GW2 going into e-sports

nariusseldon

http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/

and i quote "As eSports becomes a staple in the games industry as a way to reach new audiences and extend the existing experience, a lot of games have recently entered the realm of competitive gaming."

"By entering the ESL Pro League, ArenaNet is leveraging its player-versus-player style game play, and is trying to offer a broader experience."

kitarad

Yes I think PvP does lend itself to esports  more readily.

Righteous_Rock

Realm v realm esport , definitely going to be popular. Who will win this one johhny, zerg from realm x has 80 players, oh but wait, it looks like zerg from realm y has , yes they have 150 players zerg x has got thier hands full, stay tuned folks this ones going to be intense

muffins89

they've been trying to get into esports since they announced gw2 in 2010.

Jonnyp2

I feel like this ship sailed after they released an allegedly competitive pvp game with no matchmaking system.  It was fun to play for a couple months, but queuing up with a full group and facing a legitimately competitive team once every 10 or so tournaments got stale pretty quickly.  Conversely I'm sure it would have been pretty bad for a more casual player to face a group of "tryhard nerds" every other time they tried to queue.  Would have been nice if they made this push early on when far more quality players were actually playing the game.

thinktank001

Their product isn't designed to support this type of environment so I don't really understand how they hope to capitalize on this type of marketing.   I did watch a bit of a tournament or championship where it was a small party vs. party in an arena and it looked like a mess and extremely boring.  It might have a chance if they push it towards the realm of LOL with a " defend your castle " map, but I don't see any future if they stick with team frag matches. 

nariusseldon

muffins89 said:

they've been trying to get into esports since they announced gw2 in 2010.

It looks like it is not easy .. they are not really getting into it until Dec .. so it took them more than 5 years.

JamesGoblin

nariusseldon said:

muffins89 said:

they've been trying to get into esports since they announced gw2 in 2010.

It looks like it is not easy .. they are not really getting into it until Dec .. so it took them more than 5 years.

If my memory serves me well, they are trying esports since 1883.
I wish them luck this time (they will certainly need it).

nariusseldon

JamesGoblin said:

nariusseldon said:

muffins89 said:

they've been trying to get into esports since they announced gw2 in 2010.

It looks like it is not easy .. they are not really getting into it until Dec .. so it took them more than 5 years.

If my memory serves me well, they are trying esports since 1883.
I wish them luck this time (they will certainly need it).

lol ...

Personally I think the e-sports market is getting crowded. There are already a lot of big games out there (LoL, SC2, CS, WoT ...). How many big popular physical sports are there? 10? 20? 

How many e-sports the player base can support?

Although I cannot fault them to try to grab a piece of this huge market. 

Baitness

ANet has been trying to push GW2 instanced PvP as an esport for ages.  Every time I ever bothered to pay attention though, they were struggling from balance problems too large to be an esport.  I think it takes a lot more dedication and time than ANet realizes, and I don't think they are willing to put that in.  I really get the impression that they see the crazy cash flow popular esports games get as something they deserve rather than something they need to earn.

nariusseldon

Baitness said:

ANet has been trying to push GW2 instanced PvP as an esport for ages.  Every time I ever bothered to pay attention though, they were struggling from balance problems too large to be an esport.  I think it takes a lot more dedication and time than ANet realizes, and I don't think they are willing to put that in. 

they just did ... and they are releasing it in Dec.

Baitness

nariusseldon said:

Baitness said:

ANet has been trying to push GW2 instanced PvP as an esport for ages.  Every time I ever bothered to pay attention though, they were struggling from balance problems too large to be an esport.  I think it takes a lot more dedication and time than ANet realizes, and I don't think they are willing to put that in. 

they just did ... and they are releasing it in Dec.

Actually from what my friends say the balance is the worst it has ever been, with the new class being very powerful and warrior dropping out completely.

nariusseldon

Baitness said:

nariusseldon said:

Baitness said:

ANet has been trying to push GW2 instanced PvP as an esport for ages.  Every time I ever bothered to pay attention though, they were struggling from balance problems too large to be an esport.  I think it takes a lot more dedication and time than ANet realizes, and I don't think they are willing to put that in. 

they just did ... and they are releasing it in Dec.

Actually from what my friends say the balance is the worst it has ever been, with the new class being very powerful and warrior dropping out completely.

I did not say that they are doing it well. I am only saying they are putting in enough money & effort to make it happen. With all the competition, i dont know if they are going to make it, but it is clear that they are actually going to try. 

