Guild Wars 2

This post is for all people making threads related to new patch, also people interested in esport general and especially for anet.
Everyone is blaming it on something, balance, lack of updates or whatever reason u may think of. But from the beginning something was off. Ever since they announced that they are planning to make it in esport game I felt that they don’t understand actually what they are into.
Before I start you should know that I’m gamer for maybe 16 years ever since I got my first console and since then I became obsessed with gaming. I followed rise of esport since its beginning days in scbw – wc3 – dota – lol – sc2. These 5 games are basicly giants of esport and games that are considered most successful in that aspect. (not including fps games like cs).
So first off all I’ll say that there is “holy triangle” of esport. It consists of 3 equally valuable parts and they are depending on each others. Viewers (Casuals) – Pros (Esport Athletes) – Sponsors (guys with money Investors). Now there is actually reason why I put viewers (casuals) first. The growth of game and becoming esport depend on amount of casuals. Its simple as that. I’ll give you example of lol. There is 10 million casuals, out of those 10 million some 200 will separate themselves with skill and become pros. Other casuals will watch their streams and if you have big viewership you enter in category of Pro. Now because u have big amount of followers, sponsors will be interested. For example in sc2 one player get 8k viewers while he play. Sponsor such as Razer will see this as opportunity and will offer contract with player or team of that player. They will advertise their product and because of that their sales will increase. Pros will get their cut obviously and everyone is profiting in some way. Viewers get quality and good competitive play, pros get money, sponsors get bigger sale. Its basicly down to money. Then it gets bigger, and companies start making tournaments, if everything go well it can reach over 100k viewers. This is streamed by professional groups and caster with professional casters. It becomes job like any other.
Anet failed to deliver in first step. Casuals (potential viewers) number is so small its impossible to generate enough pro, and to attract viewers. Now you may say, well simply people are not interested. If you look at list of those 5 games I mentioned, with exception of sc2, all these games are free. Sc2 have scene based on sc1 success. Now you may say wc3 is not free. Actually it is. Out of wc3 biggest giant of all was born. Dota was for long time most popular game, it is so popular that dota2 now have 1 million dollars prize tournaments. Wc3 was pirated and you can play dota competitive on garena for example. Ever wondered why Anet have like 15 german and french servers, and garena have 20 romanian, 30 ukrainian servers and 10 bulgarian server and 1 french and 1 german server? Its because for germans/french paying 50 euros is nothing, while for majority of east europe that can be like third of their monthly pay. They simply cant afford to buy game. I know because I live in bosnia and lots of my friend simply cant afford 50 euros for a game. Or even if they could they will rather spend it on something else. Now you may say, but anet cant make game free. Yea that’s true but if you want to make it esport then at least make heart of mist free. Its anyways totally not connected with pve content and wvw. Hell maybe even some players after they try spvp will like game enough and buy full package.

Second most important thing why it failed, its because system. They probably thought game will be huge and separated it into 3 categories: spvp (totally useless), tpvp and paids (this one was biggest turnoff for me). Instead they should strongly unite this already small group of players that love game. Also why is ladder important? Casuals such as myself don’t intend going to pros, but in this game I don’t even know who is pro. Where can I check rank? Where can I check games of these players? There should be huge button like half of screen when u press mist panel that says RANKING. There should be some sort of notification when highest ranks play so I can watch. When I click on tournament npc there should be huge button that says CLICK HERE TO JOIN. Instead there were 2 mini buttons on bottom of screen that said create roster, I honestly thought I needed full team just to play tourny for 3 months. System and everything need to be polished. There have to be tournaments that mean something. There have to be some sort of ranking… reason for players to play. Overall balance is bad but this is least problem now. Even if spvp go free, all hype of game is out, how are you planning to lure casuals to this game? I don’t know answer to this, but I wish you guys pull it out cause honestly I would love to watch this game, and I love playing it.

Yep. Good post. Thanks for it.

OP brings up very interesting business-side points such as price-point of a game, as well as market penetration.

I had posted various times before release of the game in many different forums that I find it odd that Anet aimed to have Guild Wars 2 become an e-sport and yet deliberately ignore some of the largest and most competitive scenes in the world of E-sports, Asia and South-East Asia. Until now, there is still no advertisement of the game, or even news of localization efforts for China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and other South East Asian countries that consistently provide top teams and players to various international gaming events for all genres of games.

Even now, many western pro-gamers still go to Korea (and now even more to China and Taiwan) to “train,” mostly because they believe that Asian gamers are in general, better gamers. (If not, why bother to go to another country to “train?”) As such, with Anet deliberately ignoring this market, it has been said by many, that Anet had tried to make a “special olympics” of e-sports by shutting out Asian gamers and keeping it “western gamers only,” which in turn shut out a very large (if not majority) proportion of the potential e-sports global fanbase.

Additionally, in many of these countries, the price of the product has also been restrictive, as highlighted in the OP. I have read that it goes up to about $100 US if purchased in Brazil due to taxes and other tarrifs. Although, I understand why Anet will probably never let the full experience of GW2 go free to play, I believe that this business model is very counterproductive to an aspiring e-sport. As has been suggested many times on various different forums, a completely free to play PvP-only version of the game would go a long way in expanding the e-sports potential of GW2.

I dont think their publisher will market the GW2 in the east and colide with Blade and Soul :P
When BnS will released on the werstern market , then we should expext to see gw2 on east

Great post.

Looking round Twitch at what people are watching, what’s popular and getting the viewers is also baffling.

