I made a long post to explain why i agree with the op, but then i'll just state the obvious: at this point they just need to deliver a final product of the same quality as they shown in beta, and they need to flesh out a bit the infrastructure of spvp before release.
Let people that want to seriously play spvp the ability to do so, and have even more people having fun in this mode, so duels, 3v3, 5v5, ffa maps, a basic rank system, you know the basic deal for e-sport kind of gaming mode.
I made a long post to explain why i agree with the op, but then i'll just state the obvious: at this point they just need to deliver a final product of the same quality as they shown in beta, and they need to flesh out a bit the infrastructure of spvp before release.
Let people that want to seriously play spvp the ability to do so, and have even more people having fun in this mode, so duels, 3v3, 5v5, ffa maps, a basic rank system, you know the basic deal for e-sport kind of gaming mode.
They plan to allow you to rent your own servers so, should be good.
I suppose every popular thing ever is crap, after all games that no one likes are so much better.
If you prefer one game over another then fine, but just because something is popular and you don't like it doesn't mean everyone who does is an idiot. Just play the game you want to play, but don't pull out your hipster glasses and pretend that your game is somehow better because less people like it. Its all subjective anyways.
Oh I KNOW you did not just pull out the H-word. Get Wrecked and take your shit tier assumptions with you. Lots of popular things are good, but just being popular doesn't make everything good and it especially doesn't make a Scrub game like L.O.L. good. That's just common sense. Competitive Gaming isn't fucking about a bunch of lookey loos on Youtube being mildly entertained for 5 minutes before they flip the channel to the next thing. It's about the players themselves. Comp doesn't need a big audience. It just needs balance and replayability so the people doing it can have something worth mastering. (and lol isn't worth mastering!!)
Your bigger problem that I was TRYING TO POINT OUT before you brought out the personal attack, was the fact that making it all about the money and popularity also makes it all about style and not about substance then you end up with match-rigging and other scandals/drama. Then it becomes all about that shit and eventually you're not even playing a computer game anymore, you're playing MTV.
I suppose every popular thing ever is crap, after all games that no one likes are so much better.
If you prefer one game over another then fine, but just because something is popular and you don't like it doesn't mean everyone who does is an idiot. Just play the game you want to play, but don't pull out your hipster glasses and pretend that your game is somehow better because less people like it. Its all subjective anyways.
Oh I KNOW you did not just pull out the H-word. Get Wrecked and take your shit tier assumptions with you. Lots of popular things are good, but just being popular doesn't make everything good and it especially doesn't make a Scrub game like L.O.L. good. That's just common sense. Competitive Gaming isn't fucking about a bunch of lookey loos on Youtube being mildly entertained for 5 minutes before they flip the channel to the next thing. It's about the players themselves. Comp doesn't need a big audience. It just needs balance and replayability so the people doing it can have something worth mastering. (and lol isn't worth mastering!!)
Your bigger problem that I was TRYING TO POINT OUT before you brought out the personal attack, was the fact that making it all about the money and popularity also makes it all about style and not about substance then you end up with match-rigging and other scandals/drama. Then it becomes all about that shit and eventually you're not even playing a computer game anymore, you're playing MTV.
So I can't call you a hipster for hating LoL and saying that Esports is "ruined" because of it? Fine, your just an ingnorant fanboy then who can't stand that something he doesn't like is popular, better? If you don't like LoL then fine, don't play it and don't watch it, but don't pretend that your opinion of the game is somehow fact.
We are not talking merely about the game being competitive, tons of games are competitive but few games are Esports. Its all about the audience, get over it. The audience pays the players, the sponsors, the developers and everything else. Of course its about money, its always been about money.
I suppose every popular thing ever is crap, after all games that no one likes are so much better.
If you prefer one game over another then fine, but just because something is popular and you don't like it doesn't mean everyone who does is an idiot. Just play the game you want to play, but don't pull out your hipster glasses and pretend that your game is somehow better because less people like it. Its all subjective anyways.
Oh I KNOW you did not just pull out the H-word. Get Wrecked and take your shit tier assumptions with you. Lots of popular things are good, but just being popular doesn't make everything good and it especially doesn't make a Scrub game like L.O.L. good. That's just common sense. Competitive Gaming isn't fucking about a bunch of lookey loos on Youtube being mildly entertained for 5 minutes before they flip the channel to the next thing. It's about the players themselves. Comp doesn't need a big audience. It just needs balance and replayability so the people doing it can have something worth mastering. (and lol isn't worth mastering!!)
