Guild Wars 2

I was one of the ~5,000 people who watched PAX, and one of the ~2,000 people who watched the ESL Finals. I’ve found that I really enjoy watching streams from individual players (like Phantaram, or Ostrich Eggs, or Helseth, or whoever), yet I find shoutcasted tournament games to be a dull, confusing mess. Here are some suggestions for making tournament games more interesting to watch:

1. Change the way GW2 tournaments are shoutcasted so that each viewer can choose to watch the match from a specific player’s perspective. Or, at the very least, have shoutcasters stick to one player’s perspective during any given fight (they can swap perspectives after the fight, so we eventually get to see everyone’s POV over the course of a match).

Almost all the drama and action in GW2 is at the personal player level. Watching the ele blind the warrior’s earthshaker (okay I made this up, none of the top teams run ele). Or watching a warrior use earthshaker on the thief, and then seeing that the thief has no endurance or init and thinking, “THAT’S GONNA LAND!” I can’t really see or appreciate most of these plays when I’m watching from the bird’s eye view.

Instead, from the bird’s eye view, I see a handful of players running inside the point waving shivs at each other (that’s what Asura-sized weapons look like). The whole time, green, purple, and orange AOE effects are raining down on the point. And outside the point I see a few people running around waving their hands in the air doing some rain dance while being chased around by a scantily-dressed thief.

2. Give epic skills epic animations.
The skills that really turn the tide of a battle should have a big visual OOMPH to them, while skills that are relatively meaningless should be less flashy. I’m not talking about telegraphing all epic skills — the animation can come before or after the skill’s effect has taken place. And some telegraphed skills still have non-flashy animations (like churning earth). Making the animations on game-changing skills more visually striking will draw the viewers’ attention to the most important parts of the battle.

Skullcrack, final thrust, phoenix, fire grab, combustion shot, reaper’s mark etc. are all heavy-hitting gamechangers that have relatively light animations. While phoenix and fire grab do have some shine to them, they’re less shiny than many other ele skills. On the other hand, skills like earthshaker, meteor shower, the guardian’s bubbles, etc. look and feel kitten (except meteor shower, which only looks kitten).

3. Increase emphasis on clutch plays
Watching two players autoattack each other and spam low-cooldown skills until one of them drops from attrition isn’t interesting. Attrition fights in general aren’t interesting. What is interesting is watching someone successfully pull off a risky maneuver that has a big impact on the battle. Landing Pudge’s hook in Dota is a good example of this. But most of these clutch plays seem to be missing in high-level GW2 tournaments. It’s not that they aren’t available, but it seems like the top teams have discovered the optimal low-risk, high-reward builds that simply don’t leave room for clutch plays.

The solution I’d like to see is having each weapon set have ~2-3 spammable low-key attack skills, maybe 1 non-spammable defensive skill, and ~1-2 high-CD risky but powerful moves (with flashy animations). A lot of weapon sets already kind of conform to this (especially the ele’s weapon sets), except for the animations part (dust devil has a bigger visual effect than earthquake, even though earthquake is way more powerful). Other weapon sets or classes should be re-evaluated (maybe make warrior bursts more powerful but have a higher CD).

4. More interesting capture point layouts
First, capture points should not be the size of a traited necro mark. Whenever I watch a fight on one of these points, it looks like everyone is vomiting rainbows everywhere. The capture-point fight that look the most appealing to me is on Graveyard in Foefire. There, the AOEs are spread out, and that leaves room for more clever positioning.

Second, I would like to see capture points that just aren’t a flat wide circle. For example, having a capture point spread out over several narrow planks (like the rafters of a tall building). Player movement and positioning becomes a lot more important here, since falling means you’re no longer on the point. And the planks would be spread out enough so that people on top could avoid AOEs.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts/suggestions on the issue. And I’d appreciate anyone else’s constructive thoughts on this.

edit: fixed viewership numbers on ESL tourney.
edit 2: changed suggestion #1 a bit based on feedback

1. This is basically what happens now, you are perfectly capable of viewing from the player’s perspective, while also getting other views when you want to watch the flow of combat instead of the individual play.

2. I think they actually need an overall toning down of animations. While this would include making some things look more flashy to match their effect, an overabundance is one of the biggest things that makes GW2 really hard to watch compared to LoL (where a single pro player can get bigger numbers than GW2 has ever seen). So yes I agree bump up certain big skills, but also bump down the less meaningful ones.

3. 1000000000% agree. Conquest is really easy to understand and follow; the points go up, when it hits 500 you win. However it also feels really slow, there aren’t many clutch moments that make viewers have amazing reactions. There need to be more of those big mechanics.

4. An interesting idea overall. I’m not sure I agree or disagree but I think it could work.

Bhawb.7408:

1. This is basically what happens now, you are perfectly capable of viewing from the player’s perspective, while also getting other views when you want to watch the flow of combat instead of the individual play.

2. I think they actually need an overall toning down of animations. While this would include making some things look more flashy to match their effect, an overabundance is one of the biggest things that makes GW2 really hard to watch compared to LoL (where a single pro player can get bigger numbers than GW2 has ever seen). So yes I agree bump up certain big skills, but also bump down the less meaningful ones.

