The State of Guild Wars 2 E-Sports

This is something I've been thinking about quite a lot recently actually. With more and more digital content being watched on streaming sites Twitch and the like, I was trying to think why Guild Wars 2 is so hard for me (as a 5 year veteran player) to watch. I think the answer lies in the games that are currently very well watched and viewed. CS:GO has a high viewer base and is a very easy e-sport to watch and understand for a non-vet player of the game, I believe this is mostly because your attention as a viewer doesn't constantly have to be divided, there is down time which is important for the viewers to take in what happened in the previous few seconds of a big event, such as a player dying or the bomb being planted/defused. There is only 1 main objective and the killing along the way is usually a quick process. Contrast this to Guild Wars 2 with bunker metas and such, every engagement between players takes a very long time comparatively, anywhere up to 2 minutes for a single engagement to have an outcome (this is the entire length of a round in CS:GO!). And while an engagement could be going on, on 1 point, there are another 2 points which may also have action going on within them with each player having access to a very high number of skills just makes the game very hard to commentate and follow. Same premise with Dota 2, every hero has few skills to use and although there are more than just the main objectives in dota (lanes to be pushed in etc) the engagements between the heroes is usually very fast to produce a victor of the situation.I think this leaves Guild Wars 2 in a bit of a sticky situation viewer-wise for the points previously mentioned already. I don't think the game will ever be at a point where each player will have a small number of skills, to help the commentating of the game, so where does this leave Guild Wars 2 in terms of e-sports? Is there a game mode within the game that could be easily watched? I also thought about raid tournaments or wvw tournaments where you more look at compositions to determine how a team became victorious rather than each individual play?What are your thoughts on this? Discuss! :)

The only thing in GW that would remotely be entertaining to watch is snowball mayhem and the CTF winter event.

Maybe wvw.

@Omar Aschi Popp.7496 said:The only thing in GW that would remotely be entertaining to watch is snowball mayhem and the CTF winter event.

Maybe wvw.

I think you could be on to something with CTF. Much like the whole bomb plant/defuse mechanic in CS:GO, it means the attention of the commentators will only ever have to be on one objective. Which I think will give the game more success when it comes to trying to approach the E-Sports genre. I think it would be cool to have an attack/defend style game mode, like say, for instance, having an instanced version of Stonemist castle and have each team take it in turns to attack and defend the castle from siege almost like overwatch's attack/defend game mode :D I think that would be better received.

It doesn't need to be eSports. Not everything needs to be eSports, much less a game with a very poor balancing history. The highest-viewer streamers I see are almost always Raid/WvW anyway. No one will ever care about structured mmo PvP because there are already far more interesting games to watch literally everywhere.

was dead them oment this game got ditched out of the ESL ...GW2 was never an esports game, and will never be one, especialyl not with this horrible state of game balance, that this game has since june 23rd of 2015 until today.

@Orpheal.8263 said:was dead them oment this game got ditched out of the ESL ...GW2 was never an esports game, and will never be one, especialyl not with this horrible state of game balance, that this game has since june 23rd of 2015 until today.

^

IMO GW2 PvP is closer to a fighting game than to a moba or these-kind-of-thingies. Commentary needs to be way more alike Tekken or SF.Don't get me wrong: I think this is actually good. I consider GW2 a good game, if poorly balanced, but a real, deep and interesting game. All the other "easy to swallow" stuff... its ok, but can't compare. Obviously this creates a conflict: to be an easy to watch or a complex to play thing.IMO e-sports can go do something with themselves. GW2 can't be one, shouldn't be one and will be far better when Anet acknowledge this.

Gw2 will never have a esports again because it was boring to watch eventhough i watched it. The truth is at the time the game was more of bunker, blow, and rotate. People dont want to see that they want to see engagement and people dropping from engagement, and holding a point is nothing new to the industry too. Also, everything is still apply condi and remove condi so that would be even worse to watch

last time anet tried this a good amount of the player base at the time . stopped logging into the game stopped playing !! doing this again or bring it back will not be a good thing for anet or the game !! I am so sure the player base will have something to say about it . if some kittens foolishly get that idea ever again !! not only that but it will kill pvp which is pretty much dead now. but will also kill this game out right if this is brought back or even given a thought too . guildwars2 is not a ESL E-SPORTS or E-SPORTS game at all . but I will say this thos that foolishly going down that road . well hope they are ready for the player base to give them a piece of their minds . .

What GW2 E-Sports?

To be more exact, there is no MMO which is a serious esport (to my knowledge).

Even WoWs esport community is tiny compared to the overall playerbase. Sure they get some numbers, but that's to be expected from a game with millions of players.

The reasons are many, the major ones I feel are:

• esport games must be easy to follow and fun to watch
• MMOs in general don't work well with pvp balance since most of the content starts as a pve design. Split skills will only go so far.
• MMOs in general are not that fun to watch since there is way to many skills. GW1 broke out of this niche by having a strict skill limit, mostly casted skills with obvious animations and no to big powercreep
• Good pvp games need a flat powercreep (or none at all ideally) so that playerskill and new strategies based in gameplay and balance can emerge, not based on which flavor of the month class comes out on top

The last time we had a drive for e-sports it nearly blew appart the pve game. I doubt arenanet is going to take that risk again. Especially now with raids and their expansion based business model working nicely.

WvW, now that is a different issue. I do believe watching some siege or cool bigscale organised zerg fighting could be fun. Unfortunately with alternating server links as well as other issues, you'd never be able to root for one team.

MMO's should stick to what they do best, varied content played in coop with large groups. Esports ruined gw2 for many years, hope its not coming back ever.

@WARIORSCHARGEING.2637 said:last time anet tried this a good amount of the player base at the time . stopped logging into the game stopped playing !! doing this again or bring it back will not be a good thing for anet or the game !! I am so sure the player base will have something to say about it . if some kittens foolishly get that idea ever again !! not only that but it will kill pvp which is pretty much dead now. but will also kill this game out right if this is brought back or even given a thought too . guildwars2 is not a ESL E-SPORTS or E-SPORTS game at all . but I will say this thos that foolishly going down that road . well hope they are ready for the player base to give them a piece of their minds . .

Prob alot of ppl stoped playing because content drought.

@Cuon Alpinus.7645 said:It doesn't need to be eSports. Not everything needs to be eSports, much less a game with a very poor balancing history. The highest-viewer streamers I see are almost always Raid/WvW anyway. No one will ever care about structured mmo PvP because there are already far more interesting games to watch literally everywhere.

For most of the game the highest viewed consistent streamers were PvP players (Helseth, Teldo, etc), the PvP tournaments got way more than GvG or PvE speed run things, and that includes even the player run tournaments that got 5k viewers, even now it is not uncommon when you view Twitch that highest viewed streamer is Sindrener, but then I guess these days you often have the top GW2 streamer with a mere 300-400 viewers, where as Teldo or Helseth would get around 1K in the past (and you'd have a bunch of others on 300+) when the game was more healthy.

Saying that I have no idea why the OP is going on about e-sports in a 5 year old MMORPG, like 99% of other MMORPGs at this stage the playerbase is in a permanent state of decline across the entire game, e-sports is basically irrelevant at this point.

All the AoE abilities and flashy animations make it very hard to watch. It's not very appealing.