Guild Wars 2

Here we are, 9 months after release, and I think it’s safe to say GW2 tPvP still has not achieved ‘e-sport’ status.

My question to you folks is: will it ever? I am having a hard time thinking of reasons why it will (in fact, I cannot come up with any), but can only come up with reasons why it will not.

1) Long update cycles

Updates to the game arrive every 4 weeks, which is an incredibly long time to wait for an MMO. Other MMO’s release updates on a weekly,bi-monthly, or sometimes even a daily basis. It’s hard to imagine an e-sport game staying viable for long if the competitive nature is compromised by a missing feature or bug that will not see a resolution for 4 weeks.

2) Bug fixes – or the lack thereof.

There are still many, many weapon/ability/trait bugs out there that have not been resolved. It’s hard to picture the game being taken seriously when there are so many bugs such as this. Given that it’s been 9 months and some of these issues have been around since game launch, it seems unlikely this will get fixed in a timely manner.

3) Lack of interest/Lack of a player base

Again – it’s been 9 months. Many top players have already moved on to other games due to the lack of progress. Typical gamers move on to the next big thing and don’t look back. How is ArenaNet going to try to win some of that core group back?

Conquest is unadapt to be treated as e-sport.

But i’t the only mode avaible now and in the foreseeable future.

That’s the core of the problem, IMO.

IMO, the problem is the community and not enough hype! A lot of people are bringing players who are still interested together and bit by bit, these players will become our new top players. Winning the old playerbase would be nice, but we can only do so much currently until custom arenas are more refined and the queue system gets a major update.

New game modes and better balances would be nice, but it’s not what’s making this ‘esport’ lacking.

As much as I’d like gw2 to have everything it should have tomorrow, the best thing to keep esports alive is just to play it like an esport and get more people onboard.

Belief has to start here within the sPvP community.

No chance until there is a competitive ladder for GvG

Erm also Not enough diversity in gameplay/classes , sorry had to be said

Do you like playing the game? Do you like watching people play at a high level? Those are the only two things necessary to make a potential esport.

This game has then possibility, but only time will tell. If you would like to help this game become an esport, make sure you tune into the upcoming tournaments.

Probably no.
But u know, weird things happen, and the probability is close to 0 but not 0. Who knows what will happen, maybe it’s true what some believers say and this game has huge potential, or maybe it’s just a game that almost nobody likes to play and/or watch.

I can only talk about my experience, and as a game to watch, even with observer mode and a comentator, the game seems to be a chaotic particle aoe festival with almost 0 build variety (so most of the time it’s hard to tell what the kitten is going on and the pregame comentating about the teams and their builds is useless when u’ve seen some games, they could say, well this ele is runing the same spec we already explained 30 times, so, well, that’s it…).

I agree that no one can tell yet. The truth is that PvP in this game keeps “losing points” .
The main reason people are leaving the game is nothing to do but playing 1 round “tournaments” !! It can become boring for competitive players.
It is disscussed many times in these forums so no point in mentioning again what are the main problems of pvp. But unless Something is done in the near future pvp community will keep dropping

I don’t think so. Is Team Fortress 2 considered an eSport? I just don’t find the combat system in this game complex enough to really show off player skill. The current combat mode also doesn’t really show up group coordination that well either. And then you factor in the current bunker meta and there’s just nothing this game has that’s all that impressive.

Once bunkers are dealt with, classes are actually balanced to the point they’re each viable, and there was more to trait toward than just damage and mitigation I would say this game had potential of being a contender.

But how long are we going to wait for a new combat mode, bunkers not being the only option, and classes each offering something vital to the group?

not until they get rid of conquest and add team ranking. conquest in an mmo is super boring to watch especially with bunkers. I watched teldo stream him as Bunker engi fighting a Bunker ranger so so boring

People talking about the game not being engaging enough or complex enough, or that the modes are good enough.

That has nothing to do with being an ESport. Are matches interesting to watch, and are people willing to play the game to compete for prizes? Those are the question that needs to be answered. ESports is a buisness. If they can get people to watch a game by offering players prizes to play that game then they increase their revenue from sponsorships.

There is no sense of progression in sPvP.

There needs to be more interesting elements. For example, they should implement money that can be used to buy items through capping points, killing players, etc… This is similar to games like Leagues of Legend, where there is a sense of progression for doing well in a game round that adds that excitement for killing players, etc… (And then there will be the concept of fed players, which is interesting to watch) And since there is like 5 un-used accessory slot in sPvP, how about just making the merchants sell those accessory items as rewards. All seems like common sense to me but no, they had to implement a ‘capture the flag’ type of game (Spirit Watch) which doesn’t really give the sense of progression within the game itself. Give a game mode that gives a sense of progression (moba for example).

