Guild Wars 2

GW2 is so close to having the potential of being true Esports material its not even funny, could some of you take a guess at what it would mean for the longevity of the game if it ever were to hit such a status? Not too long ago a game called DOTA2 gave away ~11 MILLION to the team who took home gold medals during the International championship. Tournaments which posses stakes this high grab a vast amount of people’s attention, which get more people to play and spend money on said game.That 11-million was completely community fundraised via people buying a book in that games cash-shop which acted as a catalyst for cosmetic armor/weapon drop rate. I believe Arena Net could be accomplishing similar goals, they just need to start trying!

You don’t need a fancy tv commercial to build a fortune off said game, You don’t need fancy cutscenes either (Although they are nice to see!), The MOBA industry has proven this. Game mechanics which heavily cater to the hardcore community while also allowing newcomers to enjoy the game is most certainly one of the most important factors for a successful Esports game. This means EXCELLENT PvP, as well as implementing a rank system which allows players play with other people on their skill level. An ingame stream which allows the community to observe the games finest players doesn’t hurt either. I encourage Arenanet to take the gamble and hire a few more people who can completely devote them selves towards pvp balance and spvp map/game type design. While GW2 PvP is quite astounding its still missing a spark, and that’s quite unfortunate when this said spark is right within its grasp.

I would like to propose some ideas which would move GW2 a step closer to Esports material:

Every skill in the game should have a unique and very visible animation which stands out from the beginning to the end of the ability casted. (Burning Speed, Eviscerate, Zealots Defense, Engineer’s grenades, Enfeebling Blood are good examples of visible casting animations which give their opponent the potential to counter with a dodge/block). A great Esports game is extremely competitive, which also means the potential for counter play should merely be lurking right around the corner.

Implement an in game ranked ladder system for everyone to view. Rank is based on MMR (Match make rating) and the top 10 ranked players in SPvP have statues of themselves in every town. These players are ranked on performance via wins and skillful play

Traits which effect skills/remove conditions/block or reflect projectiles, should have a visual indication to allow opponents to know that trait has been selected and is active.

Allow no “modern” skills in GW2 to have a cast time less than ~1/2 a second. (With the exception of channeled abilities and strictly defensive abilities)

Each classes strongest burst skill should be on a 5/8th – 3/4ths second cast timer. (For those of you who struggle with math, 5/8ths is 1/8th less of a second than 3/4ths of a second) Why 5/8ths of a second? Based on my own experiences, 3/4ths of a second is plenty of time to dodge if you see it coming, 5/8ths would be cutting it close, and 1/2 of a second is extremely challenging to dodge. I would strongly encourage a 5/8ths second cast timer to become the most common time frame used for burst skills with melee range while 3/4ths of a second was most commonly used for ranged burst.

All hard CC with a base value longer than 1 second (Stun,Knockdown,Knockback, blowout) should have a cast timer long enough to provide counter play. This means at least 5/8ths to 3/4ths of a second cast time!

all burst skills have at least one solid condition providing dps(making burst harder to recover from via healing, the penalty for getting by a burst combo should not be something you can just shake off!). Condition damage as a stat is removed and has its dmg now based on the power stat. Condition damage is heavily rescaled in DPS and is now treated more like “icing on the cake”, but still poses a threat.

Bunker builds should be less about heals and more about additional HP + block/dodge options. Seriously, why are we allowing players to hide behind such an extremely unskillful type of build? I personally wouldn’t feel NEARLY as underwhelmed if my burst was blocked thus leaving my opponent alive and kicking instead of my opponent eating a whole burst chain and not even being phased by it, perhaps I could at least be allowed to puts some dents into my enemy?

Stealth becomes MUCH less spammable, using a burst skill while in stealth immediately unstealths you before finishing the cast, stealth grants a 100% crit chance on the next attack to classes with the stealth mechanic and blocks x% of dmg you would normally take if hit while in stealth, the theifs abilities to stealth become instant allowing them to use stealth as a defensive dmg absorption mechanic.

Provide more spvp maps with different and innovative game types There will still be plenty of people to play the current game type… Change is good.

Give each class a new weapon type Like I said, change is good.

At the end of an SPvP match, select the top contributor(not only points accumulated based) to enter a cutscene, that player opens a chest and is rewarded with a random cosmetic + currency.

expand on the amount of cosmetics the cash shop has to offer, but also allow these cosmetics to be found for completing spvp matches as a top contributor

I’m not sure if all suggested idea’s contribute better to the road called E-sports. But I certainly agree with all skills being pushed into the same model (Burst cast time and animation).

Also all passive builds have to be removed. Bad players should be able to compete in some way, but that way should be a spec that is less effective and more survivable. Not totally survivable where spamming your skills still requires a great player to play nearly perfect or engage with two players to take him down.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

I’m not sure if all suggested idea’s contribute better to the road called E-sports. But I certainly agree with all skills being pushed into the same model (Burst cast time and animation).

Also all passive builds have to be removed. Bad players should be able to compete in some way, but that way should be a spec that is less effective and more survivable. Not totally survivable where spamming your skills still requires a great player to play nearly perfect or engage with two players to take him down.

I completely agree with the statement in bold. I also think some of my suggestions would take care of this issue if implemented correctly.

Honestly, I would like to see it move away from eSports.

It’s a MMORPG. It has a very heavy PvE side, it has a quite unique potential PvP format in WvW, but many of its balancing- and PvP-resources are bound in emulating something other games build around the concept of eSports already do far better.

Not every game has to be an eSports-game. In fact, it can be quite damaging, as it puts escalating mistakes, focus on player- over character-performance, reflex-based combat and team-cooperation in the spotlight.

