I think some people are mixing up e-sports with elitism in this thread. I never felt directly harmed as a gamer by e-sports state of mind. On the other hand, elitist jackasses are not necessarly into e-sports. Plus, you can be elitist, but not a jackass.

While I will never be able to compete in the higher ranks and I plan to spend most of my time in PvE-land, I still hope that GW2 will do well as an e-sport.

To me it seems that Anet got a lot of experience and understanding of what both the casual and the highly competetive players want. Just look at some of the things Anet added to Guild Wars after release:

Monthly tournaments, rankings, skillusage charts, different PvP formats (not all of them great but hey...), observer mode, constant skill updates and a big one with separate skilleffects/cooldowns etc. depending on whether the skill was used in a PvE or a PvP setting.

Still to this day when I see a new guildname pop up as worldwide announcement when they win HA I often go to observer to see their match and to see if they have any GvG's on the list.

Imagine that: PvP'ers that play only for "fame", fun and cosmetic rewards? And their matches even bring enjoyment to casuals such as myself.

I really hope that Anets years of experience pays off. And I am not in the least worried that PvP skill balances will "nerf" my PvE experience!

Its not bad thread here ;)

Still I disagree with a few things OP, but mainly I think you overlooked huge flaw in Anet plan.

Servers browser seems like great idea, you can practice here, but you have to gather 10 people and its more than in GW1. You can play with a few friends here 1v1, 3v3 or anything but it wont help you for 5v5. You can even create game and wait for players to join. This can take a while even in games with huge playerbase (or mainly in these) and you have poor gaming experience even when they join (and not leave after a few secs).

If you look at most games, server browser is good when there is not enough players (so SEO based matchmaking wont work).

You have somehing like ranked matches for full teams of 5 players - automated tournaments. This will probably be the best option for any serious players and teams. But just by nature of it, you can win just buy playing A LOT of tournaments if there wont by any sort of penalty (or ELO).

You probably know where I am heading right now, GW2 NEEDs some kind of ELO because how its designed right now its just mindless grind. You have to LOSE something when you lose!!! Even in GW1 there was ELO for GvG. There should be some kind of ladder so maybe there will be ELO and its just unannounced feature.

Worst thing is, that there are tournaments for teams, there is server browser for very casual training or awfull game experience if you play with randoms. But there isn anounced any solo matchmaking so far. If you look at LoL (this kind of dont affect SC 2 as a solo game anyway :D). every pro player plays only a few team matches or tournaments, but they spent a lot of time in game. GW2 doesnt have anything for solo player who want to play serious game. Individual players also need ELO, because otherwise pro player will end up with some noob (who only play a lot) and both will be bored.

So ELO and solo queue lacks from GW2 right now and either of them arent even announced. You also need to make sure players wont leave solo game (implement some kind of leaver system). I think GW2 will fail miserably if serious players wont be able to play 90% of the time (where 10 are the tournaments and team games).

Originally posted by Spellshaper

Its not bad thread here ;)

Still I disagree with a few things OP, but mainly I think you overlooked huge flaw in Anet plan.

 

Servers browser seems like great idea, you can practice here, but you have to gather 10 people and its more than in GW1. You can play with a few friends here 1v1, 3v3 or anything but it wont help you for 5v5. You can even create game and wait for players to join. This can take a while even in games with huge playerbase (or mainly in these) and you have poor gaming experience even when they join (and not leave after a few secs).

If you look at most games, server browser is good when there is not enough players (so SEO based matchmaking wont work).

 

You have somehing like ranked matches for full teams of 5 players - automated tournaments. This will probably be the best option for any serious players and teams. But just by nature of it, you can win just buy playing A LOT of tournaments if there wont by any sort of penalty (or ELO).

You probably know where I am heading right now, GW2 NEEDs some kind of ELO because how its designed right now its just mindless grind. You have to LOSE something when you lose!!! Even in GW1 there was ELO for GvG. There should be some kind of ladder so maybe there will be ELO and its just unannounced feature.

 

Worst thing is, that there are tournaments for teams, there is server browser for very casual training or awfull game experience if you play with randoms. But there isn anounced any solo matchmaking so far. If you look at LoL (this kind of dont affect SC 2 as a solo game anyway :D). every pro player plays only a few team matches or tournaments, but they spent a lot of time in game. GW2 doesnt have anything for solo player who want to play serious game. Individual players also need ELO, because otherwise pro player will end up with some noob (who only play a lot) and both will be bored.

