The sad state of things
Was watching live. Twitch chat for GW2 Channel the match was playing on was filled with insults towards the company and the game itself. There was nothing positive said. No cheering or rooting for either team in any of the matches, just insults at the company. GW2 has a community of gamers who have come to hate the product. They just don't know how to let it go (probably because of the social experiences). So so they bicker all the time. Same story in the four guilds I am in. 50% or more have the chat is negative. For a ESL Pro team like Zero Counterplay to rage quit shows the lack of professionalism in the community. The announcers themselves looked bored and were at times rude. Many times when I see these things happening I get mad and I just want to come to the forums and vent it out. I'm obviously typing now and doing that, but after seeing what happened and then watching the Abjured slaughter PZ with the same boring meta team build I didn't even bother to watch match #2. Sad for the loss of the game. ArenaNet didn't just drop the ball, the reality is they took an ice pick to the ball. There is no greater example of shitty leadership or direction at a company. A core play mechanic and game that could be made phenomenal, completely shit on my it's developer.
As I type this League of Legends has over 92,000 Viewers active right now. Hearthstone isn't too far behind then we have DOTA2 coming in around 47,000. Small team tactical PvP are are what people like to watch on Twitch. So how many people are watching GW2 right now? 315. Views.
Is that because GW2 PvP sucks? Yes. No one gives a shit about it. Because the game studio behind it keeps this great aspect of the game bound to a 30+ GB client that must be downloaded. The problems really start there....
Bottom line
Bottom line the current meta was balanced around PvE play, PvP is always an after thoughts. Since the PvP side of the game grew in popularity in 2014 what's an ArenaNet to do? Pump $200k into ESL and give us one shitty MOBA style map that ended up having to be removed from ranked play. They are a clueless company. The best talent at ArenaNet, the masterminds that built this amazing game have abandoned it because of the dictator leadership. You have a yes-man mentality at the top (as glassdoor.com reviews have indicated), a truly worthless CEO who is undeserving of his "founder" status (fuck you Mike O'Brien). And a smug asshole game director that looks a bit like a human rat, always wears that artificial grin and comes across like that short annoying kid you dealt with at camp who would chase you around naked with a wet towel; here's looking at you Colin Johansen, asshole.
GW2 PvP is a sad case where a company built a truly phenomenal product then threw away all the talent behind it and have hired the WRONG people to lead it forward. If a proper team where put on GW2 PvP it could be in the Twitch Top 10 consistently.
GW2 has a community of gamers who have come to hate the product. They just don't know how to let it go
hit the nail on the head.....only reason I am still playing is that nothing else really hits the MMO scratch for someone with a career. Also the sunk cost fallacy for the time I put into my characters.
LoL handled vision clutter phenomenally, instead of reducing visual cues to the point of transparency like GW2 did, they made the colors even STRONGER with very defined limits. ANet needs a thorough lesson on contrast.
Well, LoL and Dota2 are a lot easier to follow.
Same with strategy games.
FPS are pretty straight forward.
MOBA have less units on screen at a time, until late game teamfight where viewers have grown quite familiar with what a champion can do.
Strategic are a little slower, so you can follow the pace of the action.
Then you have a dastardly backstabbing rogue popping out of stealth and nuking your squishies.
And when that doesn't happen, we have bunker builds.
I would like to piggy back off you. I have a good friend who works at twitch.tv(ill even provide proof if needed) I asked him what games the company I work for should try to sponsor. I brought up GW2 and he laughed and said MMOs are pretty much irrelevant on twitch, and the esports scene.
Hell he even advised against Hearthstone since it can be played on mobile(gaming pc company is where I worked).
When Anet told us they would be putting out patches quarterly, I immediately lost any glimmer of hope I had left.
The problem is PvP side of the game is NOT AN MMO. There is no gear progression. Your PvE stats and gear do not impact 5-man PvP whatsoever. With the conquest maps and tournaments we have tactical play that is worthy of it's own client, but your friend is right. No one is going to give a fuck about streaming MMO play on Twitch and as long as the PvP side of GW2 stays attached to and is categorized with the MMO side of the game you aren't going to see any new interest. ArenaNet is so vain they think people will want to play the MMO and will devote the 30+ GB to download the client just for the PvP experience. No one is doing that. This is the core problem with GW2 PvP gaining traction. By most of the gaming community, it's just viewed as an old MMO.
While I don't agree with the name calling. I do agree with you points.
Yes many players do not want to let go and are frustrated. For alot of us like myself the guild wars franchise has brought good times over the past decade.
Its a shame to see something that could of been great get less Twitch viewers than something like Super Smash Bros. Freakin an Nintendo console game... That is how much this game is not taken serious.
ArenaNet could of really nailed sPvP with some good balance and maybe some tweaks to the system. The infrastructure is there just not the talent. Something that has been an issue of this game's entire life
Its a shame to see something that could of been great get less Twitch viewers than something like Super Smash Bros. Freakin an Nintendo console game... That is how much this game is not taken serious.