Now compare RPGs:

• You want your players to make mistakes. Your game is complex and wants to offer lots of ways to interact with the world it presents. Making mistakes needs to be something the player never fears, or they’ll not want to do anything in the first place (no quickload, after all).
• RPGs are usually all about character-growth. Granted, GW2 has very little of this as is, and I don’t think it should have more, so this is really a minor point but it adds to PvP clashing with the general idea behind a RPG.
• In a role-playing game, combat is traditionally heavily influenced by your character. Your class excess at some things and is terrible at others. This makes you rely on the other classes. A wizard alone can fell a group of targets but will get overrun afterwards while recovering. Transported to MMORPGs, combat needs to be heavily influenced by your class and spec, giving you very real moments where you have an innate advantage and ones where you are disadvantaged. No matter how good or bad you play.
• Role-playing is part of the name of the genre. To properly roleplay your character even to absolutely minimal degrees (enough to “feel” like your character, but not yet hardline roleplay a specific artificial persona) you need to be able to go against your team without the game falling apart. To cushion this, computer-RPGs tend to offer “snowflake-options”. Something very underdog and usually useless but situationally game-changing. Doesn’t exactly chime with eSports balance. :P

I’d rather see all these resources currently used for the futile idea of getting players to play GW2 tPvP over MOBAs or the likes poured into improving the world, atmosphere, balance or WvW of GW2. It’s selling points, not something which is at heart an inferior copy&paste of a very very active game. Or multiple.

Carighan.6758:

Now compare RPGs:

• You want your players to make mistakes. Your game is complex and wants to offer lots of ways to interact with the world it presents. Making mistakes needs to be something the player never fears, or they’ll not want to do anything in the first place (no quickload, after all).*

This is what a superior match making system is for, you play vs people on your own level, and there is nothing to fear over losing, other than some MMR which only means you don’t fight people too hard for your skill level.

Carighan.6758:

• In a role-playing game, combat is traditionally heavily influenced by your character. Your class excess at some things and is terrible at others. This makes you rely on the other classes. A wizard alone can fell a group of targets but will get overrun afterwards while recovering. Transported to MMORPGs, combat needs to be heavily influenced by your class and spec, giving you very real moments where you have an innate advantage and ones where you are disadvantaged. No matter how good or bad you play.

There can still be builds which triumph over another persons build, infact this is very much so the case in MOBAs as well. Depending on how well your opponent can play though, I very much believe they deserve a fighting chance how ever slim it may be, perhaps you must play perfect and dodge all burst combos to win vs said class,when it comes to burst you should AT LEAST have the option to see a casting animation and potentially react to it.

Maybe. I mean I often think on a macro level .You’re certainly right, on the other hand I wouldn’t see anything wrong with the Albion 3-bolt-out-of-LoS-kill method to remove a single character, so long as that character could them be combat rezzed back if pressure is lost.

The attacking character enabling that instant kill cannot really contribute otherwise, after all. They’re used purely as a sniper, removing a specific key enemy target but otherwise holding back. Ok, in DAoC you also had the balancing factors that a) spells cannot be cast if you take damage during casting or 2s before it and b) shields block bolt-spells.

But even then I feel on a marketing level going for a more unique selling point and focusing dev effort into rebalancing and improving WvW might be a smarter choice. It sells better in the media. Ofc the flipside – and hence my provocative opener before – is that I can’t see eSports do 100v100 fighting over a map for 2 hours. :P

Are you sure its close to being an esport? There are many reasons why it will never happen. Dev input is not a factor.

You think the game is close to an esport? With the “bunker only” setup of PvP’s single only mode, Capture, not on your friggin life is it close. Add in a team deathmatch mode without capture points, and things will get better IMO. But that’s mostly because while Capture is focused around just holding points (thus bunker), Team Deathmatch would be based around killing enemies, basically increasing the interest in GW2’s PvP. Because as of right now, there’s a reason that less than 10% of the player population plays PvP.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Because as of right now, there’s a reason that less than 10% of the player population plays PvP.

Yes, and it probably has only a passing resemblance to that reason. :P
People just don’t – at large – play MMORPGs to do smallscale, action-oriented, high-tension PvP.

As evident by all smallscale PvP implementations in MMOs. And mind you, it was deathmatch in WoW, didn’t really change anything.

There’s different genres of games, and they appeal to different types of players. The sub-type of MMORPG + action-PvP player is just very small. And that’s also why I think it is such a shame that so many dev resources get wound up in it, neither the oldschool MMO crowd nor the vast majority of MMO players play them for the sPvP-side right now.
However, specialized games exist which capitalize on small-scale, team-oriented, action-ladden and performance-centric PvP gameplay.
(In other words, the market is already taken :P)

Just… focus on what you can do, and do it well. And right now sPvP isn’t something they can do, because of a lot of reasons much deeper than what the devs can directly work on.

RyuDragnier.9476:

You think the game is close to an esport? With the “bunker only” setup of PvP’s single only mode, Capture, not on your friggin life is it close. Add in a team deathmatch mode without capture points, and things will get better IMO. But that’s mostly because while Capture is focused around just holding points (thus bunker), Team Deathmatch would be based around killing enemies, basically increasing the interest in GW2’s PvP. Because as of right now, there’s a reason that less than 10% of the player population plays PvP.

The real reasons it wont happen are that its a terrible game to watch. Really unintuitive for new players to understand whats going. Battles are way too cluttered. No dedicated large viewer base. Community minority in an MMO. Slow timid balance. Gametype is not ideal but its the least of the games problems in terms of becoming an esport.

Its not far off from being a good fun gametype for players who enjoy pvp. But it will never go serious enough to be an esport. And it will never have the viewers. Just like all MMO’s. Its a waste of time to push for it.

Carighan.6758:

Maybe. I mean I often think on a macro level .You’re certainly right, on the other hand I wouldn’t see anything wrong with the Albion 3-bolt-out-of-LoS-kill method to remove a single character, so long as that character could them be combat rezzed back if pressure is lost.

The attacking character enabling that instant kill cannot really contribute otherwise, after all. They’re used purely as a sniper, removing a specific key enemy target but otherwise holding back. Ok, in DAoC you also had the balancing factors that a) spells cannot be cast if you take damage during casting or 2s before it and b) shields block bolt-spells.

