Guild Wars 2

If Guild Wars 2 was e-sport material it would have been one yesterday.

Developers can’t just will an e-sport into existence. Video games become e-sports when there’s a community of players and spectators that feel the game is worth taking seriously on a professional level.

sPvP features, balance changes, and ranking systems won’t change a thing as long as PvP is the MMO equivalent of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

If ArenaNet truly wants to create an e-sport they need to create a good PvP experience first, the rest will take care of itself.

Moderator Edit: Edited sensationalistic title

Thank you for your professional, in depth, and well thought out opinion. It’s a sad day when someone in such a prominent position to judge this field comes out with a blanket statement as kitten as this. This is embarrassing to ask, but which gaming website do you write for again?

I think it’s too early to say it isn’t going to be an E-sport. We’ll see in due time.

Not that we really needed another post on it, but just out of curiosity for the replies so far:

you guys actually think GW2 is material for an e-sport than?

Boloth.6879:

If Guild Wars 2 was e-sport material it would have been one yesterday.

Developers can’t just will an e-sport into existence. Video games become e-sports when there’s a community of players and spectators that feel the game is worth taking seriously on a professional level.

sPvP features, balance changes, and ranking systems won’t change a thing as long as PvP is the MMO equivalent of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

If ArenaNet truly wants to create an e-sport they need to create a good PvP experience first, the rest will take care of itself.

All I can say is facepalm this is just…..facepalm

Kimbald.2697:

Not that we really needed another post on it, but just out of curiosity for the replies so far:

you guys actually think GW2 is material for an e-sport than?

It’s got the potential. The solid base is there – it just needs a little time for fixes/tweaks/improvements/developed metagame. Once the game is on completely solid ground, we can hope for spectator mode, ladders/rankings, etc… (hopefully with a quick turnaround).

Remember one month into League of Legends? It wasn’t an e-sport then.

evilapprentice.6379:

Kimbald.2697:

Not that we really needed another post on it, but just out of curiosity for the replies so far:

you guys actually think GW2 is material for an e-sport than?

It’s got the potential. The solid base is there – it just needs a little time for fixes/tweaks/improvements/developed metagame. Once the game is on completely solid ground, we can hope for spectator mode, ladders/rankings, etc… (hopefully with a quick turnaround).

One big issue is the audience.
No e-sport without an audience.
no sponsors without a big fanbase.

I find GW2 pretty hard to follow from a spectator point of view, and I play it…

This goes hand in hand with the rather poor attention GW2 pvp gets on streams and such thus far.
Many pvp’ers have abandonned ship already.

And lastly it also is linked to having an active livlely ‘casual’ pvp playerbase.
When all is said and done, when the paid tournaments are balanced and the little fashion word ‘the meta’ is something everybody can contemplate with a smile on their face… than spvp will still be an utter mess where too many players run around not getting points for objectives but mostly from skirmiher kills.

Spvp is where the casuals come in, and I don’t see them joining a lot anymore.
I’m a fairly new player and most hot joins I did so far have 2v3 at best.
There isn’t this active new instream in the game anymore. Not in pvp and not in pve for that matter.

The details for an e-sport might be achievable, but the solid base i really wonder about.

League of Legends brings up another point. Many people are complaining about a lack of diversity in maps, while LoL has been very popular only 1 map in the competitive scene (3 in total).

Cosine.7841:

League of Legends brings up another point. Many people are complaining about a lack of diversity in maps, while LoL has been very popular only 1 map in the competitive scene (3 in total).

I complain about lack of variety in GW2 pvp indeed, but purley from a ‘fun’ point of view.
(and I’m really, really disapointed at the lack of game modes here)

When considering e-sport however, I don’t think having just one game mode is an issue.
On the contrary: I think you have a very good poit here, and i also understand that this is part of the reason the devs only want to balance around one game mode.

I would prefer balancing around different game modes, to avoid having particular builds dominate that are extemely well fit for a particular game mode (guardian bunker in capture point, for example).
but that’s a personal view, I do understand the dev’s attempt on this.

1 map in any competitive sports. do you see the boxing ring transform visually after the 5th round? Do you see the basketball court grow another ring for them to shoot at? Do you see canoeing suddenly change locations to the sea?

only 1 map.

with the exception of decathlon. but decathlon is once every four year sport, so i heard.

alcopaul.2156:

1 map in any competitive sports. do you see the boxing ring transform visually after the 5th round? Do you see the basketball court grow another ring for them to shoot at? Do you see canoeing suddenly change locations to the sea?

only 1 map.

with the exception of decathlon. but decathlon is once every four year sport, so i heard.

