Guild Wars 2

You cant.. I mean this is the least watchable gw2 spvp i have seen so far. I dont know what is happening and most important i cant tell what players are doing, their skills animations etc cause trap Guardians burn down the whole point..

yeah, they need to clean this up. It was even hard for the casters to know what was going on, new players or people who have no idea what gw2 is, they will think “lol wtf” and leave.

But i think they mentioned that they are working on cleaning up the system.

If anyone have played Ragnarok Online, I like how they handled cluster of animation effects in PvP. Perhaps Anet could follow a similar example.

RO’s WoE (guild vs guild) maps, some skill effects would use a simplified effect version due to the large number of simutaneous animations. The simplified animation could still easily be identified to a particular skill as it kept the same themes. While in PvE maps, the original, full animations is kept (simplified ver in PvE could still be used with command option).

pixels everywhere o/

you know the character model display options?

having those for particle effects would be excellent.

That screenshot is so messy! To be fair, a lot of stars had to align to make that kind of difficult-to-follow fight happen. It required a DH on both sides, Orange Logo preferring to engage in large team fights (especially on Nifel), TCG choosing to play a comp specifically for large team fights, and both DHs using the LB 5 simultaneously. Still, they really need red team traps to be red to make it easier on the viewers and for us newer players to the game.

Josh Davis.6015:

As Colin mentioned in his The Road Ahead for 2015 blog, cleaning up combat visibility for both actual gameplay (the people in the game) and spectators is a priority for us and is something we’re actively working on. We shipped some changes to address this issue with HoT (such as having hit effects clean-up faster), but we know some of the newly introduced elite specs skills need to be cleaned up, and those fixes will continue to be rolled out in phases. For instance, we’ll be addressing some skills on an individual basis in our next release.

The goal is communicating the important things in combat – not over-communicating them.

Thanks you, we GW2 PvP community appreciate your in-put in those dark silent ages.

Please make it a toggleable option similar to how you can use simplified character models. As someone more casual I love the effects that spells have and would be a shame to just ‘dull’ everything out for visibility. I understand in competitive pvp or even PvE (raids maybe)? being able to see what is coming at you and what allies are using is super important just be nice in casual PvP (unranked / wvw) and casula PvE (open world, map completion) to still have some ‘wow’ to spells and such.

There desperately needs to be an actual slider.
The current version of ALL OR NOTHING = Lag your balls off whenever a DH+rev/chrono/tempest/reapershroud shows up to a team fight…..

OR
Not being able to see the wards you are walking into, or the traps for that matter.

And for the first time, no thieves.

GW2 pvp has always been a giant blurr for me.

ANet could just disable guardians and kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

I don’t watch the tournaments anymore. They’re simply not entertaining. The coverage focuses entirely too much on uninteresting combat with ambiguous animations and focuses far too little on the map movements, strategies and tactics each team is trying to employ. The game mode is conquest but the coverage always makes it seem like I’m watching a series of meaningless death matches that happen to take place during a conquest match that no one is paying much attention to.

Why is the combat boring you ask? Because every team is primarily comprised of bruisers of various degrees that don’t have to coordinate with their teammates beyond the bare minimum. There’s very little room for specialist roles amongst all the builds that do everything on their own that there’s nothing to focus on in terms of skill in the team fights. This why IMO the majority of teams lack a strong opening move and simply run face first into their opponents and the first team lucky enough to accidentally interupt a heal will likely start the snowball rolling that generally defines the momentum for the rest of the match.

hackks.3687:

I don’t watch the tournaments anymore. They’re simply not entertaining. The coverage focuses entirely too much on uninteresting combat with ambiguous animations and focuses far too little on the map movements, strategies and tactics each team is trying to employ. The game mode is conquest but the coverage always makes it seem like I’m watching a series of meaningless death matches that happen to take place during a conquest match that no one is paying much attention to.

Why is the combat boring you ask? Because every team is primarily comprised of bruisers of various degrees that don’t have to coordinate with their teammates beyond the bare minimum. There’s very little room for specialist roles amongst all the builds that do everything on their own that there’s nothing to focus on in terms of skill in the team fights. This why IMO the majority of teams lack a strong opening move and simply run face first into their opponents and the first team lucky enough to accidentally interupt a heal will likely start the snowball rolling that generally defines the momentum for the rest of the match.

While the game mode IS conquest, the whole game is designed for combat. Compare it to a game of Dota/League. There is no laning, pushing, farming etc. They tried to introduce this with stronghold, but I am not confident about that. The pvp seems to be designed like one big bruiser. I don’t mean this in a negative way, but it does refrain the game from becoming a enjoying experience to watch. Its still fun to play, but for watching games id reccomend Doto/League Imho.

The combat is not interesting in and of itself. It is merely a means to achieve Conquest’s ends – i.e. taking or defending a point. By hyper focusing on the combat the relevance of its strategic value gets lost. By and large the spectator’s view on stream during a fight revolves around the first person view of the player who’s about to die. I can’t say enough how boring and irrelevant that is.

Everything from the camera angle choices to the caster’s commentating and understanding of the game play, to the animations and particle effects needs to be geared more towards viewing the game mode itself and not just going from 1v1 stalemate to downed guy to stalemate to downed guy for 10-15 minutes per match.

Both macro and micro are interesting, just like SC2 matches.

Visually I would love to see an option for displaying profession icons on nameplates.

I agree with hackks.

The combat is not interesting cause too much confusion and stomp.