Your bigger problem that I was TRYING TO POINT OUT before you brought out the personal attack, was the fact that making it all about the money and popularity also makes it all about style and not about substance then you end up with match-rigging and other scandals/drama. Then it becomes all about that shit and eventually you're not even playing a computer game anymore, you're playing MTV.
So I can't call you a hipster for hating LoL and saying that Esports is "ruined" because of it? Fine, your just an ingnorant fanboy then who can't stand that something he doesn't like is popular, better? If you don't like LoL then fine, don't play it and don't watch it, but don't pretend that your opinion of the game is somehow fact.
We are not talking merely about the game being competitive, tons of games are competitive but few games are Esports. Its all about the audience, get over it. The audience pays the players, the sponsors, the developers and everything else. Of course its about money, its always been about money.
Iller is right in this, although you guys are a little more hostile then I would be you both have some key points here. Whether or not LoL is good, for one, is almost entirely perspective. So we won't go into that. It is still, however, an E-sport. To a certain degree that is actually what E-sports are about, the "lookey loos" are the life-blood of anything in entertainment. Competition does need a big audience to sustain it. You need tournaments with large pots. Huge pots don't come from thin air. You don't need viewers to have a balanced game, true. You do need them to have a game with any level of professionalism in it.
Its similarly to saying the audience in football is not necessary because the game can still be competitive. It's not really true because without the money most of the competitive aspect is lost. The audience in E-sports, or just sports in general, provides the money and the money is what attracts serious players. If the game is fun you might attract a tournament audience, sure, but you will never attract the serious competition that is spawned between two teams at the super-bowl, for instance. You see, they support each other. I can play a fun game of tag in my back-yard but its hardly competitive and there's only a certain level that that could ever reach. I can't go out and look up serious strategies of tag to earn six figures a year.
So you are both kind of right. Baeline competition doesn't need monitary influence and you can have competition without money or audience involved. This is similar to back-yard football though and that's as competitive as that will ever be. To get true competition and players that regard the game seriously you need money and audience.
In defense of E-sports not a whole lot of match rigging goes on. In fact, I've never heard of a rigged match in my career. I'm not sure if this shows some knowledge or ignorance on my part but I just have not noticed it really at all in the scene. SC2 has some ladder rigging if that's what you mean but nothing follows through to tournaments that are for any money.
You need the audience there because you need the money. Also, lets face it, people especially good at things like this like to be known so the audience plays a role there too.
Nobody promote lame and mindless combat for esport. Look at current real esport games: Starcraft for years, WoW, LoL, CS, HALO and game on same league.
Every half serious player who tried and juiced GW2 for at least 2 days already know this game will have a good spot in E-Sports, if not the best. Great post OP. I can't wait to see serious hardcore competitive pvp matches on the steams.
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Leagues a good game, enjoyable and skill based. I don't really care if they bastardized Dota in its mechanics. That said ... if not for Sc2 and LoL I would give exactly two flips about E-Sports because frankly the rest are boring to watch. As much as I love my taste of Gw2 I don't think its E-sport scene will get to loud , the game just doesn't make for good casting. The game is chaos , they want it to be chaos ... you won't be able to cast it like you would a Sc2 or Moba game.
Nobody promote lame and mindless combat for esport. Look at current real esport games: Starcraft for years, WoW, LoL, CS, HALO and game on same league.
Your right...which is why GW2 is a good contender. The game isn't even released and there have been tournaments and battle between guilds. The game is already competitive and its not even out yet.
Leagues a good game, enjoyable and skill based. I don't really care if they bastardized Dota in its mechanics. That said ... if not for Sc2 and LoL I would give exactly two flips about E-Sports because frankly the rest are boring to watch. As much as I love my taste of Gw2 I don't think its E-sport scene will get to loud , the game just doesn't make for good casting. The game is chaos , they want it to be chaos ... you won't be able to cast it like you would a Sc2 or Moba game.
Just my thoughts ..
Actually thats exactly why GW2 will do well. In SC2 and LoL to understand any of the exciting bits you have to have prior knowledge of the game. Expansions are only exciting in SC2 when you know why its risky and rewarding. LoL is pure chaos to people who don't know about it. GW2 on the other hand is immediately understandable. I'm not sure if you've watched a 5 v 5 yet, which is understandable. Durring our 8 v 8 though it was quite clear to tell what was going on. Its harder to tell what's going on when you have 40+ players but that's only natural. When you have an 8 v 8 or, especially, a 5 v 5 it is extremely easy to tell what's going on. Anet made it that way deliberately. All player effects are visable (crippled players limp, burning players are on fire, etc.). Every buff and debuff can be seen by looking at the character. AoE's have their radius shown on the ground, etc. Nothing takes place under the hood in this game. The audience can see exactly what's going on at all times. If your being damaged by bleeding you will lieterally be bleeding.
