Guild Wars 2

I agree on all 4 points.

Maybe #1 would be partially addressed by showing more info on players from birds view? For example showing health/endurance bars near the characters and maybe also showing skill activations and/or cooldowns somehow.

Regarding #2 there are also many skills that are important in battles that aren’t elite skills like interrupts, slows and blinds. These also needs to be easy to see to be able to understand the battles.

Humac.5784:

I agree on all 4 points.

Maybe #1 would be partially addressed by showing more info on players from birds view? For example showing health/endurance bars near the characters and maybe also showing skill activations and/or cooldowns somehow.

Regarding #2 there are also many skills that are important in battles that aren’t elite skills like interrupts, slows and blinds. These also needs to be easy to see to be able to understand the battles.

Yeah I think these are pretty good ideas.

One other idea I just had would be to make the bird’s eye view similar to an MMOB interface. The shoutcaster can click on a player and it’ll show the player’s UI bar on the bottom (i.e. his skills, hp, and endurance) but WITHOUT moving the camera to the player’s view. In other words, it’s like selecting a unit in an RTS game. The camera stays the same, but you get to pull up all the information on that unit. That way, you can still see exactly what skills the player has available to him and what his status is at that time, but it let’s shoutcasters follow different players w/o creating that jarring effect of constantly changing camera views.

I love playing GW2 PvP (well, usually, sometimes it bores or frustrates me to tears when I look at what GW1 PvP was and then compare it to… this), but I can’t stand watching it. I watched the ESL stream at one point, but I was so terribly bored by it because all I saw was a bunch of Asura (and the occasional Human/Sylvari + extremely rare Charr/Norn) running around in a blob of particle effects and AoE’s. I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on.

By comparison, in GW1 I knew what was going on because I knew the builds and what was going on, they weren’t just a cluster of AoE’s and particle effects with tiny characters. If I didn’t know what a particular skill was by looking at it, at the very least I could check the cast bar and see what they were using and learn for next time.

In GW2, there is no cast bar, and that to me is a huge detriment to PvP.

I just wanted to add that I’m watching the MLG stream right now, and I have to say that the shoutcasting this time is much better. I like that the shoutcasters are focusing on one player’s perspective for the duration of a fight, and then going to another player’s perspective once a new fight starts. It’s making it a lot easier for me to get a sense of what’s going on in a fight.

The shoutcasters are also giving better commentary, but it’s hard to really describe why. There’s a lot less filler “wow a lot of damage is going down” — it may be because the teams are less condi-focused now so there are more burst-plays to call out and less general spam.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

ResJudicator.7916:

I just wanted to add that I’m watching the MLG stream right now, and I have to say that the shoutcasting this time is much better. I like that the shoutcasters are focusing on one player’s perspective for the duration of a fight, and then going to another player’s perspective once a new fight starts. It’s making it a lot easier for me to get a sense of what’s going on in a fight.

The shoutcasters are also giving better commentary, but it’s hard to really describe why. There’s a lot less filler “wow a lot of damage is going down” — it may be because the teams are less condi-focused now so there are more burst-plays to call out and less general spam.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

I really liked that they focused on the builds, especially since so many teams were running crazy specs/comps that no one had seen before. They also emphasized the map strategy/rotation aspect much more than they had before.

Because what GW2 needs is flashier animations… /sigh

We’re already blind man, what more do you want?

Besides drastically reducing the particle effect spam, the other major turnoff to watching GW2 matches is the whole downed state/rez/rallying mechanic. It breaks the flow of combat and trivialises death, which prolongs fights, and further contributes to the appearance of a mindless spamfest.

The best thing that GW2 could do is entirely disable downed state in PVP and raise base HP across the board to compensate. Could be trialled as a custom arena option.

mjharrison.3209:

Besides drastically reducing the particle effect spam, the other major turnoff to watching GW2 matches is the whole downed state/rez/rallying mechanic. It breaks the flow of combat and trivialises death, which prolongs fights, and further contributes to the appearance of a mindless spamfest.

The best thing that GW2 could do is entirely disable downed state in PVP and raise base HP across the board to compensate. Could be trialled as a custom arena option.

Downed state is horrible but it isn’t going anywhere because they can sell finishers in the cash shop. But I do think the game mode (domination) + down state is just boring to watch.

I would love to see deathmatch type scenario in GW2, but I don’t know how well it would work with the downed state mechanic.

mjharrison.3209:

Besides drastically reducing the particle effect spam, the other major turnoff to watching GW2 matches is the whole downed state/rez/rallying mechanic. It breaks the flow of combat and trivialises death, which prolongs fights, and further contributes to the appearance of a mindless spamfest.

The best thing that GW2 could do is entirely disable downed state in PVP and raise base HP across the board to compensate. Could be trialled as a custom arena option.

I would actually really like to see how it would be like to have a longer TTK with downed state removed.

Then all the combat is 100% focused on the actual fight between classes using abilities instead of downed state stuff.

And they could always make it so finishers proc on a killing blow instead of stomping.

Hell even in PvE, give finishers a cooldown and let it proc off mobs lol, would get more sales.

Knote.2904:

I would actually really like to see how it would be like to have a longer TTK with downed state removed.

Me too. It’s not like it would be hard to trial either, as a custom arena option.

oooh oooh, sacrifice ‘fun’ foe downed state and stomps

gets more viewers