You’d think that after 9 months they’d take the hint. But nah, they’re still making different flavors of icecream when all we want is waffles.

that topic again? give it a rest guys.

Esports games are just competitive games that have a large enough player base to attract sponsors, there’s nothing more.

Phira.3970:

There is no sense of progression in sPvP.

There needs to be more interesting elements. For example, they should implement money that can be used to buy items through capping points, killing players, etc… This is similar to games like Leagues of Legend, where there is a sense of progression for doing well in a game round that adds that excitement for killing players, etc… (And then there will be the concept of fed players, which is interesting to watch) And since there is like 5 un-used accessory slot in sPvP, how about just making the merchants sell those accessory items as rewards. All seems like common sense to me but no, they had to implement a ‘capture the flag’ type of game (Spirit Watch) which doesn’t really give the sense of progression within the game itself. Give a game mode that gives a sense of progression (moba for example).

Here is a suggestion, you want to play a moba game, go ahead, go play League…

Why does every suggestion have to be “make this game a clone of X”.

Just imagine someone casting this Video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSJ0pqRwjuU&feature=player_embedded

“Mr Engi is roaming to manson there is a guardian defending the point. OMGG MR. Engi is dodging the scepter orbs with mini strafe!!!!!! AMAZING play by Mr Engi!!!!! ".

Kidding… They need to fix things before we can make this game esports.
There are a lot of skills in this game broken/bad designed… =/

lol, orbs #needbetterauto

This has nothing to do with conquest mode, conquest mode is competitive, it does require teamplay and teamwork.

One of the issues is nobody knows whose the best of the best in GW2, when they release good competitive leaderboards then we will know who the best of the best is, but right now the current leaderboard is highly inaccurate. They hide so much stuff from us as well.

In the starcraft leaderboards (starcraft is/was an esports game) they showed the number rating, they had a good rating system and people chose who they wanted to play (as in they don’t play against people that destroy them or people chose not to play against people who would only make there points go up by 2 points), also the starcraft leaderboard showed the total amount of disconnect players do, so you know who the poor losers are as well.

Now I’m not saying GW2 has to let us chose who we play against, and we see there ratings before we play against them, but ANET needs to fix the matchmaking system so that people are playing against the right people, the people around there rating and place winners against winners, don’t do this play against same team 4 times bullkitten. And its CLEAR solo que’ers don’t want to be matched up against premades, so they obviously need to fix that as well.

They should show a history log as well, of who you play againsted, who you played with, and what the score was.

They should also improve the friends list, so it shows your pvp rank or pvp glory rank as well. So theres more incentive and reasons for people to show off how good they are in pvp.

They need to make the tournaments bigger, they shouldn’t even have a team limit on tournaments, you should keep playing till you lose then you have to reque type of deal.

Lastly, in GW1 it was hard to get glory rank, that’s because you could only get it in the tournament pvp, you couldn’t get it in the hotjoin games. GW2 needs to remove glory from hotjoins and only make glory obtainable in tpvp. As of right now if you ask any pve’er that your such and such rank, all they will say is “yeah I could farm that too”.

Glory rank is incredibly easy to obtain in pvp, it needs to be fixed. So when people do reach high ranks people stop in awe of them and respect them for how good they are. As of right now if your a high rank all it means is you have no life, you farm hotjoins all day long, your not necessarily good at all.

There’s no way it will become on E-sport until they get rid of builds that are so artificial intelligence dependent.

The 1v1 TTK for a ranger pet is so ludicrous and their range so long, that’s it’s an insult to both the ranger and the opponent.

Right now, a ranger can be virtually afk and still doing things no other profession can do…other times…the opponent can merely exploit terrain to sabotage the primitive AI.

Neither situations are tolerable in any true skill competition.

SPESHAL.9106:

Right now, a ranger can be virtually afk and still doing things no other profession can do…other times…the opponent can merely exploit terrain to sabotage the primitive AI.

Funny you should say that. Last night I was testing an elementalist build against a standard ranger build, she got up to answer a knock at the door and her autoattacks from pet killed me. Admittedly, that build sorta sucked, and I’m a terrible player, but that wasn’t even “virtually” afk….

Ignoring half the glaring problems in spvp like progression, variety in game modes, etc. on a purely neutral standpoint no I highly doubt it. Too much stuff going on and it’s not easy to get in to. GW1 had esport potential with GvG because you could tell what was going on.

Spectating anything except for 1v1 duels looks like a massive zerg fest with a bunch of particle affects. They shouldn’t have abandoned sound queue’s and animations that were in GW1 if they wanted e-sports imo. And this isn’t just a problem for spectators but players themselves while fighting, combat is too chaotic. A problem in both pvp and pve. I think the biggest culprit is LOLFIREONYOURSCREENLOLEXPLOSIONSLOLMORESTUFF,RUBLINDYET?