But even then I feel on a marketing level going for a more unique selling point and focusing dev effort into rebalancing and improving WvW might be a smarter choice. It sells better in the media. Ofc the flipside – and hence my provocative opener before – is that I can’t see eSports do 100v100 fighting over a map for 2 hours. :P

DAoC was a good game while it lasted, that type of gameplay is outdated now IMO :/ I was getting close to rr12 on my vw, played the game for a long time.

I believe with the suggestions I made the game could move away from these flaws many of you have listed and become the kind of game it should have always been.

Bugs that don’t get fixed, balance every 6 months…. and as long as the point of pvp mode is avoidance of pvp (bunkering), it is nowhere near esports.

Do you guys consider WoW an Esport?

If yes, how did it succeed in becoming one?

I think it would also really help if they turned down the amount of particles – somebody else mentioned that fights got cluttered, and, well…it’s just too much flashy nonsense on the screen, unless the graphics are turned way down. How’s anyone going to watch, say, an Elementalist duel, and know what’s going on?
As an example of not a bloody stupid number of particles:League of Legends, a game with an actual esport aspect, is usually fairly simple, as far as special effects go.

also, yeah, definitely think they should do a different, more interesting, less bunker-centric PvP mode. I’ve written up a suggestion for one here, if anyone’s interested:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Capture-the-Flag-Variant-mode-idea/first#post4332341

I don’t see how GW2 is anywhere near being considered an Esport.
You’ve got to have something that has a degree of approachable depth, where the mechanics of the game lead to a vibrate number of plays and counter plays, while being simple enough to learn and be conveyed well to an audience, but more then anything it needs to be fun to watch.

GW2 is none of these things. It is dumb as a sack of hammers, team play is almost non-existent, it’s a cluster-f of particle effects which makes it difficult to watch and understand what is going on, and ultimately it’s just not fun to watch.

GW2 will never be an esport, that window of opportunity has come and gone.
You just can’t throw money at this problem and expect for it to resolve itself because it’s not going to.

GW1 was close to being an Esport, even if that wasn’t the original intent. But it had the depth, team play and general readability to do it. It just didn’t get the support it needed to do it. GW2 on the other hand is just built wrong.

This game needs:

• Skills with counterplay
• Less passive play
• A game mode thats obvious and instantly understandable for viewers

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

This game needs:

• Skills with counterplay
• Less passive play
• A game mode thats obvious and instantly understandable for viewers

Yet the game listed in op, is Dota, Which has tons of heros with passive stat walls, Turtle tactics, and extremely complicated mechanics(That believe it or not dont have to do with micro, Rather When to stack, farm, push, where to stand, where LoS is, Etc etc.) That is hard to get into. Being an Esport has little to do with how the game plays. As someone who for a while was in the “High skill” Bracket of dota, I very rarely needed to time crap super fast or use lightning reflexes/Abuse tells. It was “This dudes skill set is X, And he has items Y, he is capable of doing Z” You see an engie with a rifle, you already know what his first 5 skills are and you know what each kit he does, so you need to prepare for that.

Pokemon is another EXTREMELY complex Esport(despite it being casual id still call it an Esport) That has huge skill based play that are based less on Mechanical skill and more on match up knowledge. A good prediction in mons turns your bad match up into a sweep. You dont counterplay in pokemon, you prevent them from using their tools from hitting you.

I see so many complaints of “Passive play” When almost all high level Esport play abuses the fact of Passive stats.

Mao is extremely strong in league right now, You ant counter his heal, or stop him from farming. He is good cause he is a huge stat wall with CC.

Carries in dota are litterly just walls of stats used to run over the enemy after you get items.

MTG, the best cards are not Those with sick nasty combos and good abilities, a 4/4 vanilla for 2 is the best card you can get, because its cost effective.

Basicly, GW2 will never be a good Esport because its way to shallow and is based way to much on reaction and less on the substance of the game. Atleast from my experience.

To clear it up since I tend to ramble, GW needs more substance, and more emphasis on out playing my opponent in more then one way. Right now GW2 amounts to “My active defense was better played then his, so I win” Which is very boring to watch and has no depth.

Dice Dragon.4326:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

This game needs:

• Skills with counterplay
• Less passive play
• A game mode thats obvious and instantly understandable for viewers

Yet the game listed in op, is Dota, Which has tons of heros with passive stat walls, Turtle tactics, and extremely complicated mechanics(That believe it or not dont have to do with micro, Rather When to stack, farm, push, where to stand, where LoS is, Etc etc.) That is hard to get into. Being an Esport has little to do with how the game plays. As someone who for a while was in the “High skill” Bracket of dota, I very rarely needed to time crap super fast or use lightning reflexes/Abuse tells. It was “This dudes skill set is X, And he has items Y, he is capable of doing Z” You see an engie with a rifle, you already know what his first 5 skills are and you know what each kit he does, so you need to prepare for that.

Pokemon is another EXTREMELY complex Esport(despite it being casual id still call it an Esport) That has huge skill based play that are based less on Mechanical skill and more on match up knowledge. A good prediction in mons turns your bad match up into a sweep. You dont counterplay in pokemon, you prevent them from using their tools from hitting you.

I see so many complaints of “Passive play” When almost all high level Esport play abuses the fact of Passive stats.

Mao is extremely strong in league right now, You ant counter his heal, or stop him from farming. He is good cause he is a huge stat wall with CC.

Carries in dota are litterly just walls of stats used to run over the enemy after you get items.

MTG, the best cards are not Those with sick nasty combos and good abilities, a 4/4 vanilla for 2 is the best card you can get, because its cost effective.

Basicly, GW2 will never be a good Esport because its way to shallow and is based way to much on reaction and less on the substance of the game. Atleast from my experience.

