Guild Wars 2

it’s really up to us. I personally would like to see some competition going, so I’m thinking when opportunity presents, I can fork out a bit of cash and collaborate with someone to kick off a real money tournament.

it doesn’t matter what the player base is. it doesn’t matter what the viewership is. pro football was non-existent until someone put up some cash and organized a league.

if you build it they will come.

I know that pros chase money, and if we put some up, even if it’s a small amount – people will come out of retirement to play for a day and swoop it.

I’m thinking of doing this. I also encourage other people with businesses or something to promote to work with the casters of the gw2 community and make something happen.

cheers!

There may be multiple reasons why GW2 is not an e-sport, but one of them is there is no spectating yet (it will be introduced in the next patch) and what’s a sport without the audience!

Ruler.1832:

it’s really up to us. I personally would like to see some competition going, so I’m thinking when opportunity presents, I can fork out a bit of cash and collaborate with someone to kick off a real money tournament.

it doesn’t matter what the player base is. it doesn’t matter what the viewership is. pro football was non-existent until someone put up some cash and organized a league.

if you build it they will come.

I know that pros chase money, and if we put some up, even if it’s a small amount – people will come out of retirement to play for a day and swoop it.

I’m thinking of doing this. I also encourage other people with businesses or something to promote to work with the casters of the gw2 community and make something happen.

cheers!

The only 1 thing a game really needs to become an esport is to be popular, the rest can be tinkered with into place. At its current incarnation GW2 pvp is very unpopular, they broke away with their own true and tested class differentiation from GW1 massively disappointing their established fan base, range clearly and easily dominates melee across the board, clunky UI with little customization, everything based around CDs also breaks the immersion into the game, your character is not running out of resources, it simply blew his get out of jail for free cards. This all puts people off and until they choose to go back to GW1 model, which i hope they do before they try to sell the expansions (else they are in for a reality check).

I mean, instead of Guild Wars, we have kiting wars, thus this disappointing (if esport is what you expected) result.

Until i see these changes implemented, i am not interested on this attempting a half cooked esport and i am actively recommending against buying the game to friends and family. Hell i get a better pvp experience from LoL than this, and they had YEARS of experience doing this in GW1 before LOL even came to be.

no its not, its up to the devs to deliver wich they did not in this 8 months so ppl left and the player base got smaller then well, who in their rigthful mind would invest on a game that has so little ppl playing and make a tournament or whatever with prizes and kitten.
ill make it even simpler GW2 is not fun it has a great combat system but is wasted.

There are 3 requirements for esports:

1) Balanced, competitive and polished to the extreme

2) Support and ease of access to watching replays, meaningful leaderboards, and a robust spectating mode which also encourages casting (see Starcraft)

3) Must actually be entertaining to watch for the audience. Of these 3, I believe GW2 lacks this the most, for these reasons:

Lack of pacing. From beginning to the end, pacing is the same stale point-holding throughout, and I’d dare to say that pacing is nonexistent. Despite secondary objectives and the more recent effort to create some sort of pacing (Foefire and Silent Storm), it still falls short from adequate. Compare this to the most successful esports such as

Starcraft, where the beginning gives time and breathing room for casters to provide information to the audience about the players/tournament/etc, proceedingly unfolds what plans and strategies each are building upon, and has an early/mid/late-game cycle.

Counter-Strike. The monetary aspect gives it much more depth than just a 1-life-per-round shooter. There are eco rounds, teams must take into account their economy, and rounds (and strategies) are not stagnant, but constantly fluctuating round-per-round and changing along with it.

Dota/LoL/Warcraft. Same reasons for Starcraft
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Unclear actions happening and skills. From arbitrary signets floating above peoples’ heads, to skills with no animations, to invisible traits activating, to the many Warrior animations that all look very similar, to the screen filled with Ele particle effects, this all contributes to GW2 not being entertaining to watch, and quite possibly confusing for the audience to follow or casters to explain what’s happening.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————
The current game mode. Another ingredient for esport games, along with pacing, are suspense and “moments of awesomeness”. There will never be a GW2 equivalent of a brilliantly executed Starcraft strategy that completely turned the tables, a Dota wipe that won the game, the suspense of the last round of Counter-Strike with the scores 15-15, or the kill that won the round/game, none of that.