Oh and getting downed instantly without realizing what the hell just happened, that’s not very friendly either.

GankSinatra.2653:

You’d think that after 9 months they’d take the hint. But nah, they’re still making different flavors of icecream when all we want is waffles.

Perfect post, thank you.
seriously.

I think it may draw in more people if tPvP was re-marketed as an interactive particle show.

They need to fix or remove unwanted traits from the game and replace them with a new and better trait system

At the current rate of progress … probably not.

I don’t know if there is ever a time frame for a game to achieve e-sport, but since Guild wars 2 is no longer a new game, I’d have to say that its opportunity for this endeavor is probably passed. It could be too little to late, especially with other games coming out this year.

But you never know, things can progress at a rapid rate soon and even if it does not reach e-sport status it will at least improve the quality of the gaming experience.

As long as there is WvW, class balance is relatively kitten, and as long as the game type is conquest nope not happening.

1) Technically speaking monthly patches are far faster than any other MMO but they need to be patches of substance not sprinkles. Also bugs should never come under patch release…they should be fixed asap and not considered apart of " what we have to offer this coming patch ".

2) I agree but Anet have stated in the latest “SOTG” in april etc that they 1 intend to ditch the monthly patch updates as evident by the may 14 or may 17th patch ( can’t remember what date it was due for ). They said bug fixes and features will now not wait for an end of month patch and will be released when ready.

3) This is one of the biggest issues atm, but anet has a slight advantage in that being free to play there is no cost to try out the game in say 8 months 3 months 2 years etc.

4) alot of talk about conquest = bad….i disagree here….the one thing that made WoW fail as an esport regarding arenas is that theres no reason to force a fight….what resulted was 5-10-50 resets a match. Having a system where victory isnt determined by just kill the enemy is a must for esports when it comes to team games. League has it in that you kill nexus thus making for epic split pushes and comebacks etc.

GW2 has it in node captures etc…the downside is I feel some things definitely do need to be tweaked. Conquest itself though is fine.

Finally….never forget it takes most popular games time to develop into what is acceptable for esports. EG : League of legends 18months – 2 years.

Zanthrax.6538:

1) Technically speaking monthly patches are far faster than any other MMO but they need to be patches of substance not sprinkles. Also bugs should never come under patch release…they should be fixed asap and not considered apart of " what we have to offer this coming patch ".

2) I agree but Anet have stated in the latest “SOTG” in april etc that they 1 intend to ditch the monthly patch updates as evident by the may 14 or may 17th patch ( can’t remember what date it was due for ). They said bug fixes and features will now not wait for an end of month patch and will be released when ready.

3) This is one of the biggest issues atm, but anet has a slight advantage in that being free to play there is no cost to try out the game in say 8 months 3 months 2 years etc.

4) alot of talk about conquest = bad….i disagree here….the one thing that made WoW fail as an esport regarding arenas is that theres no reason to force a fight….what resulted was 5-10-50 resets a match. Having a system where victory isnt determined by just kill the enemy is a must for esports when it comes to team games. League has it in that you kill nexus thus making for epic split pushes and comebacks etc.

GW2 has it in node captures etc…the downside is I feel some things definitely do need to be tweaked. Conquest itself though is fine.

Finally….never forget it takes most popular games time to develop into what is acceptable for esports. EG : League of legends 18months – 2 years.

I agree with most of what you said. #1 however, I do not. Take a look here: http://forums.riftgame.com/official-rift-news/patch-notes/

Substantial bug fixes and gameplay changes that arrive at a rate of 1 or more per week.

LoL was a slow burner, building up in popularity over time. GW2 does not have that luxury. Though there is no cost to play the game once purchased, there is still a cost associated with getting lost players back. ANet needs to entice those players to come back, which means they better be doing their homework as to why their current player base has been leaving.

can we get a dev response just saying they dont give a kitten about esports so we can all leave this non funded game and never come back

I mean kitten did anet really think this game would survive for 8 months without even a single kittening pvp patch / leaderboards

o right you did and your statement was the game is free so people will come back…… well i dont see people coming back do u?

Wildstar here we come

Thedenofsin.7340:

ANet needs to entice those players to come back, which means they better be doing their homework as to why their current player base has been leaving.

No homework required. The devs may not spend all day on these forums chatting us up, but they poke their heads out often enough to know what is said here and why people are leaving. They aren’t stupid, and it isn’t like they aren’t trying. For whatever reason (probably financial, but the reason is irrelevant) there aren’t enough resources dedicated to the PvP community to bring this game up to where it needs to be in the near future. Can it still get there? Sure. Will it get there without a change in strategy from A-net? Nope. Population is shrinking right now, and E-sport doesn’t happen without viable marketing which requires population.