To clear it up since I tend to ramble, GW needs more substance, and more emphasis on out playing my opponent in more then one way. Right now GW2 amounts to “My active defense was better played then his, so I win” Which is very boring to watch and has no depth.

I understand your point, altough I do think that GW2 wasn’t meant to be played like dota.
These turtle tactics are to watch.

If we accept the fact that guild wars was meant to be played as action oriented fast paced game, and will never change to a more pokemon or even card game like style. Build wars kind of style.
The game needs to focus on what makes it fun to watch. And honestly, I find a game fun to watch if you recognize what the player is going to do. And how the enemy player is dealing with that.

My first point was:

• Skills with counterplay
  Because thats the one thing thats fun to see! In large scale for example: ‘Team A sends 3 players to the far point, Team B fails to react properly by sending 1 player’. Team A was playing more efficient.
  In smaller scale: ‘Warrior uses Eviscerate, Thief has no endurance but swaps to his shortbow and uses Disabling shot to avoid incoming damage’

Currently, some extremely powerful skills have no proper animation or cast time. This is bad because it creates imbalance in some situations. But for E-sports its bad because viewers have no idea that the (example:) ‘Engineer actually dodged Signet of Spite (which has a range of 1200 and a cast time of 3/4 second)’

My second point was:

• Less passive play
  Again you can’t see what the passive player is doing to prevent huge chunks of damage. Its not fun to watch a player facetank what should be a devastating coordinated spike in a action environment.

My last point was:

• A game mode thats obvious and instantly understandable for viewers
  A simple capture the flag might not fit into GW2, but its a good example of a game mode where all the action is happening at one point. Gives a nice overview and a simple objective for everyone to understand.

Single biggest problem is that it is hard to watch. They need to solve that first.

Dice Dragon.4326:

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

This game needs:

• Skills with counterplay
• Less passive play
• A game mode thats obvious and instantly understandable for viewers

Yet the game listed in op, is Dota, Which has tons of heros with passive stat walls, Turtle tactics, and extremely complicated mechanics(That believe it or not dont have to do with micro, Rather When to stack, farm, push, where to stand, where LoS is, Etc etc.) That is hard to get into. Being an Esport has little to do with how the game plays. As someone who for a while was in the “High skill” Bracket of dota, I very rarely needed to time crap super fast or use lightning reflexes/Abuse tells. It was “This dudes skill set is X, And he has items Y, he is capable of doing Z” You see an engie with a rifle, you already know what his first 5 skills are and you know what each kit he does, so you need to prepare for that.

Pokemon is another EXTREMELY complex Esport(despite it being casual id still call it an Esport) That has huge skill based play that are based less on Mechanical skill and more on match up knowledge. A good prediction in mons turns your bad match up into a sweep. You dont counterplay in pokemon, you prevent them from using their tools from hitting you.

I see so many complaints of “Passive play” When almost all high level Esport play abuses the fact of Passive stats.

Mao is extremely strong in league right now, You ant counter his heal, or stop him from farming. He is good cause he is a huge stat wall with CC.

Carries in dota are litterly just walls of stats used to run over the enemy after you get items.

MTG, the best cards are not Those with sick nasty combos and good abilities, a 4/4 vanilla for 2 is the best card you can get, because its cost effective.

Basicly, GW2 will never be a good Esport because its way to shallow and is based way to much on reaction and less on the substance of the game. Atleast from my experience.

To clear it up since I tend to ramble, GW needs more substance, and more emphasis on out playing my opponent in more then one way. Right now GW2 amounts to “My active defense was better played then his, so I win” Which is very boring to watch and has no depth.

And thus, why many, many people state this game will never be an E-sport, because you’ve effectively summed up the one major thing that all of those games have in common: Diversity.

As it stands, the game is far too unbalanced in sPvP and only a few select builds are considered usable. It has nothing to do with the reflex speed or anything of the matter as though these other games don’t have or need it – go watch faker play Zed – there is no real readable counterplay but he does find himself killed in MLG due to quick reflexes on his opponents’ behalf and build setups.

The issue with GW2’s sPvP is that because the pool of effective builds is so small – even in the very low tiers – all that the game actually boils down to is dodging and reflexes, for the gearing process/resource blocking strategies that exist in other games like League/DotA/Smite are not applicable. You can’t shut down a DPS character in sPvP by denying it early kills and getting “fed.” Even pokemon, you need to understand this diversity and try and dynamically learn how to counterplay your opponent. All you can do in GW2 is run a better spec and/or dodge better. MAYBE you can get a chance to change builds/utilities in-game, but that’s only applicable if your team comp would allow for such flexibility to create a dynamic environment.

Frankly, if food wasn’t allowed in WvW, I’d actually call it much more balanced, diverse, and competitive than sPvP. And WvW sells a lot more copies of the game than sPvP does, especially when the top dogs for E-sports/MLG are all free titles save Starcraft.

DeceiverX.8361:

And thus, why many, many people state this game will never be an E-sport, because you’ve effectively summed up the one major thing that all of those games have in common: Diversity.

To be far, there forums discussions claim otherwise in as many threads as the forums here do. That is even more evident in many other E-sports tournaments, when both teams are actually given a certain amount of chances to block out a character, profession, or class from the other team, or even both teams.

I hardly call forced diversity, through a method of artificially prohibiting players or teams from using characters, professions, or class’s as diversity. It is only diverse when teams and players show diversity organically, not when forced to through black out a veto rules that cause said diversity.

Care to elaborate? I see no real evidence supporting your claim.

DeceiverX.8361:

Care to elaborate? I see no real evidence supporting your claim.

No evidence?

Many games during tourny’s such as Dota 2 for example, offer each team a certain amount of chances to black out a character from play. Each team has the same amount of picks. This is often used to block the other team from choosing characters, classes, or profession they thrive at. It happens a very large number of Esports games.

Sorry, I was under the impression that this was fairly common knowledge.

