Guild Wars 2

Or Making An E-sport, I couldn’t quite decide wich title.

Hello all, I’d like to talk about GW2 as an e-sport, and how I believe it falls short at maintaining a competitive scene.
I think most will agree with me that the games spvp is is somewhat underpopulated, wich is a shame as, and I’m sure you’ve heard this before, this game has , in my opinion, the potential to make an amazing pvp scene.
So let’s talk about where this game might have gone wrong and what could be done to realize this potential. The spvp may have launched in a state that can not be called ready, but it is far from a lost cause.
I will try to avoid touching the subject of game balance. This will probably not be a popular assessement but while balance is important to the competitive scene, I do believe a game mustn’t be emaculately balanced to be an e-sport. I
will try to stick to other design issues I believe is holding this games spvp back.

First a little about me: I’m no pro player; in fact I’m quite the newb when it comes to spvp, although this may in turn give me insight a pro player may not have in what ails spvp. I’m no authority on how to make a competitive game succesful at all but I have definatly been around and played my fair share of competitive games and I like to think I know a thing or two about game design. Maybe my insights I’m about to give are invaluable, or maybe I’ll just be speaking common sense. In case of the latter it never hurts to be reminded of the obvious from time to time.
I hope this topic will spark some discussion on how to improve upon the spvp side of this game, and maybe get some of those ideas to the devs.
Lastly I’m not a native english speaker nor a writer, so don’t expect top notch literature.

So let us begin. Beginning at the first problem a prospective spvp may encounter

The entry barrier

The entry barrier is the collection of reasons a player that may want to play spvp, that keep him from doing so.

There’s a multitude of reasons as I see it, many who stem from the fact that pve is the first thing new players come into contact with. Now don’t get me wrong, a seperate pve part to a game with a competitive scene can be a boon, but it can just as well be a curse.

The benefit of pve in conjuction with competitive pvp is that pve can serve as a giant tutorial into the games combat. Soften the entry barrier by having players learn to play vs computer controlled opponents instead of throwing them to straight into full on pvp they may not be ready for yet. In fact I have seen a game or two that did not have any pve at all add some for exactly this reason . Look at LoL for example, there is a reason they have added a player vs AI mode, it allows for new players to learn the game at a speed they are comfortable with.
Now then why does GW2 fail at this concept, there is a substantial pve part, a predominant one might be argued, after all. The problem is that combat in pve is so immensly different from playing against another player,
it does little to prepare the player for actual pvp encounters. No player will only attack every five seconds or stand still whilst attacking, not even care about boons and condition on himself or the opponent and not heal at all.
Yet this is what we see in pve, an AI that appears to be designed with traditional mmorpg combat in mind in a combat system that is wholy different. A good combat system ofcourse, but one that boils down to kiting monsters as best you can whilst spamming damaging attacks. I think this is not only a problem for pvp but for the pve itself, wich after learning the basics becomes rather shallow (the reason people complain about the lack of trinity if you ask me). Just as damaging to the pvp however, since beyond learning how skills work (and this the game does well with the unlocking) and gradualy learning about traits as you unlock them, the pve teaches next to nothing on how to compete in pvp.

This is a real problem and me personally I haven’t the faintest clue how to solve it. It stems from the core design in the games pve wich cannot be changed at this point in the games life, at least not without a complete overhaul of the pve combat AI to more resemble how a player may fight. Sadly the only way to keep making pve engaging (really not a concern for this discussion, but I would like to add regardless) is to add boss mechanics to make up for lacking combat mechanics. And then to soften the entry barrier, something that can be achieved by having a superb matchmaking that ensures brand new pvp players are put against similarly experienced players, not ideal but feasable.

Next up another issue rooted in the pve. spvp and pve being seperated as they are, are like two seperate games but with the same combat and whatnot. What this means is that both sides of the game will effectively be competing with one another for players (as I said before, predomination of one game mode is the likely result of this). Now pve in mmorpgs is designed with one core concept in mind to keep players playing; and that is investment. You level your character, collect gear, gain achievements; it gives you a sense of progress. Once you’ve spent time and effort progressing your character through the game you’ve invested in the game, and a player who’s made such investments is less likely to quit the game lest all that time and effort be wasted. And that’s fine it’s how these games are designed, but as things are currently in it’s not healthy for spvp. Players start off their adventure in pve and start getting invested in that portion of the game before they likely set foot in pvp. Since spvp is like a seperate game, a player will be less likely to leave his pve because of the investments he has there, wich are all meaningless in spvp since the only things you keep are your character name and looks. Nobody likes to start from scratch, it is against the design principle in mmorpg of progress to lose everything. So long as pve and spvp are completely seperated the commitment a player has to his pve character will scare said player away from spvp. pve commitment is a powerful game design, and as it stands it is to the detriment of the pvp.