So ELO and solo queue lacks from GW2 right now and either of them arent even announced. You also need to make sure players wont leave solo game (implement some kind of leaver system). I think GW2 will fail miserably if serious players wont be able to play 90% of the time (where 10 are the tournaments and team games).

     Thank you, and thank you everyone for the great discussion. This is, to me, one of the best threads I've seen thanks to you guys. Actual debate and discussion. I've been involved in E-sports for a while and I find myself learning new things almost every post in here. So thanks for the responses on a topic very interesting to me.

     I have my reserves that you must absolutely be playing a game to jump into a game. I think guilds can create personal servers that allow only 5 people to either practice timed runs through maps or strategies in action. Even if you can't create your own practice server though (have they talked about server specifics yet?) I don't think it'll be very hard for most teams to organize a skirming group. Most teams have associated guilds and It would be easy to scrounge up 5 more people every now and then and have a skirmish group. Even if your operating as a seperate team presence for competition it shouldn't be too hard to find 5 people within your combined circles to play a few rounds with.

     That's all only necessary IF you can not create designated practice servers.

     As far as tournaments are concerned you do have the penalty of not qualifying for the monthly. You must win a weekly tournament to qualify for a monthly, and a monthly to get into the annual to compete for a free trip in the semi-finals and the grand pot.

     There is no negative penalty per-say other than not getting into the revered monthly tournament for your shot at an annual placement (where the huge pot rests).

     There is a ladder in that sense already. If you lose you are not qualified for the monthly and, thus, don't get to play in the finals. I believe that is like every sport out there. You don't have a ranking ladder in football, but if you lose to much you won't be playing in the playoffs. That's clearly enough for them to mind losing.

     I feel it may be the same here. I think rankings and ladder systems just add a layer of agony and frusteration to the experience. Even if you are casual you don't want to go down in rank in SC2. So every time you lose its this big frusteration. While going up a rank out of a hundred doesn't really provide you with much joy.

     I know this is human nature (SEE: loss aversion) but still. I think its actually better if there is no penalty for losing as far as a rank ding or anything but, rather, there is a loss of an opertunity. Lose and you can't progress. I think that will give the serious competitors reason to care about losing (they can't get into the big tournaments) without giving casual players angst.

     So, in light of that I don't think the game needs an ELO. Its got enough incentive to win without penalizing players directly. Just like in sports, you do not drop in rank if your team losses. I also don't agree that GW2 needs 1 v 1. This is specifically a team affair. All real pro-players will thus have a team. If you are competitive with PUG teams then you are just messing around really. There is no solo que because its not that kind of game. You can practice as 1 v 1 (as you stated) but I don't think there's any need to accomodate a solo scene here. I also doubt it would grow at all, most of the competition is so engrained in team-play with this game.

     When you can please give me your thoughts on these points.

Thanks for reply mate and I agree that this thread have some very interesting posts!

I still think there should be some risk in competetive gaming and not only reward. And more important thing is, that you should have more perofrmance levels than two (qualifiers to monthly and the rest). For example I want to be able to know if my team is in top 50, 100 or 200.

If you only have possitive points, it will end up about how often you play, not about how good you are.

There will be practice servers and you can rent a server. But as you could see in latest BWE, server based games are really trash and you cant have much fun there. In latest BWE there were games 1v1 2v2 ... 8v8 and some were even 3v4 , 6v7 or something like that. Thats something serious players wants to avoid and if "play now" button put them on these games, they will leave and will be angry (I was).

If you look at pro LoL players, they often casts from 5v5 ranked games, where they join alone and game get them another 4 players on equal level (and if you are a pro these games could be interetsing). Matchmaking will guarantee, that you end up in game 5v5 with players as good as you are.

Most people want to play when they have some precious time, they dont want to spend it by looking for players or in games 5v3 with noobs. So I am not talking about 1v1, but I am talking about queue for matchmaking (you can join alone or in 2 etc), where you are guaranteed 5v5 game with equal skilled players (and to measure skill, you need ELO, there is no other way).

