Guild Wars 2

To be honest, Guild Wars 2 has the potential (in my opinion) to be an enjoyable game to watch competitively despite streaming being very low on Twitch (more people are watching Runescape lol). I’ve seen moments where this game had very interesting tournament plays and watched before they tried to actually push it into mainstream esports. The problem? HoT hit PVP hard at the worst time imaginable and all these people for the worst impression on the game.

When HoT launched their season 1 pro leagues, everyone’s first impression was the tedious bunker meta and not only that, but it’s right when elite specs killed build diversity. I will go as far to say the game was more competitively interesting when it wasn’t trying. The reason why I find games like LoL interesting to watch is because while there is a defined meta, people are trying new champions/builds and have some success with it as well as there being a lot of action and strategy.

So can they do? Even though the damage is done, they need to bring back build diversity, and I know they don’t like this term as it’s not the easiest for them to do, but PVP needs its own balancing, especially at this point. Push different game modes, Stronghold was forgotten competitively and has potential to be an interesting variation from conquest, but you need to make it more action and strategy oriented.

They need to reduce the chaos. PvP should become more clear, more tactical. Currently, everyone throws around their aoe’s and the team that happens to be better at spamming wins. This is mainly due to all the skills that came with HoT. But now you cannot simply nerf/remove them. And that’s the problem.

I think there are many things, let me cite the 2 which I think are the most important:

• build diversity: in most popular e-sport, the team composition is an important factor. Look at LoL, the time spent at the champion choice. Good news: we are finally back at a point where we have different team compositions! Also the team composition should imply a different playstyle. This is actually the whole point: watching different team comps should mean that each game look different, so that watching 8 games in a row (current pro league format) does not feel like 8 times the same game. In gw2, we see that with thieves and to some extent with mesmer. They bring things which no other classes bring (insane mobility for thief, portal/moa for mesmer) and which affect the overall gameplay. I don’t feel it as much with other classes and this is sad. Finally, LoL has more than 9 champions… Gw2 has a build system with the potential of some classes playing very different roles but barely uses it. Now that inter class balance has been (almost) brought back, I think a-net should focus on intra-class balance. One big thing which would help is that builds should not be good at everything like they currently are. The bruiser meta is clearly more boring than a roamer+bunker+DPS meta. Currently, all builds are sustaining themselves, doing good damage and control, etc… This reduces the influence of team comp.
• Game progress. The game play of conquest is fairly linear for the most part. People fight, fight fight fight fight, sometime they die, sometime they get caps. To attract viewership, you need a less linear story. Look again at LoL, there is a lot of setting up, and then sudden burst of fighting. You could argue that gw2 has more actions, considering that in between the fights, LoL is fairly… uninteresting almost. But this allows to have this big bursts of interest. If you look at gw2, the most interesting things to watch is precisely when the gameplay is less linear. A big lord/boss push, a big rez/stomp event, basically any moment where suddenly the stakes get higher. The problem is that the lord/boss push only work in “close” games, which are not that frequent in gw2 (probably because of low competitive population). On the other hand, I think the downstate mechanics of gw2 is really the big saving factor. Those are often big moments in the fight, dangerous for both sides and where big outcomes can emerge (team wipes). I guess stronghold was created to improve on the linear conquest experience, but it needs a lot of refining. One map which I think would work well for that is “Spirit Watch”. I know it is currently not the most “loved” map, but the one competitive game I saw on it (AG) was really fun. The orb push was really nice, with players pushing, then abandoning the orb to heal while another one takes it, etc…

So in summary:

• improve build diversity, and make sure that different team composition imply different strategies and gameplay.
• make games less linear. This is mostly the map design. In Foefire, the lord works great but only for otherwise even teams. In Forest, the boss are usually only contested at the very end in very even games (or when they are killed before it is usually uncontested). Temple often sadly ends up being 5 infinitely contested objectives, but is still often an interesting map. Kyhlo has nothing… Spirit watch could be a lot of fun and I would love to have it in competitive rotations. Skyhammer… meh. Stronghold concept could work, but needs a lot of refining. I don’t think the current SH map works at all.

i think they need to focus on making the mode extremely fun 1st, then they can worry about esports.

