Guild Wars 2

Just watched the first few minutes from this match.

then I watched the first few minutes (of the actual match) of Dota (youtubegoogled for dota championship)

I played neither game(mode) but the main thing I noticed is that GW2 PvP is impossible to spectate if you are anything but a fly. everything is just way way waaaay too fast. Even if you speed up the dota match to twice the speed, the viewing experience is so much nicer, you can actually see things and begin to understand what is going on. Slowing down the gw2 video to 0.5 makes it viewable at least.

The gw2 game consists of flashes, sparkles and more flashes. the commentary feels removed from what you see on screen as for whatever they’re saying, it was already over 10 actions ago.
The changing of perspectives every few seconds doesn’t really help but I also got the feeling that it doesn’t matter too much either, since watching flashes & sparkles here or there doesn’t make a difference.

You see skill effects and not the players skills. And there is skill involved, a lot of it. I only know this because I play gw2 though and I would perish within seconds in this match.

Now, esports doesn’t mean the viewer needs to have a good experience but it would surely help to monetize this game mode.

Maybe I watched the wrong game mode though, I’ve heard about the moba style mode which sounds a lot more comprehensive, I couldn’t find it on the gw2 youtube.

Additionally, where are the explanations on team composition, builds and player introduction?
I also noticed, there are only 5 out of 9 professions in the game, this doesn’t look so good to a PvE player. Do the other classes really bring nothing to the team composition? is it because most professions can do mostly everything and don’t rely on specialists (pun intended)?

Why does PvP use the same skill set PvE does? Balancing must be close to impossible. It’s like balancing starcraft units for a counter strike game, just doesn’t make much sense.

Anything that brings players, viewers and cash to the game is great so I figured I’d share my thoughts when watching this game.

Sore topic, legendaries again…
The visuals are more likely to be done than the journey to get the legendaries themselves so perhaps consider releasing the skins without the crafting as a combined WvW & PvP reward.
Then add the precursor to the loot tables and see how the economy reacts.Then the rest.

Would be a waste to throw away the work that has been done so far but putting more stress on a very small team seems even worse.
Seemed like pulling the emergency break as the quality envisioned for the entire legendary procedure couldn’t have been met in a timely fashion.

I prefer more live content tailored to 99% of the player base though, looking forward to this.

The context to the trait unlocking, based on events was kinda nice, not being able to choose which trait/event you’d get wasn’t.
Unlocking itself doesn’t have to be bad, the current system is just too tedious and doesn’t lend itself well to the GW2 world where one can play in any region while progressing.

If there is some kind of unlock it would be nice if it supports the “play as you want” philosophy as in “play where and what you want”.

For instance, completing personal story steps would be a nice place to unlock traits of your choosing, while having the option to unlock them during open world content or WvW & PvP as well.

Great to see that the system will be revamped, I haven’t unlocked any traits willingly on new 80’s but I did stumble upon one or the other trait while running around the world.