I agree that pre-made teams are the best option, but if you ever played in some team game, you know that you spend only a fragment of time with this team. Other 90% of the time you are alone or with just 2 other mates from team. That precentage can differ from team to team, but its way more than 50% when you dont have your team available. And ArenaNet need to address this situation in a way that is satisfying for serious players (and server browsers games are FAAAAAAR from that).

Hmm, although the Esports thing does sound a bit interesting, as long as its kept seperate from the W v W v W PvP then i don't have a problem with it.

The only thing "eSport" (lol...) achieves for a game is a continuous stream of nerfs and dumbing down of all classes in a continuous attempt to balance them all, which is impossible. In the meantime, that ruins classes and sometimes the whole game for all the other players, those who actually pay for the game.

That's why I hope GW2 will never become some "eSport".

Originally posted by Phry

Hmm, although the Esports thing does sound a bit interesting, as long as its kept seperate from the W v W v W PvP then i don't have a problem with it.

I totally agree.  Although I think you'll see more interaction in the WvW side of the game simply because it's quite a bit easier to get in to, and there will be less pressure for the player. 

I'll probably dip into e-Sport myself with GW2, but I wouldn't expect it to appeal to everyone. That's what WvW is for. 

Originally posted by Phry

Hmm, although the Esports thing does sound a bit interesting, as long as its kept seperate from the W v W v W PvP then i don't have a problem with it.

I don't get why you call map control micro. To me map control is strategic, thus macro.

I'm a bit unsure as to why people would desire e-sports in a genre of gaming which is wholly unsuited to it.

I also notice the mention of micro and macro decision making.  There is little to no real macro strategy in e-sport games whatsoever, small team management and map awareness in small areas is micro management. In my opinion.

Originally posted by Nightshade55

Originally posted by Redemp

 Leagues a good game, enjoyable and skill based. I don't really care if they bastardized Dota in its mechanics. That said ... if not for Sc2 and LoL I would give exactly two flips about E-Sports because frankly the rest are boring to watch. As much as I love my taste of Gw2 I don't think its E-sport scene will get to loud , the game just doesn't make for good casting. The game is chaos , they want it to be chaos ... you won't be able to cast it like you would a Sc2 or Moba game.

 

Just my thoughts ..

 

     Actually thats exactly why GW2 will do well. In SC2 and LoL to understand any of the exciting bits you have to have prior knowledge of the game. Expansions are only exciting in SC2 when you know why its risky and rewarding. LoL is  pure chaos to people who don't know about it. GW2 on the other hand is immediately understandable. I'm not sure if you've watched a 5 v 5 yet, which is understandable. Durring our 8 v 8 though it was quite clear to tell what was going on. Its harder to tell what's going on when you have 40+ players but that's only natural. When you have an 8 v 8 or, especially, a 5 v 5 it is extremely easy to tell what's going on. Anet made it that way deliberately. All player effects are visable (crippled players limp, burning players are on fire, etc.). Every buff and debuff can be seen by looking at the character. AoE's have their radius shown on the ground, etc. Nothing takes place under the hood in this game. The audience can see exactly what's going on at all times. If your being damaged by bleeding you will lieterally be bleeding.

     That being said I do think it has a good chance and doing very well in the scene. We will see where it goes.

  I completely disagree and think you've missed my point. Watching an E-sport can only be as good as the people you have casting it, without the ability to keep the viewers entertained and informed during the course of a stream/tournament .... you won't have an audience. Guild Wars 2 PvP is chaos .... nothing spells this out quicker than an Elementalist playing properly and attunement switching. The casters won't have the ability to describe what is happening for one character let alone 10. It will in essence be a simple replay ,  where those of us who know whats going on ... know, and those who don't are lost. With Moba's ... you have a  set amount of abilities and cooldowns on each character, it can still be rather difficult to completely inform the viewer who's doing what. The games simply to fast and to chaotic, the audience knowing whats going on doesn't matter ... the point of the casters is to tell us whats going on, they won't be able to do that in the  cluster that is Gw2 pvp. If you find a casters that can ... he's an auctioneer, or its the slowest Gw2 pvp match ever.

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

The only thing "eSport" (lol...) achieves for a game is a continuous stream of nerfs and dumbing down of all classes in a continuous attempt to balance them all, which is impossible. In the meantime, that ruins classes and sometimes the whole game for all the other players, those who actually pay for the game.

That's why I hope GW2 will never become some "eSport".