make it fun
→ more players pvp since its… fun
→ better population means better Q times
→ better Q (and more people) means more people will try to organize as teams
→ more teams means more competition in the top tourneys
→ more competition + more people can increase the drive for people to actually watch the matches
→ more people watching matches means we can start to think of esports again

Jaxom.7310:

i think they need to focus on making the mode extremely fun 1st, then they can worry about esports.

make it fun
-> more players pvp since its… fun
-> better population means better Q times
-> better Q (and more people) means more people will try to organize as teams
-> more teams means more competition in the top tourneys
-> more competition + more people can increase the drive for people to actually watch the matches
-> more people watching matches means we can start to think of esports again

true as hell from player perspective. I’m on the same openion
However having an isolated PvP tourney for this amount of monney is totally enough from ANet perspective. Running this gives them the right to use the ‘top teams compete in ESL’-like term in the ADs they run on webpages or make it appear in reviews only scratching the surface of the game. And that is exactly most of the newcommers see before getting the game.

1st : Polling about what Casual needs
(surely they will cover it when the WWvW ‘lift up’’ ends)

(if you see some old-veteran mofo , trying to persuade the newer community that we shouldnt need 8v8 , BECAUSE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS DONT HAVE IT ….IMMIDIATLY TEMPONARY BAN HIMMMMMM !!!! – otherwise i will force him to change game …. gently…)

2) Making Money
By buying an item from the GW2 store (800 gems) will real money , you get as bonus a ‘’Points-o-Matic’’ that stores any World Bosses Exp + Dynamic Events Exp + PvP rank points and awards you will small amount of gems occasionaly , up to 1600 gems(capped) by playing casually 35 min each day , for 45 days

If it is succeful , create a ‘’SilverPoints-O-Matic’’ that cost the same but rewards x3 , but has x3 efforts and can be used in the same time as the ’’normal version .
So pay 20 euros and buying 2 items and get rewarded with those 2-o-Matic every 45 days (trust me , the more days = more alluring…), you can get x5 amounts of Gems , by playing 3-4 hours per day .
(they pay with real money + play longer + and hopefully with less blue whales videos)

3) Making poll for drasticly changing spells (not effecting PvE) with each season .

Or boosting Highly Telegraphaft Attacks , to be the main source of damage only .
For example 100-blades is not effected by the Toughness of the enemy , but the effect can only work on Capture points or artificial areas created by the player (Longbow-Fire field or placing the Banner)
(So use Bollas or Pin Down or Sword F1>stow or change weapon or ask a friend to Immobilize him

Edit:
4th : do something about scoring
PPl gave up mid ways and we see ppl linking their final score 500 vs 300 on the forums , thinking that the Matchmaking doesnt work …
Either bring back the old ‘’you can gather Rank points, regadles if your team looses’’ and cap it on 450 , I DONT CARE IF WE SEE LESS PPL DEFENDING THE 2 SILLY NODES
or implanting LoL or any low bughet idea

All they have done is implement a system which rewards you with stupid wings rather than give us more maps and modes like 3v3 or 1v1

Rarely play because they expect us to collect pips in order to unlock reewards plus we only have a very limited amount of time to achieve this.

Good job anet

Real simple list:

• #1 – If you want people to watch a game, you need people to play that game so that they can be interested in watching that game.
• #2 – To create and keep a player fan base, the game needs to be “fun” and “reliable”.
• #3 – To make the game fun, it needs diversity and choices that are viable.
• #4 – To keep a game reliable, you need to stop turning it upside every other month.
• #5 – When a game is reliable and has builds/choices that are stable, that won’t change any time soon, players can begin learning the game up and down. When a player knows a game up and down, they can then WATCH the game and be able to tell who is good, who is bad and how they are playing. Similar to how people watch football or boxing and comment on it because they know how the game works. This is what people find fun about watching any competitive scene, is being able to understand what is going on and criticize it or be impressed by it. However, this is not possible to achieve while making players relearn the game’s meta and how it is played every 2 months. Not enough players are willing to constantly give their undivided attention to keep relearning GW2 meta.

We don’t need anymore promotion tactics or changes in systems, yada yada. We need the balance of spvp meta to once again become stable, reliable and diverse concerning viable build structures that can be played and watched, similar to the state of the game pre 6/23/2015. If and when GW2 can achieve this, people will return and be interested again but they had better hurry up before some MMORPG usurper arrives and completely steals the fan base of GW2. Arena-net has been lucky on this one so far but I think this luck will run out within the next year if they don’t land a golden balance patch.