3. 1000000000% agree. Conquest is really easy to understand and follow; the points go up, when it hits 500 you win. However it also feels really slow, there aren’t many clutch moments that make viewers have amazing reactions. There need to be more of those big mechanics.

4. An interesting idea overall. I’m not sure I agree or disagree but I think it could work.

Thanks for the feedback! For the most part, I agree with what you’re saying. Except for #1 — I think maybe I wasn’t clear about what I was asking for. I know I can currently join a game that’s in progress and watch from a player’s perspective, but I don’t think I can, for example, go back and watch the PAX finals from Xeph’s point of view. Instead, at least as far as I know, I have to watch the streamers shoutcast it. In that case, I’m locked to whatever they’re viewing, which 99% of the time is the Bird’s Eye view. (Sometimes they randomly jump between the players, spending like 10 seconds on each player, which isn’t all that helpful to me). If I’m wrong, please let me know.

With respect to #2, I think we’re mostly in agreement here. I want the overall graphical effects to be toned down, but I want the more epic skills be relatively flashier. Shatterstone (the most worthless skill in the game) should not be a flashy, animated ball of ice that slowly builds up and explodes all over the place for 500dmg, while skullcrack looks like an autoattack.

1 – I think that is something the casters should be doing. For example LoL only has one perspective, and its up to the cameraguy to show you the action. I just think custom arenas lack certain tools to make viewing as good as possible, and also I just think a lot of the current casters do a bad job of making the game watchable.

2 – I agree fully. The biggest currently successful eSports games are exciting to watch even if you have no idea whats going on. I love watching SC2 even though I’ve literally never touched the game myself, and I can follow whats going on. A lot of this is visuals. When I see something huge and flashy on screen, it makes me thing it has a big effect. GW2 hasn’t done well in this respect, a lot of visuals don’t match their effects well at all.

@Bhawb: Not true about LoL, you can watch from player’s perspective too but no one does it because it’s really ugly to watch and right this is GW2 problem.
There should be a free camera, not player perspective nor fixed camera.
Free camera would improve greatly the “watchability” of matches.

Watching from the player’s perspective in LoL is no different than hovering the camera over them. The only thing special you get by selecting them is seeing all their CDs.

I believe they talked about free camera before. It was an issue of being difficult to code fully, and the fact that their maps were not designed to be viewed that way, so a lot of stuff a free camera could see wouldn’t look pretty.

#1. is the most important here. You see so much from a player perspective that you don’t see from the following perspective, camera direction has a lot to do with it.

Bhawb.7408:

Watching from the player’s perspective in LoL is no different than hovering the camera over them. The only thing special you get by selecting them is seeing all their CDs.

I believe they talked about free camera before. It was an issue of being difficult to code fully, and the fact that their maps were not designed to be viewed that way, so a lot of stuff a free camera could see wouldn’t look pretty.

Yes, it was discussed during a SotG but currently player’s view sucks (too subjective) and fixed cameras are not placed well (too distant and in some cases too near).
Maybe a total free camera can’t be done but give the possibility do zoom-in/out on fixed cameras (which will basically mean move forward and backward, which leads to free camera, lol) and a bit of mobility on them.

Allie Murdock.8152:

In #1 you’re saying that you can’t understand enough of the combat without being latched on to one specific player. Then, in #2, you say that epic skills should have epic animations. If we did #2, would that help with #1?

Good to see the reply, Allie.

I think the issue here is that more important skills aren’t more visually impressive than regular skills and fall into the soup of effects during teamfights. This is probably important for the players to reduce visual clutter, but for spectators, I feel like we can add more obvious particle effects to something like Entangle or Spirit of Renewal to make it stand out during messy teamfights.

Allie Murdock.8152:

FYI – ESL tourney had 1.8-2k concurrent viewers during the stream (not to mention #s from non-English streams). Maybe Blu can share with us the total number of unique viewers during the stream – but if it’s anything like the other GW2 tournaments, it’s probably around 30-50k unique viewers. I’d say that’s pretty good considering the LoL championship and GvG streams were happening at the same time!

Where do these numbers come from?

Allie Murdock.8152:

I see a couple problems with following players while shoutcasting; First, it puts the focus mostly on 1 entity in the fight, when there could easily be things happening around/behind that player that the casters might miss due to not being able to see them. Second, it is more difficult to control what’s happening with the camera. There isn’t much we can do about this as we can’t tell players to sit still so the camera doesn’t jerk around.

This can be resolved by simply having great shoutcasters. It takes a lot of skill to know what’s going on during a teamfight without relying on a bird’s-eye-view perspective – similar to the contestants in the tournament themselves. The players in the tournament must know what’s going in a team fight and yet they don’t have the option of a bird’s-eye-view. Having a skilled shoutcaster who can put himself in the contestants’ perspective and still shout cast accurately is ideal.

In fact, I think using the bird’s-eye-view is a lazy shortcut that also negatively impacts the spectator experience.

I can’t even believe what was just said in the few posts above me. The fact that you think its okay to do that… wow. Great showing of why the PvP community is absolutely terrible though.

