500-140. When we start seeing the top NA teams getting to mid 400’s against Abjured, that’s when we know the NA scene is competitive.

Which goes to the whole point of viewership, if everyone knows that Abjured is going to stomp most teams, it’s going to get low views. To put it into American Football terms, Patriots have been completely dominant this season except for when they played the Giants. That game was a constant battle. The NA scene doesn’t have those types of moments.

Who the hell is going to watch Pros play? Most esports that have alot of people viewing are ones the viewers plays as well, when they got a equal footing.

You took soloQ away, didnt even put in voice com. People arent interested.

The only gw2 players watching are the ones who are premaid groups que or the ones just starting to play.

The 90% of the playerbase is soloq. Which will be dying faster in numbers once rank play go’s live.

a way to watch the proleague matches ingame and follow specific players would be neat

TLDR; Matches are in too many places, put all videos in one place for people to easily search and view. Do post game analysis. Youtube is prefered but only slightly more so.

I reviewed the twitch and the numbers are similar. So for NA games on twitch, they peak at about 1.5k for older ones. The EU numbers are less on twitch but similar in views on Youtube. I think that you can’t use viewership on twitch to determine your viewership strategy. I think you need to look at views post match and I think Youtube is the better medium for putting up videos.

So I think if they are partnered with ESL, then they need all the ESL matches (including weekly) on the ESL youtube page OR they need to put all the weekly matches on the Anet Youtube page so it’s all in one place. I also think that a post match recap should be done to view all weekly and monthly highlights to show how and why they won. If the issue is that PvP in GW2 is too hard/fast to view then you need to break it down for people.