Guild Wars 2

Surprising no one, tonight’s NA matches went from close-ish to completely dominating when The Abjured showed up. What sets them apart from all the other NA’ers?

They have practiced.

Doesn’t the NA teams like insta break up after losing something?

I don’t know, last time I watched the NA scene before it started to bore me half to death it was people just rotating teams 24/7

Like if ya’ll could stay with the same solid roster for more than a week who knows, maybe someone will knock them down. Hasn’t a couple teams gotten close to start making them sweat a little? I remember a few games where teams have gotten a pretty high score against them.

But another problem that probably exists, is that it must be so off putting trying to actually form an esl competitive team when you know you’re probably going to be slapped around by the Abjured for a while until you’ve really got the hang of it.

They’re pretty much the only consistent NA team. It’s not hard to be the best when there’s zero real competition.

Note that I’m not saying they’re bad, I’m just saying that it’s no mystery why they dominate in the current situation.

there’s radioactive who is also a pretty consistent NA, also apex.

Fay.2357:

They’re pretty much the only consistent NA team. It’s not hard to be the best when there’s zero real competition.

Note that I’m not saying they’re bad, I’m just saying that it’s no mystery why they dominate in the current situation.

Actually, this may sound like I’m calling them bad aswell, but I actually do think alot of people don’t understand why they are so dominant, some people seem to view these players as gods of the esport pantheon of the NA scene that rains down hellfire on any who dare oppose them.

Are they good? Yes.

Are they great? Yes.

But it’s because there is no other teams that really stick around long enough to grow to their level. Same happened with TCG in EU.

I really wish some NA teams could stick with being a punching bag for a while until they can actually challenge Abjured, the NA scene is so dead it’s on life support.

Or the Abjured can magically disapear, either works for bringing the NA scene back from the dead.

Khenzo.2465:

I really wish some NA teams could stick with being a punching bag for a while until they can actually challenge Abjured, the NA scene is so dead it’s on life support.

Noooooot that the what, 3 teams of EU qualify as a thriving metropolis of esport either.

They care about competition, they practice, and they don’t waste so much time hoping ANet balances the game for them.

I know nothing about them, but I am pretty confident in those three things. Everyone is so quick to say the skill cap is low, but a team dominates all others. Maybe there’s something to the game?

They are all top players in their professions and have been playing together for a long time. Also the sad state of the infrastructure is probably keeping others from catching up. Nowadays teams will spend much of their time being matched up against pugs/solos instead of getting good practice. Oh and you can’t duel/practice anymore while waiting for queues so gg.

Fay.2357:

Khenzo.2465:

I really wish some NA teams could stick with being a punching bag for a while until they can actually challenge Abjured, the NA scene is so dead it’s on life support.

Noooooot that the what, 3 teams of EU qualify as a thriving metropolis of esport either.

Yeah EU isn’t exactly top notch either.

But watching some of the close games the EU top teams have is sure as hell better than the massive anti climax boring NA finals every time.

It got to the point I’d watch the NA scene until the finals, becasue watching some team being slapped 500-50 is entertaining. Heck, I’d also often watch something else for 10 mins when ever Abjured played. It’s simply a snoozefest from a viewer PoV when ever they take the stage.

It’s simple economics, the level of e-sports in GW2 is only large enough to sufficiently support one team at any given time. If a second team were to enter the competitive scene and practice enough to compete at the same level as the abjured, the GW2 e-sports level would no longer be able to support both teams, and consequently both teams would experience e-sports degeneration. Other teams know this, and due to the high barriers to entry of the conquest game mode, it is not economically viable to expend the required resources to compete with the abjured. Unfortunately, this leads to a vicious cycle in which the lack of competition gradually degrades the total e-sports level capacity of GW2 over time, so that eventually it will not even be sufficient to support one team. This phenomena is known as Vain Convergence.

They are a consistent team with people who know what class they like and they play them well.

The twitch chat is more fun to watch than the game though.

