Guild Wars as Spectator Sport

One of, in my opinion, the greatest features in Guild Wars is something called observer mode. Or obs mode if you're trying to hard to be in the know. But that's not a big thing because observer mode is all about being in the know. It was implemented around this time last year as a “present” for the ongoing Wintersday festivities (Just like this year they put in an improved party searching feature and reconnects.) and although I wasn't playing at the time I imagine there was much rejoicing (It was, in fact, one of the things that enticed me back into the game for my last go around.). Observer mode lets you watch high end PvP battles (On a bit of a delay so there's no shenanigans, of course.) - you can watch the battle from anyone's perspective or from set vantage points. And you can see what skills people are using and their tactics and a host of other information. While you're doing this you're in a chatroom with other people watching the match along with you. And while it's as mixed a bag as anywhere else people gather online you can still occasionally gain some insight into the game and its players. People from the match you're watching will even stop in from time to time to check out how they did because observer mode is an excellent way to gain an overview of a match. Something it's hard to see when you're in the middle of a battle. Nowadays, I gather, it's not just for the guilds at the top of the ladder but any team can check their own battles in a private observer mode. It's an excellent way to review a game. Or learn about the tactics and techniques that the best teams are using. Or even just to hang around with the PvP crowd and get to know some of them (I'd imagine, I already know most of these people. And to them, I'd just like to say: Sorry.). And all it takes is a little button click and a browse through a list of available games.

So, I found Nightfall underneath my tree, so to speak, because someone thought, and I quote, “You like that Guild Wars game, right? So I know you didn't ask for it but I figured I'd get you the latest expansion.” This person and I are no longer speaking, of course, because there's just no way to explain the mixture of dread and excitement this game still gives me. I did try, though, because if I want nothing else for the game it's for it to succeed and gain player after player[1]. And when I started talking about the game and the matches I've had in my time and they start rolling their eyes and I'm standing there with the game's box in my hands, well, I commandeered the nearest computer. Grabbed the client from the official site, installed the client, ran it and had the game ready to go inside of fifteen minutes (The box comes with CDs to install that sort of thing, I gather, but I've never used them so I wouldn't know.). I could have stopped there and just fired up my account right then and there – any computer, anywhere, that has GW on it, I can play on without needed to spend another dime - but as long as I was at it, I put in my new access key so I could get the Nightfall stuff (And I correctly figured I could get someone to run a character through the tutorial for me – hey, it's not like I haven't done that nearly two dozen times in other versions of Guild Wars by now.). Anyhow, I got in game and fired up the observer mode, let my friends and cousins pick out a few matches and, as we watched, I tried to get them talking and to gauge their reactions.

And their reactions were that it looked like a bunch of people just standing around and not doing much of anything. I mean, I'm sitting there watching a gang of Warriors build up their adren while the caller picks out a target who gets their enchantments rent just as the wars sweep down and begin unloading. But whoever's supposed to be sitting on their Monks is a half-second off because they get a prot spirit up and the spike rams headfirst into that wall, blunting it just enough for healing to arrive. But the people watching it with me see a whole bunch of nothing. And, to be blunt, an unexciting bunch of nothing. Just some people with swords hitting people who standing around making pretty graphics bloom then all switching to the same target who gets some effect and takes some damage. And prot spirit's a big, splashy effect – you can't miss that one – what if it was a degen defeating Heal Party or a spike foiling Infuse Health that had ridden to the rescue?

Fine, I said, let's load up another match. And another one. And another. I tried to explain what was going on. These people aren't unused to gaming, after all. One way or another they play a lot. And they're not unintelligent people, either (The scary thing is, I'm pretty much the stupid one in my family. And, well, no offense, but I don't befriend idiots if I can avoid it.) so it's not like they were incapable of grasping things. But, for instance, I was watching a match and saw some people breaking off down the side path. They headed for the enemy's guildhall and I switch the camera to follow them and tried to explain a split to the rest of the audience. But that's when they started doing some interesting things. They were using Shadow of Haste (A skill I've always thought had some potential and I'm intrigued to see has been improved since the last time I played. Although, it's probably a bit too good at this point.) then would sneak in the base and work on the NPCs and when they got into trouble they'd pop off some other stance and warp back to safety. My friends and family couldn't understand why I was so excited about the possibilities there or even why the gank squad was going to run away when they ran into even minor trouble. And trying to explain to them about a stance toggle was just an exercise in futility.