 

ESport for an MMORPG is for those not good enough to play the eSport designed FPS but who want to feel "leet" with their pro-class tab targeting.

 Do I really need to explain how different Moba's are from Fps's or Strategy games are from Fps's?

Yeah .... that was really a very moronic comment, considering the E-Sport scene erupted with Sc2 and then LoL so its a much higher probability they are jumping from those two flavors than a Fps.

Originally posted by Redemp

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

The only thing "eSport" (lol...) achieves for a game is a continuous stream of nerfs and dumbing down of all classes in a continuous attempt to balance them all, which is impossible. In the meantime, that ruins classes and sometimes the whole game for all the other players, those who actually pay for the game.

That's why I hope GW2 will never become some "eSport".

 

ESport for an MMORPG is for those not good enough to play the eSport designed FPS but who want to feel "leet" with their pro-class tab targeting.

 Do I really need to explain how different Moba's are from Fps's or Strategy games are from Fps's?

Yeah .... that was really a very moronic comment, considering the E-Sport scene erupted with Sc2 and then LoL so its a much higher probability they are jumping from those two flavors than a Fps.

 

 

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by Redemp

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

The only thing "eSport" (lol...) achieves for a game is a continuous stream of nerfs and dumbing down of all classes in a continuous attempt to balance them all, which is impossible. In the meantime, that ruins classes and sometimes the whole game for all the other players, those who actually pay for the game.

That's why I hope GW2 will never become some "eSport".

 

ESport for an MMORPG is for those not good enough to play the eSport designed FPS but who want to feel "leet" with their pro-class tab targeting.

 Do I really need to explain how different Moba's are from Fps's or Strategy games are from Fps's?

Yeah .... that was really a very moronic comment, considering the E-Sport scene erupted with Sc2 and then LoL so its a much higher probability they are jumping from those two flavors than a Fps.

 

 

 

A MOBA is just a FPS but designed for eSport, my apologies for failing your anacronym test, my point stands.

A Moba is just a FPS designed for E-sports?

Really? What about a Moba besides the odd skill shot characters is in ANY WAY like a Fps?

Oh  nevermind ... I get it now, you're trolling ... time to ignore you.

Wait, wait, wait. You keep saying "some of us in the esport scene", remind me again WHO you are in the esport scene? What team are you part of? Who is your sponser? Have you done any interviews on any websites that we may have heard of?

Originally posted by bunnyhopper

I'm a bit unsure as to why people would desire e-sports in a genre of gaming which is wholly unsuited to it.

 

I also notice the mention of micro and macro decision making.  There is little to no real macro strategy in e-sport games whatsoever, small team management and map awareness in small areas is micro management. In my opinion.

 

I think he is referring to it as relative. For example managing your own personal skill set and cooldowns is micro whereas map control, spawn timing, etc etc is all macro.

Originally posted by bunnyhopper

I'm a bit unsure as to why people would desire e-sports in a genre of gaming which is wholly unsuited to it.

Matter of point of view. It's the same as some American Football fan saying that stadiums are made for American Football.

Anyway, you guys are derailing what was an humble and interesting OP into some kind of political-scientifical debate about what is and what is not E-Sports (or who is the OP). For one time that we have some humble E-Sports discussion, please respect the humble tone, because right now the more you will invoke the bad sides of E-Sports with your questions, the sooner they will show their ugly face.

Originally posted by Nevulus

Originally posted by bunnyhopper

I'm a bit unsure as to why people would desire e-sports in a genre of gaming which is wholly unsuited to it.

 

I also notice the mention of micro and macro decision making.  There is little to no real macro strategy in e-sport games whatsoever, small team management and map awareness in small areas is micro management. In my opinion.

 

I think he is referring to it as relative. For example managing your own personal skill set and cooldowns is micro whereas map control, spawn timing, etc etc is all macro.

Whilst I can understand that line of thinking, I can't agree with it personally. Small team combat on a (generally) small map has pretty much zero macromanagement. Sticking someone on a locale to observe the battle is not macromanagement.

Strategy that falls outside of the current battle but impacts upon it, or on the longer running contest is macromanagement. Cutting supply lines, economic warfare, rotating squad players and having tactics to win a league fit that remit better. The bigger picture, not the here and now battle.

But then, as I say that's just my opinion.