Guild Wars 2

I was was watching quite a few streams of Tournaments/scrimms recently and even though I play a lot of PvP, it often was quite confusing to watch. In this Thread, I want to talk about what the Streamers themselves can do to make the game easier to watch and understand, but also what I think ANet could do to make the game more viewer-friendly:

Teamcolors

Seriously, it should be standard that you use “show teamcolors for everyone” when you are Shoutcasting and streaming a Tournament, the benefits of making the game easier to watch far outweigh the pretty colors of every player (you can show them before the game starts when explaining the builds).

Effects in Teamcolors

It can get soooo confusing watching a Teamfight with Multiple Fire-Fields, some Fields of the Mesmer etc. and If the observer recently was on another part of the Map, the teams run similar builds you cannot identify who casted the spell, it’s basically impossible to quickly see whats happening on the Field. I highly promote making the effects, especially the ones of AoE’s with longer durations, easier to identify by adding an Option to use Team-colors for them. I don’t know how much time this would take, but if you want GW2 to become an e-Sport, it’s definitely worth investing time into it.

Pets/Illusions/summons with Teamcolors

Same as with the Effects; just paint them blue or red and with Pets and Summons (that would look stupid all red/green), put a blue/red hat on them (semi-serious: Just come up with sth. to make them easier to Identify, even if it’s just a Blue dot on Top of them).

Possibility to toggle a big Icon during the game with the Class and Teamcolor

If the observers could simply press a Key to show the Class-Icon above the Heads of the Players in their Teamcolor, it could make things much clearer in Teamfights.

Icon/Healthbar for Downed-state

A downed Player is extremely important for the outcome of a game and it should be clearly visible when spectating (not necessarily when playing though), so why not show an Icon of a Skull (again preferrably in Teamcolors) or a big Version of the downed-state “Healthbar” above the Char in Teamcolors?

Do sth. about Asuras

It’s soooo hard to properly Identify the Class, the Animations etc. of those Asuras that it can get really confusing for spectators that aren’t playing on a very high level.

Ability to Toggle Skillbars

Make it possible to Toggle the Skillbar with the Name of the Skill cast, the cast-duration and a small Icon either above the Heads or next to the Healthbars on the Side of the Screen.

Customizable Layout of Healthbars and other additional Info

Being able to place them on different parts of the Screen, the ability to make it bigger/smaller etc. would be helpful

The Map

First of all, it seems that the little Map on the right bottom seems to change my selected “Zoom” at random and often switches the position of the Map, showing me stuff I don’t wan’t to see while ruining the Setup where I can confortably see the whole Map.
For good spectating in a Game like GW2, an easily understandable Map is key: There should be Options to make it even bigger, make it semi-seethrough when the cursor isn’t on Top of it or make it possible to slide over the Map with the Mouse and make it pop up a bit bigger.

I really think that stuff like that will be extremely important for the success of GW2, because it’s a pretty hard to understand game, so we should do whatever is possible to make it easier to understand whats happening.

Perfectly reasonable and well said maple of those suggestions could carry over into normal play aswell but for shout casting, anything arena net can do regarding the UI and its functionality will definitely help in the short and long term competitive scene.

To add to the list:

-Add an option to show picture in picture for the other capture points. That way you can get a glimpse of what’s going on at the other nodes without taking you away from the bigger fight. (for example, you could set 2 of the eyes to be your pictures-in-picture; you could set it to the other nodes, or to other points of interest, like a fight at treb)
-Show progress bar of capture points on the spectator UI (maybe up top under the node icons)

^ You’re first suggestion (picture in picture) is something that I think would be really beneficial!! +1

Cosine.7841:

To add to the list:

-Add an option to show picture in picture for the other capture points. That way you can get a glimpse of what’s going on at the other nodes without taking you away from the bigger fight. (for example, you could set 2 of the eyes to be your pictures-in-picture; you could set it to the other nodes, or to other points of interest, like a fight at treb)
-Show progress bar of capture points on the spectator UI (maybe up top under the node icons)

This would definitely be cool, but I guess it’s not too easy to make this happen AND there’s always the possibility for the Streamers themselves to arrange sth. like that. Yes, it would need to be quite a Production, but at least it’s possible. ^^

I also had another Idea:

Toggle Condition-Icons above the Chars

Would be cool if you could toggle the Option to see the Conditions that a Player is suffering from: Just sth. you could toggle a few seconds long when you get into a fight or when certain classes are fighting to give the viewer a better Image of whats happening, who might be winning etc.