To fix this issue obviously there needs to be some interaction between pve and spvp. Titles are one thing, but really gear is what matters. Before you try to burn me at the stake let me say I competely agree with the design of having all pvp players on equal footing as far as equipment goes, no e-sport would survive where the outcome of a fight is largely determined by who has the best gear. What I do think is that the cosmetic aspect of equipment should somehow be carried over from pve to spvp and vice versa. As it stands you sort of have your pve progress with lvls and gear etc and pvp progress with rank and cosmetic armors, I believe keeping a single character progression throughout pve and pvp is of the utmost important.

Last issue regarding the pve spvp transition I would like to talk about is flow. Whilst every mmorpg allows a player to adventure freely within level restrictions, there exists a sort of flow directing your pve adventures, usually in the form of quests leading you from one location to the other. Some games have this more then others, though I would say this game does not have that much flow. It is definatly there however, most evidently in the personal story. Whilst most everyone loves the freedom to explore wherever he wants in the game world, in the end almost every player requires the game to suggest a course of action; in this case to follow ones personal story around the world. (and when said story ends many players feel lost not knowing what to do next). Sadly at not one point does the game flow towards spvp. Certainly in every major city you have an npc or two conversing about spvp or wvw, faintly suggesting the player to check it out. I fear though to most players this is but ambient chatter to the drive to follow the personal story. An npc like that one asura in lion’s arch babbling about existential dilemmas, while a humorous play on the feeling of directionlessnes after the game is no longer holding the players hand, just doesn’t cut it.

My suggestion to improve upon it is really direct the players flow through the game more towards spvp as well. Sure the player should not feel forced to pvp, but as pve is the first to grab a players attention it is only fair that pve directs to player towards spvp down the road so the player can give spvp a fair shake. My first thought would be to add a personal story quest involving a visit to the mists in between the current quests. I would say the best time for this would be right before the player joins an order, when he is most likely to enter lions arch for the first time. Something simple really, like a courier job that ends you up getting a tour of the mists and spvp, just to catch the player’s attention.

Now the player comes into contact with spvp for the first time, the utterly important

First Impression

You only get one shot at this. The first opinion a prospective player will form of pvp is the most determining factor wether or not he will stick around and become a competitive player. First impressions make or break games, many games put the utmost effort into making this a dazzling experience (and sometimes slack off on later parts of the game once the player is hooked, not a strategy I like seeing used personally). So it is for spvp, a difficult task given how a new player probably hasn’t the faintest clue how to play and experience the pvp beyond a messy clusterkitten of disorientation and confusion. Still there is little to be changed in the way newbie pvp matches do not reflect how matches with competitive and pro players may look like. One thing that can help in this regard is spectatorship. Maybe newb matches won’t be as glorious as they can be but a new player could spectate competitive matches to truly get a good idea of what spvp is all about. But more about this later, no the real big issue here is hotjoin. It is natural for a newbie to get started with unranked easy to join matches like hotjoin. A big play now button to make sure new players do not have to spend much time figuring out where to get some action and experience spvp personally, this is good. In fact this is something that can easily be botched up as well. for example myself I was trying out this other game at some point, straight after logging in I was met with a big red play now button I naturally clicked on to get started; unknown to me at the time this was the button to find ranked matches wich a new player is obviously not ready for, leading to a bitter experience for me and other players involved, a poor first impression to say the least. Anyway back on track, join now; good that it’s there but I wouldn’t be talking about the subject if something didn’t go quite wrong. The button puts you in 8v8 maps. Now I find it curious the argument that the game is not balanced for 1v1 is used so often against adding something like dueling into the game, yet here we have a game mode, classes and maps balanced for 10 players with 18 players crammed into it. This turns the first impression of spvp into a horribly chaotic confusing zergfest that does actual competitive spvp matches no justice. Especially for new players this easily devolves into a zergy spamfest where players do nothing but gloryhound. This is bad, really really bad, bad bad bad bad.