To the original question, I believe its possible to get those statistics through twitch, or some third party means. I don’t stream much so I can’t say for certain, but I know that Blu has stated numbers like that before, and it isn’t just something they pull out. Its actually not that rare to have a really high amount of individual people log in, while a relatively small amount at max concurrent viewers. Pretty common of most similar events really.

fugazi.5139:

How on earth did you get this job?

30-50k unique viewers LOL THAT’S FUNNY!!!

Well I’ve been having fun defending the devs recently, so here goes…

She was obviously counting EU channels. A quick youtube search pulled up a french and german shoutcast, and there’s even a chinese one. I’ve seen some in spanish but couldn’t find one for the ESL final (doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, it’s just not on youtube). Blu’s twitch was confirmed to have about 2000 live viewers at a time. Let’s say that the average viewer only tuned in for a couple matches—for simplicity’s sake let’s say each viewer watched a fifth of the tournament, meaning 10k unique viewers.

The German channel appeared almost as popular. We’ll arbitrarily say it managed 8k, the French channel managed 6k, and the chinese channel managed 6k. We’re up to 30k unique viewers by extrapolating some arbitrary numbers. I’m probably way off, but I’m just saying—it’s possible, only just possible, that she’s accurate.

NevirSayDie.6235:

fugazi.5139:

How on earth did you get this job?

30-50k unique viewers LOL THAT’S FUNNY!!!

Well I’ve been having fun defending the devs recently, so here goes…

She was obviously counting EU channels. A quick youtube search pulled up a french and german shoutcast, and there’s even a chinese one. I’ve seen some in spanish but couldn’t find one for the ESL final (doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, it’s just not on youtube). Blu’s twitch was confirmed to have about 2000 live viewers at a time. Let’s say that the average viewer only tuned in for a couple matches—for simplicity’s sake let’s say each viewer watched a fifth of the tournament, meaning 10k unique viewers.

The German channel appeared almost as popular. We’ll arbitrarily say it managed 8k, the French channel managed 6k, and the chinese channel managed 6k. We’re up to 30k unique viewers by extrapolating some arbitrary numbers. I’m probably way off, but I’m just saying—it’s possible, only just possible, that she’s accurate.

I’m going to have to see this on paper please. Offical. Signed.
and…
who cares if people that play already watch it. the only way the community get better and bigger is by having new people watch it.

fugazi.5139:

I’m going to have to see this on paper please. Offical. Signed.
and…
who cares if people that play already watch it. the only way the community get better and bigger is by having new people watch it.

In all seriousness, I think the number might be accurate. It’s impossible to prove one way or the other without contacting the 3+ channels that were shoutcasting, and even they may not really have data on how many unique viewers tuned in.

I never watch games—ever—but I just browsed through a few of the youtube videos to see if I liked watching GW2. It wasn’t bad, the close matches were very exciting. It would probably be pretty boring for someone who had never played, though, mostly because there’s just no way to understand what’s going on without a knowledge of each build being used. It might be cool to see shoutcasters explain the strengths and weaknesses of each build—at least for me, if I didn’t understand what was going on, I’d be more interested to hear about each team’s composition than who was winning a certain fight. I did enjoy the times Blu switched to a player’s viewpoint, although sometimes seeing the whole fight was helpful. Mostly I just wanted to see what builds the engineers were using.

NevirSayDie.6235:

fugazi.5139:

I’m going to have to see this on paper please. Offical. Signed.
and…
who cares if people that play already watch it. the only way the community get better and bigger is by having new people watch it.

In all seriousness, I think the number might be accurate. It’s impossible to prove one way or the other without contacting the 3+ channels that were shoutcasting, and even they may not really have data on how many unique viewers tuned in.

I never watch games—ever—but I just browsed through a few of the youtube videos to see if I liked watching GW2. It wasn’t bad, the close matches were very exciting. It would probably be pretty boring for someone who had never played, though, mostly because there’s just no way to understand what’s going on without a knowledge of each build being used. It might be cool to see shoutcasters explain the strengths and weaknesses of each build—at least for me, if I didn’t understand what was going on, I’d be more interested to hear about each team’s composition than who was winning a certain fight. I did enjoy the times Blu switched to a player’s viewpoint, although sometimes seeing the whole fight was helpful. Mostly I just wanted to see what builds the engineers were using.

Play ranger.

fugazi.5139:

Play ranger.

Too mainstream.

NevirSayDie.6235:

fugazi.5139:

Play ranger.

Too mainstream.

Well spoken. I love you.

NevirSayDie.6235:

fugazi.5139:

Play ranger.

Too mainstream.

One day ranger will be an actual class.

Brutal Arts.6307:

fugazi.5139:

Brutal Arts.6307:

fugazi.5139:

How on earth did you get this job?

People have to eat, in this economy a job is a job.

Though I’m surprised she’s posting again after what happened last time. Then again these responses reek of straight A’s in anet’s “Forum Academy”

No, I meant, like…how did she get this job. She accomplishes nothing. Her sarcasm makes me want to puke and swallow it again, for flavor. She is in no way helpful to the community in anyway. Dead weight.

Equal hiring practices?
A very good resume?
Wowed the interviewers?
Moved up from art/sound?
Maybe it was Grenth, god of Nepotism?

The mysteries are infinite.