1. Conquest is boring as evidenced by not even having 8 teams in the bracket!
2. Everybody hates each other!
3. Nobody wants to get better in a game that doesn’t reward you for getting better!
4. The current community has stagnated and there’s no new faces who want to get good at this game because read reasons 1-3!
5. Nobody cares about GW2 esports because nobody cares about conquest or wants to watch conquest on Twitch except the few people who stuck it out and are still here from the beginning! Most of everyone quit already!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Cuz spvp is dead. And just like ellesee said, most people already quit or cant get on abjured’s level because there’s no reason to do it. And the game actually rewards people for mindleslly spamming their skills, I dont see why anybody should be concerned about improving their gameplay.

Because NA only has 1 good team whereas EU has several.

I just hate conquest, I couldn’t do it enough to be #1 tier anymore. Plus I lost my drive for being competitive once I had a kid.

WTB 2v2/3v3s and I might actually care about competitive pvp again. :P

Waffler.1257:

It’s simple economics, the level of e-sports in GW2 is only large enough to sufficiently support one team at any given time. If a second team were to enter the competitive scene and practice enough to compete at the same level as the abjured, the GW2 e-sports level would no longer be able to support both teams, and consequently both teams would experience e-sports degeneration. Other teams know this, and due to the high barriers to entry of the conquest game mode, it is not economically viable to expend the required resources to compete with the abjured. Unfortunately, this leads to a vicious cycle in which the lack of competition gradually degrades the total e-sports level capacity of GW2 over time, so that eventually it will not even be sufficient to support one team. This phenomena is known as Vain Convergence.

Lol, nicely said; I even looked up “Vain Convergence” to see if there was such a thing.

I like how people are blaming the game when it’s clearly only an NA issue to have one team rolling over everyone else.

Cogbyrn.7283:

They care about competition, they practice, and they don’t waste so much time hoping ANet balances the game for them.

I know nothing about them, but I am pretty confident in those three things. Everyone is so quick to say the skill cap is low, but a team dominates all others. Maybe there’s something to the game?

That’s why they’d test out the most broken classes/traits combination and take them because they know Anet is horrible at balancing this game. They know they’d have advantages if they find those broken stuffs and use them.

They also know Anet is slow at balancing, and has extreme favoritism to certain classes, that they can abuse those stuffs as long as they want and Anet wouldn’t care a single bit for 2 years.

Because they have no lives (sorta), they have all the time to get good.

Toxsa.2701:

Cogbyrn.7283:

They care about competition, they practice, and they don’t waste so much time hoping ANet balances the game for them.

I know nothing about them, but I am pretty confident in those three things. Everyone is so quick to say the skill cap is low, but a team dominates all others. Maybe there’s something to the game?

That’s why they’d test out the most broken classes/traits combination and take them because they know Anet is horrible at balancing this game. They know they’d have advantages if they find those broken stuffs and use them.

They also know Anet is slow at balancing, and has extreme favoritism to certain classes, that they can abuse those stuffs as long as they want and Anet wouldn’t care a single bit for 2 years.

That’s fine. They’re playing to win. People who play MOBAs don’t stick with a hero who takes a hard fall just because they like the hero. They play to win.

Honestly, the biggest failing of PvP in this game is attachment to classes/characters. It helps get people dedicated to a class to try to even up balance, but if you want to be competitive, you need to be flexible based on the state of the game.

I’ve been solo playing PvP for 3 years and have never heard of the Abjured. For that matter, I’ve not heard of any PvP guild. Just an indication of how the playerbase can be completely unconcernced about what tournaments, premades, and things like that. Despite how I think Anet wants us to be…

Waffler.1257:

It’s simple economics, the level of e-sports in GW2 is only large enough to sufficiently support one team at any given time. If a second team were to enter the competitive scene and practice enough to compete at the same level as the abjured, the GW2 e-sports level would no longer be able to support both teams, and consequently both teams would experience e-sports degeneration. Other teams know this, and due to the high barriers to entry of the conquest game mode, it is not economically viable to expend the required resources to compete with the abjured. Unfortunately, this leads to a vicious cycle in which the lack of competition gradually degrades the total e-sports level capacity of GW2 over time, so that eventually it will not even be sufficient to support one team. This phenomena is known as Vain Convergence.

what this guy said. There is little incentive to try to really get a team together and compete in gw2 tourneys when it takes so much time to get ready and good enough for them. The money is not there. In order to make a game into an “Esport” a lot of time and money needs to be invested by the parent company on start-up and Anet has sort of dragged their feet the entire time or simply do not have enough resources to create a real scene.