This issue is easily fixed, remove 8v8 hotjoin rooms. I do not understand the reasoning to add them in the first place, the only reason I can think of is to minimize the amount of spvp instances created by having more players in one instance. In a way this approach is succesful, if only by scaring away many prospective spvpers so that few pvp rooms will be filled in the first place. If server load is the problem I think we can all agree that with the current pitiful spvp population this really won’t be an issue for the forseeable future. Remove 8v8 and make sure hotjoiners get to play 5v5 matches to ensure they get the real spvp experience, both to make a good impression and to propperly prepare
players to play real competitive ranked matches.

So let’s assume a player makes it past the entry barrier and spvp made a good enough impression; he will now be facing

The learning curve

The learning curve encompasses the skills and knowledge a player must gain in order to be competent at the game. Any game with some sort of depht has a learning curve, but how steep or long it is depends largely on the means for learning a game gives to its players.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying a learning curve is a bad thing. In fact a learning curve can give the player a sense of progress in pvp; similar to how you gain levels in pve over time you can ‘progress’ in pvp by improving your skill and knowledge of the game. There is something very fullfilling about seeing yourself improve your play over time in a competitive pvp environment, so long as this process goes paired with only limited frustration. This is how a large learning curve can potentially scare away learning players, by being so frustrating and unending a player may no longer care at all to put the effort into learning how to play. I find this games spvp learning curve to be extremely harsh and unforgiving. I’d go as far as to say it dwarfs dwarf fortress’ learning curve, wich is saying something.

So what makes learning how to play so frustrating? Well the way to learn, be it learn what you’re doing right or what you’re doing wrong, is to analyze combat information. If there is one thing this games combat has it is a LOT of it’s information. This games combat however is so fast paced (nothing wrong with this), a player hardly has any time at all to take in every bit of vital information at all times during combat. With practice a lot of this can become muscle memory, but not before learning it regularly. Even in a simple 1 on 1 fight at any one time you’re keeping track of
1. Your health 2. Your incoming damage 3. Your boons 4. Your conditions 5. Your position 6. Your cooldowns 7. The opponent’s health 8. Your outgoing damage 9. The opponent’s boons 10. The opponent’s conditions 11. The opponent’s position 12. The opponent’s current attack
And if you’re upping the ante
13. The opponent’s cooldowns 14. The opponent’s traits and equipment
Although granted the latter is bordering metagame or is deduced from immediate combat experience. Anyway, this is a lot of information and the player is going to need help taking this all in, both in and out of battle. You cannot tell a player to learn how to play but not give them to means to do so.

So how do you keep this learning curve from being overly frustrating? The key is to give the player the right information at the right time. When a player is a defeaten there are two common reactions: frustration or motivation. A frustrated reaction can be caused by not having acces to the necesary information to learn from defeat, whereas motivation can be caused by do having this. After defeat it is extremely important to motivate a player to overcome the obstacle in question, in this case the opposing player. For this purpose there is already a death recap in the game, but it is sadly incredibly lacking. You cannot expect a learning player to know every single ability of every single class in the game, so when you tell the player he recieved x damage from ability y but he hasn’t the faintest clue what ability y is, then the information within the recap is useless. Furthermore knowing the source behind the conditiondamage instead of just the informing the player of damage caused by type of condition is important. If you tell a player he suffered 1000 bleeding damage but he does not know wich ability it was/abilities it were that applied the conditions to begin with, this information is next to pointless to help the player counter the opponent.

As I see it the death recap needs to be improved to allow for a concise description of what an ability does and hint how the animation looks like. Perhaps on mouseover. It is been quite some time since I played it, but I believe LoL (again referencing that game because it became a hugely popular esport for a reason) does exactly this. Each and every ability should also show wich condition it applied and how much damage this did. This so a player can learn how to play against other classes (or the same class running a significantly different build) without having to play every single class and learn every single ability from every single class in order to know what they can do. Know thine enemy and all that, it’s important in learning how to play.

