Already previously I talked about the importance of an observation tool in Guild Wars 2. Watching other people play, revisiting previous games of your own and strategising with friends is vital for an esport and its community to prevail. But over at GuildWars2Hub Brad “Innuendo” Phillips takes it one step further and presents a suggestion as to how such a spectator mode could be implemented.

His system would include roughly 70 to 100 cameras on the map including static cameras and player cameras. The static cameras don’t have to be completely motionless but would rather pan or move along fix routes. His idea would be to include a system which would auto-switch between the cameras to show where the action takes place. Hereby a system called weight is introduced. Each camera is granted weight depending on the actions it is filming. This would take into account player actions, player health, trebuchet activity, contested capture points and more. In addition newly shown camera perspectives are granted a weight bonus which diminishes over time which should prevent too fast camera switches. And to prevent switching between two cameras showing the same intense action a similar weight bonus is used. Innuendo also discusses the use of custom camera settings which allows for example for players to watch certain preferred professions.

All in all it is a well thought out proposition, which would of course need a lot of fine-tuning and testing. But when reading through the article I was certainly temped by it. His goal is to allow players to tune in and let the reporter do the rest. More experienced players/viewers would certainly interact with the camera much more and would watch the game mostly manually. But I guess he’s right in saying that especially people new to the game would have a much easier access to Guild Wars 2′s esport.

Though I said in my previous esports article that releasing the observer tool after release isn’t a bad thing (I figured people will firstly be occupied with the campaign and esport won’t be that important in the beginning.), the more I read about it, the more I am convinced that it is rather important for ArenaNet to include it early on. Especially for someone who never watched a competitive game it is often very inaccessible and if ArenaNet can send a strong signal and include these players early on they could start building a strong community right from the start without people rejecting the game due to its complexity. Because one has only one chance to leave a good impression. This is why I’m inclined to join Innuendos call for a solid observation tool: bring it ArenaNet! We urge you to. The community would profit a LOT from it!

I only summarised the article. To see the full article please visit it on GuildWars2Hub.