There is no window for individual players to shine. Poorly executed skills do not punish players. If a game was won 501-499, what would happen? People will not be astonished as in Counter-Strike, people cannot attribute that win to anything; it may even be attributed by many as luck. As someone else on the forums put it, the only possible game-changing play he can think of MIGHT be a well-placed Fear on a point that gives a few seconds advantage that would just so happen to win the game.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Here is a clip of what Kotaku calls the greatest moment of Esport history, demonstrating all of the above. It would be great if GW2 could address a few of these points and supply pacing, greater rewarding/punishing of executed tactics, and give these “moments of awesomeness.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=np_5BHmaSI4

Sorry for the lengthy post. Yes we can cast, but ultimately there is more to an esport than just people volunteering to cast or the community hosting a tournament.

@Bushido.2184

Completely agree.
It just doesn’t seem like a good game to cast/watch at its core.
Rezzing/rallying isn’t a good mechanic at all for it (with how common and with no negatives after rezzing, especially if done by 2+ people or a bunker, it ruins the sense of progression in a fight and losses from a victory), conquest is a terrible map for casting, the combat is mediocre for it at best… not to even mention the terribley stagnant meta from the balancing job Anet is doing.

GW2 never had any real hope of being an Esport after what was released at Beta.
Right now its just struggling to have a player population… if it pulls off keeping TPvP alive threw the year that’s a massive accomplishment for Anet in and of itself.

E-sport this, e-sport that, it’s a bit sickening to see that word popping up everywhere and being so widely misused:(

E-sport is nothing but a business: pro players getting paid and competing for real money, whose games are commented by remunerated shout casters to an audience that generates money through advertisement.

See a trend here? Money.

Turning gw2 into e-sport won’t improve the inherent qualities of the game, it will just inject money in the circuit thus making it artificially more interesting to follow.

What the players need above all, and I’m really talking about the majority of players here, Not the 1% that have the skills to go e-sport, not the shout casters, not the guys who just sit and watch games without playing it, so what 95% of the players want and need is a polished competitive game with fun combat and a healthy competition.

Once this is achieved then please consider adding the money and waving the e-sport banner:p

Who wants to watch people rolling in a circle?

Remember that even League of Legends didn’t even reach its E-Sport status right after release, or even for some months after.

It took around (almost) 2 years for it to become an E-Sport.

I’m sure if ArenaNet now start to polish what they got, being Leaderboards, Custom Arenas, Spectator Mode, they will reach E-Sport as well.

@Hugs, However, having a focus to become an esport also means having a focus to create a “polished competitive game with fun combat and a healthy competition”, in order to make that possible.

Having such a game is a requirement for esports, but esports is not really a requirement for having such a polished competitive game. You just get that as a side-effect, if you really are focusing on becoming an esport. Which judging from their efforts from the past 8 months or so, Anet is not.

bushido, good points.

I’m now disappointed and depressed after reading your very good and informative post with some very good points.

I enjoy the game, but I can see how it isn’t a good candidate at this point in time.

Hi
I’m an Esport lover who played many Esport games and participated in many high lvls tournaments (CS , wc3 , LoL ) and I bought GW2 thinking it would be the same but I clearly was wrong.
In this game since release people can leave Tournaments and not getting punished , while Anet team is aware of this (hopefully) they are not taking action.
This just shows why GW2 won’t be an Esport because they are not taking care of it , Hopefully I’m wrong and today’s patch will fix it but if it stays as it is , it won’t become an Esport thats for sure.

Bushido.2184:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/we-can-make-GW2-e-sport/first#post1921443

This post is gold!
Good job

Gw2 combat is very rough and unpolished (bad animation,effects ,balance etc). Combined with completely borked ladder/tournament ( hotjoin which is its own game totally different from tourneys) there is very little population actually interested in spvp.

Can it be salvaged? Maybe, but not with the current level of efforts arena.net puts into it

Bushido.2184:

There are 3 requirements for esports:

1) Balanced, competitive and polished to the extreme

2) Support and ease of access to watching replays, meaningful leaderboards, and a robust spectating mode which also encourages casting (see Starcraft)

3) Must actually be entertaining to watch for the audience. Of these 3, I believe GW2 lacks this the most, for these reasons:

---

Lack of pacing. From beginning to the end, pacing is the same stale point-holding throughout, and I’d dare to say that pacing is nonexistent. Despite secondary objectives and the more recent effort to create some sort of pacing (Foefire and Silent Storm), it still falls short from adequate. Compare this to the most successful esports such as

Starcraft, where the beginning gives time and breathing room for casters to provide information to the audience about the players/tournament/etc, proceedingly unfolds what plans and strategies each are building upon, and has an early/mid/late-game cycle.