First of all we need a skill based combat system, which went out of the window when Anet decided to discard GW1 to create a game aimed at casuals called GW2.

If Anet was to fix the braindead AoE/CC/condi spamfest that is GW2, PvE/casual players would explode which they can’t afford.

Splitting skills could be an option, but the changes would have to be so massive that someone coming over from PvE to PvP wouldn’t even recognize the game. Plus it takes effort, releasing gemstore skins are easier.

IF they are even half serious about esports they should be pushing GW1.

The reason I don’t think that GW2 will ever be a serious Esports contender is that it’s too complicated to watch. I barely even know what’s going on when I’m playing it, much less watching someone else do it.

I mean, there are at least ten different moves each player can be using at any given time, not even counting the force multipliers available to Eles and Engies, two of the biggest classes right now.

You then have five players on a side, and the most interesting match-ups are often 4v4, plus in some cases a dozen or more random pets. I had a match the other day with 2+3 minionmancers and couldn’t even see the ground.

To be a serious ESports contender, they need things to be MUCH more simple, like 3-5 total moves per character, all well established and known in advance. When someone launched a gamechanger, it needs to be completely obvious what’s going on.

It also doesn’t help that matches are up to 15 minutes of non-stop movement, covering three different points. It means that you might have two massive fights going on at once, and then thirty seconds of nothing interesting as players move around the map. A single control point would be much more focused, or much shorter rounds in which players could attack, and then have time for commentators to review that action and explain what happened before the next burst of activity.

Long story short, GW2 sPvP is just not designed to be entertaining to watch, and that is not something they should worry about. Make the game fun to PLAY, that is all.

It would also help if maybe they tried a different approach to ESL recording.

The shoutcasters do a great job at live shoutcasing, they really do but maybe if they would have three other observers constantly recording each individual node in the background, they could then go back and create like an edited version of each match. This way they could slow down animations and show game changer plays so people can actually see what is happening.

Dunno, is it possible for a-net to be able to record the game’s entire activity and then reload it in to a match to re-play itself as bots so to say? This way they could already know exactly what is going to happen and make sure to get the right camera angels on an edited version, with detailed calls, explanation and slowed down animations.

Or even a system where players could connect in game as observers to view the match and choose to follow who they want to follow in the match. Now THAT would draw viewers.

Have a league system that actually shows your skill, the pip system shows nothing, only what order you go your wins in. I have won 15/29 matches, but only have 6 pips to show for it. yeah, totally shows my skill…….

Team Queue.

The reason why people don’t play in teams as much and why fewer teams are coming into the EU scene is because there’s no way to actually test your skill and coordination vs good teams outside of ESL and Pro league tournaments. There is no guarantee that you’ll meet other teams if you queue as a team.

Dirame.8521:

Team Queue.

The reason why people don’t play in teams as much and why fewer teams are coming into the EU scene is because there’s no way to actually test your skill and coordination vs good teams outside of ESL and Pro league tournaments. There is no guarantee that you’ll meet other teams if you queue as a team.

Indeed. If they want the leagues to act as a breeding ground for new teams, then they need to “force” people to make teams to play. or have 2 leagues. one team the other soloQ. You can play solo, or in a full team of 5. Nothing in between. Not a popular I dead I know, but if ANet wants ESports, this is how it needs to be. Or accept it’s failed, and put the money to good use. I don’t see how ANet is making anything from the ESL with average of 1K viewers. When you consider the game has sold millions of copy’s, You would expect a lot more in terms of viewers. I bet the POI and Guild chats get more views.

Meta is kitten, Nobody wants to see someone 2 v 1 for kittening 10 minutes its boring and very slow.

I think they need to bring the game more in line with what it was two years ago. It was slower for sure and the only abilities that could really hit you for 10-15k was a buffed hundred blades or ambush, and they were more difficult to land and easier to avoid, as well as the player sacrificing a lot in order to do that. Right now you have lots of possibilities for delivering 10k plus in less than a second and it makes the PvP experience less about tactics and brainpower and more about spammy nonsense.