It doesn’t stop there though. A learning player does not only need feedback after defeat, but all throughout a match. How can a player know wether he is doing something right and actively contributing to the match without any sort of information about his combat activities. Sure you can actively be looking at damage numbers recieved and inflicted, but really I think everyone will agree this is not feasable in such fast paced combat. Right now the only practical way I know of to get any sort of information about ones combat performance is to ask an opposing player to read his death recap to you after defeat. This is hardly an ideal solution. Obviously overall match information should not be as in depht as a death recap. Simply knowing how much pure damage inflicted, condition damage inflicted, healing done, pure damage recieved, condition damage recieved and damage mitigated, point captured/defended, kill, deaths throughout the match can help immensly to analyze ones own performance. That isn’t to say a fully detailed in depht battle report after every single combat engagement wouldn’t be useful, it is impractical but worthy of consideration. Perhaps as a future sparring feature?

So what needs to be done? A scoreboard to put it bluntly. I know there will be players who will see their score as nothing more then boasting material, perhaps going as far as to play the entire match in function of maximizing certain scores whilst foregoing the actual objective. This will happen and this isn’t to great yes, but not giving the player any sort of feedback is even worse. And let’s face it, forsaking the objective in order to maximize something else is already happening, it’s called glory farming. A scoreboard that should keep track of the combat statistics mentioned earlier of each player. This will allow a player to compare his performance to other players or to himself when trying out different strategies or builds. As also mentioned a more in depht combat information analasys may be desirable. Certainly you can test scenarios versus the npcs in the heart of the mists, but this is no substitute for a real skirmish. Perhaps a sparring mode that gives all this in depht information after every duel. Yes I said the word, more of it in next section.

Dueling! Players are doing it, devs don’t want it. I can see why, the game is not balanced neither is it meant to be balanced for 1v1. Why am I about to say then that not only is it a good idea to have it, but that it is a horrible idea not to have it? Simple, it is the best way to learn how to play. The larger the battle the more variables, the more variables the harder it is to discern what you need to know to improve you play. A duel is the most simple battle possible, the minimum of two combatants. In a controlled environment of the duel it is a lot easier to learn plays and counterplays. It cannot teach you everything, but it can give the player a basis on wich to build on for fully fledged fights. I think only a scarce few really want rated 1v1 competition, something I personally would hate to see it make into the game. No, dueling would be a tool to make the learning process easier and less frustrating, in a game with a
learning curve as rough this why would you deny the player this comfort.

So implement dueling! You can keep it simple and have players initiate a challenge anywhere and anytime, and have battle commence when both parties are agreed and ready. This makes for good entertainment for prospective observers as well. Or you could have it somewhat how players are dueling now, in a server. I hear custom server may be implemented down the road wich would make this possible, so there’s a solution. However since in a duel no players are actually interested in the objective it seems silly to put them in a conquest map. Again, this idea of a dueling system could be incorporated with the previous suggestion of having a training mode with in depht combat reports akin to the suggested improved death recap, but ofcourse for either victory of defeat. There really is no better way to learn the ropes then in a controlled minimally complex combat scenario.

So those were a few issues with out of combat information display, next up let’s talk about what information a player needs to be able to see in combat in the next section.

Visibility

Combat can become very…chaotic for a lack of word. Ability animations and effects can overwhelm (especially new) players easily, with result that plays and counterplays are sometimes thrown out of the window and combat reverts to a
spamfast as many have called it. I believe this to be a problem caused by overdone ability effects obfuscating vital combat information from ability animations. Ability animations should be clear and distinct to allow for players to keep track of what their enemy is doing, wich I believe in this case they largely are, however this is meaningless when combat is riddled with fancy effects. AoE effects especially are the main culprits here, but all sorts of bright flashy effects really must be toned down so both learning and competitive players have an easier time figuring out what is actually going on in combat. The same problem exists in pve as well, where large battles are more or less akin to attacking a target that looks like a lightshow. Naturally in pvp this problem is amplified given how dynamic it is. Oftentimes when talking to players I introduced to spvp they tell me they have no idea what was going on due to all the visual effects cluttering the battlefield, keeping them from seeing the opponent and figuring out what they should be doing to get closer to victory.

What must be done is for all these fancy effects to be toned down, or give the player the option to do so using settings. This will make it easier for players to keep track what the opponent is doing and his position, allowing the player
to learn to play better and engage in counterplay.

