Guild Wars 2

Is Guild Wars 2 PvP too complicated to be consumable by the the mass esport audience?

There’s the whole build aspect of the game, which requires a lot of analysis and reanalyzing as you go in order to put together an effective build.

• Guild Wars 2 has a lot of systems players need to understand in order to create an effective attribute setup.

• While you’re crafting your attribute setup you must also consider what weapons play to those strengths.

• Additionally you need to consider what 5 slot skills play to the strengths of your attribute setup.

• You also need to figure out what traits make the most sense in your build. You must also consider the impact trait lines have on attributes.

• Finally you have to figure out what runes and sigils make the most sense to run.

The combat itself involves variable/dynamic effects. Conditions, Crowd Control, Specific skill effects, Trait/rune/sigil effects. The magnitude and duration of these effects is also variable.

Again the question I’m posing is…

Is Guild Wars 2 PvP too complicated to be consumable by the the mass esport audience?

no. I am best in world and I use number 3 only. sometimes 2.

Take a look at the last 200 threads in the forums, and you can answer the question by yourself.

Anyway – answer is ‘no’. There are other thousands of factors, which prevents GW2 beeing even near esports. GW2 beeing to complicated (?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?) is surely not a factor.

Though – you are trolling.

I totally disagree. In fact, the tactics for GW2 is pretty simple. What made GW2 fail at esport was because of the bad balance, and the 6 months per patch balancing approach.

Shockwave.1230:

• Guild Wars 2 has a lot of systems players need to understand in order to create an effective attribute setup.

LoL has a lot of systems players need to understand: multiple modes, multiple traits, builds, strategies. I’m just pulling up a random page for a random hero below. In short, it’s even more complicated (and people love it).
http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/taric-support-why-gems-are-truly-outrageous-march-update-243829

Shockwave.1230:

• While you’re crafting your attribute setup you must also consider what weapons play to those strengths.

In LoL, while you’re picking a champion, you also must consider which masteries to use, which runes table to use, which summoners skills to pick. Then in game, you must consider which items to buy, etc… Picking a weapon in gw2 locks in the spells, which you can think of is just similar to picking a different champion in LoL. And LoL has way more champions than gw2 has with the weapons per class.

Shockwave.1230:

• Additionally you need to consider what 5 slot skills play to the strengths of your attribute setup.

Considering how many skills/items combo you need to learn for LoL, you’re not making a good case that gw2 is more complex. In fact, most of the slot skills people use are pretty standard, and unchanged for a while. Think about a warrior without Berserker Stance? Even a newbie knows that. It’s more of a false choice rather than complexity. Want to be OP? There is only one or two choices. Don’t want to be OP? Then you should know what you are doing already.

Moreover, you don’t have to level up skill in gw2 pvp. In LoL, you even have to plan which skill to level up first depends on the situation.

Shockwave.1230:

• You also need to figure out what traits make the most sense in your build. You must also consider the impact trait lines have on attributes.

The masteries table and runes table in LoL is pretty complex too. Guess what, that’s esport! Why? because they only allow masteries/runes to change your power by around 15% of the original one. That maintains good balance while allowing hardcore people to tinker and find their best builds. A complex trait systems is what we want. What we don’t want is to get killed in 2 hits, or to attack a bunker for 5 minutes and they don’t die. Both of that are too extreme.

Shockwave.1230:

• Finally you have to figure out what runes and sigils make the most sense to run.

Tbh, I love the runes and sigils system in gw2. Sure, there are certainly some OP ones that I don’t like; however, it’s a pretty good system. The stats points given are low enough that it doesn’t significantly change the build, while offering a lot more customization options. In the next patch, they removes part of the customization already, so you can just put on one rune.

Shockwave.1230:

Is Guild Wars 2 PvP too complicated to be consumable by the the mass esport audience?

A strong no. Worst case, just google a guide and copy it. How is it more complicated than LoL, which is one of the most successful esport game?

The game has 3.5 mil+ sold. Even if no non-GW2 player ever understood the mechanics, there’d be still a plenty large audience — if most were still active and the PvP were actually good.

I’d say LoL is much more complex and yet it’s the biggest esport.