To get population back into this game a TON of work needs to be done addressing a number of the things that have been mentioned in this thread. There is more than one path to get there, but we clearly aren’t on any of the right ones at the moment.

I can’t imagine it happening for at least another two years. Development is too slow, the general interest in Guild Wars 2 PvP is too low, and there’s not enough content there to keep players interested.

Yes. Spectator mode and BLU shoutcasting. Team Paradigm is very exciting to watch.

Zanthrax.6538:

1) Technically speaking monthly patches are far faster than any other MMO but they need to be patches of substance not sprinkles. Also bugs should never come under patch release…they should be fixed asap and not considered apart of " what we have to offer this coming patch ".

2) I agree but Anet have stated in the latest “SOTG” in april etc that they 1 intend to ditch the monthly patch updates as evident by the may 14 or may 17th patch ( can’t remember what date it was due for ). They said bug fixes and features will now not wait for an end of month patch and will be released when ready.

3) This is one of the biggest issues atm, but anet has a slight advantage in that being free to play there is no cost to try out the game in say 8 months 3 months 2 years etc.

4) alot of talk about conquest = bad….i disagree here….the one thing that made WoW fail as an esport regarding arenas is that theres no reason to force a fight….what resulted was 5-10-50 resets a match. Having a system where victory isnt determined by just kill the enemy is a must for esports when it comes to team games. League has it in that you kill nexus thus making for epic split pushes and comebacks etc.

GW2 has it in node captures etc…the downside is I feel some things definitely do need to be tweaked. Conquest itself though is fine.

Finally….never forget it takes most popular games time to develop into what is acceptable for esports. EG : League of legends 18months – 2 years.

Didn’t know this game was free to play thanks for letting me know

Shawnbuell.8407:

Do you like playing the game? Do you like watching people play at a high level? Those are the only two things necessary to make a potential esport.

This.

Patches and bug fixes help this along. How often they arrive and in what quantity doesn’t matter as long as the gameplay remains exciting.

On the spectator end, the major problem I’m seeing is that it’s just too chaotic right now. In part, I think this is due to shoutcaster inexperience (observer mode has only been out for a couple weeks). The camera bounces around a lot, some of the action is skipped, the casters can’t tell what’s going on immediately at times. Another part may be due to the meta game, though with more media, it can innovate faster.

On the player end, I think the player-base needs to be pushed toward tournament or tournament format games more. 8v8 hinders as much as it helps and allowing so many rule combinations with custom arenas makes the problem worse, not better. The zerg style player seems to drive away many potential players.

Thedenofsin.7340:

My question to you folks is: will it ever?

Nope, the window of opportunity has been missed.

I agree that inconsistent hot join format is a huge detraction from the overall experience. If the game is supposedly designed and balanced from a 5v5 perspective, why in the world do you promote anything else?

To get people into combat quicker and more often?

I find that a silly argument because that’s exactly what capture points do. They direct you to where the fighting is happening (or will happen).

Anet just needs to embrace the fact that their combat system is designed around small scale combat (3v3 and under). They’ve designed an intricate system, with beautiful animations and spell effects, none of which can be appreciated, exposed and become an integral part of the meta game when there’s too many people cluttering it up.

Even the fact that they’ve decide to make each class self sufficient with personal heal spells promotes smaller scale gameplay, yet they seemingly refuse to embrace this fact.

Personally, I, like much of the community, am pining for Anet-sanctioned small-scale TDM. They nailed it with GW1 and only made the potential better with this combat system, yet the reasons they haven’t focused on it are absolutely perplexing. Teams will just stand around staring at each other? Has this ever happened in a TDM game?

shrug

just go to twitch and see what people are watching- says it all. As it has been said 2013 is a big year for mmos. The concept of gw2 is brilliant just a shame they couldn’t of made it work.
I’ve spent thousands of hours in game and have (mostly) enjoyed it and Yes it has been worth every penny.

Why do people even still want this to be an e-sport?

Its fairly obvious at this point that Anet doesn’t care based on the extremely poor development pace.

They have been charging money for competitive play previously through tickets and now through servers when no other competitive game does this. All these people trying to setup tournies and teams are just rewarding Anet for doing a poor job.

PvP cannot be balanced because PVE comes first.

Conquest is lame and its not going away.

The recent tournies are able to get a few hundred viewers, but thats largely because of the novelty. Once that wears off and its the same teams running the same builds on the same maps over and over again the viewership will drop just like it did after the first month.

The guy who streams auction house and gives away gold all day has a larger following than pretty much any of the ‘competitive’ teams.