Guild Wars 2

Belze Intilie.8436:

made my day (maybe the best troll ever) xD
tyvm

This. ^^

No one wants to tryhard v thief dodge spammers, cele eles and engis who never die and having to wait 6 months for a pvp “update”/ balance patch and ONE game mode.

Sizers best troll attempt yet.

Volrath.1473:

Mrbig.8019:

This game is not e-sport worthy, this game is a joke.

A joke with best combat system ever created, a totally wasted potential due to terrible devs decisions.

didn’t you know that devs don’t make decisions?

follow the link on my signature, and say you are sorry.

Man that is indeed disturbing , hopefully they listen to their debs and make a change , would be sad to see this company not make it.

This game is not esports lol… Gw1 GvG was esports. The only good thing this game has is a the combat, that’s it. The balance is awful, so much AI and Bunkers everywhere.

Tellerion.8102:

tanztante.6532:

Volrath.1473:

Mrbig.8019:

This game is not e-sport worthy, this game is a joke.

A joke with best combat system ever created, a totally wasted potential due to terrible devs decisions.

didn’t you know that devs don’t make decisions?

follow the link on my signature, and say you are sorry.

these reviews are actually very, very, very, very disturbing. i suspected, that something was going on, but this actually gives me the creeps just reading it. sounds like you need a bottoms up full fledged revolution down there at arena net!

If these reviews are legit it is indeed very disturbing.

“Most of the upper management seems disconnected from their employees and the customers”

Sizer.2654:

Guild wars 2 defiantly has the potential to become esports !

Guild wars 2 is the only MMO game in the world which managed to be balanced in PvP at HIGH LEVEL !!!!!!!. No other MMO game has managed to achieve this!!!
The people complaining for balance out there just need to learn how to play better or use more effiecient keybinds

The unique combat system and conquest game mode allows for a higher skill cap , more strategic/tactical decsions and mind games then any other MMO game has yet to offer.

Now to reach esports what we needs is :

1. Better youtube videos!!!!!! All the youtube videos is filled with noob players who dont make any major skillful plays or are involved in high action pact combat. These skilless videos are not entertaining enough

2.We need better camera angles when casting / streaming major tournaments. The people behind the camera angles generally dont have enough knowledge about the game to place the camera angels where it is most needed/entertaining. Having a mini dual monitor during the stream so people can see several fights occuring at the same time would be helpful

3. Most of all We need more skillful and dedicated players !!!! You wvwvw heroes out there come to SPVP its alot better practice!!!

4. “To be released at a further point in time”

5.“To be released at a further point in time”

6.“To be released at a further point in time”

Thank you for the positive vibe! The forum could use more of that.

I see potential. For 4, I’d say it needs to work on building up a prize pool.

Sizer.2654:

First, I want to say, thank you Sizer for making this post and starting this opportunity for discussion. Since you’re a streamer, I’m sure you’ve already developed a thick skin when it comes to negative reactions and you won’t take the negative or uneducated posts personally.

Overall I agree with the points that you made and I believe that all in all, we’re probably heading in the same direction.

As a GW1 veteran that played in the amazing golden days of guild wars PvP, I also believe there is hope for GW2 to be ESports. The extremely fluid movement and combat system in GW2 and overall balance in high tier play are the major points as to why GW2 has potential to be ESports.

However, there is a lot of work that still needs to be done to get there. What frustrates me is that a lot of the work that needs to be done in my opinion were the things that made GW1 PvP so alive and vibrant and yet, none of it was carried over to GW2.

My two major points re-enforce the main concept that high-end PvP play needs to be a fulfilling and continuously rewarding end-game which it isn’t at the moment.

1st major point is that there simply isn’t enough visibility of high end play in the game which correlates to your 3 points you mentioned so far.

1) The problem is that a learning player shouldn’t always have to go out of the game to obtain valuable information on how to improve their play. Sure, today we have the amazing capability to watch live streams through platforms like twitch, but it’s extremely limiting when the only way to learn techniques and strategies from skilled players is through an outside channel. This problem exists because the only form of spectator mode, accessible to regular players, are in hot-joins where skillful play and proper rotations is thrown out of the window and ‘zerg mentality’ and ‘uneven-teaming’ are incentivized. I believe it is because of this reason that many players never really learn correct counter-plays to builds that they perceive to be OP and why many opinions on the forums are often uneducated finger pointing. GW2 desperately needs more in-game visibility of high-end play that promotes healthy progression of player skills and knowledge. And there are many solutions to this problem but I believe an in-game live (although slightly delayed) spectator mode of high end tournament play is essential to GW2’s PvP livelihood. Again, this is one thing that frustrates me to no end because this feature was part of GW1 but was not carried over to GW2. In GW1, games of top ranking PvP games could be re-watched in game from any player’s perspective minutes after the game has started. Because of this, it was really easy for me to improve when counter-plays to builds I initially thought I couldn’t beat were constantly available to me whenever I wanted. Not only does this solution solve the problem of player education, but it also promotes the perspective that high-end PvP is a rewarding end-game. I fondly remember the days when I would watch and re-watch the skillful play of top GW1 GvG teams and get the urgent feeling of wanting to improve myself and being excited about climbing the ladder to one day appear on these in-game broadcasts for all Guild Wars players to see. If this is done right, then everybody (including WvW heroes and even PvE’ers will want to get involved in S/TPvP for a chance at true ‘visible’ glory)

