I was one of the ~5,000 people who watched PAX, and one of the ~2,000 people who watched the ESL Finals. I’ve found that I really enjoy watching streams from individual players (like Phantaram, or Ostrich Eggs, or Helseth, or whoever), yet I find shoutcasted tournament games to be a dull, confusing mess. Here are some suggestions for making tournament games more interesting to watch:
1. Change the way GW2 tournaments are shoutcasted so that each viewer can choose to watch the match from a specific player’s perspective. Or, at the very least, have shoutcasters stick to one player’s perspective during any given fight (they can swap perspectives after the fight, so we eventually get to see everyone’s POV over the course of a match).
Almost all the drama and action in GW2 is at the personal player level. Watching the ele blind the warrior’s earthshaker (okay I made this up, none of the top teams run ele). Or watching a warrior use earthshaker on the thief, and then seeing that the thief has no endurance or init and thinking, “THAT’S GONNA LAND!” I can’t really see or appreciate most of these plays when I’m watching from the bird’s eye view.
Instead, from the bird’s eye view, I see a handful of players running inside the point waving shivs at each other (that’s what Asura-sized weapons look like). The whole time, green, purple, and orange AOE effects are raining down on the point. And outside the point I see a few people running around waving their hands in the air doing some rain dance while being chased around by a scantily-dressed thief.
2. Give epic skills epic animations.
The skills that really turn the tide of a battle should have a big visual OOMPH to them, while skills that are relatively meaningless should be less flashy. I’m not talking about telegraphing all epic skills — the animation can come before or after the skill’s effect has taken place. And some telegraphed skills still have non-flashy animations (like churning earth). Making the animations on game-changing skills more visually striking will draw the viewers’ attention to the most important parts of the battle.
Skullcrack, final thrust, phoenix, fire grab, combustion shot, reaper’s mark etc. are all heavy-hitting gamechangers that have relatively light animations. While phoenix and fire grab do have some shine to them, they’re less shiny than many other ele skills. On the other hand, skills like earthshaker, meteor shower, the guardian’s bubbles, etc. look and feel kitten (except meteor shower, which only looks kitten).
3. Increase emphasis on clutch plays
Watching two players autoattack each other and spam low-cooldown skills until one of them drops from attrition isn’t interesting. Attrition fights in general aren’t interesting. What is interesting is watching someone successfully pull off a risky maneuver that has a big impact on the battle. Landing Pudge’s hook in Dota is a good example of this. But most of these clutch plays seem to be missing in high-level GW2 tournaments. It’s not that they aren’t available, but it seems like the top teams have discovered the optimal low-risk, high-reward builds that simply don’t leave room for clutch plays.
The solution I’d like to see is having each weapon set have ~2-3 spammable low-key attack skills, maybe 1 non-spammable defensive skill, and ~1-2 high-CD risky but powerful moves (with flashy animations). A lot of weapon sets already kind of conform to this (especially the ele’s weapon sets), except for the animations part (dust devil has a bigger visual effect than earthquake, even though earthquake is way more powerful). Other weapon sets or classes should be re-evaluated (maybe make warrior bursts more powerful but have a higher CD).
4. More interesting capture point layouts
First, capture points should not be the size of a traited necro mark. Whenever I watch a fight on one of these points, it looks like everyone is vomiting rainbows everywhere. The capture-point fight that look the most appealing to me is on Graveyard in Foefire. There, the AOEs are spread out, and that leaves room for more clever positioning.
Second, I would like to see capture points that just aren’t a flat wide circle. For example, having a capture point spread out over several narrow planks (like the rafters of a tall building). Player movement and positioning becomes a lot more important here, since falling means you’re no longer on the point. And the planks would be spread out enough so that people on top could avoid AOEs.
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts/suggestions on the issue. And I’d appreciate anyone else’s constructive thoughts on this.
edit: fixed viewership numbers on ESL tourney.
edit 2: changed suggestion #1 a bit based on feedback