Carighan.6758:

It’s a MMORPG. It has a very heavy PvE side, it has a quite unique potential PvP format in WvW, but many of its balancing- and PvP-resources are bound in emulating something other games build around the concept of eSports already do far better.

Such as? And don’t you dare say MOBAs because those games do not deliver at all what GW2 does right when it comes to PvP.

I’d love to see more standalone 3rd person controlled, ability-centered arena pvp games that do not make you level up anew each game with in-depth character building as GW2 features. Alas I don’t know anything that comes even close in the pvp aspect.

Also characters with premade design and story/lore are boring and suck.

How can you make something an e-sport when it’s not able to be balanced?

Sunshine.4680:

How can you make something an e-sport when it’s not able to be balanced?

• By toning down the extremes from a game
  - guardians can be more tough, but can’t bunker endlessly
  - extreme glass spikes are toned down so fights are not ended instantly when a third player comes in for example (Which gives that team a HUGE advantage from the bat, as often seen in the tournaments)
  - extreme evading
  - extreme everything

Spikes must be coordinated, and can be caught easier. Gives more room for splits and other strategies (like in GW1 http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EFWvdyCk1Uo)

• Make all skills active abilities
  - Healing Signet
  - Ranger Spirits
  - Other AI and signets to some degree

• Have counterplay for every spec
  - Some of the greatest spikes in game have no telegraph (or slight)
  - Some spikes take < 1 second to pull off
  - (A fight between X and a P/D thief is lame)

• Understandable fun to watch game mode
  - Conquest is fun, but there are all sepperate fights going on. The camera can only be at one spot at the time
  - Going back to some of GW1 game modes would be interesting if implemented right

This question is probably like asking, “What is the meaning of life?”. Regardless of that, I’m going to ask it anyway… Why the hell doesn’t this company take advantage of a good thing they got going and make a game solely based on 3rd person PvP combat? Right now the gaming industry is showing us that PvP sells much better than PvE, so why not focus on PvP?!

Grimreaper.5370:

This question is probably like asking, “What is the meaning of life?”. Regardless of that, I’m going to ask it anyway… Why the hell doesn’t this company take advantage of a good thing they got going and make a game solely based on 3rd person PvP combat? Right now the gaming industry is showing us that PvP sells much better than PvE, so why not focus on PvP?!

Probably because for MMOs in particular, the industry is not showing that PvP sells much better. At least no information we have points to that. Players are largely in it for the PvE.

dancingmonkey.4902:

DeceiverX.8361:

Care to elaborate? I see no real evidence supporting your claim.

No evidence?

Many games during tourny’s such as Dota 2 for example, offer each team a certain amount of chances to black out a character from play. Each team has the same amount of picks. This is often used to block the other team from choosing characters, classes, or profession they thrive at. It happens a very large number of Esports games.

Sorry, I was under the impression that this was fairly common knowledge.

I was referring to your expression how that blocking opponents out of their selections adversely affects diversity.

Frankly, the reason it’s implemented into the game to begin with is to do promote diversity by preventing teams from building compositions of blatantly overpowered character choices, or making teams compromise strategically before the game even begins. Characters considered not viable or situationally useful by design thus have their shining moments when worked around the bans. If no bans took place, every team would have the same composition every time – it’d be like if players were not allowed to be traded in sports teams until they retired. That’d make for a really lame spectator sport, don’t you think? Especially when once one team wins the series the first year by a landslide, they’ll probably keep doing so, and people will just know the victors before it even begins.

You can’t apply that logic here, though, since our selection is much smaller. Consider those games for a minute, where say, in a given ranked game of league, the matchup consists of quite literally one of quintillions of combinations. A few bans will not severely affect the diversity in the game. What’s much, much more unhealthy for the E-sport scene is a metagame, or strictly speaking, all of these possibilities not designed around one static way of playing.

So I’ll ask again. Where’s your evidence?

I think what holding GW2 back is its too complicated to watch there are a lot of skills going off very fast making it more of a game to play and less of a game to watch. Its like watching a SF game vs watching a anime/marval fighter game. SF tends to be a lot slower and easier to read what going on where in anime/marval fighters games a lot is happening and if you have no ideal about the games it seems like spam.

There is something there for GW2 for esports but the spvp needs to be simplified or every thing needs to be slowed down some or skills need to have less effects but more unique.

DeceiverX.8361:

dancingmonkey.4902:

DeceiverX.8361:

Care to elaborate? I see no real evidence supporting your claim.

No evidence?

Many games during tourny’s such as Dota 2 for example, offer each team a certain amount of chances to black out a character from play. Each team has the same amount of picks. This is often used to block the other team from choosing characters, classes, or profession they thrive at. It happens a very large number of Esports games.

Sorry, I was under the impression that this was fairly common knowledge.

I was referring to your expression how that blocking opponents out of their selections adversely affects diversity.

Frankly, the reason it’s implemented into the game to begin with is to do promote diversity by preventing teams from building compositions of blatantly overpowered character choices, or making teams compromise strategically before the game even begins. Characters considered not viable or situationally useful by design thus have their shining moments when worked around the bans. If no bans took place, every team would have the same composition every time – it’d be like if players were not allowed to be traded in sports teams until they retired. That’d make for a really lame spectator sport, don’t you think? Especially when once one team wins the series the first year by a landslide, they’ll probably keep doing so, and people will just know the victors before it even begins.

You can’t apply that logic here, though, since our selection is much smaller. Consider those games for a minute, where say, in a given ranked game of league, the matchup consists of quite literally one of quintillions of combinations. A few bans will not severely affect the diversity in the game. What’s much, much more unhealthy for the E-sport scene is a metagame, or strictly speaking, all of these possibilities not designed around one static way of playing.

So I’ll ask again. Where’s your evidence?

I have offered plenty of evidence. Just because you chose to ignore it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

You can say what ever you like. It doesn’t change the fact that artificially forcing characters, professions, or classes out of a match in an artificial manner is literally a display of a lack of natural balance. If the balance was organic and natural, such a forced concept would not exist.