Counter-Strike. The monetary aspect gives it much more depth than just a 1-life-per-round shooter. There are eco rounds, teams must take into account their economy, and rounds (and strategies) are not stagnant, but constantly fluctuating round-per-round and changing along with it.

Dota/LoL/Warcraft. Same reasons for Starcraft
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Unclear actions happening and skills. From arbitrary signets floating above peoples’ heads, to skills with no animations, to invisible traits activating, to the many Warrior animations that all look very similar, to the screen filled with Ele particle effects, this all contributes to GW2 not being entertaining to watch, and quite possibly confusing for the audience to follow or casters to explain what’s happening.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————
The current game mode. Another ingredient for esport games, along with pacing, are suspense and “moments of awesomeness”. There will never be a GW2 equivalent of a brilliantly executed Starcraft strategy that completely turned the tables, a Dota wipe that won the game, the suspense of the last round of Counter-Strike with the scores 15-15, or the kill that won the round/game, none of that.

There is no window for individual players to shine. Poorly executed skills do not punish players. If a game was won 501-499, what would happen? People will not be astonished as in Counter-Strike, people cannot attribute that win to anything; it may even be attributed by many as luck. As someone else on the forums put it, the only possible game-changing play he can think of MIGHT be a well-placed Fear on a point that gives a few seconds advantage that would just so happen to win the game.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Here is a clip of what Kotaku calls the greatest moment of Esport history, demonstrating all of the above. It would be great if GW2 could address a few of these points and supply pacing, greater rewarding/punishing of executed tactics, and give these “moments of awesomeness.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=np_5BHmaSI4

Sorry for the lengthy post. Yes we can cast, but ultimately there is more to an esport than just people volunteering to cast or the community hosting a tournament.

Thanks for your proffessional post. Hard to explain it better than you did!

Kheops.3081:

Hi
I’m an Esport lover who played many Esport games and participated in many high lvls tournaments (CS , wc3 , LoL ) and I bought GW2 thinking it would be the same but I clearly was wrong.
In this game since release people can leave Tournaments and not getting punished , while Anet team is aware of this (hopefully) they are not taking action.
This just shows why GW2 won’t be an Esport because they are not taking care of it , Hopefully I’m wrong and today’s patch will fix it but if it stays as it is , it won’t become an Esport thats for sure.

Go back to the first 6-12 months of League of Legends….same kitten different game. If in a years time this game is still not looking promising for esports then you may comment. For now quit if you see fit and come back whenever you want to try it.

Bushido.2184:

There are 3 requirements for esports:

1) Balanced, competitive and polished to the extreme

2) Support and ease of access to watching replays, meaningful leaderboards, and a robust spectating mode which also encourages casting (see Starcraft)

3) Must actually be entertaining to watch for the audience. Of these 3, I believe GW2 lacks this the most, for these reasons:

---

Lack of pacing. From beginning to the end, pacing is the same stale point-holding throughout, and I’d dare to say that pacing is nonexistent. Despite secondary objectives and the more recent effort to create some sort of pacing (Foefire and Silent Storm), it still falls short from adequate. Compare this to the most successful esports such as

Starcraft, where the beginning gives time and breathing room for casters to provide information to the audience about the players/tournament/etc, proceedingly unfolds what plans and strategies each are building upon, and has an early/mid/late-game cycle.

Counter-Strike. The monetary aspect gives it much more depth than just a 1-life-per-round shooter. There are eco rounds, teams must take into account their economy, and rounds (and strategies) are not stagnant, but constantly fluctuating round-per-round and changing along with it.

Dota/LoL/Warcraft. Same reasons for Starcraft
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Unclear actions happening and skills. From arbitrary signets floating above peoples’ heads, to skills with no animations, to invisible traits activating, to the many Warrior animations that all look very similar, to the screen filled with Ele particle effects, this all contributes to GW2 not being entertaining to watch, and quite possibly confusing for the audience to follow or casters to explain what’s happening.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————
The current game mode. Another ingredient for esport games, along with pacing, are suspense and “moments of awesomeness”. There will never be a GW2 equivalent of a brilliantly executed Starcraft strategy that completely turned the tables, a Dota wipe that won the game, the suspense of the last round of Counter-Strike with the scores 15-15, or the kill that won the round/game, none of that.