Why doesn’t esports work in gw2? (my opinion)

General:

- B2P (Higher barrier than free2play)
- MMO (Less popular than moba’s) < MMO’s consist of pve/pvp(/wvw) and thus it divides the resources/focus of the dev team.

Specific:

- Lack of competitive infrastructure.
- Passive gameplay (< AI, RNG, etc.). Greatly reduces the skill cap. Lots of very low skill cap builds which are yet the most rewarding.
(- Pre-release hype —> release disappointment + Dev focus (Slow reactive balancing, lots of flawed system implementations who then require an overhaul, etc.)) This will make it hard to become an esport in the future. Hard to earn back that trust.

Viewership:

- Difficult to cast/difficult to watch. (< b/c of fast-paced combat system, conquest and visual clutter)

Competitive games: high telegraphs, medium particle effects.
Guild Wars 2: little to no telegraphs, heavy cluster of particles and AI.
Trying to make sense of what’s happening while watching GW2 gives people headaches and the lack of good shoutcasters and interface that helps them (e.g.: a linear text log of major skills used in a particular fight) is another reason why Blu gets less viewers streaming ESL Weekly than a regular 12 years old kid playing LoL.

Other reasons:

1. Conditions – why is that guy losing health yet we see no big numbers on him?
2. Tanky builds – diving in for kills and close calls are what make games like LoL and Dota fun to watch. Tanky builds eliminate the possibility of bursting single targets.
3. Invulnerabilities and evades – there are too many in this game and they make combat boring and mistakes forgiving.
4. Conquest – I do like conquest as it has place for some amazing plays. Problem with fighting on small nodes is that everything happens on 2% of the map and the rest is totally useless. It would be way more fun to watch fights on larger nodes with open areas around to make pulling people off point into a burst combo viable.
5. No reason to play – the amount of attention PvP gets is just ridiculous. Stale meta makes people leave and no competitive rankings, leagues, seasons mean that there is literally nothing a competitive player would want in this game.

If anything, it’s too shallow.
Not enough strategic variety. For an Esports title, timing should be an important factor. There should be time windows, where x is strong, but y becomes stronger, the longer it drags on, etc.
You just can’t create a game, where some players dance around points for 10 minutes and the team, which dances better, will win in the end. An interesting solution would be making kills more meaningful. Lock out dead players for longer or make kills give more points. Then we’d see stuff like headhunter strategies clashing with checkpoint bunker strategies, with flexible roaming being the middle ground.

Balance itself was never a problem for esports. Conceptual flaws are way more devastating.

Someone also pointed out in some thread, that the extremes are too… well… extreme.
You got bunkers, which can not be killed by “balanced” builds and glass canons, which can one-shot “balanced” builds. Making the bunkers slightly less tanky and making the glass canons hit slightly less hard would actually do a lot to help build diversity(and thus maybe enabling more strategies).

lol pvp is too complex. good joke!

I think the reason is far more simple.
Conquest is boring to watch…

Too spammy in my opinion, also somewhere on forums i read that attack with 1 should do less dmg and also another nice thread where they suggest that 1 down also bring up only 1 player. This would make pro ppl/skilled ones stand out little more + combat wouldnt be so chaotic (beisde lots of particle cluster). Oh yea …. and that balance …. Tho i like conquest, dont miss death match at all.

No it’s not. GW2 may have a lot of superficial complexity but in practice it’s not very deep.

Also very few skills really affect play or have important synergies.

Don’t think that the combat nor the game mode is the problem.
Even after the patch gw2 is missing incentives for top tier players.

Smite launched with a $100k (+5$ per ticket purchase) tournament. If you really want ‘esports’ to kick off, that’s the target to aim for. (Ofc now announcing such a tournament to launch within a few month would be pointless.)

Really need a way to let people know, that gw2 tpvp exists, and has a future.

Is PvP Too Complex to be an esport?

No, the opposite, its too simple, with very limited variety of builds, too few skills, very limited tactics and strategy. Also, what skills/builds exist get nerfed to be really boring, medicore. So it gets boring real fast, hence lack of interest. Also, visually its a mess, with screen obscured by special effects, so whoever can hit there buttons fastest wins, with some pure luck thrown in.