GW2 has already earned a bad rap with all their pve blunders and is labeled a casual game. Furthermore the PvE does such a bad job at teaching people nuances in the game play that when people do approach PvP they get faced with terrible match making and think everyone is just spamming skills when there are rotations and things to visually see and avoid.

On the incentive side I do not think the cash prizes are large enough nor does Anet seem to really want to increase them. They instead offer gems and in-game weapons but if you play PvP exclusively this stuff matters less. They may have gotten by in GW1 with gold trims and names on trophies but in today’s day and age talent and competition are being lured by real cash just like real sports not by in game gimmicks.

What makes The Abjured so unstoppable?

Two words:

“Magic Toker”

/thread

Jasher.6580:

What makes The Abjured so unstoppable?

Two words:

“Magic Toker”

/thread

The Abjured and these 3-4 EU teams was created some time ago, when the hope was still alive. Now not a sane person who is serious about PvP won’t start to create a team and to train seriously for e-sport in a game with less Twitch viewers than Sims 4 or Pokemon.

Eurantien.4632:

They have practiced.

This. If you spend a couple hours every night practicing with the same people you get really good. This goes for any team based Esport.

I think the Abjured with Ostrich Eggs was even more unstoppable and enjoyable to watch. Best engie in the game and unlike his former teammates, he solo queues and pugs like most people

So I’ve noticed that Guild Wars 2 has a lot of whiny players, and this may be due to the casual community. So freaking pessimistic, new age teens. I’ve been competing in eSports Tournaments across multiple different games for almost a decade. I’ve gone through multiple teams and multiple sponsors, had teams that have seen success and teams that lose sponsors and are left in the dark. Passion for PvP and a competitive edge is what keeps eSports alive and creates a better foundation for a true eSports community.

The Abjured are keeping this spirit alive and from what I have read in the thread, most people are just like “screw it, people are already better than me, I don’t earn money… why bother trying to build a team and compete”. It is YOU that are ruining the prospect of eSports in GW2, not ArenaNet.

Yes ArenaNet need to join in more to support this community but the community needs to show promise to get ArenaNet involved. Watch YouTube, read Forums, live on Twitch, give people a dueling option (the game doesn’t need to be balanced around dueling. Dueling exists to get as close as possible to beating an unbeatable opponent, but most importantly, learning peoples playstyles and adapting), group up with friends, USE MOTHERkittenING VOICE COMMS AND JUST kittenING PVP!!!

~Your friendly neighborhood kittentail consumer.

I agree that a lack of desire to compete for the sake of competition, regardless of reward, is keeping the PvP experience down.

NA scene doesn’t really have another high level team.

Too bad we can’t do some cross region tournaments besides WTS so we could watch them play some EU teams more.

glock.6590:

Cuz spvp is dead. And just like ellesee said, most people already quit or cant get on abjured’s level because there’s no reason to do it. And the game actually rewards people for mindleslly spamming their skills, I dont see why anybody should be concerned about improving their gameplay.

And also there is terrible infrastructure in the game with long queues, no leaderboards and no in game tournaments. You also cant duel whilst queuing anymore cos anet.

Literally there is nobody new coming to pvp anymore. Name me 1 person who started down the esports path in the last 6 to 12 months. Nobody does it because the game flat out sucks in terms of the experience it offers

Because they just don’t have competition. There are several teams that are at their level… in EU.

Lordrosicky.5813:

glock.6590:

Cuz spvp is dead. And just like ellesee said, most people already quit or cant get on abjured’s level because there’s no reason to do it. And the game actually rewards people for mindleslly spamming their skills, I dont see why anybody should be concerned about improving their gameplay.

And also there is terrible infrastructure in the game with long queues, no leaderboards and no in game tournaments. You also cant duel whilst queuing anymore cos anet.