There is no window for individual players to shine. Poorly executed skills do not punish players. If a game was won 501-499, what would happen? People will not be astonished as in Counter-Strike, people cannot attribute that win to anything; it may even be attributed by many as luck. As someone else on the forums put it, the only possible game-changing play he can think of MIGHT be a well-placed Fear on a point that gives a few seconds advantage that would just so happen to win the game.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Here is a clip of what Kotaku calls the greatest moment of Esport history, demonstrating all of the above. It would be great if GW2 could address a few of these points and supply pacing, greater rewarding/punishing of executed tactics, and give these “moments of awesomeness.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=np_5BHmaSI4

Sorry for the lengthy post. Yes we can cast, but ultimately there is more to an esport than just people volunteering to cast or the community hosting a tournament.

This is what gw2 is lacking, great job putting it in word Bushido. This require a sticky so that devs can read it and improve these weakness so that gw2 can be a export.

Yesterday, i was watching teldo stream tpvp, it seem awfully boring to watch. A lot of animation clutter, no pacing, seem like everything he does is leading to the same stuff. The down feature kill somewhat of the suspend as it doesn’t let player feel that the awesome team fight took down a player but somewhat a boring rezzing lead to some opponent team downfall and some boring stomping cause a team mate to die.

So the game i watch was:
Aoe
Aoe
Aoe
Stomp
CC
Aoe
Aoe
Downed
Rez
CC
Downed
Rez
Aoe
Aoe
Stomp
with animation clutter all over the place.

if we want daigo moments in this game then we need mechanics closer to fighting or action games.

reduce or remove cooldowns, add situations where heavy damage can occur (eg. punishing a missed attack, counter attacks, etc) and create an offense/defense tradeoff so people aren’t autoattacking so much.

for an example of how to do this in a 3d world, Dark Souls is a good example. duels in that game are tense faceoffs where players circle defensively until someone makes a mistake and gets killed by a counter backstab. or kicked off a cliff :p

Going for E-sports introduces a design bias for the developpers.

They then design the game from the ground up to be widely accessible, very simple to hop in and entertaining to watch even for the non-initiated.

Instead of designing a complexe, deep, engaging and challenging team game.

Gw1’s combat, skill design, team interaction and GvG objectives were absolute jewels. It was a game made by hardcore PvP’ers for hardcore gamers.

As a consequence it was probably boring as hell to watch for anybody not familiar with the mechanics, but for those of us who understood the game, the sheer beauty of GvG was second to none.

With Gw2, Anet is aiming for the E-sport scene. Hence a much simpler game. Fun but much simpler.

This game will not be an esport because its a PVE game. The updates / balancing / player population are all pve focused.

Why would Anet bother going through the hassle of designing a good competitive pvp game when they can keep adding a gear grind and selling gems.

The fact that private servers will have a cost when games like LoL and Starcraft allow you to host private matches for free automatically reduces the number of people who will even access the game.

Paid tournaments already killed the competitive population. Paid private matches certainly won’t revive it.

People love talking about how LoL took 2 years to become an esport. That happened because RIOT pumped ASTRONOMICAL amounts of money into events and the game always had high stream viewership.

Anet has no viewership and no pvp money, it has its hands full managing a PVE game. They can’t even balance pvp because that would mess up the entire PVE side.

If the devs don’t want to support their own competitive PvP, then its a waste of time for players to waste what little time and resources they have on it.

Jacobin said all. How many koreans are playing Gw2? it’s decreasing more and more.(It’s even not been 1year that Gw2 released)
Whereas in Gw1, they kept the game alive during 3years(2005-2007) until there were kill game extansions and bad updates. Then after only 1year, there was the GWWC and GWFC with real money/prices. Gw2 isn’t rdy to have anything right now.
Personally, Im from EvIL(Gw/Gw2) full of 300 koreans and NONE still playing Gw2 anymore while EvIL was GWWC winners(web)+sponsored by Azubu.

They all quit to play World of Tanks that is being competitive and just entered in Esport league.

Bushido hit the nail on the head here