I see marathons on a new location every time, same for cycling. Racing tracks vary.

Let’s discuss e-sport and GW2.
Making these kind of analogies are always bound to be countered, and you basically end up discussing the analogy moe than the topic.

Kimbald.2697:

alcopaul.2156:

1 map in any competitive sports. do you see the boxing ring transform visually after the 5th round? Do you see the basketball court grow another ring for them to shoot at? Do you see canoeing suddenly change locations to the sea?

only 1 map.

with the exception of decathlon. but decathlon is once every four year sport, so i heard.

I see marathons on a new location every time, same for cycling. Racing tracks vary.

Let’s discuss e-sport and GW2.
Making these kind of analogies are always bound to be countered, and you basically end up discussing the analogy moe than the topic.

marathon and cycling are linear sports. that means the mechanics is going from point a to point b.

They’re not about aggregating points. They’re not even a team sport.

So your examples are a futile counter.

this is how it starts…

Cycling is a team sport, saying differently shows you don’t know how it works.

Again: leave the analogies, they are never fully accurate, and they cause more confusion than they clear things up.

not to mention they derail threads…

You want to put down that an e-sport should have one map only?
Great, point taken. I can relate to that, it makes more sense than dragging in other sports.

i was just supporting my stance with real life examples. what’s the difference between e-sports and sports anyway?

Kimbald, so you want to ride bikes in Gw2?!

Let’s continue to speak about LoL:

http://timeline.leagueoflegends.com/

Launch – 10/27/2009

League of Legends was officially launched in both North America and Europe. The game featured 40 playable champions, automated matchmaking on Summoners Rift, and a basic tutorial on the Proving Grounds to introduce new players to the game. The Twisted Treeline – League of Legends premier 3v3 map – was available for play in custom games.

Season 1 – 7/13/2010

The culmination of a massive, company-wide effort, Season One was the single largest content update League of Legends had received to date, as well as the start of the first major competitive season. The major features of Season One included Draft Mode, Ranked Games, Ladders and more updates that helped elevate the game to a whole new level of competitive play.

For those playing the home game, that’s roughly 8.5 months between launch and competition, based on the official game’s timeline. LoL isn’t exactly a game offering a lot of gameplay options, it’s just a DotA-clone MOBA with some skill trees, and it took them 8.5 months to release competitive elements.

But if GW2 was going to be an e-sport, it would have been one yesterday, a little less than 2 months after release.

I just don’t get the rampant impatience.

I can’t edit my post on account of these forums, but the LoL Spectator Mode beta launched on 11/22/2011.

If you’re keeping track, that’s about 13 months after the game released. A game solely focused on type of experience that already had a template in place.

@Cogbyrn

Right now you’re looking at least 6 months before a spectator mode will be in the game. And no game today can survive in the scene without a solid spectator mode. You can’t shoutcast matches from specific players POV.

Anet lead people into believing that GW2 was going to become an e-Sport contender shortly after release. Add some polish, fix some bugs, then good to go.

This was their focus. Their goal. To turn GW2 into the premier competitive MMORPG e-Sport. At least that’s what I got from reading the blog posts and goals for the game before launch.

LoL made no such promises in becoming an e-Sport sensation.

Niptease.8971:

Kimbald, so you want to ride bikes in Gw2?!

how can you tell who won that argument, if you can’t even deduct from my post that I tend to agree on having one map for an e-sport, and certainly one game mode.

As for the analogy: capture points isn’t comparable to the sports listed, what sport would use a field filled with walls and trebuchets and other nonsense?
real sports as used in the analogy use flat and evened out playing fields, not asymetric army training fields…

Again: those analogies didn’t make anything clearer.
The point he wanted to make was clear enough by itself.

Your reply doesn’t really make sense.

In case it helps: sure I would like to ride bikes in GW2.

Who needs GW2 to become e-sport star, and why? It is a great RPG game.

Dagins.5163:

Who needs GW2 to become e-sport star, and why? It is a great RPG game.

competitive pvp’ers do.
And from what I gathered, the developpers who made the game wanted it as well.

It’s ok if you don’t see the need for it, or me, or anyone out there.
But plenty do.
And of course there is money in e-sport, that’s always a factor too.

Daays.4317:

@Cogbyrn

Right now you’re looking at least 6 months before a spectator mode will be in the game. And no game today can survive in the scene without a solid spectator mode. You can’t shoutcast matches from specific players POV.