And you all wonder why the devs don’t respond on the forums? I’ll take a stab.

fugazi.5139:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for the constructive feedback! You make a lot of good points, though I am curious about one thing:

In #1 you’re saying that you can’t understand enough of the combat without being latched on to one specific player. Then, in #2, you say that epic skills should have epic animations. If we did #2, would that help with #1?

I see a couple problems with following players while shoutcasting; First, it puts the focus mostly on 1 entity in the fight, when there could easily be things happening around/behind that player that the casters might miss due to not being able to see them. Second, it is more difficult to control what’s happening with the camera. There isn’t much we can do about this as we can’t tell players to sit still so the camera doesn’t jerk around.

So, it makes me wonder if these two problems, maybe even #3 as well, would be alleviated with better skill tells and maybe less skill effects. Either way, I think we have a few options to help with the problems you feel happening in the shoutcasted matches.

FYI – ESL tourney had 1.8-2k concurrent viewers during the stream (not to mention #s from non-English streams). Maybe Blu can share with us the total number of unique viewers during the stream – but if it’s anything like the other GW2 tournaments, it’s probably around 30-50k unique viewers. I’d say that’s pretty good considering the LoL championship and GvG streams were happening at the same time!

How on earth did you get this job?

30-50k unique viewers LOL THAT’S FUNNY!!!

To be fair, I think GW2 eSports has no future and I also think 30k-50k unique viewers is pretty bad regardless of competition. However, what she said can be completely true.

Concurrent viewership is not the same as total unique viewers. People join and leave streams all the time. My guess it is close to 10k-20k unique viewers, but Allie’s number is entirely possible. And not as extreme as people are making it seem.

A game called Forge, which is basically a small arena game by a no-name developers (224 followers on Twitter) with an extremely small player base had their ESL Finals the same day. They had 1200 concurrent viewers.

http://www.twitch.tv/darkvalegames/b/461968133

The fact that they got almost as much as GW2 is an extremely bad sign.

ResJudicator.7916:

Second, I would like to see capture points that just aren’t a flat wide circle. For example, having a capture point spread out over several narrow planks (like the rafters of a tall building). Player movement and positioning becomes a lot more important here, since falling means you’re no longer on the point. And the planks would be spread out enough so that people on top could avoid AOEs.

This is nice but will encourage some sort of cheese meaning the one with the most Stability and/or CC skills win like how people complained about the Skyhammer map layout with all those holes on floors and stuff.

I agree that animations need to be tuned down to improve visibility.
This applies mostly for aoe. On the other hand, you can’t tell what’s going on by looking at castanimations, so they need to become more unique and more noticeable. At the same time, aoe effects need to be self explaining.

Example: everybody knows rangers barrage or the eles AoEs.
You can tell what’s going on by looking at the animation.
For Guardians, every symbol looks the same, you never know what actually happens. If many AoE’s come together, you just notice red circles.

The solution is to make animations less flashy but at the same time more noticeable.
A castbar would also be a very helpful tool for watchers and players.

http://i.imgur.com/eACzJ4e.gif

Pvp stream?
:/ think i have missed it.
I was one of the ~1400 watching a not by Anet supported GvG from GD vs Scnd ^^ (only known in community events section/reddit I think)

Worth rewatching the pvp stream? (I love to play spvp, not if I get matched with noobs tbh)

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’d say that’s pretty good considering the LoL championship and GvG streams were happening at the same time!

Really, a dev is officially mentioning GvG in a post confirming that it exists and that players find it enjoying enough to viewing it?

Wow, i´am speechless, should that be a change in your information policy and actually acknowledging reality ? I really hope so.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for the constructive feedback! You make a lot of good points, though I am curious about one thing:

In #1 you’re saying that you can’t understand enough of the combat without being latched on to one specific player. Then, in #2, you say that epic skills should have epic animations. If we did #2, would that help with #1?

I see a couple problems with following players while shoutcasting; First, it puts the focus mostly on 1 entity in the fight, when there could easily be things happening around/behind that player that the casters might miss due to not being able to see them. Second, it is more difficult to control what’s happening with the camera. There isn’t much we can do about this as we can’t tell players to sit still so the camera doesn’t jerk around.

So, it makes me wonder if these two problems, maybe even #3 as well, would be alleviated with better skill tells and maybe less skill effects. Either way, I think we have a few options to help with the problems you feel happening in the shoutcasted matches.

FYI – ESL tourney had 1.8-2k concurrent viewers during the stream (not to mention #s from non-English streams). Maybe Blu can share with us the total number of unique viewers during the stream – but if it’s anything like the other GW2 tournaments, it’s probably around 30-50k unique viewers. I’d say that’s pretty good considering the LoL championship and GvG streams were happening at the same time!

About the effects; the one thing I think needs toning down is the Guardians constant blinding white light. That combined with a white floor for a capture point make things really hard to see for me.

There was actually a time I think some guy was bugged and I couldn’t see anything he was doing because he was just gleaming all over the place.

Writetyper.1985:

And you all wonder why the devs don’t respond on the forums? I’ll take a stab.

Because everything they say has to be in accordance with the company’s incredibly strict posting guidelines, including, but not limited to:

-No promises
-No acknowledgement of any mistakes
-EsportsEsportsEsportsEsports

I don’t envy them at all.

