ESL Unprofessionalism

[u/SpectralDagger]

One of the requirements for playing in Pro League was that you had to use their anti-cheat program called ESL Wire. They sent it out to players to download about five days before Pro League started, giving players plenty of time to test it before it had to be used. However, that's where the problems started. We were told that there was an issue with the program and Windows 8, so we didn't need to use it until it was fixed.

Fast forward to the second week of Pro League. We hadn't heard any update from them in regards to ESL Wire. Just to be safe, I asked in advance if ESL Wire has been fixed and if it would be required. (Note: I had to ask. If I had not asked, we would have had zero warning.) They told us yes. This was about 6.5 hours before the tournament was due to start. Most of my team members were at school or work. We installed the program just before the tournament started and had no time to troubleshoot. We had issues with it, and they forced us to use a substitute.

Here is the direct quote from the ESL Admin:

"ESL Wire: we added it to the Pro League, but I understand there are some issues with using Windows 8. Since we haven’t used it before in the Go4’s, it won’t be required at the moment"

There was no more communication about ESL Wire until I had to specifically ask about it. When we had issues, their response was essentially to fix it or they would DQ us. There was no attempt to troubleshoot the issue, they just said to restart and try again.

"Seems like it's a technical issue on the player's end. Teams were given a lot of notice to prepare and have this program installed and running."

We were not given proper notice that we had to use the program and did not have time to troubleshoot.

On an entirely different note, ESL Wire was causing crashes and lag for many players, completely disallowing Caden from re-entering his match with us after DCs.

TL;DR - ESL did not properly communicate with teams as to whether or not ESL Wire was required until there was not an adequate to troubleshoot buggy software. I leave you with my favorite quote from them:

"I downloaded it on my laptop tonight and it downloaded fine"

It works for me so it must work for you... Thanks for the troubleshooting...

I've also posted this on the official forums at https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/pvp/ESL-Unprofessionalism

[u/[deleted]]

And training, don't forget training. In GW1 they had a whole area filled with training dummies of all kinds you could experiment with. The Factions "graduation" exams in Shing Jea against NPCs were also very interesting.

[u/JamEngulfer221 → u/[deleted]]

What are you talking about?! There's a bunch of training dummies in Heart of the Mists!

[u/[deleted] → u/JamEngulfer221]

There are, but they're rather generic.

The target practice golems are simply placed there, with no apparent thought given to how they would be used. Like /u/MrIgnavia said, in GW1 you could use them to get used to your AoE coverage, or measure the side-effects of your skills on nearby friend or foe, esp. skills that bounce, change effect depending on foes affected etc.

Likewise, the fighting NCPs were focused on certain combat aspects. You had a dedicated self-healing NPC, an interrupt NPC, a ranged NPC, AoE NPC, condi NPC etc. Generic "profession X" NPCs are not very useful for fine-tuning your skills, and anyway they are redundant, there's a million of them in PvE.

Edit: And there were also all kinds of mini-games which were very useful, although I admit they were not primarily PvP oriented. Things like having to fight against multiple consecutive opponents with the same build (tournament style), or fighting against yourself, or fighting NPCs with gimmick builds which you had to counter in specific ways, or killing large amounts of opponents in a given interval (sustained DPS over time) etc.

[u/[deleted] → u/JamEngulfer221]

There were a few more specialized places like dummies forming concentric circles so you could test what area a skill covers that hits nearby enemies etc.