I’ve never played WoW past 5 minutes of trial, so I decided to look it up on Twitch to see what people are raving about and what was popular.

I found this guy, 6500 viewers at the time. Watching him play a map that was basically conquest style take and hold locations to slowly accumulate points.
He played a Rogue that sat in perma stealth for 10 minutes while he waited at the point to see if someone would come for him to gank…
And people say GW2 would be boring to watch a bunker sit on a point!

It was so boring to watch him sit there for 10 minutes, then some guy came and he killed him 1v1 by stunlocking him, attacking, going into stealth when the stun lock finished, waiting in stealth for cooldowns, rinse repeat 3 times and then the guy was dead, he never had a fight, he just stood stun locked getting attacked, when he wasn’t stun locked he could of course never see the Rogue.

And people were cheering this? Calling him so pro, calling it amazing play…
Seriously, permanent stealth, stun lock, no actual fight. And this is entertaining for thousands of people to watch.

AND DONATE TO. ~He claims to have had $3000 recently, and a $21,000 donation in the past… among countless others every day.

It was the most boring thing I’ve ever watched and I couldn’t understand why people were so captivated and impressed.
I’d rather watch a GW2 8v8 hotjoin in spectator mode.

This. Best topic since patch arrival.

I guess what makes most semi-HC pvp players like me REALLY frustrated is the illusion of e-sporting.
I mean, the game is alright, it’s pretty balanced for such a complex weapon-utility-build-amulet-sigil-rune customization system, there are a lot of viable options and you can tweak your builds to any almost any parameter you like. It’s definitly the most balanced game I’ve ever seen in terms of options, I even compare it to MoBAs in terms of team setup possibilities.
Problem is, OP is so absolutely right: we love this game so much we’d like to see it handled professionally by a staff that cares about the competitive state of the game, but we can see ANet is definitly lost between making the game MORE casual in attempt to draw more players in, or reward the current hardcore player base.
And that doubt is certainly reflecting on our opinions about the game.

In Guild Wars 1 you were able to buy pvp-only version of the game, not including Alliance Battles as far as I remember. Step back in sequel here

In gw1 they had a package you could buy called pvp pack and it was like $15 and gave you access to all the skills across all of the expansions regardless of the expansion that you owned. These skills were available only for pvp arena use.

Maybe they could sell HotM for like $15-$20 and just give you access to pvp side of the game.

Duncanmix.5238:

Second most important thing why it failed, its because system. They probably thought game will be huge and separated it into 3 categories: spvp (totally useless), tpvp and paids (this one was biggest turnoff for me). Instead they should strongly unite this already small group of players that love game. Also why is ladder important? Casuals such as myself don’t intend going to pros, but in this game I don’t even know who is pro. Where can I check rank? Where can I check games of these players? There should be huge button like half of screen when u press mist panel that says RANKING. There should be some sort of notification when highest ranks play so I can watch. When I click on tournament npc there should be huge button that says CLICK HERE TO JOIN. Instead there were 2 mini buttons on bottom of screen that said create roster, I honestly thought I needed full team just to play tourny for 3 months. System and everything need to be polished. There have to be tournaments that mean something. There have to be some sort of ranking… reason for players to play. Overall balance is bad but this is least problem now. Even if spvp go free, all hype of game is out, how are you planning to lure casuals to this game? I don’t know answer to this, but I wish you guys pull it out cause honestly I would love to watch this game, and I love playing it.

I strongly agree mostly on this second point of yours. The mists has never been newbie friendly right from the start. Requiring to talk to the right NPC in order to join either hotjoin pvp or tournaments, add to that a very messy clunky window for the tournament queuq which I haven’t fully understood until 2 months later or so, just pushed me away from joining tourneys the first few times I tried doing PVP. And yes, the button that says “Create Roster” will definitely make people especially newbs to think that a full team is required to join tourneys. I didnt know that I could que in solo for tourney until I read it somewhere in these forums. Good thing they added the “Que Solo” button but its really really small at the lower left corner of the tourney window. This current tourney panel needs a MAJOR OVERHAUL. Make it newb/casual friendly.

And yes, for the love of god, Spectator Mode and Leaderboards! These two features should be in by now.

The Esports label was a marketing tactic to sell boxes and bring in beta testers.

If a person has no way to learn how to play competitively in a solo setting, then there will never be a large pool of casual, yet fairly skilled players who form the recruitment pool for teams and provide consistent viewership.

Designing the competitive side of the game for hardcore teams only just creates a small elitist community that slowly dies off since they won’t play with anybody they don’t know thus hardly anyone can learn the game.

Jacobin.8509:

Designing the competitive side of the game for hardcore teams only just creates a small elitist community that slowly dies off since they won’t play with anybody they don’t know thus hardly anyone can learn the game.

I’m starting to think that this is always what they had in mind.

Soloers/casuals need the proper training ground first for improvement and thus having the potential to grow, become pro, and then play in a pre-made well-coordinated team play. We also need reliable means to measure skill/improvement compared to other players, and not how many times we have farmed hotjoins for glory points and silly ranks. We must have the opportunity to view pros playing in actual matches or friends playing competitively in real time in-game, and not relying on twitch or other streaming websites in order to do this.

Leaderboards, Spectator Mode, Custom Arenas and Solo Queue.

Will we be having these features one bit at a time? With the implementation of a ranking system in the beta-stage 6 months after release, should we expect these features in the first quarter of this year? End of this year? Three years from now? The game needs these features ASAP. I doubt anyone disagrees on this.