Guild Wars 2 PvP Interview
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There is a large player base that wonders why you think 5v5 Conquest format is better than a 3v3 Death Match, or traditional Guild Wars GvG format. Could you discuss your position on these issues? Is there a possibility we might see them at a later point?
We tried a number of formats for GW2 and decided to go with one that scaled well for different numbers of players and was familiar to a wide audience. We want to build an open and inclusive PvP community, and finding a game format that fostered both friendly play as well as highly competitive play was a challenge.
We have seen the Conquest format work well on our open play servers with 10v10 as well as competitive 5v5 tournaments. It is important to us that people have an avenue to move from less competitive to more competitive play. Our hope is to see a player new to the game start off by hitting (Play Now) on the server browser, getting to know the game, making some friends, and building some confidence. Once they have a firm grounding in how the game works, how the maps work, and how their builds work, we hope to see them move into tournament play with our automated tournament system and eventually to our scheduled tournaments where they can contend for a spot in our yearly tournament. Our dream is to see someone go from newb to world champion. We just want to provide a path for them to follow to get there.
Having said that, we may try new formats in the future, but we want to be sure that we don't split up our competitive player base and that any new additions are good for the game overall.
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How much do you take the whole e-sport aspect into consideration when developing the game? For instance, do you take into consideration how easy/convenient the game is to spectate?
This has been a concern the entire time PvP has been in development as far back as day one, meeting one. We've learned a lot from watching other e-sports (walk through the design room on any given day and you will see e-sport streams running), and having combined that with the lessons we learned from the original Guild Wars, we tried to balance spectator, announcer, and player needs. We wanted it to be easy to get into, but we also wanted a skill gap that would allow pro players to show their mastery. In addition to this, we wanted to make sure the game was exciting from a spectator's standpoint, while ensuring that announcers easily understand the action well enough to communicate to the spectators.