Care must be taken not to scale them down in a way important visual cueues from effects become hard to see, only in a way that doesn’t clutter the screen but still relays important information. For example you definatly want to be able to see when an elementalist is raining a blazing firestorm down on an area, but not in a way it clutters all over other important visual cueues. Keep effects moderate but clear.

Again another problem with visibility in combat, albeit a smaller. Don’t laugh, but there is a potentially major size difference between combatants. It’s simple really, the smaller the opponent is the harder it is to keep track of his position and what he is doing. Again, visibility hampering plays and counterplay. Asura may have somewhat more visible animation to make up for their small size, but really minimum size asura still have an outright advantage in combat. Perhaps I misjudge the issue since as I said I’m still a new player, but from what I have seen it appears minimum size asura are still the most popular choice for competitive play. A balance issue to be sure, but also a design one since visibility is key in competitive play.

What to do here? You could just accept how it is and force all players to play a min size asura if they want to seriously compete, but what is the point of offering the choice then. I believe it’s fair to simply up the min size for asura in pvp, and have all asura who chose a size smaller in pve to be upscaled to this min size in pvp. Not an elegant solution but it solves the problem of the unfair advantage and the lacking clarity in combat.

Alright what next? Our player got through the entry barrier, got a good enough impression and is learning how to play the game competitively and combat has been made clear to allow for

Counterplay

And here’s the part where I link that nice video regarding counterplay! Just kidding I won’t be doing that, it got a little old if you ask me. An important subject though, no game can be called competitive without counterplay in it. But what is it? In a pve environment you will most likely be facing opponents with a static unchanging combat tactic. All the player needs to do is execute his optimal strategy whilst the enemy simply takes it. There is no real interaction in this scenario because you are not facing a human opponent who can respond to your actions. That is in fact more or less what counterplay is, a dance of action and reaction, endlessly feeding back until one combatant is victorious. Combat that allows for counterplay will have combatants constantly change their battle strategy in response to changing conditions brought on by the actions of one or more opponents. A simple example, in pve a greatsword warrior can run up to a monster and start swinging his hundred blades, a devestating attack. The monster will not respond to this and instead take the full brunt of the attack. In pvp with good counterplay however the opponent
may try to avoid getting hit by this skill through the use of an evasive skill or a well place dodge. The warrior now not only needs to simply pull off his powerful move, but consider wether and if so how an opponent can counter him by avoiding this attack. In turn the warrior may chose to change his strategy to for example bait out escape abilities and dodges, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Then his opponent may in turn respond to this strategy etc etc.

So now that we have that out of the way let’s see where this game falls short on promoting counterplay. Obviously poor visibility hampers being able to respond to enemy acions and strategies but I’ve already mentioned this earlier. Let’s talk about a mechanic that by its very nature does not allow for counterplay: stealth. That’s right stealth, I think it comes as no suprise as many this mechanic is a problematic one. There is a reason after all why LoL (referencing yet again!) took a good moment to realize ‘hey wait a sec these stealth mechanics, wether or not they are op, are they actually healthy for our game’ and proceeded to take an eternity to figure out how to redesign champions relying on such mechanics. This is because stealth does not allow a player to respond to the stealthed target thus effectively cuts counterplay short. There is nothing more frustrating to a player knowing his enemy is stealthed and there is very little he can do about it other then hoping he is equiped to survive whatever his enemy has in store for him when he pops out of stealth. Better for a player to lose knowing he did everything in his power to try and win then to lose and being able to do squat because of stealth.

Honestly this is a difficult issue, removing stealth at this point isn’t very practical. I do believe it could do with a tweak that, while it maitaining the balance around stealth there is now, allows for the player to do SOMETHING to counter it. Maybe you could take the same path LoL took and have opponents revealed within certain radius. At the very least it will require the player using stealth to keep this in consideration when sneaking up to his opponent. Again, counterplay. Even if available counterplay is not all that effective in such a situation it is still better then having the player be powerless to react.