A quick note I want to address on the comment about how ‘ReadTheWind rangers pew pewing for 16k at 1500 range is OP’. I think this comment goes to show how much we need an in-game high-end PvP broadcast as many high-end players know the counter-plays to RTW rangers and often don’t have a problem dispatching them. ie: using line of sight, not getting caught in the open without cover against a team with RTW rangers, using blocks/evades/reflects, using stealth/teleports to get in the face of a RTW ranger where their overall strategy suffers. I definitely hate feeling helpless when I’m getting owned by arrows 1500 range away from me, but it truly is my fault for being caught in the open and not having prepared a proper counter play for that situation. In my opinion, RTW rangers is a clear illustration of how little players consider terrain advantage and projectile combat and I love how it forces people to finally consider these important aspects or else suffer a quick death by longbow.

(continued below)

2nd major point is not enough weapon-skills/utility/traits horizontal progression.

2) The problem is a stale PvP environment as there simply isn’t enough variation in high-end PvP builds to choose from due to the limited number of weapon-skills/utility/traits. This in my opinion was something that was done extremely well in GW1 and was in my opinion one of the biggest selling points of the GW1 PvP. Because of GW1’s inherent double profession system and focus on having an expansive skillset included in each campaign/expansion, there were so many viable and interesting builds to choose from. With GW2’s lack of double profession system, limited number of total utility skills per profession, an extremely horizontal-progression limiting mechanic of only one weapon skill set per weapon, it is no wonder that we have so few high-end PvP builds to choose from which can easily lead to a stagnant un-evolving PvP environment. I’m sure there are many solutions to this problem but I’ll just propose one.
First, introduce new weapon-skillsets for each weapon with incoming patches/expansions such that the player can choose a different set of 5 skills for their GS or different 3 skills for their scepter and so forth. This will fit in with lore in upcoming expansions as a ‘Canthan’ or ‘Elonian’ might not use the greatsword the same way a Tyrian may. By the way, this doesn’t mean that I get to fit my GS with 5 whirlwind attacks, but rather, my Hundred blades now reflects projectiles, does less damage in return, and along with that, my 4 other weapon skills on the GS function differently with pros and cons. This will open up a huge avenue of different viable builds and reinvigorate the PvP and PvE scene with more horizontal progression.

Again, I think these two points need to be assessed and solved for GW2 PvP to be on the same level as GW1 and be an ‘ESport’. My apologies if the things I mentioned were already discussed in previous discussions or CDI’s as I don’t jump on the forums often enough due to various reasons.

i can wholeheartedly agree to both of your points!

except for one thing: gw1 pvp was nice, yes and overall a pretty neat pvp experience, but it was not that glorious and problem-free as everybody remembers it. it had major balance flaws as well, a new fotm terror after every balance patch, ... horrible memories!

crochip.2389:

Sizer.2654:

1. Better youtube videos!!!!!! All the youtube videos is filled with noob players who dont make any major skillful plays or are involved in high action pact combat. These skilless videos are not entertaining enough

If i remember correctly, TCG promised loads of guides and videos to the community if we send you the gamescom. Perhaps lead by example before complaining?

QFT.

sinject.4607:

people who romanticize gw1’s pvp are terribly misguided. take your nostalgia goggles off and stop pretending that gw1 didn’t have a ton of issues with it’s pvp as well, just as much if not more than gw2’s.

Like what? FOTM builds? In GW1 they were niche: they only worked against unskilled opponents, and the kinds of gimmicky builds you saw were often hilarious. I’d rather have build variety and get rolled by an occasional crazy Ray of Judgement spike team with 7 monks, than always come up against the same engi/warrior/ele-heavy teams. In GW2 niche builds have become the norm, and build variety is nonexistent.

Not sure who you are, but you seem to want this game to grow into an E sport and I’m going to lay down the only reason it is not.

The game is not fun.

Simply put, most people don’t find the game entertaining…that’s all there is to it. I bring up GW2 often at conventions, forums, other pvp game chat rooms, with my own followers etc….its always negative reactions.