Anet lead people into believing that GW2 was going to become an e-Sport contender shortly after release. Add some polish, fix some bugs, then good to go.

This was their focus. Their goal. To turn GW2 into the premier competitive MMORPG e-Sport. At least that’s what I got from reading the blog posts and goals for the game before launch.

LoL made no such promises in becoming an e-Sport sensation.

I don’t recall them speculating Spectator mode would take another 6 months, but I’ll guess I’ll take your word for it because this is the internet, and you seem to be an expert in the space.

Also, I thought it was fairly obvious that the GW2 marketing/hype machine was in overdrive. The only rival I’ve seen recently is Chris Roberts, who I think has promised every single thing. Unforeseen circumstances are the bane of any ambitious development timeline, and I’m honestly not surprised they’re set back.

Are you? Be honest with me, and yourself.

ANet made their overzealous marketing mistakes. Does that truly mean that the game will never have potential to climb the e-sports ladder? Will that many people pout about the game not delivering what they want when they expected it and use that point to not play the game?

Maybe. Or maybe people just need time away, and will be re-attracted to the game once all of its features have been fleshed out and deployed.

In either case, calling it 2 months after release seems like crying wolf to me, so I’m going to enjoy the game in the meantime.

It’s not impossible to get there. The foundation of this game is fast-paced pvp with a strong focus on movement and active damage mitigation. That’s not a bad foundation.

Cogbyrn, you could be right about the waiting but there is one thing I fear here:

is it really that likely that ‘pro’ pvp’ers will return to the game when they left it for, say: months?

I know it’s B2P and all that, but money or sub fee isn’t the argument I think.

Reputation is much more important than the abscense of a cost to come back.

Reading what you and Baays discuss, I can relate to most of it. But this one thing jumps up for me.

I know the pvp community can shift easy, but does that also mean they return on their steps once they qualified a game as ‘not fit for e-sport in this state’?

The only sport I recommand for healthy persons happens outside, dont waste your short lifetime with too much consume of virtual pixels. You are getting fat if this is your main hobby =)

We won’t know if it can be an e-sport or not until the correct tools in place.

The thing about LoL is that it has like 30 million players who all signed up for 5v5 PvP.

I would say its a pretty small percentage of people who bought GW2 for sPvP. It would be interesting to know how many players are actually above rank 30. I would suspect its like 1% of the population.

The thing is, people hear “e-sport” and start thinking LoL. DotA 2. Starcraft 2. They imagine these big games with large teams having lots of sponsors with big paying tournaments. They think of it as a person’s career, where they make their income solely on sponsorships, tournament winnings, and potentially streaming (though becoming a popular streamer is a completely different can of worms and doesn’t even necessarily mean you have to be a “pro” at the game).

However, some of these games had starts before the “flagship” titles of today were released. Defense of the Ancients hit WCG in I believe 2005, 2 years after the first version of the map was released by Eul. It built momentum slowly, gaining new followings, new teams, etc. The MOBA genre, as far as I can tell, was birthed from this process. LoL and DotA 2 have just piggy-backed on that success, gaining teams from these games and kick-starting their popularity with names and faces that have already been prominent in a game almost exactly like the newer models.

Then look at Starcraft 2. The first one was potentially the first prominent e-sport ever, even if it was mainly tied to South Korea. Although many top tier players and “bonjwas” didn’t move to SC2 initially, a whole hell of a lot of players did. Names that had experience with SC1, knew how to take RTS to a competitive level, and had resources. Replays also allowed other names to rise up from Youtube as new commentators in the space.

Now look at GW2. What other game is truly like it in the competitive arena? No LoL/DotA team is going to move to GW2, as they are rooted into their game. FPS games are sometimes similar, but different enough that the skill sets could discourage migration onto this new platform. GW1 wasn’t an e-sport, even if it did have a competitive field.

So where, oh where, does GW2 pull from for its “professional” base? Which players can jump into GW2 and commit to it professionally, earning income from sponsorships, forming “guild houses”, and winning tournament money?

Even if ANet had all of the appropriate features in place, they’re still basically starting from scratch. If in-game tournaments/rankings/leaderboards don’t climax in a championship held for actual money, then none of those things contribute to a game being an e-sport. They’re for the hard-casuals, or casualcore players, who want competition but can’t commit professionally to the game.

So what did ANet even have in mind with regard to GW2 being an e-sport? Did they mean it would be a foundation for a competitive arena where tournaments could be held? Probably. Did they mean you could make a living off of GW2 as a professional gamer? Honestly, probably not.