Next up quickness. I’m going to try and make this quick (couldn’t resist sorry) so I’ll cut to the point. Firstly I imagine it is a balancing nightmare. I promised not to talk to much about balance and I’ll try to keep my word, but I really can’t imagine balancing with quickness in mind is easy. Every single strategy, oftencase a burst strategy coupled with quickness, needs to be balanced when it can be pulled off twice as fast. As I see it a burst strategy will either be balanced at normal speed and be gamebreakingly powerful with quickness, or be balanced with quickness but rubbish without. I really do not see this promoting build variety, but more on that later. Let’s stick to counterplay; the game is already very fast paced, and that’s fine. Having the game be fast paced as it is can add depht because of the skill required, however a fine balance must be found. Just as it adds depht making the game to fast paced can
remove depht; a player is only human and as such his plays are subject to human reaction time. Let’s be positive and say this is somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3 seconds. Add in some time required to think of a way to react to an opponent
and putting your plan in motion and you amount to a sizable timeframe to realisticly start engaging your opponent in counterplay. When quickness is involved (to some extent target drops in the form of stealth) this time often does not exist for our unfortunate victim. I find the best description as I’ve seen on these boards is the game can play a bit like an FPS, where victory is largely decided by who gets the jump on the opponent, killing before he can react. Thus the game loses depht because potential counterplay is lost.

So the solution to this problem. I can’t think of anything drastic other then removing quickness. I can’t really comment on what to give all classes that have such skills instead as, as I’ve said, I don’t nearly know enough about class balance and all classes’ skills yet. One example I do know is Time Warp since I main mesmer. My suggestion in this case is to reverse the effect and instead slow down the opponents actions. Hell the mesmer already had acces to such mechanics in gw1, it would serve to make for more counterplay, maybe even help out the often forgotten interrupting aspect to mesmer. This is only one idea for one case of quickness though, so do brainstorm and post an idea if you’d like.

Next to if not even more important to counterplay is

Variety

Variety is the spice of life, and it’s no different in games. When it comes to combat in spvp we have a variety of classes with a variety of different builds these classes can run. This is good, namely for two reasons. Every player his has own play style and preferences, having multiple classes and multiple builds to chose from lets the player get a functional build he can be competitive with and that is closest to his playstyle as possible. Secondly nobody enjoys fighting the same type of build over and over again, this makes for a boring shallow experience. Players enjoy new combat scenarios, new things to learn to counter (so long as the player can learn how to), the battlefield
needs to be unpredictable and full of variety. Sadly variety is not something spvp does well. There really are to few working builds to keep things fresh. It’s a terrible thing to offer all these different potential builds on different classes only to take them away if the player wants to seriously compete. Nobody likes to have things taken, no player wants to be pigeonholded into certain builds because they are simply optimal given class balance and the game mode being played. The end result here is an extremely shallow experience where there are two ways to build any class to be useful in spvp, bunker or burst. This ‘metagame’ as people call it is far to restricting, no competitive game with such poor variety will maintain most of its players once they become more engaged in the competitive scene. It’s boring for the players, it’s boring for the observers and it removes a lot of depht from a potentially deep gameplay experience.

I’m not sure what to suggest, obviously this is a class balance issue. As I said I won’t be going in the specifics of class balance, so the only thing I can say is work on it so anything else then the two extremes of being either fully offensive or fully defensive are viable. Let’s see more well rounded builds.

Let’s proceed to the next section. Our player has crossed the entry barrier, had a good impression, is well on his way to scaling the learning curve, has the necesary visibility to allow for a rich combat filled with counterplay and variety.
The player is ready for

Competition

Ah finally, we’re ready to get started on competition Thought we’d never make it, but we’re not there yet. A well designed game needs to be able to encourage its players to compete not only to win the match at hand but overall be driven to play and win more matches. That probably sounds very simple, but at present there is very little encouraging this outside of the glory grind, wich by the way doesn’t even require a player to actually compete but just grind sufficiently. A player who does well has very little to show for it and is quickly discouraged when the game keeps him completely oblivious to the progress he may be making.

But for victory to have any meaning a match must first be competitive. This can only be possible if both teams in a match are more or less equally skilled. A player with lesser skill then his opponent will find defeat inevitable and be completely discouraged from even trying to win, and the player with a higher skill then his opponents may find his victory to be an empty one. The game needs to promote HEALTHY competition. This is done with a matchmaker. Yes the game finally has one (although I would say it is not yet trialed and tested), the reason I want to talk about this is because how utterly destructive it was to launch spvp without any matchmaking whatsoever. In such circumstances new players will quit out of frustration, veteran players will quit out of boredom, everyone will quit trying to compete. It’s a good thing there finally is a matchmaking, now to make sure it will work well enough to make up for lost time.

