Guild Wars 2

Just finished watching (well, most of*) the EU qualifying matches. There were some really incredible fights, and some really insanely lop-sided fights.

I’d like to provide some feedback from a spectator’s point of view. Below are some comments/suggestions. These are in no particular order

- Maybe I missed it, but I’d like to see some kind of tournament tree occasionally as the matches progress.

- It would be nice for the commentators to elaborate a bit more on the strategies and team compositions (i.e. who they are attacking, why, and what the team comp does for them)

- Most of the characters in the matches were Asura. I imagine they did this because it’s difficult to see what an Asura is casting/doing due to their size. The problem is, as a viewer, I have no idea what they are doing either. It just looks like a bunch of little bunnies flying and flipping around on the map. Really detracts from the game.

- Some of the fights were really chaotic. So much stuff thrown about that I really couldn’t tell what was going on. It would be nice to figure out some way of slowing the pace down, or maybe discouraging the mass zerg fighting.

- *The championship match up was incredible – super close and lots of crazy fighting! But I cannot believe that mist league’s video stream cut off the last 30 seconds of the final fight. That’s simply unacceptable. Maybe ArenaNet should have its own stream of the matches so things like this don’t occur. Maybe ArenaNet could have a page that contains full streams for the big match-ups in tournaments.

I’ll add some feedback as well then.

- Everything was so glowy and flashy, I’ve never seen it so bad. Is it because I play on lowest settings? Maybe casters could turn settings down for the sake of viewers while ANet keeps trying to tone the effects down overall.

- Builds. I don’t know if I’m only one, but I’d definitely like to see a small review of everyone’s build before the match, to get an idea exactly what they’re doing. Otherwise every game will simply be 5 professions vs another 5 professions and we actually have no idea what the teams are trying to accomplish and what they are doing to earn their win. Can delay stream to prevent teams changing comp based on what you show.

- Also I hope you get 480p on Twitch for these who can’t download 720p speeds, because 360p was very bad quality, can’t even read names. French stream had 480p and they weren’t even as popular. They showed builds a little also.

Players who had little or no contribution to the overall outcome got lots of shouts for the little they did. The players who were the backbones of their respective teams got little shouting/recognition for their excellent play. This may come down to style or sensationalism, but I think casters owe it to the spectators to spend at least equal time on players who are consistently good—not just ones who pulled out a lucky play.