The only reason I find GW2 boring to watch is that I can never tell what’s going on. All it looks like is a clusterfook of particle effects and tiny asurans everywhere. I mean seriously, even the shoutcasters have nothing to say about the gameplay because there is nothing to even say. It’s just 2 teams relying heavily on passives and AI to eventually down someone who will eventually get instantly rezzed, then the process continues. Anyone remember the good ol’ power meta days where there were actual plays involved and you could actually tell which teams where good based on what they did. Hell, I remember facing Qt back when paid tournaments were still out and they demolished us every time. It wasn’t because they had a better comp or builds, but because they were simply more skilled and had better strategies… Ugh I miss that meta.

for point 1 it would help to see atleast the actionbars from all players. Often i dont know whats going on until i see what they have on CD now. And it would help to understand a fight when can see what players are doing.

so maby do it like it is atm in spectator mode but add the actionbar under all the player names

OR

show behind the name the last 3 pressed buttons (symbols) in last 15 secs

this alone would make watching this tournaments way more interssting when can see whats going on or see what bigspells come soon back form cooldown and will change the game^^..

This can all be fixed if they reverted balance back to power meta it was so much better…. Lot more awareness was required since pretty much people 1 shot each other and it was way more fun to watch.

Number of viewers doesn’t really mean anything. PvP in GW2 is fun to play but extremely boring to watch. And, I don’t think fixing that is a priority at all. There are many more things that should be done first. For example: fix matchmaking, fix rating, show rating, have daily tournaments that everyone can access rather than just invitational ones, etc.
Anet is obviously not doing the best job but it’s still acceptable considering how few people they have working on the PvP section of the game.

Id love to see a similiar system as in gw1 where you could replay matches and watch everything in the way you want (i think thats how it worked at least, since i only played RA and wasnt into GvG i didnt watch many matches). So far I only watched very few matches and only from players streams but this would make it a lot more attractive for me.

Agree with the other stuff, especially the big nodes.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Thanks for the constructive feedback! You make a lot of good points, though I am curious about one thing:

In #1 you’re saying that you can’t understand enough of the combat without being latched on to one specific player. Then, in #2, you say that epic skills should have epic animations. If we did #2, would that help with #1?

I see a couple problems with following players while shoutcasting; First, it puts the focus mostly on 1 entity in the fight, when there could easily be things happening around/behind that player that the casters might miss due to not being able to see them. Second, it is more difficult to control what’s happening with the camera. There isn’t much we can do about this as we can’t tell players to sit still so the camera doesn’t jerk around.

So, it makes me wonder if these two problems, maybe even #3 as well, would be alleviated with better skill tells and maybe less skill effects. Either way, I think we have a few options to help with the problems you feel happening in the shoutcasted matches.

Thanks for the response Allie, I appreciate that you took the time to consider these thoughts.

In answer to your question, I think there is definitely some overlap between #1 and #2. But even if we fine-tune the effects perfectly, I think #1 would still be a major issue (at least for me). The reason is because I feel a sense of drama when watching the game from the player’s perspective that I don’t get when watching it from a bird’s-eye view.

For example, imagine watching a teamfight from the guardian’s perspective — you see his cooldowns slowly being used up (and you can see exactly when he’s using them), you can count how many of his virtues he has left, how much endurance he has remaining, etc. You feel the tension rising as that last bubble gets cast, and now he’s down to just an evade. If he can hold out for 6 more seconds, his line of warding will be back up, which will buy him some more time, and you know 10 seconds later he’ll be able to cast shelter again. So these next few seconds are critical. When you see that nothing has happened (i.e. he didn’t die) — you breathe a sigh of relief (or a cry of frustration if you were rooting for the other team).

Now imagine watching the same thing from a bird’s eye perspective. Let’s also imagine that all the animations are now distinctive and clear. So we can still see the guardian slowly using up his cooldowns, but it’s harder to know which cooldowns he has left, and how much time remains until he can re-use some of his earlier skills. We don’t know how much endurance he has. So instead we see him casting some defensive spells, running around a bit, dodging, running around some more (this part is the critical 6-10 second window where he was extremely vulnerable), then casting some more defensive spells. I think the drama is missing here.

Also, there’s something to be said for not seeing everything that’s going on in the fight. Trying to show every player at once leads to a bit of information overload, at least for me. I think watching the teamfight fight through the perspective of a single player helps to filter out the less important information and let’s the viewer focus on what matters. If the teams are coordinated, then the player you’re viewing is probably focusing on the most important target. Through his perspective, you can identify who the key target is and realize that all the other enemy players are currently just obstacles. It filters out the noise. I realize a bird’s-eye view works for MOBA-type games, but I think GW2 is a lot more complex in the sense that each player is juggling way more abilities, and strategies often have less of a ramp-up time (e.g., in a MOBA, you can see the gank coming from a mile away).

Now, I guess the next issue would be figuring out which player to focus on. Different viewers obviously have different favorites. In the style of Solomon, my approach would be to have the shoutcaster use a different player’s perspective for each fight — but please don’t swap between perspectives mid-fight, that is jarring. Let us watch the entire fight unfold from one player’s perspective, and only swap to a different fight if it looks like this one isn’t going anywhere and there’s a more important fight happening elsewhere.

fugazi.5139:

Brutal Arts.6307:

fugazi.5139:

How on earth did you get this job?