But who doesn’t dream of playing their game, becoming famous in said game for being awesome, and enjoying that game as a career? You get to play all day, perfect your strategies, and don’t have to work out in the “world”. It’s easy to be led to believe that this is how the game is going to pan out, because you want to believe it. People often read what they want to read, not necessarily what is written, and marketing/hype doesn’t help this at all.

I wouldn’t be surprised if GW2 ran a similar course as what I saw from GW1 in my minimal time. You could hop in to spectate top teams playing, look at leaderboards and in general the game would have a competitive edge that allows you to stand out within the game. Some LAN tournaments might be held if ANet foots some financial support, but I really wouldn’t expect GW2 to be an “e-sport” in the sense of a LoL, or DotA 2.

I also don’t think that’s a bad thing.

I could be wrong. Maybe it’ll flourish. Maybe it’ll die. Maybe everyone will leave and never come back. Maybe some will leave and come back later. Maybe all it takes is one key expansion or content release to open floodgates. Who knows.

I’ll tell you who doesn’t know: us.

I think the only thing that will eventually drag GW2 down from becoming an esport game is CONQUEST. Conquest is simply not that competitive.

I never cared much for Guild Wars 2 becoming an e-sport. That’s not why I got the game.

The point I was trying to make is don’t expect PvP to evolve past what it is now.

ArenaNet can release all the PvP updates and balance fixes they want but unless they do a complete system redesign (they won’t) PvP will never have that competitive metagame players are looking for.

So don’t worry about ranked matches, spectator mode, new game maps, or whatever the next overpowered FoTM build is.

Just enjoy sPvP for what it is: Hungry Hungry Hippos with more buttons to mash.

Please stop trying to force the Hungry Hungry Hippos analogy. I know you probably think it’s clever, but at best, it’s completely wrong.

You can’t be sure that it won’t be some kind of e-sport at some point in time.
What you can be sure of tho is that it will most definetely never be a successfull e-sport.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Please stop trying to force the Hungry Hungry Hippos analogy. I know you probably think it’s clever, but at best, it’s completely wrong.

Like it or not that’s what PvP is like.

Players use the exact same 3-button gimmicks every game without any regard for what their opponent is doing.

Boloth.6879:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Please stop trying to force the Hungry Hungry Hippos analogy. I know you probably think it’s clever, but at best, it’s completely wrong.

Like it or not that’s what PvP is like.

Players use the exact same 3-button gimmicks every game without any regard for what their opponent is doing.

I love wen I see players using 3-button gimmicks, because it means my odds of slaughtering them is ultra high.

I use 16 skill buttons as often as possible in PvP. Some skills I use differently depending on the situation.

So no, that isn’t what PvP is like. It isn’t a matter of liking the analogy, it’s a matter of it being incorrect.

I may not have said it the same way, but I agree that GW2 has very little potential as an esport. For all the proof you need, head over to twitch.tv and spend 30 minutes watching one of the tournament streams. Odds are you’ll find it boring as hell. There’s too much downtime between playing, bunker builds are a total bore to watch, and the effects aren’t clear at all. I’ve been playing a couple weeks now, rank 10 in spvp, have played almost every class at least a little bit, and I still don’t know what’s going on half the time I’m watching a stream. People who aren’t familiar with the game won’t have any clue at all.

Being an esport isn’t about having the best pros or being the most competitive game; it’s about being entertaining to the viewers. That’s where the money comes from which makes esports possible. Quite frankly, GW2 is not interesting enough to watch to be an esport. All the proof I need to support that statement is that GW2 rarely even makes it on the first page on games on twitch.

Anet may have talked a lot about being an esport, but that doesn’t mean anything. These days, every pvp game wants to be an esport and will talk about it a lot during development. Really, go to any pvp game currently being developed and you will find talk about esport aspirations. Just because the devs want it to happen doesn’t mean the game actually has the potential for it, and sadly, GW2 does not have what it takes to break into the scene.

This game needs now: spectator mode, ladder, 4 new maps, 1 new mode and GvG, then will be perfect, now is too boring.

Spectator mode, ladder/ELO rankings need to be added.

The GW2 meta is good, very e-sport viable.

Reminds me of League of Legends a couple of months in.

@ Kat mostly:

I watched a stream yesterday (team Paradigm).
Jon peters actually joined them for one match I saw.
They had 240 viewers and were rather surprised at that ‘big’ number.
One even joked that the total GW2 population was watching them

The audience isn’t there yet, and it’s not increasing for now.

