Guild Wars 2

Thanks Jonathan Sharp for the video.

I must say it looks really interesting, thought I must myself feel how it works. There are ‘hot spots’ but it seems you can’t walk around with the camera freely.

Hopefully it will work out really well, because it looks really good, imo.

Also a video about Custom Arenas here.

Also thanks to John Corpening for this video about Custom Arenas!

I must say this looks awesome as well, there sure are some lovely options there, more than I imagined.

wait i didnt kno there was third john and from the 2nd vid he is apparently the LEAD pvp designer?

Wow how many Johns do they have? It’s like the entire company is made up of people named John and jon.

Although I have to admit I’ve always enjoyed John sharps presentation style there’s something very soft about his voice is also strong confident that it’s just the right tone.

What is the delay between spectating and in-game, is there any?

JonathanSharp.7094:

Yep! So a few things to note:

If you don’t want people looking at your builds, just disable spec mode on your custom.

Also, if you’ll notice, players now show up on the minimap as red/blue profession icons. So, for instance, I won’t just see a an ally’s green dot running to a point, I now see their profession icon. This helps you to make much more educated decisions in the course of a game. When in spectator mode, it allows you to see EXACTLY how each team is spreading itself out, where they send their light classes, where they send their bunker, how they collapse to deal with threats, etc.

These awesome features are courtesy of Evan Lesh. GO BLUXGOREE!!!!!

-J

This sounds really good JSharp, thanks for the information.

Now… Where’s the wide cripple option you ’’promised’’ us? I want a Warrior Only Wide Cripple Arena.

Also, can you tell me the name of the other guy? or edit my post to spell his correct name :|

ensoriki.5789:

What is the delay between spectating and in-game, is there any?

Wasn’t it stated as currently in real time but open to change if it leads to abuse.

preset cameras? that didn’t look too well :< why can’t I just click anywhere on the map?

edit: and maybe move around with WASD and pan the camera with the mouse..

I must admit both the Spectator Mode and Custom Arenas look really really solid.
Please, please… please Solo/Duo Q next, please?

I’m really liking what I’m seeing from this coming patch!

Evan Lesh.3295:

pullnointer.1476:

preset cameras? that didn’t look too well :< why can’t I just click anywhere on the map?

edit: and maybe move around with WASD and pan the camera with the mouse..

We discussed having free-cam, but decided on not including it for this patch because of performance and positioning issues (We don’t want people flying outside of maps) I won’t say it will never be included though

Is it possible to just put in a “character” who’s completely invisible? And thus have no worries about rendering or anything.

In my opinion the interface of the Health Bar in Spectator Mode is too small to be clearly seen by viewers who don’t know the game yet. (shoutcast)

@ spectator mode trailer we can see blue and red dots on map, this is sort by player or by team?? and if its by player, does that mean that from now we will get this feature only in spectating or in all modes?
also this colors are sort by class or rather just place in party like in other games (moba im looking at u)?

also i would gladly see some answers at this topic :
Idea to improve Solo Q / Voipless play

Does this mean I can be on red team, toggle myself as a spectator, quickly see what blue is doing and then join the game again?
Or if I have died while waiting to respawn, go to spectate then come back after getting field awareness?

Powerr using ice bow.

facepalm

The spectator mode actually looks really polished. Good stuff anet.

Now they just need to add more than 1 game-mode to solidify the deal for me, this is definitely on the right track.

But going from GW1 where we had GvG (important!), TDM, Flag stands, Node Control, Kill Count, Relic Runs, Ghostly heroes and a massive variety of maps to play on…to a handful of maps and a single game-mode….

I’ll just say variety is the spice of life :p

Does it have an “automatic camera” mode, so I can leave it on and just watch as if it were a stream or will it stay static?

Will we be able to spectate from a party member’s point of view while defeated and wayting for waypoints to be enabled?

Rigging that mechanic to all parties anywhere in the game could come in handy. It’s kind of boring lying around when the action is somewhere else.

So.. only people that will be on the server will be able to spectate? What about GW2TV similiar to HLTV? So we are free to spectate w/e we like..

Loving the icons on the map. Adds a lot to non verbal communication, and just for the sake of general clarity as to what is going on! Very cool.

Great job devs I feel spvp is on its way to becoming the vision everyone wants it to become. Honestly spvp can be perfect now for me if these three came in future patches.

1. Way to spend glory / incentives / rewards
2. Designated 3 round tourney times / split ques / rewards and incentives/ more modes
3. Polish/ balance/ bug fixes

But besides that great job at releasing some real content for spvp.. if content comes like this every other patch instead of 7 months I feel the spvp community will grow tremendously.

Zietlogik.6208:

Now they just need to add more than 1 game-mode to solidify the deal for me, this is definitely on the right track.

But going from GW1 where we had GvG (important!), TDM, Flag stands, Node Control, Kill Count, Relic Runs, Ghostly heroes and a massive variety of maps to play on…to a handful of maps and a single game-mode….