Actually, builds are limitted, because playing some advanced builds requires you to be a robot, not a human. There are builds in which screwing an evade or an interrupt costs you a victory. You have to watch that tiny asura to move their hand by an inch and react to it – otherwise, die.

Nobody bothers with it; it’s stressing and not fun. Viewers won’t even notice that ‘epic’ dodge, because you have to pay VERY close attention to see that pindown inbetween auto-attacks. Increasing cast time to 1 second won’t help either.

People play faceroll builds instead, like hambow or PU mesmer, that require from you zero awarness and skill to stay effective. With these builds, you literally have to worry about nothing but your and your enemy’s health bar – step back when yours is decreasing, and push when theirs is low. That makes really flat, boring gameplay.

Nah it’s just bad balancing issues due to not being anywere near a priority on the company list

It’s not the game type or skills. It’s the pacing of the game. It’s fast and it’s hard to call out, in a larger fight what was the key moment.

biggest problem is it is hard to read whats going on even fro the player playing the game

in most cases i can´t tell what exactly killed me when i die – combat log total fails and there are no analyze tools to help to improve

nothing what tells me how much dmg taken, how much dmg absorbed, how often interupted, how much dmg i did, how often dodged an attack or dodge wasted, what spells did most dmg to me, how much condis removed, how long condis on me, how much dmg i did …… AND SO ON

arenanet tried to reduce game → player comunication only on animations but this fails in many ways and make the game only a big clusterf…

this game need more (better) analyze tools + some castbars and much lower animations + spell effects before can talk bout e-sport

I think the lack of class building is the biggest drawback. It just is not that interesting compared to other games. In their attempt to balance and simplify the game they have made it perhaps the most uninteresting pvp Imhave ever played.

Shockwave.1230:

Is Guild Wars 2 PvP too complicated to be consumable by the the mass esport audience?

There’s the whole build aspect of the game, which requires a lot of analysis and reanalyzing as you go in order to put together an effective build.

• Guild Wars 2 has a lot of systems players need to understand in order to create an effective attribute setup.

• While you’re crafting your attribute setup you must also consider what weapons play to those strengths.

• Additionally you need to consider what 5 slot skills play to the strengths of your attribute setup.

• You also need to figure out what traits make the most sense in your build. You must also consider the impact trait lines have on attributes.

• Finally you have to figure out what runes and sigils make the most sense to run.

The combat itself involves variable/dynamic effects. Conditions, Crowd Control, Specific skill effects, Trait/rune/sigil effects. The magnitude and duration of these effects is also variable.

Again the question I’m posing is…

Is Guild Wars 2 PvP too complicated to be consumable by the the mass esport audience?

No. Just look at Pokemon, I can’t even begin to think about how people train or boost their pets MP or whatever stat that exists within that game.

PvP is too messy for complete stranger to watch. If u dont know alot of the game the fights only look like bunch of aoe rings and particles popping all around, its not really entertaining.

Complexity? Nope. Every team is the same, everyone uses the same meta builds, every build is spam 1-2 skills to win. Only complex part is how the teams decide to rotate around points and thats just about it. This game would need so much more diversity on builds / team comps to be interesting to watch.

Covis.6037:

Complexity? Nope. Every team is the same, everyone uses the same meta builds, every build is spam 1-2 skills to win.

Are you suggesting that in other game modes there are more than 1-2 skill needed to win?

Think about what you are saying .. How is that PvP specific? More hyperbole garbage, parroted by people who seem to think PvP is easy, but almost always have very little mastery of ‘1-2 skills’ themselves.

It’s not that gw2 is too “complicated” to be e-sports, but there are too many variables that are generally unknown, hidden, and unpredictable (for both the user and receiver) to be e-sports which does tend to stem from traits and runes (more so than general stats).

Things like:
- Too many evades
- too much AI
- Too much reward for spamming
- sheer power of conditions without needing additional stats
- too many condition clears causing conditions to go from super over powered to useless solely on group composition
- stacking conditions to be shared amongst players thus more than one condi player together can end up stepping on one another’s feet where power doesn’t have that (would be like adding a max 10% damage from power attacks per second cap)
- thief initiative system differing so much from the other 7 classes which rely on CDs
- proc rates
- Sheer amount of not visible ICDs on long cool down traits (30+ seconds)
- lack of game modes worth considering “e-sport” worthy

These items are what stop e-sports. Not depth and complexity, but more the execution of depth/complexity that leads to too much nonsense and unknown factors.