The heart and soul reason…is people think that the pvp is boring to play and boring to watch. You can spend an additional couple years chasing the rabbit down the hole trying to find some other solution…but that’s what it is.

Whether they hate the combat mechanics like Rally, or they don’t like the camera controls…or they simply just find conquest boring (many fall into that category)…or maybe its the fact the game boasts endless customizations where really there are only a couple competitive/viable ones per class. Pick your poison, but the game at its base is just not entertaining enough to play…and EVERYONE even other developers of major games that I have interviewed in the recent past, all acknowledge that GW2 does not support their game well….some went into more detail but I’m not about to call out any names here, but I thought its funny that they try to distance themselves so much from this game to point out how they are NOT making the same mistakes.

If your really passionate about E-sports…might check out some games on the horizon that are putting fun combat first and actually trying to develop their game into E-sports…..like Gigantic. Even EQN combat looks like it might be shaping up to be something fun, and then there is warhammer 40k online that is going with a full pvp focus. Problem with games like this, pvp was stiched on at the end….so look at games who put pvp first in their development process, and you’ll probably find a game that was completely goaled to making pvp fun and where the pvp is fun, you find the players, you find the viewers….you inevitably find the e-sports.

EDIT: I think its funny that the conquest game mode appeared in smite and was the least played map so they eventually removed it, league of legends has a similar style gameplay “Dominion” and its their least played map….I’ve even seen this type of play style in Gears of war and its the least played…….so why did GW2 choose to make a game mode most people don’t like their core pvp mode? Curious.

ghaleon.2861:

This game is not esports lol… Gw1 GvG was esports. The only good thing this game has is a the combat, that’s it. The balance is awful, so much AI and Bunkers everywhere.

Serious question: are pets and bunkers (and passive procs, and aoe cleaves, and skill spamming, etc) a problem with “balance”, or a problem with the “well-made combat system”?

Dear god, so many reactions in the thread are either “OMG, wtf, Sizer, just because you play thief really well, you don’t know kitten about the game, everybody agreeing with you is a stupid fan boy, you suck!” or “OMG, wtf, Sizer, you play thief really well, you know a lot of kitten about the game, everybody disagreeing with you doesn’t know what he is talking about, they all suck!”. Way to start a discussion, guys. Still, many interesting points were made. An interesting topic, regardless of the original intentions of Sizer. Still don’t know if serious or trolling.*

So. That being said, lets tackle the original post and start with: point one is crap.
1.) Yeah, we get it, you are a God Walking Among Mere Scrub (should be a title!) in PvP. But come on, this attitude (so many kittenty people, way too many kittenty youtube videos (Have you seen them all? No? Oh well …), you all suck, mimimi) is not going to help. How can people not accept that smack talk is (arguably) okay, but insulting people, flaming, whining and an elitist attitude are absolutely not? Sportsmanship and all that. There is a reason this behaviour is frowned upon in ACTUAL sports. As a matter of fact – and by fact I mean my own kittenty opinion – PvP is rather toxic when you are a new player interested in PvP. There is no place to really learn outside the battle field. And on the battlefield mistakes are mocked immediately, both in hotjoin and in yoloQ. Hotjoin is “the place to start your PvP journey and test builds and possibly find your soul mate”, yet it is full of people deserving to actually be punched in the face, several times, because they are socially inept and lack the ability to talk and behave like a normal human being. Therefore people flock to cheesy builds – which are also used in Hotjoin to win all these off point 1v1s that are so important in later conquest /s – with a low skill floor. I started with cheese-turret build myself after getting my kitten handed to me as a mostly PvE player, felt absolutely guilty afterwards and now I’m trying to actually learn different classes and how to play without resorting to the worst kind of blue cheese in game. But the constant flaming, whining, insults, the attitude of players in yoloQ, afking, leaving, spectator mode abuse and so on? Yeah, that doesn’t help. If you want to be eSportZZZZ, you might try and establish some sort of sportsmanship all across the board. Starting with the top. You really don’t need that high horse for extra height. Also, how about starting with some instructional videos yourself? As far as I remember, promises were made. Also, videos of you just playing do not count as instructional videos, as interesting as they might be sometimes.
2.) Absolutely right. Cannot argue with that. To me the game feels like it doesn’t want to be watched, especially not by people not playing the game themselves. Showed it to friends, they were put off by so many things in PvP as well as PvE and WvW.
3.) See point one. To be a skilled player you need to learn. You need experience. Just saying “all good people from WvW should go to PvP, that’s where the grown-ups play!” is not going to fix the problem of having a small player base in general and an even smaller one up top. Good and experienced players will always roflstomp newbies. Newbies will be flamed and insulted. And I’ve seen many of them quitting because of that. People who are not unskilled but unexperienced in PvP. I cannot fault them. And you shouldn’t either.