Literally there is nobody new coming to pvp anymore. Name me 1 person who started down the esports path in the last 6 to 12 months. Nobody does it because the game flat out sucks in terms of the experience it offers

me i started about 8-9 months ago
but conquest is meh and the meta got boring and i didnt even try to put together or join a team for tourneys before i ran back to pve/wvw (in part because my pvp friends have semi-ditched gw2 for other games)

abc.5790:

I think the Abjured with Ostrich Eggs was even more unstoppable and enjoyable to watch. Best engie in the game and unlike his former teammates, he solo queues and pugs like most people

He keeps it real that’s for sure. Couldn’t tell you if he carried the pug team we were in but he’s a good player.

It’s not the money. Anet has increased the money throughout the years and added consistency. Not much has changed in terms of participation.

It’s the lack of a competitive infrastructure. The platform that would create a big mid-level scene, the casual-competitive playerbase. You need that in order to get a bigger high-end scene.
Anet has focussed on low-end and high-end, ignoring that casual-competitive scene. This is the biggest factor for why we have such an abysmal pvp scene (imo).

Look at ToL participation, etc. Just some nice ingame rewards and people are flocking towards it to participate.
Split those queues, give use automated tournaments, a better LB, exclusive pvp rewards, reward skill over time, etc. And voila.

+1 for exclusive pvp rewards yo

Necromancer.

/15 Charrs

It’s because everyone else stopped playing. Seems like American players are just less prone to wasting time.

I know it was the reason why I lost all desire to play after most of my friends stopped competing/playing. Now I have no friends in the game and cri everytim when I log in to see only one or two people from my inner circle playing ;(

I also played necro and that’s one of the reasons I always felt left out, despite being so clever, sexy and fun. Always tried to make my character look best so that people would take me for visual reasons. Instead, they would laugh at me because I play male characters, but I can’t RP as female in PvP, because I’m a man.
My post… it’s pretty random amd troll, and it’s supposed to be, because GW2 PvP is in such a poor state that nothing else seems appropriate. If I wanted to make a valid post about the reasons for why the Abjured is so dominant, I would just end up bashing the game trying to prove that what the people running the game development did over the past 3 years indicates they don’t care about it at all. I actually tried that many times in the past and got infracted for it by the moderation team.

@ topic: Abjured wins cos no one else cares. Coming from an economist, I know stuff. Trust me.

Could just be that no one else is as competitive, currently. The small pool of players contests to this. There was bound to be a team that is better and we saw that game enfold during the WTS Tournament.

Lets not forget also the type comp Abjured is running. They manage their team incredibly well, even countering certain Thief team comps because they manage their two bruiser Ele’s very well in that area. Not to mention the Mesmer only brings more salt to the wound. A lot of low risk low reward playstyles all around.

Don’t get me wrong, Abjured is a very well made team that have synchronized their plays to near perfection. They’re a double edge sword playing with single edge blades.

Lack of a job.

Message Body length must at least be 15.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Lack of a job.

Message Body length must at least be 15.

Thanks to you I choked on my coffee…

Belial.9350:

Because NA only has 1 good team whereas EU has several.

pretty much

They are basically a high school basketball team playing pickup games at the YMCA.

In the grand scheme of things, there are much more talented esports players (i.e. college and pro basketball players to fit the analogy). However, none of them stuck with GW2.

We’re left with a small population fighting in virtually meaningless and rewardless tournaments. Hence, the team stacked with the most experienced and coordinated players wins all the time.

I’m not sure why great NA players didn’t stick with the game, but I assume it had to do with the lack of rewards in the game and the very long lag in addressing balance issues.

The Abjured is a Polygamy. But who is the Man among the wives?

The game is buy to play. that’s why its less people playing …. comparing to other Esports that are Free to play …

Pretty much

15 char

Liza.2758:

The game is buy to play. that’s why its less people playing …. comparing to other Esports that are Free to play …

Oh noes, the whole 10 euros/dollars you have to pay at the start, how soul destroying.

Belial.9350:

Oh noes, the whole 10 euros/dollars you have to pay at the start, how soul destroying.

By G2A ?

Belial.9350:

Liza.2758:

The game is buy to play. that’s why its less people playing …. comparing to other Esports that are Free to play …

Oh noes, the whole 10 euros/dollars you have to pay at the start, how soul destroying.

the point is not just price …. why would u buy the game when you can play other bigger Esport for free