Carighan.6758:

Grimreaper.5370:

This question is probably like asking, “What is the meaning of life?”. Regardless of that, I’m going to ask it anyway… Why the hell doesn’t this company take advantage of a good thing they got going and make a game solely based on 3rd person PvP combat? Right now the gaming industry is showing us that PvP sells much better than PvE, so why not focus on PvP?!

Probably because for MMOs in particular, the industry is not showing that PvP sells much better. At least no information we have points to that. Players are largely in it for the PvE.

I understand MMO’s in general are based around PvE, and its a shame no ones trying to break out of the norm and try something a little different. Look at the numbers DOTA2 and LoL pull in, those games are two of the most popular online games in the world and they completely revolve around PvP. I don’t think its too farfetched to believe Anet could make a popular 3rd person combat game based around pvp. Just because no one hasn’t made a mmorpg solely based on pvp combat doesn’t mean it couldn’t work. Hopefully Mark Jacobs can show everyone whats up with his game, Camelot Unchained, and change the mmorpg scene for ever.

I really feel like GW2’s pvp could be the test subject for a new pvp based mmorpg title, the pvp in gw2 is what stands out to me more than anything else this game has to offer, this is why I’m still here playing this game! Like many of you, I only PvE when I’m “forced” to so I can obtain the gear I need to compete in PvP. Why wouldn’t Anet want to put more work into polishing up one of the greatest aspects of their own game? I know not everyone feels the same way as I do, but there is still no denying that PvP sells, while PvE just drags in bored veteran WoW players, which I suppose can make corporate a few bucks but why not aim for the bigger picture?

There’s been more PvP-centric MMOs in the past, Shadowbane and Age of Conan comes to mind. Ok, the latter we better don’t mention because ugh, the former did ok but never truly well.

There’s also DAoC, which until Trials of Atlantis (incidentally the expansion which drove the lion share of players away from the game) was pretty much full-PvP once you hit max level. That one was fairly successful, capping at ~400k players stable I think.

Probably a few more.

But in the end, the reason PvE is so popular is complex.
Like LoL or DotA2, WoW drew in the insane numbers it partially still has by peer pressure more than anything else. Look at MOBAs: they’re inherently unfriendly to newcomers. They’re meant to be due to their focus on the super highest end, but this also makes you wonder why so many would play it.
Well, easy. Most of their friends do + it’s free.

Similarly – though without the free but in return actually being accessible – WoW drew in an enormous crowd of players who really didn’t game, didn’t want to game (outside of WoW) and had 0 interest in any serious commitment unless it was in the process of playing with friendly, directly. Family, loved ones, friends, they all joined because well, their SOs, family or friends all played it.

So in short, to make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO?
Easy. Make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO.

Once you hit “critical mass”, you can draw in crazy amount of players. How to get there however, no clue. It seems no one has gotten close yet.

Carighan.6758:

There’s been more PvP-centric MMOs in the past, Shadowbane and Age of Conan comes to mind. Ok, the latter we better don’t mention because ugh, the former did ok but never truly well.

There’s also DAoC, which until Trials of Atlantis (incidentally the expansion which drove the lion share of players away from the game) was pretty much full-PvP once you hit max level. That one was fairly successful, capping at ~400k players stable I think.

Probably a few more.

But in the end, the reason PvE is so popular is complex.
Like LoL or DotA2, WoW drew in the insane numbers it partially still has by peer pressure more than anything else. Look at MOBAs: they’re inherently unfriendly to newcomers. They’re meant to be due to their focus on the super highest end, but this also makes you wonder why so many would play it.
Well, easy. Most of their friends do + it’s free.

Similarly – though without the free but in return actually being accessible – WoW drew in an enormous crowd of players who really didn’t game, didn’t want to game (outside of WoW) and had 0 interest in any serious commitment unless it was in the process of playing with friendly, directly. Family, loved ones, friends, they all joined because well, their SOs, family or friends all played it.

So in short, to make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO?
Easy. Make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO.

Once you hit “critical mass”, you can draw in crazy amount of players. How to get there however, no clue. It seems no one has gotten close yet.

No ones seems to be willing to take that daring leap into innovation, here are some of my thoughts that come to mind when thinking about a successful “innovative” mmorpg

-PvE with intelligent AI that would test your skills, think Vindictus boss fights, but lets take it a step further and actually make trash mobs provide some sort of mental engagement, yet soloable. IMO fights where you are FORCED to dodge/block/counter some form of attack or be completely obliterated is a step in the right direction. There needs to be a challenge, and the steps you must take in order to succeed should be quite apparent, but also challenging. Not sure if many of you played Vindictus but there were boss fights which were designed for a “group” of players to take on, but also were soloable if the player was skilled enough. People would literally post videos of themselves soloing a lvl 20 boss at lvl 3 because they could counter/avoid a boss’ attack at all times. You could also obtain titles that you could flaunt around to the community, proving you soloed a boss which was meant to be a group encounter… If an MMORPG wants to revolve around PvE, they should make it a lot less mindless!

-PvP that supports even-numbered fights with great counterplay options, how to accomplish this? I have no idea other than having a game match mode that only allows a fixed numbered amount of people to join (e.g. 5v5) It would be really cool though if open world pvp had specific areas that promoted enemies to battle each other in small numbers. A constant flow of low traffic if you will, maybe something in the air would kill off a big enough group that huddled together in this general area?

Carighan.6758:

So in short, to make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO?
Easy. Make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO.

Once you hit “critical mass”, you can draw in crazy amount of players. How to get there however, no clue. It seems no one has gotten close yet.

You say that but…

http://www.eveonline.com/

Substance E.4852:

Carighan.6758:

So in short, to make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO?
Easy. Make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO.

Once you hit “critical mass”, you can draw in crazy amount of players. How to get there however, no clue. It seems no one has gotten close yet.