That being said I do think it has a good chance and doing very well in the scene. We will see where it goes.
The thing to understand as to why LoL became a huge e-sport, while more "hardcore" similar games like HoN and DotA2 didn't is precisely what makes those games "hardcore". Games that want to be an esport need to be easy to play, but hard to master. They need a high skill ceiling so that the best players stand out from the pack, but the game needs to have broad appeal and be easily accessible. Most people aren't interested in watching tournaments for a game that they don't play, and most casual players don't play games like HoN or Dota2, because those games essentially punch you in the face repeatedly until you've played them for a long time. League of legends took out a lot of the more newbie-unfriendly mechanics from DotA, and added things like bot games to let even bad players enjoy the game casually. It's also easier to look at and figure out what's going on, with the character portraits on the minimap and art style of the game, making it easier to spectate. Even new LoL players can understand what's going on in the games when watching a professional stream or match. It's also extremely easy to get into with the free to play model- there's no monetary barrier keeping people out of the game.
GW2 is making a push to become an esport, by making a game type that tries to be e-sport friendly. They don't have a monthly fee, which removes a lot of the accessibility limitations that MMO's generally encounter. Their combat is largely positioning based, with obvious effects so it's fairly easy to see what's going on, especially in smaller-scale combat (i.e. 5v5 with multiple objectives to split teams up). Instead of having a large number of buffs and debuffs that are only visible as icons on the character portrait, they've got a limited number of shared buffs and debuffs that largely have noticeable effects. These all help make the game easy to watch.
GW1 made a strong attempt at becoming an e-sport- they had a couple of major tournaments held by Arenanet, and a couple of lesser tournaments run by others, but at the end of the day, there wasn't enough interest. I think a lot of the reason behind this was that although guild battles had a lot of depth and an extremely high skill cap, they were too inaccessible to a more general audience, and it was too difficult to be able to tell what was going on without an in-depth understanding of the game. It was hard to get into them, since you needed to have 8 people online in the same guild for what was likely going to be an hour or more to just get in and play a match or two. Understanding what went on in the fights also required an in-depth knowledge of the game- you could get the general gist of things like if a team executed a good spike or a monk made a clutch save, but it was really hard to be able to see the important plays when spectating. Most of the time, the game-changing plays were things like getting a disabling shot on the enemies Aegis, or stripping Prot Spirit before the monk could cover it with another enchantment, which were nearly impossible to see while spectating.
Whether or not GW2 succeeds at becoming an e-sport remains to be seen- we won't know until the game is released and a few tournaments have run. However, they've obviously been working on removing barriers and difficulties that would stop it from being successful as one. In the end, it will come down to if there's enough people interested in watching GW2 tournaments, and whether or not the combat system holds up and has a high skill ceiling that allows the top tier of players and teams to distinguish themselves. Not whether or not it's as hardcore and challenging as "insert game X", but rather if it gets the interest of the masses who will be the people watching the streams and tournaments to generate ad revenue and get the interest of sponsors.
The thing to understand as to why LoL became a huge e-sport, while more "hardcore" similar games like HoN and DotA2 didn't is precisely what makes those games "hardcore". Games that want to be an esport need to be easy to play, but hard to master. They need a high skill ceiling so that the best players stand out from the pack, but the game needs to have broad appeal and be easily accessible. Most people aren't interested in watching tournaments for a game that they don't play, and most casual players don't play games like HoN or Dota2, because those games essentially punch you in the face repeatedly until you've played them for a long time. League of legends took out a lot of the more newbie-unfriendly mechanics from DotA, and added things like bot games to let even bad players enjoy the game casually. It's also easier to look at and figure out what's going on, with the character portraits on the minimap and art style of the game, making it easier to spectate. Even new LoL players can understand what's going on in the games when watching a professional stream or match. It's also extremely easy to get into with the free to play model- there's no monetary barrier keeping people out of the game.
GW2 is making a push to become an esport, by making a game type that tries to be e-sport friendly. They don't have a monthly fee, which removes a lot of the accessibility limitations that MMO's generally encounter. Their combat is largely positioning based, with obvious effects so it's fairly easy to see what's going on, especially in smaller-scale combat (i.e. 5v5 with multiple objectives to split teams up). Instead of having a large number of buffs and debuffs that are only visible as icons on the character portrait, they've got a limited number of shared buffs and debuffs that largely have noticeable effects. These all help make the game easy to watch.