People have to eat, in this economy a job is a job.

Though I’m surprised she’s posting again after what happened last time. Then again these responses reek of straight A’s in anet’s “Forum Academy”

No, I meant, like…how did she get this job. She accomplishes nothing. Her sarcasm makes me want to puke and swallow it again, for flavor. She is in no way helpful to the community in anyway. Dead weight.

You’re a great example of why if I were on Anet’s PvP team, I wouldn’t touch these forums with a ten-foot pole.

I think you’re right Allie. If animations are more clear, especially high impact skills, it will help casters call the game and allow viewers to “get it” too.

I don’t think #1 is a technically realistic or interesting suggestion at all…
I think it’s the role of the shoutcaster to choose (for the viewer, especially if the viewer is inexperienced) where and what to look at at a particular point in time. This is why being a shoutcaster requires knowledge of the game, so that they can interpret the events for you.
Sometimes they will want to show you a bird eye view of the action (more strategic/team/point based), sometimes they will want to show you a close up view of the action, from the point of view of 1 character (more action/skill/reflex oriented).
I think both views have their “interesting” moments and following only one player would be missing half the game.
Also, from what I generally see, shoutcasters oscillate between the macro (map) and micro (players) pretty well, at a good pace.

As for suggestion number 4, different sizes of capture points (not just “graveyards”) has its pros too.
You can’t really play a “hammer guardian” on graveyard as efficiently as you can on Kyhlo clocktower – because of the size of the graveyard. This provides for some interesting micro play and specific strategies based on positioning, pushing the opponent off point (which is on a side note different from Skyhammer, where pushing opponents off points is an “iWin” button not just a way of saving 3-4 precious seconds).
Which brings me to the next point: your “planks” example is already in game, it’s called Kyhlo clocktower.

Suggestion number 3: clutch play.
The elite skills should be more of that, perhaps. Although most of them are actually more risk-free “panic buttons” aimed at saving your skin rather than “turning points” and “risky manoeuvers”. I think the game could be improved this way, perhaps.
Otherwise, they have implemented clutch play in the maps environments if you haven’t taken notice. The best example of which is the lord in the “Foefire”: risky, but can pay and change the outcome.
Other examples of this are boring though: cannon in Capricorn (yawn, especially considering how hard it is to pull it off – not rewarding at all), skyhammer cannon (a bit too op perhaps, maybe should have limited ammunition), trebs in Kyhlo (OK, but isn’t a “turning point” – perhaps it should give points on repair so that enemy team think twice about breaking it?), the creatures, the orb.
I think they should change those “map features” to make them more “make or break”. They should come at a high cost with high rewards (similarly to the lord).
At the moment, they feel more like sprinkling a few extra points on top of what you have thanks to the capture points (creatures, orbs, etc.).
Then again, on a tight game, it is more than enough points.

I think many of the issues are tied to the shoutcasters’ relative inexperience at both calling the right play at the right time and camera control/selection….both of which will get better with time.

it’s a young game that moves extremely quick and in several places at once..calling that effectively is challenging and I think they’re doing a great job of it so far.

Has anyone considered modeling it off of other eSports especially shooters where the first thing the modding community would do is customize the UI and in game graphics with a “pro” mode. This usually meant everything was clear to understand from a competitive and objective view. In other words there could be a different way to watch where the players team colors glow more and actions are more prominent in relation to each other. Also consider how technology is used in live sports to draw on the field. It does not have to be the same application but in the since you can have a SPECTATOR mode that shows more of what is going on through the whole map and simple icons and representations of who is doing “better” at any given situation. This way the commentary becomes just that and can still give insight.

Models can be totally different as well as colors in order to better distinguish the teams.

Animations do not necessarily need to be different but visual cues need to be present so that a spectator can follow what is going on.

Spectators that are “Hosts” or casters should be able to Draw on map just like in party but have some visual effect or maybe highlight a current player to focus attention.

Even joining as a spectator directly to a delayed server playback would be great so each viewer can customize their spectator options for optimal viewing.

Some of these features may already be there but i think the visualization and cues “dumbed” down would help to objectify and follow the game easier. This will develop a language and understanding outsiders can follow.

Thanks.

I really, really do hope Anet isn’t deluding themselves to think GW2’s “esports” scene is doing well.

“I’d say that’s pretty good considering the LoL championship and GvG streams were happening at the same time”

And I hope it’s just simple company chest-puffing, because if it’s the former then this is going to be much harder to fix things unless they’re more humble.

Anyway to the OP, I don’t think it’s important to have player point of view aside from being able to see abilities/cooldowns, a closer bird’s eye view would probably still be better. Just compare it to LoL.

In LoL being able to see all the players equally is important to see what’s really going on, but it’s also very easy to tell what’s going on because their abilities aren’t a mess.

As the OP said, the insignificant stuff needs to be less blinding, and the important stuff needs to be very clear and impactful (but not blinding).

But besides all that, the actual gameplay IS going to have to change whether Anet likes it or not, just the spamminess of it, it’s going to be a huge downfall to GW2’s potential as esports, there needs to be skill actually factoring into every move at a high level.