You say that but…

http://www.eveonline.com/

I will never understand why people like playing that game but yes I guess there is… that… The combat in that game felt so passive it was as though I was watching a boring movie.

Grimreaper.5370:

Substance E.4852:

Carighan.6758:

So in short, to make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO?
Easy. Make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO.

Once you hit “critical mass”, you can draw in crazy amount of players. How to get there however, no clue. It seems no one has gotten close yet.

You say that but…

http://www.eveonline.com/

I will never understand why people like playing that game but yes I guess there is… that… The combat in that game felt so passive it was as though I was watching a boring movie.

True and that’s why it works. It’s 100% tactics and planning based, presentation is an afterthought. CCP doesn’t care about being an Esport and the people who invest their time in the game don’t much care either.

It’s when you think “well if Valve and Riot can do it then so can I” that you run into problems in the same way MMO’s fail when they try to be “WoW 2.0”

Substance E.4852:

Grimreaper.5370:

Substance E.4852:

Carighan.6758:

So in short, to make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO?
Easy. Make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO.

Once you hit “critical mass”, you can draw in crazy amount of players. How to get there however, no clue. It seems no one has gotten close yet.

You say that but…

http://www.eveonline.com/

I will never understand why people like playing that game but yes I guess there is… that… The combat in that game felt so passive it was as though I was watching a boring movie.

True and that’s why it works. It’s 100% tactics and planning based, presentation is an afterthought. CCP doesn’t care about being an Esport and the people who invest their time in the game don’t much care either.

It’s when you think “well if Valve and Riot can do it then so can I” that you run into problems in the same way MMO’s fail when they try to be “WoW 2.0”

Except PvP is a pretty vague term when it comes to building a game around this concept. I never implied that Anet should make their own MOBA, not sure if you thought I was heading in that direction or not.

Thats a great point, in regards to “Bans” Pokemon fits into “Tierlists” (atleast in teh accepted casual esport, the official tourneys are ninetendo so they are much more…. child friendly, with less restrictions. And are always in 2v2 for the most part so yeh…) So your mons have to be in the same weight class essentially to play ball. Essentially banning out your opponents from having certain mons.

AS for dota/league, There is alot of champs so there is more bans. And is used to create once again, another diversity/dynamic to take into account. if you make a 5 man combo it can be destroyed if one gets banned. so you have to play around this dynamic.

WvW/spvp in this game has none of these dynamics. It litterly has nothing. sPvP is more or less hold points win game, which is stale and belittles it to favor certain set ups while not allowing others to flourish due to poor game type.

Wvw is imo the worst though because its sorta not competitive and never will be, its “Welp their server has more dudes in the map then we do, rip” If anything id like to see GvG brought back. GvG had alot of potential and was someting I love in gw1. GW1 pvp was just plain better due to more depth of skills etc.

So really, honestly, This game just needs more depth to get to a point where it can reach a higher skill.

Grimreaper.5370:

Substance E.4852:

Grimreaper.5370:

Substance E.4852:

Carighan.6758:

So in short, to make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO?
Easy. Make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO.

Once you hit “critical mass”, you can draw in crazy amount of players. How to get there however, no clue. It seems no one has gotten close yet.

You say that but…

http://www.eveonline.com/

I will never understand why people like playing that game but yes I guess there is… that… The combat in that game felt so passive it was as though I was watching a boring movie.

True and that’s why it works. It’s 100% tactics and planning based, presentation is an afterthought. CCP doesn’t care about being an Esport and the people who invest their time in the game don’t much care either.

It’s when you think “well if Valve and Riot can do it then so can I” that you run into problems in the same way MMO’s fail when they try to be “WoW 2.0”

Except PvP is a pretty vague term when it comes to building a game around this concept. I never implied that Anet should make their own MOBA, not sure if you thought I was heading in that direction or not.

Basically, my point was that eve works as a pvp centric game the same way GW1 worked as an MMO in the hayday of WoW. By being completely different.

Trying to inject what works for other popular platforms will likely only backfire.

Substance E.4852:

Grimreaper.5370:

Substance E.4852:

Grimreaper.5370:

Substance E.4852:

Carighan.6758:

So in short, to make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO?
Easy. Make a truly successful PvP-centric MMO.

Once you hit “critical mass”, you can draw in crazy amount of players. How to get there however, no clue. It seems no one has gotten close yet.

You say that but…

http://www.eveonline.com/

I will never understand why people like playing that game but yes I guess there is… that… The combat in that game felt so passive it was as though I was watching a boring movie.

True and that’s why it works. It’s 100% tactics and planning based, presentation is an afterthought. CCP doesn’t care about being an Esport and the people who invest their time in the game don’t much care either.

It’s when you think “well if Valve and Riot can do it then so can I” that you run into problems in the same way MMO’s fail when they try to be “WoW 2.0”

Except PvP is a pretty vague term when it comes to building a game around this concept. I never implied that Anet should make their own MOBA, not sure if you thought I was heading in that direction or not.

Basically, my point was that eve works as a pvp centric game the same way GW1 worked as an MMO in the hayday of WoW. By being completely different.

Trying to inject what works for other popular platforms will likely only backfire.

The whole idea I’m trying to get across was to create something that wasn’t mindless and has some essence. I only used specific games as a reference, I never said Anet should just copy feature x from game y.

Let me ask you and everyone reading this a question, do you honestly enjoy grinding mobs for currency/materials that are so easy to defeat you could kill these creatures in your sleep? Is this concept actually fun for any of you? After a few hours I’d imagine anyone with a brain gets bored of doing this. THIS is what the MMO market needs to STOP making us do. This atrocious mindless self indulgence we call PvE is not something most of us enjoy when it comes to being forced to grind the same mobs 100,000x times in order to finally obtain the result we have been long waiting for. I understand the point of a time sync for the sake of business, but at least make the journey to our final destination entertaining… please?