I’ll just say variety is the spice of life :p

I respectfully disagree…while i do want other modes eventually for now stick with whatever will be your competitive play….for example league of legends main ma kitten ummoners rift thats the esport map….thats what most people play on….in that regard stick with conquest mode…push the features to help that then later down the track add that variety for non competitive fun play ( not that competitive can’t be fun )

So let me get this right that these are the highlights.

-Can now watch matches on sPvP servers you join!
-Yes, you have to actually join an sPvP server and can only watch matches from that one server.
-By "matches" we mean only what is currently going on, you can’t watch old matches or save matches
-sPvP team size increased from 5 to 6 thanks to live-spectate and VoiP

I also see that this seems to be modeled exactly on "spectator" mode used by FPS games. That mode in those games doesn’t really see much use, but more importantly it takes up a player slot on the server.

While it wasn’t perfect, the spectator mode from GW1 was superior to this in every way aside from the GW2 spectate mode’s ability to directly see builds.

JonathanSharp.7094:

If you don’t want people looking at your builds, just disable spec mode on your custom.

Welp! Nevermind.

Dont get me wrong I find this great progress towards sPvP but lets just say you do a 1v1 or 2v2, what will happen is people will first try to get a a descent spot to actually duel and I feel like the current design of the maps is way to big for duels like this.

It is normal as the current design of all maps is meant to capture the point, my question is are there any plans that you will make specific maps that are meant to 1v1 or 2v2….?

How many gems does the spectator token cost.

Gotta say – I’m pretty pumped for this!

great job ANet!

I think more modes is important to have. perhaps a capture the flag or whatever will end up being the most popular mode.

WoW had AV first and WSG, but eventually AB came along and it was better, then arenas ended up being the thing to play.

you never know till u introduce it. forcing players to play a specific game type isn’t going to improve the community.

whenever you force/restrict someone to do something, you generally get the opposite. so restricting pvp to one type may end up losing most of the player base.

just my 2cp.

How does spectator mode and player limit interact? Say the pvp room has 16 players max, does a spectator take up one of those slots or can you jump in any room and spectate even if the room’s full?

Dat ice bow, must be pro MLG

Both Custom Arenas and Spectator Mode look promising!
I can’t wait to try these new features and have been looking forward to them for some time now, especially spectator mode.
I’m happy with the number of options for now, but if you some day (and i really hope you do) implement some kind of replay/demo feature, a “Free-Cam” would be ideal. This would allow for very interesting perspectives and clips that can be used for moviemaking and montages.
As you probably know, moviemaking was a huge part of keeping CS 1.6 competitive for so long.
I’d be very pleased to see Guild Wars 2 on here some day:
http://www.themovievault.net/

What exactly is meant by “For games that impact the leaderboard, we won’t be allowing players to spectate directly” ? If this is just a system similar to Guild Wars 1 where the games are put on a delay so that they cannot be watched live then that’s fine but I really don’t think forcing people out of watching the highest level games unless they like a particular caster is a good way to foster the pvp community. I know you want to give a purpose to shoutcasters and attract viewers to them but I don’t think this is the way to do it.

Tidas.2038:

What exactly is meant by “For games that impact the leaderboard, we won’t be allowing players to spectate directly” ? If this is just a system similar to Guild Wars 1 where the games are put on a delay so that they cannot be watched live then that’s fine but I really don’t think forcing people out of watching the highest level games unless they like a particular caster is a good way to foster the pvp community. I know you want to give a purpose to shoutcasters and attract viewers to them but I don’t think this is the way to do it.

Who will play rated matches when custom-arenas are out with shoutcasted-tournaments? I mean, leaderboards can’t be taken serious. So you will find the top-guilds anyway in these real-tournaments (not single round-crap)

Why is spectaor mode limited to the maximum amount of arena slots? Not everyone enjoys watching shoutcasts but still would like to watch tournaments and such. Dont you dare say due to lag, you can output map and character data and re-render it in a separate ‘arena’ so that it would have no effect on the players playing.

so why we did not have this 8months ago? was it hard to make or some1 in the top actually told u to work?

Juan Ignacio.8903:

so why we did not have this 8months ago? was it hard to make or some1 in the top actually told u to work?

From what I have gathered from both Dev statements and working in the software field, projects at ArenaNet seem to be very flexible which is why they dont announce anything in advance. As great as that may sound its an absolutely terrible design model as it allows the company to invest great amounts of time and resources into projects that will inevitably fail. Because those projects are not announced there is no direct blowback from the customer, only internally. The, its released when its done development method, is a great ‘promotional’ statement as it seems to imply quality, but in reality its a way to remove accountability for failed projects.

That being said, chances are they had an idea for doing things one way, tried to implement it, failed, and followed that pattern until we have the current iteration which finally was able to pass quality control.

Parisalchuk.9230:

Juan Ignacio.8903:

so why we did not have this 8months ago? was it hard to make or some1 in the top actually told u to work?