My suggestion here is just to not lose track of matchmaking and keep monitoring and adjusting as necesary. It will have a rough life before population increases for matchmaking to be more effective. Don’t forget how important this is to promote healthy competition.

Now then I was saying earlier a player needs to have a sense of progress. It’s a core design principle behind games really. In fact it is a core principle in many things, storytelling, work you name it, when someone puts time and effort into something he wants something to show for it. Here in pve your progress will be in the form of levels acquired, equipment, skill points, achievements all that good stuff. In pvp you get glory and cool cosmetic armors, but this is not enough. To make for a competitive environment the player needs to be rewarded for his efforts relative to his fellow player. I’m sure you can see where I’m getting it, we need a ranking (or ladder, however you wish to call it). Not only will this give the player a sense of progress in his spvp but it will also allow for him to compare his skill lvl to other players. This is very important in the learning process (wich never really ends in a game like this), where a ranking will tell the player wether or not his plays have room for improvement or wether they are top notch. The prestige of having a high rank will by far outweigh the sense of accomplishment of grinding glory. The player needs to be
challenged and then rewarded, a reward will only ever be as sweet as how much effort had to be put into gaining it.

Simple fix for a simple problem, a ranking needs to be implemented. Seems like progress is being made in this regard, I have been told rankings are largely hidden at the moment but will be revealed after the system is fully tested. Definatly don’t wait to long with this, it’s just as important as matchmaking for the player to really get a sense of progress as his skill level increased and subsequentially is rewarded with a higher rank.

Last point on competition, the game needs gamemodes for different levels of play. What I mean is that a player only looking for some casual fun needs to have a go to gamemode, the player looking for a slightly more serious competition needs one and lastly a full on competitive game mode. Currently we have hotjoin for casual fun and rated tournaments for competitive play. I think we need another gamemode to really get players the kind of gameplay they are looking for at that time in spvp. LoL has player vs ai (training mode), unranked (casual mode), soloqueue ranked (competitive mode) and teamqueue ranked (hardcore competition) Add custom games for a total of 5 gamemodes. We could do with a third.

What I’m thinking of is actual tournaments. The current tournament incarnation really are to small to set a really competitive scene (whoever heard of a one round tournament >.>) . The tournament system is a wonderful one, an ever rising skill level as teams fight through the competition, if ever there was a healthier kind of competition I wouldn’t know what it was. All culiminating as the tournaments reach their finals, the larger the tournament the higher the stakes. I’m thinking large pre planned tournaments with qualifications, a dozen or so brackets and hundreds of teams. Who wouldn’t want to spectate something like that. Of course it should be scalable, if only because the current competitive community is for to small for such numbers. Also timing is another thing when going with these pre planned events. Maybe have pre planned ones at standard times and allow for players to organize their own tournaments at a time of chosing? It would all be possible with custom games, but why not fully give the players the tools to make this happen.

Let’s assume the game has a healthy competitive community of players who got through the entry barrier, got a good enough first impression, are scaling the learning curve and engaging in a clear spamless combat environment with lots of counterplay and variety. (last time I type that out, good lord ^^). Now it’s time for fame and glory through

Spectatorship

Last but not least, if a competitive game can support spectatorship I think we can all agree it is worthy of being called an e-sport. Spectators take a competitive community, and makes it ten times more awesome. Let’s be honest regarding the current situation, the spectator scene is atrocious right now and has been for a long time since launch. So long as issues like that ones I have brought to light persist I don’t think this game will ever have a competitive community large enough to sustain an competitive scene that is compelling for viewers. The biggest problem however currently plaguing the spectator scene is as I have previously spoken of the games visibility. It’s very hard for players to figure out what is going on in combat and this is for a player who is a direct participant in the match viewers will be seeing, for a spectator seeing what is going on is even harder. This will be less of an issue if a solution for previously mentioned problem is implemented, but still visibility could be improved. I believe spectating this games spvp matches is also an acquired taste, meaning you need to take some time to really get to know the game before you understand what is going on. Again, it’s important players learn to play the game, in
this case so they can enjoy watching pro matches to the fullest as they can tell what is going on.