So. Might now make a few points myself!

4.) Same old, same old. Watching people play is interesting from a ‘players interested in PvP’-perspective, not so much from, well, anybody else. One reason is the existence of a few meta-builds that are tweaked and min-maxed to bits. When you open the score panel at the beginning of the game, all you need to do is see the classes used and most of the time, you will be able to predict what build they are playing. There is not much variety. There is sooo much useless crap attached to each class, so you cannot fault the player base for using the few things that work. This game needs more build variety, a balance between direct damage, condition damage, CC and support abilities with every class being able to provide more than one of the above.
5.) It is visually complicated. Kind of, sort of. Many eSport games might be actually very complicated, follow very complicated rules and principles, but what you see on screen is rather straight forward, even in RTS games. You see everything. In GW2? You don’t. You can focus on one character and actually maybe know what they are doing, though it gets increasingly harder with professions swapping around their weapons skills all the time like Ele and Engi. Or you focus on an area and you see all those pretty colours. Mind you, not as bad as zerging in WvP or PvE, but in a heated 4v4 or even 3v3 with effect heavy professions, it is easy to lose focus. No idea how to counter that, actually. But it still is a problem in my opinion.
6.) “Casual”, “PvE player” and so on are not insults. Stop using them as such. Scrub is ok, because that is at least funny.
7.) Same old, same old, take two. Aside from getting better as a player yourself, there is not that much to do. Not that many maps, only one game mode. Many new things that are added to PvE/WvW (stat combos, runes and sigils) take ages to appear in PvP, might not appear at all. No wonder many players get creative in WvW instead of staying with PvP or ever playing it in the first place. What PvP needs? New stuff. Excitement. Weeee.

I actually like PvP. Kind of, sort of. Still probably an awful player, but there is a learning curve and that feels nice. But sometimes it feels like the game is actively trying to “fix” that. So, maybe ANet and the community should try to create a fun and exciting game mode. Players will follow, so might the whole eSports-stuff. Possibly not, though. Maybe the MMO genre is just not made out to be part of that. Like a trusty van, that is never going to be used in Formula 1 racing.
Sorry for the massive post. No TLDR for you. Hahaha.

/* On a side node, are all these exclamation marks to be taken serious, or is this done to indicate a troll post, which in turn would render everything I just wrote completely useless?

crochip.2389:

Sizer.2654:

1. Better youtube videos!!!!!! All the youtube videos is filled with noob players who dont make any major skillful plays or are involved in high action pact combat. These skilless videos are not entertaining enough

If i remember correctly, TCG promised loads of guides and videos to the community if we send you the gamescom. Perhaps lead by example before complaining?

Well, actually TCG is the only team whose members have a solid twitch presence (rom, sizer, denshee, helseth), and all of them answer to almost every questions posted on the stream chat. Well maybe Helseth’s answers are more like “I can do that because I am the bestest and you are just a paesant”.

They also accept duel requests, just whisper them when they are online and they’ll duel you while waiting for the queue to pop.

BTW, Sizer, I do agree with you, but the way you wrote it is really ambiguous..

agree with that ,, some little changes like AI engis and some balance in some maps to be the same from both sides not like in legacy about bosses and in sand storm some point not designed in a equall terms from both sides ,, the game will be amazing ,, its amazing the combat system is perfect thats why im still playing its freakin good and it shows some skills not like other mmos , ppl saying its not esports , dude you cant say its not Esports untill you are good in this game so pls go and learn how to play then come and talk about the game for not being Esports and stuff
NOTE : dont consider yourself good as long as you play bunker setup "
ty – Demonlord

I really love this game. Its not spectator friendly enough to be an esport though and the player base has been destroyed by Arenanets apparent priority on the PvE side of the game…

we need to help anet then. someone crack the code to the game and just reprogram it!

KingMango.9785:

Watching my screensaver flashing to music is more appealing then watching gw2. Sometimes I really don’t know what of both I’m looking at.
Why should anybody watch it?
Even if all of these good suggestions would be in the game. What reason would somebody have to watch it?
For me this is the big point. Popularity needs some factores. First, it has to be enjoyable to look at.

Yea, I agree, and I attribute this largely to the conquest mode. The maps are small and even though there is strategy, the fights often just look like a series of dog piles. Everyone just crams on a tiny point and blows up their AoE and cleaves.

This is the #1 reason I don’t really watch much PvP.

Spread out the action and put in more side objectives. I really think that GvGs and HoH were great to watch because of how well they accomplished this and I hope GW2 will eventually pull this off as well.