From what I have gathered from both Dev statements and working in the software field, projects at ArenaNet seem to be very flexible which is why they dont announce anything in advance. As great as that may sound its an absolutely terrible design model as it allows the company to invest great amounts of time and resources into projects that will inevitably fail. Because those projects are not announced there is no direct blowback from the customer, only internally. The, its released when its done development method, is a great ‘promotional’ statement as it seems to imply quality, but in reality its a way to remove accountability for failed projects.

That being said, chances are they had an idea for doing things one way, tried to implement it, failed, and followed that pattern until we have the current iteration which finally was able to pass quality control.

I dont know man i mean this is just a simple feature that well any game has at their release and well …. free. Also in the last SOTG they were a bit more open and they actually said clear stuff, i still go with the some1 in the top woke up.

Juan Ignacio.8903:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Juan Ignacio.8903:

so why we did not have this 8months ago? was it hard to make or some1 in the top actually told u to work?

From what I have gathered from both Dev statements and working in the software field, projects at ArenaNet seem to be very flexible which is why they dont announce anything in advance. As great as that may sound its an absolutely terrible design model as it allows the company to invest great amounts of time and resources into projects that will inevitably fail. Because those projects are not announced there is no direct blowback from the customer, only internally. The, its released when its done development method, is a great ‘promotional’ statement as it seems to imply quality, but in reality its a way to remove accountability for failed projects.

That being said, chances are they had an idea for doing things one way, tried to implement it, failed, and followed that pattern until we have the current iteration which finally was able to pass quality control.

I dont know man i mean this is just a simple feature that well any game has at their release and well …. free. Also in the last SOTG they were a bit more open and they actually said clear stuff, i still go with the some1 in the top woke up.

They said they had been working on Observer Mode and Arenas since before the new year. It was initially stated it was targeted for Jan/Feb/March and that clearly was delayed till May. I find it much more likely that they ran into issues and had to redesign and code.

" Each player that spectates also takes up a slot on the server. That means on a twenty slot server, if ten people are spectating, only ten players can be playing. " source

:(

xehn.3420:

" Each player that spectates also takes up a slot on the server. That means on a twenty slot server, if ten people are spectating, only ten players can be playing. " source

:(

Yup, I made mention of that before Colin’s response (which answered nothing). Absolutely terrible system.

xehn.3420:

" Each player that spectates also takes up a slot on the server. That means on a twenty slot server, if ten people are spectating, only ten players can be playing. " source

:(

Lol what, how TERRIBLE, I hope that’s a troll?

So far i really like this patch, it brought a little more balance, and arenas + spectator mode let some new modes getting popular. There are some 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 rooms filled with spectators all the day long, everyone wanting to have a try, its really great imo.

For those saying that our actual maps are not designed for 1v1 and are too big, actually its not a problem cause ppl joining the arena 98% of the times knows that theya re going to fight right under the spawn point, without capping points and running all around.
Thats the use of spectator mode….. u see, u learn and jump into the game.
Now i hope they will be open for all soon, and i hope they wont be really expensive.

Mathias.9657:

xehn.3420:

" Each player that spectates also takes up a slot on the server. That means on a twenty slot server, if ten people are spectating, only ten players can be playing. " source

:(

Lol what, how TERRIBLE, I hope that’s a troll?

What?! That is bad. If there is a tournament or a league you want to watch you are limited in capacity.

If they would do it unlimited it would crash with the first big tournament. This is more targetted towards shoutcasters. They’ll stream it. As for an in-game spectator lobby like gw1, that’s always welcome. Just pick some high-rated tournies and when you add dailies/weeklies make those pop up in there too.

Spec-Mode And CAs were a nice addition, but some things I think are needed:
- Turning off Conquest Points

- CA & tourney Browser should be accessible via UI not NPC!

- Qeue up for multiple Arenas (solo/group/ as Spectator)
Similiar how the WvW map qeues currently work, but option to surpress notification in-match.

- Max players = Allowed Qeue-size
1 to “unlimited” and Browser should show the currently qeued amount of players.

- Rejoin CA qeue after match
(..if u like to fight another match on that particular CA)

- Elemination mode
Winning team remains. Team that lost, will be changed out with other players/teams waiting currently in the qeue.

Face it, players like to fight/duell …and at the end of the day (or in the meantime) still will qeue up for conquest tourney.
Being able to qeue for multiple CAs as well as tourney at the same time and from within a map/Arena is not only more convenient for the player/team, but also would keep the player pool high for matches.
Very popular Arenas (with high/long player qeues) could even use the MMR system to try match qeued players of similiar skill (…but not changeing MMR itself by CA matches, ofc)
And players can fight in other Arenas while waiting for a free place in their favorite one(s)… not needing to spam refresh browser page all the time^^

In the future i also would like to see:
- Recycle/Allow non-conquest maps
Like snowball mayhem…or even allow player-generated maps (modding scene allows for for good synergies with e-sport plans…).

ok but, too late

there is no longer any sponsored team playing?