Too much passive HIGH dmg is thrown around way too much, the game needs to not only slow down a bit, but needs more focus on bigger, easier to avoid, harder to land, and more obvious attacks. Think of 100 blades warriors, Dragon’s Tooth/Phoenix Ele’s, Kill Shot Warriors (although not totally obvious), etc.

Taking these 3 examples, notice how Greatsword Warriors, Rifle, and Sceptre Ele’s don’t have massive auto attack or passive dmg? Most of the dmg is baked into cooldown abilities that are harder to get off, or take longer to get off and actually need to be thought about when to use or combo’d into CC.

This is also true for condition specs, too much is passive condition spam instead of “thoughtful” condition application (even a lot of condition removal is passive). Imagine if Necro Sceptre condition attacks were much less focused on the auto’s and more on it’s cooldown abilities, like Grasping Dead was a pulsing aoe that potentially applied a ton of bleeding (like up to 10 over duration), and Feast on Corruption could consume (8 stacks of) bleeding on a target to do a spike of dmg, or apply Torment equal to the bleeding consumed. (With Feast becoming a slower more telegraphed attack)

Then you could see clutch plays like the Necro popping grasping dead on someone, dodging in front of them to fear them back into it, someone then immobilizes him, Necro feasts it into more dmg, then someone else pulls enemies in and he Epidemics, boom, and it would be with attacks that are clear and well telegraphed no only so it can be avoided but also visible for viewers.

(I also believe this would be a good thing for PvE and WvW as well so I honestly don’t see why the lack of split balancing should deny these changes. Mechanics on bosses in PvE don’t matter as much when all you need to do is just spam high auto attack dmg for example. Hell even the cluster-bleep known as GvG is mainly just a mosh pit of people spamming high dmg auto’s these changes would even benefit GvG)

Why is it is so easy to see this sort of thing happen in LoL for example? When you see jarvan ult go out and catch 3 people and jarvan’s mage teammate rains aoe on them, you can clearly see every single ability that’s happening clearly, even everyone’s HP bar (which is something that could probably be reworked to be more clear in this game too.)

Knote.2904:

Too much passive HIGH dmg is thrown around way too much, the game needs to not only slow down a bit, but needs more focus on bigger, easier to avoid, harder to land, and more obvious attacks. Think of 100 blades warriors, Dragon’s Tooth/Phoenix Ele’s, Kill Shot Warriors (although not totally obvious), etc.

Taking these 3 examples, notice how Greatsword Warriors, Rifle, and Sceptre Ele’s don’t have massive auto attack or passive dmg? Most of the dmg is baked into cooldown abilities that are harder to get off, or take longer to get off and actually need to be thought about when to use or combo’d into CC.

I think this is a great description of the problem with a meta based on high passive damage. I think the comment on scepter eles is especially accurate. You don’t expect a scepter ele to win unless he manages to land his burst, which requires good positioning, timing, and sometimes teamwork. And the risk involved in landing the burst is high, due to many of the initiating spells having a 40s+ CD. Without his burst, his autoattack damage, while meaningful, is not going to end a fight anytime soon (even as a glass cannon).

The same is not true of the classes that are popular in this current meta. An S/D thief has no “burst” to land. Instead, he consistently hits for 1k-2k damage with sword AA and larcenous strike while repeatedly dodging. And while CC warriors and necros do have “burst” combos, you can expect them to win even if they don’t attempt or land the burst combo. For example, a necro doesn’t need to get a full fear combo chain off to quickly down a player, and you can still expect a warrior to win a fight even if he whiffs his first 2-3 skullcracks.

To make a sport fun to watch it has to be easy to understand and follow. This is one of my biggest issues with GW2 trying to be an e-sport (and, imo, why it wont).
As a GW2 player since launch i still find spvp matches difficult to follow and hard to really get a grasp of what is going on.

If i cant follow it, how could someone that doesnt even play the game? And that is the audience you have to appeal to if you’re going for esport.

And as action in the fights is to fast. The actual evolution of the game is quite slow and dull. A fight over the midpoint can lasts minutes on end, someone goes down, gets rallied, gets low, and back to full health. This makes it extra difficult to get any sense of who is actually winning.
And then suddenly something alligns and 1 side sweeps the other team. Which then all happens to fast again.

There is also nothing exciting to watch besides fighting over a point. A Dota style game you can see ganks happen because kills outside of a point matter. There is harrasing and pushing out of a lane, taking on a big pve objective. And even if they are just farming you can tell a character is getting stronger.
The Conquest mode revolves far to heavily around just the capture points that what happens outside of these doesnt matter as much and isnt very exciting.

Recognizability is really bad aswell. In other games (SC2, Dota, LoL) champions/units are recognizable. You can kinda see where something is going and what to expect. In Gw2 professions can look very similar in the same armor-class, and are especially hard to see what they are or do if they are Asura.
“Look at the Thief combo with the Necro” and im like “what, where do you see the necro? What Thief? Where are they, doing what?”