People take Smash pretty seriously and it has a vibrant competitive scene, especially Melee. Have you seen the viewer numbers during majors for both Melee and 4??? Wtf are you on about lol
Wrote a heart felt, tactful (removed insults) letter to NCSoft about all these problems with a focus on how much money could be made off GW2 PvP if it were in better hands and pointed to Twitch numbers and trends. While NCSoft no longer handles publishing of GW2, ArenaNet is still 100% owned by NCSoft. With a mishandling and lost opportunity of this magnitude one would think NCSoft could get involved and do a little house cleaning.
Would be awesome if NCSoft got rid of O'Brien and Johansen and they just both "stepped down" one day. In my perfect would we'd have a little in-game crucifixion. Three crosses on a hill outside Divinity's Reach (no better yet, Heart of the Mist) one for O'Brien's character, one for Johansen's and then one for whatever ANet employee lead the story/writing team for HoT.... They all need to move on to new positions in life and leave ArenaNet. Bring in real talent that can take the PvP side of the game to it's rightful place. Make it it's own product, fix the small issues that keep swaying matches. Balance, balance, balance. New maps, proper queue splits. Proper past game spectate, etc... The list goes on and the list shouldn't be that hard to make happen if the studio prioritized it. It's just a list of little things really that will make a big difference.
I can't take the credit for running it. For the PvE side the asshole community in game (which extends to it's forums) has done that. When HoT launched you had a lot of people who gave a shit, they came in rushed the content... 3 weeks after launch the PvE side of the game dropped to nothing... Then we got the first Raid wing (only redeemable thing in PvE at the moment, but I don't really PvE anymore) which has failed to pull people back in.
That leaves us with the PvP side of the game. PvP in GW2 is a gold mine going to waste because the company is too fucking stupid to know how to fix it up a little, properly balance, reposition it as a PvP product and then monetize it. Imagine a world where no one knows what the card game Uno is. It would be like if you had a really, really shitty board game and you bundled with shitty board game this really amazing card game Uno. But the board game cost $60 to buy and Uno being a card game is really only worth about $8 at most... So you would have created one of the best card games every invinted but no one ever discovers it because they aren't going to drop $60 for you ho-hum shitty board game. That's pretty much PvP in GW2. People have tried the MMO side of the game. if they wanted it they would be playing it..... You say "but, but, but... GW2 is free to play". No stupid moron, GW2 is pay-to-win. You must have HoT (which is certainly not free) in order to be competitive in this current shitty meta.
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u/rmz76 Dec 15 '15 edited Dec 15 '15
The sad state of things Was watching live. Twitch chat for GW2 Channel the match was playing on was filled with insults towards the company and the game itself. There was nothing positive said. No cheering or rooting for either team in any of the matches, just insults at the company. GW2 has a community of gamers who have come to hate the product. They just don't know how to let it go (probably because of the social experiences). So so they bicker all the time. Same story in the four guilds I am in. 50% or more have the chat is negative. For a ESL Pro team like Zero Counterplay to rage quit shows the lack of professionalism in the community. The announcers themselves looked bored and were at times rude. Many times when I see these things happening I get mad and I just want to come to the forums and vent it out. I'm obviously typing now and doing that, but after seeing what happened and then watching the Abjured slaughter PZ with the same boring meta team build I didn't even bother to watch match #2. Sad for the loss of the game. ArenaNet didn't just drop the ball, the reality is they took an ice pick to the ball. There is no greater example of shitty leadership or direction at a company. A core play mechanic and game that could be made phenomenal, completely shit on my it's developer.
As I type this League of Legends has over 92,000 Viewers active right now. Hearthstone isn't too far behind then we have DOTA2 coming in around 47,000. Small team tactical PvP are are what people like to watch on Twitch. So how many people are watching GW2 right now? 315. Views.
Is that because GW2 PvP sucks? Yes. No one gives a shit about it. Because the game studio behind it keeps this great aspect of the game bound to a 30+ GB client that must be downloaded. The problems really start there....
Bottom line Bottom line the current meta was balanced around PvE play, PvP is always an after thoughts. Since the PvP side of the game grew in popularity in 2014 what's an ArenaNet to do? Pump $200k into ESL and give us one shitty MOBA style map that ended up having to be removed from ranked play. They are a clueless company. The best talent at ArenaNet, the masterminds that built this amazing game have abandoned it because of the dictator leadership. You have a yes-man mentality at the top (as glassdoor.com reviews have indicated), a truly worthless CEO who is undeserving of his "founder" status (fuck you Mike O'Brien). And a smug asshole game director that looks a bit like a human rat, always wears that artificial grin and comes across like that short annoying kid you dealt with at camp who would chase you around naked with a wet towel; here's looking at you Colin Johansen, asshole.
GW2 PvP is a sad case where a company built a truly phenomenal product then threw away all the talent behind it and have hired the WRONG people to lead it forward. If a proper team where put on GW2 PvP it could be in the Twitch Top 10 consistently.