It’s great, imho, 1v1 while u can watch your opponent and deduce through animations what he is going to cast or use. Maybe counter him or just chose what to do in response of that specific skill… interrupt? dodge it? teleport to avoid? use cover?

But now ( before too, but was better than HoT spvp ) there’s more spam and the game seems more casual.

They just went overboard with all the area of effect abilities.

You really can´t see whats going on under your feet.

And in my oppinion area of effect abilities are too strong damage wise.

Its nice to have those abilities but they should point more towards utility.

Necromancer marks are really well done i think. They don´t deal huge amount of damage but allow the necromancer to land his crucial skills, transfer conditions etc.
And you can see them quite well.

Thiefs clusterbomb and choking gas are well done too.

You can drop a big poison field that slows down health regen for a short duration.

Clusterbomb is a slow projectile from distance … if you want to push high damage out with it you have to go into melee.

Would be a smart move from arenanet to shift the damage focus more into telegraphed single target skills and keep the utility part for aoe effects.

Would make it more enjoyable for viewers and casters aswell.

Best regards!

Shino

Wish I could see those rings in game, guess I’ll settle for on stream.

Question: i see 5/6 chain rings into the image…

… but there’s only1 guardian per team.

Is the img legit ( i don’t know much abount guardian, but the chain skill should have some cd )?

LB5 places a ward around everyone who’s still in the radius after the channel completes.

Too many particle effects.

Translation:

They’re kittened.

Nah we’re really going to be e-sports this time though. Just look at how much money we’re throwing at it!

Shirlias.8104:

And for the first time, no thieves.

This x 100

Its not the fact thieves aren’t present but what it actually represents. Imagine playing a non bruiser in that mess…..

I would be embarrassed if I ever designed something that strayed so far from being functional. This is and has always been a glaring issue with spectating Guild Wars 2 PvP. The designers have fallen in love with their special effects college degrees that they failed to implement functionality.

But to be fair, this isn’t exactly particular to the Anet designers. I’ve noticed that a lot of game developers these days fall victim to prettying up their games through the use of superfluous particle effects, excessive post-production, and unrealistically extravagant lighting. This game, I think to myself as I spectate a PvP match, is definitely no exception. See, I’m appreciative of games like CS:GO or Starcaft 2 that have such deep layers of spectator-friendly options. I tune in to watch a match or two on my spare time and my mind can instantly acclimate with ease. But with Guild Wars 2, I struggle to notice pivotal moments of any given fight.

(For the record I’ve played GW2 PvP off and on since release, but the time invested in a game should be irrelevant when evaluating how easy it is to spectate it.)

And so, as a famous architect by the name of Louis Sullivan taught us: form follows function. Perhaps today’s game designers should read up on some of Sullivan’s theory? :>

Making the skills easier to understand what is going on is not enough. The way this game was built is literally 10 times worst than seeing games like LoL and Dota 2, which also have times where spectators can’t fully understand what is going on.
The only way to make this possible is by educating the viewers about what is going on, and the only way to do it is slowing it down somehow, showing the relevant moments and decisions of a game, while making each match look like “an awesome moment” for the game itself.
3 ways to make this game become more spectator friendly:

1- A lot of replays in slow motion while the match is on, SHOWING (not saying) the best moves and decisions (replaying them in the time-out between maps and after the match is over with an overview).

2- Give a FULL meaning to each match or leage-stage —--> 1 day = 1 match, because each match has like 45 mins / 1 hour and you can boost each match potential, by giving meaning to each match and concentrating viewer numbers in a shorter stream (there’s a reason why most TV channels have most of their shows have a 45 minutes – 1 hour limit, because viewers won’t be watching that for much longer when there might be other interesting things to see they don’t wanna miss).
This is particularly good for league/tournament stages, because you can have 2 or 3 streams playing different teams and viewers will look for the matches they like the most (best way to see the potential of each team for possible future sponsors and real investments)

3- Timing of the tournament streams should be on weekends.

LB 5 animation is ridiculous in the first place, and needs to be completely revamped. like, why animate the little pillars with the chains? am I lined up to buy a movie ticket or something?

just animate one arrow penetrating the ground tied to a floating chain around the target.

cleaning of wat cant even fix warriors berserker thing how much for cleaning?

Lol at the picture. Well, considering that nowadays victory is decided by how many DHs there are in each team, have to get used to flashy shiny traps.

LOL it shud be DH tournament

It’s worth noting I think that even though all those particle effects are going off, and damage is being laid all over that point, pretty much everyone is still at full health…

too many bruisers + not enough specialists = uninteresting team fights

Peacekid.1463:

LOL it shud be DH tournament

Agree we should officially name gw2 to DH2

Anet is too busy going hard with marketing without putting any real infrastructure in place. Esports is not something a corporation can create and shove down the communities throat so they can profit on.

If the majority of the community does not even want to play Spvp, why would they want to watch it.

Things like making a proper observer client and making your product viewable should of been first priority, instead of trying to hype and throw money on marketing the past 3 years.

You guys need a lot more than just money incentives to grow a Esport scene. You’re game has to actually be designed for competitive play and watchable for the masses.

I love guild 2 for what the game is, a fun laidback non traditional MMO. You guys got a long bloody road ahead of you if you want your structured pvp to be considered relevant in the Esport scene.

This game also needs cast bars so that observers can tell what is being cast. Most of the time you can’t figure out what’s happening till a skill actually goes off.

Dakarius.3284:

This game also needs cast bars so that observers can tell what is being cast. Most of the time you can’t figure out what’s happening till a skill actually goes off.

Indeed. Some observers won’t know without cast bars what happened even after skill goes off.