IMO we should have to face challenging tasks to obtain the rewards we seek, these tasks shouldn’t have to be repeated 1000 times either. I’m not saying Anet should make us group up to fight X boss because he hits so hard, so often, you couldn’t possibly avoid all attacks and therefore need 1 person tanking and 5+ people healing. Group challenges should be soloable, hard as hell to do so but soloable, this way there is a difficulty level for all kinds of gamers to enjoy, you cater to the casuals by letting them easily complete an event by grouping and also let that hardcore player have his fun as well.

With all that being said, I believe that GW2’s PvP is far superior to its PvE; I don’t have any statistic to prove what I’m about to say but based on my intuition Anet would be better off heavily devoting their time fixing up the WvW/SPvP side of the game. The PvP in GW2 is Anets diamond in the rough where their PvE as of now, is nothing special.

“Trying to inject what works for other popular platforms will likely only backfire.”

This is exactly why focusing on PvE will eventually lead to the downfall of this game unless they come up with something revolutionary.

Yes but “not mindless” is actually rather difficult.

For example, EVE Online’s balance never even remotely tries to make player skill a factor. If you got inferior numbers or most importantly if the enemy ship happens to counteract yours loadout-wise, good luck with that uphill battle.
This works extremely well in EVE. Trying to make that more about player- and less about “character”-skill (read: ship stats/context) would make people quit most likely, as that’s not why they play.

But compare GW2. How would players here react if classes hardcountered each other, TF2-style? If the team depended on a one-of-each-or-more setup because each class left a sizeable hole if not present?
I doubt they’d like that. It’s always all about “player skill” here. Yet, on paper a computer-RPG is not much different from a simulation in that it tries to care about character/object first, player “skill” is an afterthought.

It’s just an inherently divergent design wish. MMORPGs by nature aren’t suited for “skill-based combat”. Not much, at least. Sure it can be stapled on, but it will always feel exactly like that: stapled-on.

Maybe to truly make GW2 a PvP-useful game, the whole idea of us players always having even odds determined by player skill only has to leave?
TF2-like balance I could see work at least a bit better. If the core of fight-balance was a set of hard-countering setups and classes, that should be easy to implement and convey to the player in the UI.

Grimreaper.5370:

“Trying to inject what works for other popular platforms will likely only backfire.”

This is exactly why focusing on PvE will eventually lead to the downfall of this game unless they come up with something revolutionary.

But… GW2 is not a PvP-centric game with someone trying to inject PvE into it. It’s quite PvE-centric, even it’s main PvP-mode, WvW, has a lot of more PvE-like elements with a strong non-player-vs-player component and trying to outmove instead of outfight the enemy.

It’s the opposite. It’s PvE-centric and people (you included :P ) are trying to inject something which works in other games (an esports-focus) into it more than it should have. Well ok, so are some devs, and honestly I have no idea what they are doing. Even Microsoft doesn’t hold onto a clearly not working concept as long as they do.

Carighan I wasn’t referring to EVE and to be honest, I don’t care about what works/doesn’t work or even how “difficult” that game might be. That game is nothing like GW2; I’m interested in solving issues which exist in GW2.

“But compare GW2. How would players here react if classes hardcountered each other, TF2-style?”

Classes in GW2 do currently hard counter one another, this is something I want Anet to avoid.

“It’s just an inherently divergent design wish. MMORPGs by nature aren’t suited for “skill-based combat”.”

You only feel this way because this is all you know, all you have ever seen. MMO combat has mainly been the way it has been due to server latency issues, this WILL change, and is slowly but surely changing already.

“It’s the opposite. It’s PvE-centric and people (you included :P ) are trying to inject something which works in other games (an esports-focus) into it more than it should have. Well ok, so are some devs, and honestly I have no idea what they are doing. Even Microsoft doesn’t hold onto a clearly not working concept as long as they do.”

If you honestly think trying to implement skillful based combat is wrong, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I don’t think you truly believe this though, you said it your self that class X hard-countering class Y would probably upset some/most of the playerbase, and it does. Classes DO currently hard-counter others in this game. Allowing people to skillfully outplay a class that SHOULD hard-counter them (because of the nature of their class mechanic vs the opponents class mechanic) would alleviate much player frustration.

I don’t like the fact that I can defeat some players because of my classes passive attributes being much stronger than theirs, it especially bugs me that I can defeat a specific class so badly they had NO chance what so ever, even if I ate every single burst combo they threw at me. I want to know that the players class mechanic it self has the potential to completely stomp mine, I want to know I defeated an enemy player because I outplayed them.

The only thing holding back GW2 from being an esport is the balance team. If they can get some new people in that group, this game has great potential. You can’t have an esport with so many under/over powered skills and then taking 5-6 months to release any balance adjustments.

The reason why I’m here actually is because of the action/skill-based gameplay. As are many others, and it was a massive part of their marketing thing since it allowed for endgame content to be available relatively easily.

I’m quite happy to be off the gear treadmill in all honesty, and I have absolutely no intention on going back to one even if it’s “more balanced.”

It has much less to do with the strategy in place but the overall handling of the game content and class balance in general; simply, ANet is just slacking in this department and thus failing to properly market their game as a competitive one since it so obviously isn’t.

style.6173:

The only thing holding back GW2 from being an esport is the balance team. If they can get some new people in that group, this game has great potential. You can’t have an esport with so many under/over powered skills and then taking 5-6 months to release any balance adjustments.

Assuming everything IS balanced, 5-6 months is fine. I think Arenanet just has unrealistic views on their game.

Doesn’t matter if faces change on the balance team. Whatever the top dawgs want goes in and out of this game…

Carighan.6758:

There’s also DAoC, which until Trials of Atlantis (incidentally the expansion which drove the lion share of players away from the game) was pretty much full-PvP once you hit max level. That one was fairly successful, capping at ~400k players stable I think.

TOA didn’t kill DAOC’s numbers, WOW did. DAOC population actually went up after TOA.