Oh, developers can will a game to esport status. Did you play wow arena when it first started? Blizzard threw sooo much money at that thing to make it popular. It was trash can status, but with prize pools you get competition, and eventually make the game interesting.

What about league of legends? The MOBA for babies that put a viewer counter into their game client so it would list everyone online and playing as a spectator even though they werent. But add investors were fooled at least a little and still sponsored show matches with money.

A company can make a bad game an esport just fine. Thats why we dont have different game modes, it would fragment the community and they might now watch the pros playa game mode they dont have any interest in.

You’re shooting the fox before it’s even out of the cage. A great eSport is meant to last years, not months. These things take time. Great advertising can change a lot.

@Cogbyrn

excellent post, one of the best i’ve read in this board. Thank you!

@ryston

the exact opposite.

Kimbald.2697:

@ Kat mostly:

I watched a stream yesterday (team Paradigm).
Jon peters actually joined them for one match I saw.
They had 240 viewers and were rather surprised at that ‘big’ number.
One even joked that the total GW2 population was watching them

The audience isn’t there yet, and it’s not increasing for now.

Hahahahaha!! Lol 240 viewers are a “big” number!!! Hahahahahaha!!!

This game will die next month.

ArenaNet said they have something cooked up for next month so just have a bit of patience. I know that’s a hard thing to grasp in this tech era we’re in, but wait a bit.

If things aren’t positively changed after being 3 months in, well then you can light the torches.

In terms of esports for GW2, the potential is there, but the other issue is that GW2 has to appeal to someone who hasn’t heard of Guild Wars or has very little knowledge of the game.

I agree that there are a couple of “downtime” periods and some “stand still” things going on. Anet should add a couple of things that keeps up the action or at least promote players to not just ‘stay’ in one place.

If a game like LoL can be an e-sport, I see no reason at all why GW2 cannot, especially once they implement new maps/modes etc., which in all likelihood they will.

No anet just isnt focusing on that much.Unlike Blizzard who basically throws millions to push wow and sc2 e-sport scene

LOL at people making the wow comparision. Arena started what, 6 years ago? And it took them a frakking long time to get anything close to competitive pvp in there. They even said on multiple occasions that arena was the worst thing they ever implemented.

Aether McLoud.1975:

LOL at people making the wow comparision. Arena started what, 6 years ago? And it took them a frakking long time to get anything close to competitive pvp in there. They even said on multiple occasions that arena was the worst thing they ever implemented.

GW2 didn’t start 6 years ago, or when WoW started.

It started when there was a huge public for pvp in MMO’s who were used to several things.

It’s one thing to fix some bugs and such, but no one can claim GW2 didn’t know what the demands of the current pvp scene were.
GW2 pvp was designed with the current state of MMO pvp in mind, not the state of WoW’s launch or first arena or any other point in the past.

It’s no excuse that it’s new, when it comes to offering features. The only excuse could be that it takes time before you grow a big audience.
But than I have to ask: if 2 million buyers don’t supply you with a decent number of pvp’ers to start with, than what will?

Somehow they missed the boat in making the best use of the playerbase they aquired in beta and on launch.
At this point the concern is not how to keep them here anymore, the concern has already shifted to ‘how to get them back.’

Yes: it’s without sub fee. But people are overly optimistic if they think players will simply return in a few months, when new pvp changes are made.
They might, and let’s hope they do. But once the pvp community labels a game as ‘no good pvp’ than it’s pretty hard to attrackt a large audience ever again.

They weren’t ready, I’m afraid it’s that simple.

I don’t think it will be an e-sport due to lack of “spikes” in excitement.

The way classes are designed, there are SO many “oh kitten” buttons that mitigate all forms of burst, there is the downed state, etc.

I can’t imagine a commentator or spectator ever on the “edge” of their seats like in LoL or what not. I mean PLAYING it is very intense yes, but I don’t think watching it would prove exciting at all…

Watching a tpvp on stream is a lot of running over rooftops, getting random effects on characters not even in combat.
Once the fighting starts it’s loads of flashing particles and funny tumbling characters.

From a spectator point of view, i think this game is pretty unclear to follow any precise actions.

Players might object against action bars, but for a viewer just to see a characters hands move, in the midst of a big fight, without knowing who’s doing what… I can’t tell how entertaining that ends up to be.

In order to have an audience that understands GW2 pvp fights, you at least need to have a good notion of GW2 pvp itself.

Every debuff, every cc goes so very fast, that it’s hard to make out much, unless you know all professions pretty well.

Every game suffers this to some degree. GW2 suffers this to a very large degree…