Solar_Prophet

This isn't going to end well for anybody. I just don't see any MMO which has to balance classes around PvP and PvE ever being suitable for e-sports. One side is always going to suffer. The only way to do it would be to build the game and balance classes solely for PvP, then design all the PvE content around that balance. 

I've seen way too many fun classes and abilities get rendered useless in PvE for the sake of PvP balance, with Blizzard being the #1 offender in this category ever since they released arenas for WoW. Bioware is close behind. 

Baitness

nariusseldon said:

Baitness said:

nariusseldon said:

Baitness said:

ANet has been trying to push GW2 instanced PvP as an esport for ages.  Every time I ever bothered to pay attention though, they were struggling from balance problems too large to be an esport.  I think it takes a lot more dedication and time than ANet realizes, and I don't think they are willing to put that in. 

they just did ... and they are releasing it in Dec.

Actually from what my friends say the balance is the worst it has ever been, with the new class being very powerful and warrior dropping out completely.

I did not say that they are doing it well. I am only saying they are putting in enough money & effort to make it happen. With all the competition, i dont know if they are going to make it, but it is clear that they are actually going to try. 

Sorry, I misunderstood you.  My bad!

stayontarget

I wonder if anyone would watch it, my guess would be no.

Luiden

Isn't GW2 a P2W game?  Don't they have a cash shop?  How can you do esports with that?

saurus123

you guys talk about balance and giving wow, LoL, sc2, dota as examples lol

APThug

GW2 has been pushing for esports much harder then any MMO I've seen. Maybe Blade and Soul may fair better since they have 1v1 arena's etc.  But gw2 already has casters who live stream pvp tournaments matches all the time and commentate them.

Many of these tournaments involve real world money that teams can win. If thats not esports then what is? Its literately groups of people playing a video game together to win money, whose also been viewed by 100s of people, and be commented upon. 

APThug

Robokapp said:

saurus123 said:

you guys talk about balance and giving wow, LoL, sc2, dota as examples lol

chess is balanced. ever see online tournaments?

Yes, its called chess dot com. 

nerovergil

gw2 is a great game, esport is a good thing

BillMurphy

DMKano said:

Here's a thought - maybe make an esport game instead of trying to change GW2 into something it's not.

If I remember right, a friend told me once they were working on something for eSports after GW2 came out. But they pulled it back because they just didn't like the way it was going. If WoW's Arenas can have a following, they figure GW2's PVP can too.

Thupli

No particle effect slider = poor watching conditions

Heretique

Can't force eSports on a game.

YashaX

Luiden said:

Isn't GW2 a P2W game?  Don't they have a cash shop?  How can you do esports with that?

Pvp in gw2 has no gear or level imbalances- everyone gets the equivalent of a top level toon with all skills unlocked and you pick what gear you want to use (gives different bonuses). 

As others have mentioned though the class balance is the worst it has ever been atm because of skills they added in the expansion.

Outside of class balance though I think there are some structural issues with the game that work against it becoming a popular esport. For example the "Conquest" style gamemode is kind of abstract to watch (compared to say a moba) and the gameplay has become very spammy with lots of aoe making it hard to identify good plays.

Axehilt

Righteous_Rock said:

Realm v realm esport , definitely going to be popular. Who will win this one johhny, zerg from realm x has 80 players, oh but wait, it looks like zerg from realm y has , yes they have 150 players zerg x has got thier hands full, stay tuned folks this ones going to be intense

Haha, nice!

Of course MMO PVP will never become a popular eSport.  Small team sizes are essentially mandatory for a successful competitive scene.

Which is why it was odd that SOE/Daybreak persisted so long in professing their desire for Planetside to be an eSport game.  The game's core differentiating feature was its massive combined-arms FPS combat, so it was doomed if it tried for small-scale matches.  But it was similarly doomed when it tried large-scale (40 player team) matches.  With large teams it's difficult for a match to tell an interesting story, and almost impossible to focus on individual heroics, and perhaps worst of all it's impossible for fresh new competitors to emerge. Basically you get a dominant 40-player team and they have all the best players, and they absorb all the best players from other teams (because those players want to win and be surrounded by pro teammates) which results in an extremely stagnant competitive environment where it's nearly impossible to dethrone that team.

Same factors apply to any MMO combat.  But of course the competitive scene in GW2 is small-scale PVP so it has a chance of working.