Anyhow, we talked about it and about why they weren't seeing the same game I was watching. One person said that it's like watching NASCAR. If you know the rules of the game and can follow all the subtle things going on each and every game it's a tense, thrilling battle. But if you don't then it's just watching cars go around in a circle. The idea being that without a grounding in the mechanics of the game, they had no clue about what to look for and what was important. There was no visceral feedback letting them know what was important. The animations of the game's engine are too subtle, too vague, to convey these things.

And that, to me, makes a lot of sense. Because, you know, I've watched matches, I've tried to think about them and write about them like sports games and, I'd like to think, although I might not know the latest twists I've been around the game long enough to have a least a slight understanding of what's running under the surface of the game's water. But unless I'm paying attention and swapping between skill bars even the most impressive of battles is just a confusing mess of people doing unclear things. I've considered this a failing of my own – that I wasn't trying hard enough to understand and comprehend what came naturally to others. But from talking to others, I've come to realize that it's not my fault, it's a failing of the game itself.

Which, I think, is a problem. PvP is a big part of the game. And video of the game[2] should be a useful marketing tool. Slap footage from the last championship or even any top tier battle on a website or a commercial or a demo and it should sell the game on its own merits. Because, trust me, I can look at that sort of thing and become enthralled and I'm not the only one. All I should have to do is point to the game itself and let it do the talking. Because that way, it doesn't need selling, people will be drawn to it all by themselves. Whether it's people who've never bought a box or people who've been playing the game for a while and have never set foot in PvP. Show them what they've missing, make them want to take part, and convince them it's going to be a blast. But that sense of action and tension just isn't getting across. Not like it does in, say, footage of WoW where you might not know what everyone's doing but they're leaping around and it looks like what they're doing actually has an impact on the fight. Not so in Guild Wars where the subtle things good teams do to win just aren't apparent to the average observer.

Combined with just how much information a player has to absorb to get up to speed in PvP and just how poorly documented some things are (Like how the Guild Lord can only take so much damage at the start of a GvG battle to prevent people from doing crazy things with Grenth's Balance or otherwise ganking him in five minutes. I had this worked out at one point but he starts out being only able to take a slight percentage of his health as damage and as the match goes on that damage cap gets raised until it's at 100% something like fifteen minutes into the game. The net effect is that you can still win early if you roll someone but it's hard to just reduce the Guild Lord to a puddle. This, by the way, isn't necessarily a bad thing but, to the best of my knowledge, it's never been explained. And certainly not within the game itself) Guild Wars is a very unintuitive game. Playing with it requires someone to struggle against its rules and find its limits rather than experience them on a gut level. I, of course, have no idea about what can be done to correct this at this particular point in time. But what I do know is that, if this game wants to grow and expand beyond what it is, it's probably something to start thinking about. Until someone just walking by an observer mode demo can get that something cool and impressive is going on without having to know each and every corner of the rulebook, the design's not what it could be.

[1] – I hesitate to mention this sort of thing. Not because I'm embarrassed about it but because ArenaNet encourages it. They encourage – or at least did when I was a tester – people to go out and spread the good word about the game and, well, we've had more than one falling out over the years. Don't get me wrong I think they make excellent use of their fanbase. But they, at times, use it like a resource. There's a lot of things they've “outsourced” to the fans and the fansites and the larger community not because those people are going to do a better job but because they'll do it for free. And as someone who's been on both sides of the line, so to speak, it's hard not to feel, well, used. That the developers want to whip me and others into a frenzy so we'll go out and sell their game and write their guides, and otherwise beg for affection by do a lot of other things just for a few scraps, relatively speaking, from their overflowing table. Not that I'm trying to say that they treat people like dogs and are taking advantage of them. At other times they're wonderfully generous. The game's their business, after all, and they're just trying to do everything they can to see it prosper. So, I keep quiet about these sorts of things. Because I don't want, and I don't need to feel like I'm telling people about the game for a T-shirt or anything of the sort. I don't want to be compensated for something I'd go and do anyway, in so many words, because it makes me less likely to go out and do it. And, yeah, I'm weird but I love this game. Still do. And that love gets shared. Giving me something for it means that I'm, in some way, indebted and obligated. When, really, I just want to be a good neighbor.

[2] – If you're interested in finding some matches to watch and you don't feel like installing the game, it's all over the place. There was, at one point, no observer mode so people got into the habit of recording their matches. In the early days, footage of good teams were akin to state secrets – closely held and just as well guarded – because of the advantage they'd confer. But even then people would post them and share them. Now, with observer mode anyone can cap a video of almost any match that matters. So they're all over and the PvP community devours them. As I haven't been playing for a while I'm not exactly sure what's the best place to go at the moment and I'll direct you to an old favorite GW Versus. They've got a large collection and a lot of games draw some commentary, too, and they've set them up to stream in your browser.