Obviously class balance needs a lot of work, when teams would rather stack 3 of the same class than diversify its a pretty clear sign of problematic class design and balance.

For starters, it needs to be much easier to see what’s actually going on in fights. Not just in regards to visual clutter, but the amount of effects getting thrown around. The game is incredibly spammy right now (many things optimally used on recharge), and individual skills do too many things at the same time. They’re going to need to slow the game way down and focus on better telegraphs and more focused functionality of skills (e.g. a CC can just be CC – it doesn’t need to also deal massive damage and have a bunch of utility effects). The game simply isn’t engaging for viewers when you can’t tell how a fight is won. People want to see interesting combat and mechanical skill from the competitor.

Silverkey.2078:

I think there are many things, let me cite the 2 which I think are the most important:

• build diversity: in most popular e-sport, the team composition is an important factor. Look at LoL, the time spent at the champion choice. Good news: we are finally back at a point where we have different team compositions! Also the team composition should imply a different playstyle. This is actually the whole point: watching different team comps should mean that each game look different, so that watching 8 games in a row (current pro league format) does not feel like 8 times the same game. In gw2, we see that with thieves and to some extent with mesmer. They bring things which no other classes bring (insane mobility for thief, portal/moa for mesmer) and which affect the overall gameplay. I don’t feel it as much with other classes and this is sad. Finally, LoL has more than 9 champions… Gw2 has a build system with the potential of some classes playing very different roles but barely uses it. Now that inter class balance has been (almost) brought back, I think a-net should focus on intra-class balance. One big thing which would help is that builds should not be good at everything like they currently are. The bruiser meta is clearly more boring than a roamer+bunker+DPS meta. Currently, all builds are sustaining themselves, doing good damage and control, etc… This reduces the influence of team comp.
• Game progress. The game play of conquest is fairly linear for the most part. People fight, fight fight fight fight, sometime they die, sometime they get caps. To attract viewership, you need a less linear story. Look again at LoL, there is a lot of setting up, and then sudden burst of fighting. You could argue that gw2 has more actions, considering that in between the fights, LoL is fairly… uninteresting almost. But this allows to have this big bursts of interest. If you look at gw2, the most interesting things to watch is precisely when the gameplay is less linear. A big lord/boss push, a big rez/stomp event, basically any moment where suddenly the stakes get higher. The problem is that the lord/boss push only work in “close” games, which are not that frequent in gw2 (probably because of low competitive population). On the other hand, I think the downstate mechanics of gw2 is really the big saving factor. Those are often big moments in the fight, dangerous for both sides and where big outcomes can emerge (team wipes). I guess stronghold was created to improve on the linear conquest experience, but it needs a lot of refining. One map which I think would work well for that is “Spirit Watch”. I know it is currently not the most “loved” map, but the one competitive game I saw on it (AG) was really fun. The orb push was really nice, with players pushing, then abandoning the orb to heal while another one takes it, etc…

So in summary:

• improve build diversity, and make sure that different team composition imply different strategies and gameplay.
• make games less linear. This is mostly the map design. In Foefire, the lord works great but only for otherwise even teams. In Forest, the boss are usually only contested at the very end in very even games (or when they are killed before it is usually uncontested). Temple often sadly ends up being 5 infinitely contested objectives, but is still often an interesting map. Kyhlo has nothing… Spirit watch could be a lot of fun and I would love to have it in competitive rotations. Skyhammer… meh. Stronghold concept could work, but needs a lot of refining. I don’t think the current SH map works at all.

I really think if they pushes stronghold and refined it a bit would make for some very interesting competitive battles because there can be strategy to it, I’ve seen moments where unique plays do make it very interesting in close fights such as a good use of mesmer portal or working with a teammate’s unique abilities. Seeing more professions getting played, build diversity and not just focusing one one game mode (conquest and stronghold) would be great assets to focus on. As much as I complained about the whole esports bomb, I do it because I love this game, I know when something isn’t working and I want it to be good because I’ve seen it good. It was just an awful first impression and brought many new viewers one of the worst and monotonous metas to date, imagine you never playing gw2 at all and your impression to the competitive scene was the bunker meta lol

cursE.1794:

They need to reduce the chaos. PvP should become more clear, more tactical. Currently, everyone throws around their aoe’s and the team that happens to be better at spamming wins. This is mainly due to all the skills that came with HoT. But now you cannot simply nerf/remove them. And that’s the problem.