ResJudicator.7916:

Knote.2904:

Too much passive HIGH dmg is thrown around way too much, the game needs to not only slow down a bit, but needs more focus on bigger, easier to avoid, harder to land, and more obvious attacks. Think of 100 blades warriors, Dragon’s Tooth/Phoenix Ele’s, Kill Shot Warriors (although not totally obvious), etc.

Taking these 3 examples, notice how Greatsword Warriors, Rifle, and Sceptre Ele’s don’t have massive auto attack or passive dmg? Most of the dmg is baked into cooldown abilities that are harder to get off, or take longer to get off and actually need to be thought about when to use or combo’d into CC.

I think this is a great description of the problem with a meta based on high passive damage. I think the comment on scepter eles is especially accurate. You don’t expect a scepter ele to win unless he manages to land his burst, which requires good positioning, timing, and sometimes teamwork. And the risk involved in landing the burst is high, due to many of the initiating spells having a 40s+ CD. Without his burst, his autoattack damage, while meaningful, is not going to end a fight anytime soon (even as a glass cannon).

The same is not true of the classes that are popular in this current meta. An S/D thief has no “burst” to land. Instead, he consistently hits for 1k-2k damage with sword AA and larcenous strike while repeatedly dodging. And while CC warriors and necros do have “burst” combos, you can expect them to win even if they don’t attempt or land the burst combo. For example, a necro doesn’t need to get a full fear combo chain off to quickly down a player, and you can still expect a warrior to win a fight even if he whiffs his first 2-3 skullcracks.

Yes EXACTLY!

I really hope Anet can see this is and can get to work on fixing it.

Knote.2904:

ResJudicator.7916:

Knote.2904:

Too much passive HIGH dmg is thrown around way too much, the game needs to not only slow down a bit, but needs more focus on bigger, easier to avoid, harder to land, and more obvious attacks. Think of 100 blades warriors, Dragon’s Tooth/Phoenix Ele’s, Kill Shot Warriors (although not totally obvious), etc.

Taking these 3 examples, notice how Greatsword Warriors, Rifle, and Sceptre Ele’s don’t have massive auto attack or passive dmg? Most of the dmg is baked into cooldown abilities that are harder to get off, or take longer to get off and actually need to be thought about when to use or combo’d into CC.

I think this is a great description of the problem with a meta based on high passive damage. I think the comment on scepter eles is especially accurate. You don’t expect a scepter ele to win unless he manages to land his burst, which requires good positioning, timing, and sometimes teamwork. And the risk involved in landing the burst is high, due to many of the initiating spells having a 40s+ CD. Without his burst, his autoattack damage, while meaningful, is not going to end a fight anytime soon (even as a glass cannon).

The same is not true of the classes that are popular in this current meta. An S/D thief has no “burst” to land. Instead, he consistently hits for 1k-2k damage with sword AA and larcenous strike while repeatedly dodging. And while CC warriors and necros do have “burst” combos, you can expect them to win even if they don’t attempt or land the burst combo. For example, a necro doesn’t need to get a full fear combo chain off to quickly down a player, and you can still expect a warrior to win a fight even if he whiffs his first 2-3 skullcracks.

Yes EXACTLY!

I really hope Anet can see this is and can get to work on fixing it.

I lost hope in Anet. Especially with this patch being no balance changes. Pvp is dead :/

It wasn’t a balance patch, it never was going to address balance.

This video is a good example of how high auto attack dmg is a problem. You have to pop cooldowns and evade/run away just to survive basic, free, auto attack dmg that never ends, instead of trying to line up bigger attacks that take more thought.

Imagine an esports match where everyone is playing a build/class where all the dmg is on auto attacks like this, then people just run around spamming each other and dying.

It would be like if LoL matches was 5 AD carries vs 5 AD carries, and no one could use abilities lol.

Bhawb.7408:

It wasn’t a balance patch, it never was going to address balance.

Regardless we waited like 2 months in a kittenty meta and with there balance changes preview it was not promising but freighting.

If there were 20-50k unique views (you can do wonders with kludge math) from 2k listed views wouldn’t that mean that other games had more than the number of unique viewers listed on their twitch channels as well?

As for the OP, what’s fun to watch in team games are the interesting and creative strategies. Conquest allows for only very few macro strategies like boss rushing, but there can be a variety of on the spot strategies through the actual combat. However, the combat is nearly illegible, not only because of the poor telegraphing but because important factors like boons and conditions are UI elements that are spammed faster than the shoutcaster can explain what’s going on, and the application is much faster and more frequent than the players can counter them (this leads to moments of no commentary aside from banal quips about petting zoos and passive play lulz) ANet has to start over at the very basics of their mechanics to address problems with legibility, otherwise they’re going to keep running headfirst into brick walls.

Allie Murdock.8152:

In #1 you’re saying that you can’t understand enough of the combat without being latched on to one specific player. Then, in #2, you say that epic skills should have epic animations. If we did #2, would that help with #1?

Things like ‘endurance being an observable bar above health’ and ‘Utilities being shown’ would greatly help the game.

It’s ‘hidden CD’ cluttered as kitten right now.
Anything to increase transparency so ability to counterplay and understanding of the game, without sitting your camera on one player throughout a match, would be wonderful.

Kinda laughable that the 2 most important things in GW2 for the company, watchability and cash shop setup, are the worst done.