Covis.6037:

PvP is too messy for complete stranger to watch. If u dont know alot of the game the fights only look like bunch of aoe rings and particles popping all around, its not really entertaining.

Complexity? Nope. Every team is the same, everyone uses the same meta builds, every build is spam 1-2 skills to win. Only complex part is how the teams decide to rotate around points and thats just about it. This game would need so much more diversity on builds / team comps to be interesting to watch.

I haven’t found a game that wasn’t “messy” for new players to watch.

Chaith.8256:

Covis.6037:

Complexity? Nope. Every team is the same, everyone uses the same meta builds, every build is spam 1-2 skills to win.

Are you suggesting that in other game modes there are more than 1-2 skill needed to win?

Think about what you are saying .. How is that PvP specific? More hyperbole garbage, parroted by people who seem to think PvP is easy, but almost always have very little mastery of ‘1-2 skills’ themselves.

Im just saying how things are… When was the last time u saw something “new” in a streamed tournament? How many pwhip, spirit ranger, bunker guard, hambow teams u see during these tournaments (i’d say 90% if not all). U rarely see anything too unique or new because nothing else works against these cheese builds.

There is one main reason why GW2 is not an esport. It is entirely because of conquest mode.

In short, conquest mode is fun to play but it is extremely boring to watch. That’s why you see so few viewers on tournament streams.

Its chaotic which makes it look complicated. Compared to Starcraft 2 which in my opinion is the most complicated eSports, Guild Wars 2 is a child’s game under the chaos.

Complex I lawld. The game is way too spammy there are barely any clutch moments and the risk/reward ratio just isn’t there

There are a lot of things involved, but complexity isn’t one of them.

The game is too spammy AND fast paced to work properly.
A fast paced game would have needed a smaller amount of skills or some kind of resource (mana, energy, …) in order to prevent every character involved in a fight from performing meaningful things all the time.
For a game with an arguably high amount of skills per charcater and no resources, the pace should have been quite slower for the insane amount of things happening around to be readable.

Whenever fights get bigger than a 1on1 (probably 2on2 for decent players), everything starts becoming a mess and even the involved players have to tunnelvision and start ignoring many things.
For someone trying spectate the whole teamfight, the game is completely unreadable and several replays are needed in order to understand whta happened (and that’s without considering screen clutter).

its complex in a certain way. not in a way of math. neither for apm.

but its complex in
1. pace, it’s pretty fast
2. visually. they really insist on immersion and telegraphs are not as distinct and often drowned in the background flash noise.

conquest mode is interesting in terms of strategy. there is a narrow division between 3cap/0cap. should you assault far, defend home, these are questions with many variables (team comp, map etc…).

i’d summarize: its easy were i like it and hard were it neednt be.

Pace seems like it is a big issue.

What could be done to make the pace more consumable to viewers?

Would the current overall feel of PvP have to be significantly changed in order to allow viewers to feel like they can follow what’s going on? What are the smaller portions that would need to change?

I have to respectfully disagree because the game is not complex enough to be a very popular Esport Title. Essentially, GW2 is too shallow in the profession’s abilities. However, I think there are several hurdles that GW2 can overcome before it gains widespread popularity as being a popular Esport worthy game:

1. Spectator camera angle
   In a very popular MOBA there is a relatively unbiased 3rd person overhead camera angle. Whereas in GW2 there is only a single 3rd person camera angle that focuses on one person.
2. Build diversity is greatly limited
   Sadly the possible combinations of builds and team compositions are probably less in number than several thousand in GW2. In a popular MOBA with 100 champions and items, there’s many more thousands of possible builds and combinations.
3. Perception of relative balance in the game
4. Abilities or builds make the game fun to watch and play:
   How many abilities launch/knock up/ down/ away enemies?
   I personally find it insanely fun to watch people fly and get knocked around.
   How many abilities are ‘skill shots’?
   How many abilities allow someone to actually control areas and bar enemies’ progress or movement in interesting ways?
5. The games have relatively predictable phases and strategies therein:
   Early game (1v1; 2v2 etc), Mid Game, and Late Game (mostly team fight) phases.
   GW2 doesn’t have many predictable phases and games are mostly about fast Team fights.