That is what gw2 is ment to be, if they wanted that fixed thou would design classes and skilsl more towards that.

The momment Anet started to design classes to pve and make then in the pvp field, this never ends well, it should be the other way arround,more balance more single target, more better timmings to spike/ gank needed or even interrupt.
Gw2 pvp system is ment to short the gap between new players and more dedicated players.

Crowley.8761:

I think they need to bring the game more in line with what it was two years ago. It was slower for sure and the only abilities that could really hit you for 10-15k was a buffed hundred blades or ambush, and they were more difficult to land and easier to avoid, as well as the player sacrificing a lot in order to do that. Right now you have lots of possibilities for delivering 10k plus in less than a second and it makes the PvP experience less about tactics and brainpower and more about spammy nonsense.

Obviously class balance needs a lot of work, when teams would rather stack 3 of the same class than diversify its a pretty clear sign of problematic class design and balance.

It’s funny you bring this up because I’m going to compare it to another competitive game I used to play, Yugioh. The first few years of Yugioh was actually a lot of fun to watch and compete in because it was slower, but very strategic. To get that good powerful monster you built your deck around required a lot of building up, having to get monsters on the field while being limited to only summoning one per turn.

Nowadays, people have lost interest because they introduced things like synchro summons and xyz summons, remember those monsters that required a lot of building up and planning to get on the field? All of those cards are obsolete because the new xyz cards you can basically just throw three monsters in one turn, eliminating the good pacing and strategy for both players and viewers.

I agree with what people are saying about adding in Skyhammer and Spirit Watch. They’re more fun to play, so probably more fun to watch.

I also think adding in build diversity would do a ton. It gets tiresome watching the same builds used over and over again on stream. There’s nothing interesting about it.

Being able to see new builds and comps (they’re doing better with making everything viable class-wise) every week would be really cool.

Crowley.8761:

I think they need to bring the game more in line with what it was two years ago. It was slower for sure and the only abilities that could really hit you for 10-15k was a buffed hundred blades or ambush, and they were more difficult to land and easier to avoid, as well as the player sacrificing a lot in order to do that. Right now you have lots of possibilities for delivering 10k plus in less than a second and it makes the PvP experience less about tactics and brainpower and more about spammy nonsense.

Obviously class balance needs a lot of work, when teams would rather stack 3 of the same class than diversify its a pretty clear sign of problematic class design and balance.

Both they where easy to execute an the skill needed to counter them was very high .
From Octomber 2012 – Febrruary 2013 where both deemed as casual-stomp spec that wont see the light on the competive play and where used by a lot of players (and we had that Thief MegaHate which more views that the regular Patchnotes :P).
Till is was used by Jumper and i dont remember the Warrior (dont hate=dont remember) that introdueced it with HIGHLY SUCCESS in the tournaments

You needed a stunbreak (to counter Venom Poison + Bull Rush) + condtion removal to counter the immobilize (Bollas + when the thief left you with 50% hp trait) and Dodge to avoid other attacks = all in that in 1-1,5 sec

The newer community SHOULD NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES

They should reduce the amount to active skills players have at hand, reducing all the usable skill at one time to 8-10,
- Increase every cool-down by a significant amount.
- Reduce the type of conditions and boons to 6/6.
- Make every condition and boon stack once per character.
- Make some of the conditions and boons, profession only (like guards are the only ones with the Guard boon, or Eles the only ones with chill. This would avoid professions having all the boons and condis (engi and mes).
- Lower the mount of AoE skills.
- Introduce RA/TA, that format would be great to watch, especially with interesting maps. The shorter format would be great to watch.
- essentially turn the PvP into a GW1 kind of PvP that is fun to watch and to understand what is happening.

Ragmon.6350:

- Introduce RA/TA, that format would be great to watch, especially with interesting maps. The shorter format would be great to watch.
- essentially turn the PvP into a GW1 kind of PvP that is fun to watch and to understand what is happening.

due to the amount of work i imagine the 1st part of your post would include, i can’t ever see it happening.

at least these 2 things seem more reasonable. they don’t affect anything else. altho anet will never do any of it. at least the last 4 years show them unwilling to do it