What I’m thinking of is a spectator mode to be implemented into the game. Ranked matches and beyond would have room for spectators in the server with their own view of the battle, instead of relying on someone to stream their view of the battle. I’m thinking a birds eye view would be ideal to fully catch all the action, but not intirely top down. You could go all out with this like LoL and have a fully automated computer controlled camera showing the best action, but something simple will work just the same. This should be easily accessible ingame, and streamers showcasting such matches will come naturally as he games popularity possibly increases.

And that’s all I can really think of that I find major problems in spvp as it is now. This is all subjective ofcourse, and as I said I’m not expert let alone a qualified game developer, but I hope the read was somewhat helpful. If anything I should congratulate you for reading this far. Do please discuss!

TLDR: Game has problems. Fix problems make game e-sport.

Alright that took a while to write and post. Looked smaller in my text editor…

I think you overdid it a bit..

EDIT: Holy god you actually filled all of them. +1

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Larynx.2453:

I think you overdid it a bit..

Let it never be said I settle for half a job! But yeah you’re probably right lol.
What can I say, I want the game to succeed yeah.

Reserved for past content.

Reserved for non-existent content.

Did you just write the bible?

I normally write the walls of text around there here parts!!!!!

Quite possibly the largest post I have ever seen. If you manage to get through it though, the arguments are sound.

Please don’t write anymore….. Use bullet points.

Good post tho ( content), -1 for the sheer size of it.

You should add “And that’s half of the first chapter of my upcoming PvP book.” at the end.

Nice read, agree with pretty much anything.

I think problem with Asuras comes exactly from combat being too flashy, as lightshow teamfights can make them nearly invisible. I’ld fix that problem first and then see how it affects the other. (Read: I don’t want my Warrior made bigger, she’s cute as it is!)

Kinda wish you wrote it couple days earlier, so devs got a chance to read through it before SOTG.

Look at all those posts I didn’t read.

Sensational post.

I hope when I die they will talk about me in such a lengthy manner as you did with GW2.

I could summarise why sPVP has completely tanked: it’s boring.

Lack of choice in builds, unoriginal format, flow-destroying down-state, amongst other detractions.

Bump up! lets keep it up… please!

Thanks, very good read, and well written. Your points and feedback are well informed and backed by knowledge of the competitive gaming scene… Sadly we are still hoping we will get there someday “soon” but by then there wont be a spvp playerbase.

Competitive scene? Maybe in 2-3 years when the game will have some decent pvp features. new expansion cough cough

Good to see the text wasn’t to daunting for some of you who took the time to read it.
Gamers these days, no attention span or patience at all! Just kidding ofcourse, I wouldn’t blame anyone for looking for a TLDR.

Harrier.9380:

I think problem with Asuras comes exactly from combat being too flashy, as lightshow teamfights can make them nearly invisible. I’ld fix that problem first and then see how it affects the other. (Read: I don’t want my Warrior made bigger, she’s cute as it is!)

Yeah definatly shouldn’t make all such changes at once. When making balance related changes in a game it’s important to work in short increments as to constantly have feedback on gradual changes that are implemented. Definatly need to clean up the effects then evaluate what is needed further.

Zog.3954:

Competitive scene? Maybe in 2-3 years when the game will have some decent pvp features. new expansion cough cough

I don’t know, I don’t have much experience working on large software projects like games so as far as coding goes I’m not really one to judge. Some of the suggestions I put forward, or other possible ones for the issues mentioned, don’t seem like they’d take that much time to implement. Cleaning up visual effects, adding a little mist related story quest things like that I can’t imagine would take all to much work. Adding scoreboards and stuff, new functionalities on the other hand.

I guess in the end it depends on how much manpower and resources the spvp staff has. If the decision makers are content with spvp being a sideshow then yeah no point in waiting couple of years.

Jeah this is great topic

Such a nice read, and yes, I’ve read it all.

I completely agree with you, in absolutely every aspect; it is common sense.

If every little aspect you mentioned was implemented in the game, man it will be the pvp experience we always wanted. I seriously hope for Dev’s to read it, and to take it into consideration.

But of course, last time I heard about custom arenas was in october of last year: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/structured-pvp-iceberg/