Now a suggestion could be to roll each weapon’s Auto Attack into an ability that doesn’t have a button, which opens up a new ability for each profession. Make the current auto-attacks initiated by opposite clicking on an enemy. Make each new ability unique and make them fun to use and WATCH.

Ultimately GW2 needs more of an emphasis on CONTROL and SUPPORT capabilities and needs to have thousands more possible combinations of viable builds.

How can this be done?
Mainly by allowing people to choose their stats on their gear—> Each individual Major and Minor stats with a few restrictions from a drop down menu.
Unlink the connections between 2 Stats per trait line, and give players complete freedom in the allocation of their stat points.
Lastly new skills created that actually allow someone to CONTROL enemy movements and SUPPORT their allies effectively, and new traits that are each unique and greatly define builds and fundamentally change their game-play.

Pyriall.5027:

Covis.6037:

PvP is too messy for complete stranger to watch. If u dont know alot of the game the fights only look like bunch of aoe rings and particles popping all around, its not really entertaining.

Complexity? Nope. Every team is the same, everyone uses the same meta builds, every build is spam 1-2 skills to win. Only complex part is how the teams decide to rotate around points and thats just about it. This game would need so much more diversity on builds / team comps to be interesting to watch.

I haven’t found a game that wasn’t “messy” for new players to watch.

This is the messiest game I have every played. There is no flow to it.

The problem is that reducing the skill cooldown and removing mana costs doesn’t actually increase the skill requirement. On the contrary, it reduces it, by reducing the room for smart plays, and the chance of overexposing yourself.

Look at what happens with URF in LoL, which is really similar: OP champions or not, it’s still the champion that makes the plays, more than the player. Chaining skills means nothing, you shoot until everyone is dead. And if you get caught outnumbered/with cooldowns, you have no chance of getting away.

What we learnt with esports is that more than apm and reflexes, tactics and awareness make the most interesting matches.

Relentliss.2170:

Pyriall.5027:

Covis.6037:

PvP is too messy for complete stranger to watch. If u dont know alot of the game the fights only look like bunch of aoe rings and particles popping all around, its not really entertaining.

Complexity? Nope. Every team is the same, everyone uses the same meta builds, every build is spam 1-2 skills to win. Only complex part is how the teams decide to rotate around points and thats just about it. This game would need so much more diversity on builds / team comps to be interesting to watch.

I haven’t found a game that wasn’t “messy” for new players to watch.

This is the messiest game I have every played. There is no flow to it.

Care to elaborate on that? I don’t know what you mean by , “There is no flow to it.”

It’s not complex if you understand the meta. But it looks like such a mess, it’s all fast pace all the time. 8 minutes of an unappealing mess. The only people who watch are this who understand it and care, adrenaline junkies, and those who are trying to be hip wanting in on the Esport scene.

Not to say it isn’t fun to be apart of (when the meta carried by isn’t low risk spam) but it’s not that interesting to watch.

IMO there needs to be better pacing, something that forces 1v1s into pushes. And slows not the combat, or team fights, but the phases of the game.

In contrast I think 2v2s are actually really fun to watch. When plays are made it looks good, and feels good when your doing it. It’s less of a cluster and everything done feels meaningful and clear.

I feel like gw2 is nowhere near as complex as say a sc2 which is considered an esport.

I like to draw comparisons between sports and esports.

I agree that GW2 can be pretty messy and fast paced. By the same token so can a sport like American Football. It’s hard to keep up with everything that goes on for both fields. That said, football is extremely popular in America.

Is the difference something as simple as there being a focal point for the sport in question, and a lack of a focal point in the “esport” in question? Most sports have a ball to focus on. Even an esport like starcraft, tends to have 1 or 2 points of focus at a given time, and within a focal point it seems somewhat easy to consume what’s going on.

Guild Wars 2, as has been mentioned suffers from a skill effect overload in both simultaneous quantity and magnitude. This combined with the extremely fast pace, is probably not helpful for consumption.

That said, GvG in Guild Wars 1 was fast paced too, it also had a huge quantity of skill effects triggering simultaneously. A difference I notice though is that GvG was larger scale, had way bigger maps (so event with a fast combat pace, map movement moved at a more comfortable pace), and the magnitude of skill effects was lower.

Would a game mode that has bigger maps, and a more game changing focal point make for easier consumption from viewers and still be competitive and fun?

no its not complex. The balance is just broken.

The “balance” team is just trying to dumb the system down as much as they can. This is how it is suppose to be in spvp:

Necromancers: conditions, hp, pets

Warriors: cc, conditions, crit, mobility, regen, tank, condition removal, stability, invuln, blocks, etc

Thieves: crit, conditions, stealth, teles’s, mobility, high burst, condition removal, low hp

Engi’s: conditions, bunker, health, cc, invis, power, pets, support, mobility, invuln, blocks, and everything else

mesmers: stealth, stability, conditions, condition removal, crit, cc, mobility, tele’s, clones/pets, invuln, high burst, low hp

Rangers: pets, regen, ranged

Ele’s: cc, mobility, conditions, condition removals, support, high damage, low hp

As long as you follow within those guidelines you’ll do fine. Esports? Nah. Not gonna happens :P I wish it would. But it’s not really looking good.

I main a necro. Don’t go anything but conditions when playing a necro in spvp because thats all they’re meant for. And to get focused.

It’s a matter of dumbing down (limiting builds) so that players can understand whats happening. Oh! a necro? He’s obviously conditions. Oh! an engineer? He can obviously do everything. Oh! A mesmer? he has low hp but can do more ranged stuff than thief. A thief? oh hes gonna go stealth or teleport everywhere and 2shot people.

I actually hope that one day the devs will just remove a power option from necromancers so there will be less confusion. Like when you start spvp just prohibit them from using any power amulets or dagger or axe. Stuff like that. Actually they should just preset the necromancers build and not let the players mess with it at all. That would be the simplest thing. Why beat around the bush?

XD

No one here obviously recalls those 3vs5 Naga initiations in TI3. Those people knew they were going to start a fight outnumbered but they know the mechanics of the game and how to chain their skills properly together as a team not just spam everything.

In LoL I don’t think it’s possible to start a fight outnumbered on your terms. Everything is just ultra spammy high burst low CD low mana cost and everybody even the pros AND the devs basically use the same runes and masteries because they are the most effective and sound.

sorrychief.2563:

No one here obviously recalls those 3vs5 Naga initiations in TI3. Those people knew they were going to start a fight outnumbered but they know the mechanics of the game and how to chain their skills properly together as a team not just spam everything.

In LoL I don’t think it’s possible to start a fight outnumbered on your terms. Everything is just ultra spammy high burst low CD low mana cost and everybody even the pros AND the devs basically use the same runes and masteries because they are the most effective and sound.

I hate this constant comparison to leagues. This is an entirely different game. The issue is that even the devs are trying to simulate the moba feel. Instead of champions or heroes or whatever, they are limiting each class to a few builds. These builds will be easily recognizable and thus make them easier to convey to the audience/players.

The dev’s are shooting themselves in their own feet. This isn’t a moba. There should be no over-emphasizing particular builds for the sake of easy understanding.

The devs brought such new stuff to the table with this game and are just sabotaging it now by trying to fit it inside another games schematics. That’s not how this game won all of its accolades and it’s not how its going to succeed in esports.

I started GW2 with my wow guild. We where one of the top RBG groups in europe during pretty much every season. The group had only glad level people in it so their pvp experience wasnt limited to RBGs only.

Every single one of them (but me) quit since the combat is to simplistic and spammy. Other reasons that where mentioned where the lack of gamemodes including a small scale arena type gamemode and the lack of a ladder.

The biggest problem is that the community that couldve been the backbone of pvp in this game quit before they even got to think about potential depth within conquest as a gamemode for example.

Blance and boredom are the two reasons pvp is no longer fun for me.

GW2 PvP was build with the concept of teamwork and combos in mind, but it is very unbalanced and simple, while combos are mostly used in WvW. Therefore, in my opinion it will never be an eSport simply because it is unbalanced and combos are not very rewarding for PvP.

If GW2 PvP was more complex requiring teamwork with spells coordination for multiple combos, probably then and only then it could try to go for eSport, but as it stands now… it’s just too simplistic and childish.

PvP mechanics (Dodges, response and so on) are good…too bad gw2 pvp is based on skilles specs and crap metas, so no since being competitive here doesn’t necessarily require skills it will never be an esport. As i said like 1 year+ ago they must choose between casual friendly and competitive, there will never be an esport caring for nubs, better players should prevale and nabs should be ganked, that’s how it works for every competitive game from gw1 to mobas…..rewarding casuals and randoms while being bad already killed gw2 pvp. Marketing choices after all…they wanted it, now they’re getting what they deserve.

Seifer Thalaen.7869:

PvP mechanics (Dodges, response and so on) are good…too bad gw2 pvp is based on skilles specs and crap metas, so no since being competitive here doesn’t necessarily require skills it will never be an esport. As i said like 1 year+ ago they must choose between casual friendly and competitive, there will never be an esport caring for nubs, better players should prevale and nabs should be ganked, that’s how it works for every competitive game from gw1 to mobas…..rewarding casuals and randoms while being bad already killed gw2 pvp. Marketing choices after all…they wanted it, now they’re getting what they deserve.

This coupled with a complete lack of quality control/well thought out changes is pretty much exactly what’s wrong with this game’s pvp. The combat framework is great and has an amazing amount of potential, but the obsession with making casual friendly, low skill rewarding builds, based around some sort of “awesome” gimmick (invisible teleporting ninjas! Super “sturdy” warriors! AI armies that fight for you!) just makes it impossible for this game to be anything more than a casual distraction at best. It’s an incredibly frustrating pity.

Around the time of PAX last year there were a lot of threads on these forums persuading devs to stop pursuing e-sports and start catering to their main playerbase who are mmo PvPers. Mmorpg PvP is very different from the competitive e-sport scene you see in MOBAs.

I have mentioned some of the reasons why competitive players and teams left in the following thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Reasons-for-competitive-player-disinterest/first#post3836839

I’d rather not repeat myself.

I believe the biggest issue with GW2 PvP not being eSports material is the lack of replay and observation options.

Take SC2 for instance. When it came out, I immediately bought it and laddered like crazy. It was so much fun, even when I was on the loosing and. And I was often on the loosing end

But I enjoyed the game, because of the numbers of casts in the internet, where I could follow the action with passionate commentators. In GW2 you must be life there to observe the game. There is no option to just load a playback and rewind it as much as you want.

If you want to showcase some tactics, strategies and special situations, you can not simply play back to this point in time. I mean you can, but it takes a considerable amount of editing instead of just going to the point in time in a replay while you are watching the match (like you can in SC2). And this makes it not worth it. Also, I would want a “zoom far away out”-option, so I can check what’s going on from further away. If you’d have a freely movable camera and free playback file, where you can relive the action, then there would be way more option to offer this game to an audience. If you have an audience, you have potential to make it into the eSports scene.

It was obvious that GW2 won’t be an eSport back during the first beta.
Why are you people surprised?

TyPin.9860:

I believe the biggest issue with GW2 PvP not being eSports material is the lack of replay and observation options.

Take SC2 for instance. When it came out, I immediately bought it and laddered like crazy. It was so much fun, even when I was on the loosing and. And I was often on the loosing end

But I enjoyed the game, because of the numbers of casts in the internet, where I could follow the action with passionate commentators. In GW2 you must be life there to observe the game. There is no option to just load a playback and rewind it as much as you want.

If you want to showcase some tactics, strategies and special situations, you can not simply play back to this point in time. I mean you can, but it takes a considerable amount of editing instead of just going to the point in time in a replay while you are watching the match (like you can in SC2). And this makes it not worth it. Also, I would want a “zoom far away out”-option, so I can check what’s going on from further away. If you’d have a freely movable camera and free playback file, where you can relive the action, then there would be way more option to offer this game to an audience. If you have an audience, you have potential to make it into the eSports scene.

I always liked the Halo series for it’s match replays introduced in Halo 3 and beyond. A system like this would be incredible for streamers, the tool would do the work editing would do in a much quicker, simpler and easier to use manner. If people could save and share their most clutch moments to show off, I think people would be much more invested.