GW1 made a strong attempt at becoming an e-sport- they had a couple of major tournaments held by Arenanet, and a couple of lesser tournaments run by others, but at the end of the day, there wasn't enough interest. I think a lot of the reason behind this was that although guild battles had a lot of depth and an extremely high skill cap, they were too inaccessible to a more general audience, and it was too difficult to be able to tell what was going on without an in-depth understanding of the game. It was hard to get into them, since you needed to have 8 people online in the same guild for what was likely going to be an hour or more to just get in and play a match or two. Understanding what went on in the fights also required an in-depth knowledge of the game- you could get the general gist of things like if a team executed a good spike or a monk made a clutch save, but it was really hard to be able to see the important plays when spectating. Most of the time, the game-changing plays were things like getting a disabling shot on the enemies Aegis, or stripping Prot Spirit before the monk could cover it with another enchantment, which were nearly impossible to see while spectating.
Whether or not GW2 succeeds at becoming an e-sport remains to be seen- we won't know until the game is released and a few tournaments have run. However, they've obviously been working on removing barriers and difficulties that would stop it from being successful as one. In the end, it will come down to if there's enough people interested in watching GW2 tournaments, and whether or not the combat system holds up and has a high skill ceiling that allows the top tier of players and teams to distinguish themselves. Not whether or not it's as hardcore and challenging as "insert game X", but rather if it gets the interest of the masses who will be the people watching the streams and tournaments to generate ad revenue and get the interest of sponsors.
You know what your talking about here, and I agree with most of it. I disagree that LoL is easy for spectators to fully understand. You can get the gist of what's going on but some of the meta decisions and strategy types are almost so minisculy different from each other that you really have to be a serious player to understand why they make a difference. Generally though I see where your comming from with that. its not tough to see when someone springs an ambush and its exciting to see. Its not hard to see when someone snipes a lane or leaves their own, so more over arching game-play moves are easy to notice and have easy excitement behind them.
I also somewhat disagree that non-players don't make up lareg portions of an audience. Now I ONLY disagree because of SC2. SC2 is now the largest E-sport in the world and most of its viewers actually don't play the game. I believe it is the exception though and you are mostly right in that assessment.
GW1 also didn't have any real incentive for profesional players. There were minor tournaments but no structured annuel and no large pots until far too late.
You hit one of the things I'm most excited about as an E-sport contender. The games naturally split up the teams. This is huge. It means more exciting matches with small skirmishe pockets everywhere. It also means that teams won't just run in the middle and clash mobs until one side pushes the other back (although that is actually pretty exciting here too, just not as much so IMO). Of course newer teams and PUG teams will probably still try to stay together and zerg the other team. Luckily though a zerging team in GW2 is the equivalent of an "all-in" in SC2. Sending your whole team out is also borderline suicide for 5 v 5 unless the other team does it too. various strategies have already been thought of in the last BWE to immediately counter team zergs. The strategies range and include doing pretty much anything else besides zerging them back. If even one man is seperated from the group and out capturing points, you win versus a team zerg.
So I liked what I saw there. As I note from my above post I also fully agree that exciting moves be easily noticeable and recognizable. I think they will be based on what I've seen. the visual cues are mostly common sense. The competition is gaurantee'd on the sole basis of its balance and huge annuel pot offering. To get the audience we need some casting tools. Soon as that is in, I think Anet will have a full package to deliver as an E-sport.
I think they should make games for esports so they don't pollute other game genres.
How are we polluting anything? What did we pollute? We (E-sports) basically created the NBA out of a bunch of backyard teams.
E-sports allowed people to make a little bit of money (or a lot of it) doing what they love to do. If a game is balanced and fun enough to attract observers it only does good things for it and its fans. You don't have to play competitively, you can still play every E-sport casually for sure.
Even if I'm playing a game casually I think its cool to talk to others about that really skilled player or that play last night or some crazy things somebody did in a match. Especially in a game like GW2, where the competitive scene is completely and totally seperate from everything else. You aren't going to walk into a battlegrounds here and be dominated by some wondering pro. Here the pro teams play in the tournaments setup by Anet and in private servers. Its a great deal like playing football for fun.
Normally you aren't playing football with your friends and T.O. comes in out of no where to smash your face. T.O. and competitive players have their own stomping grounds in basketball and every sport. It'll be the same here .
In other words, we won't be in your cool-aid. We're just the suger pack you can choose to add next to it .
I think some people are mixing up e-sports with elitism in this thread. I never felt directly harmed as a gamer by e-sports state of mind. On the other hand, elitist jackasses are not necessarly into e-sports. Plus, you can be elitist, but not a jackass.
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While I will never be able to compete in the higher ranks and I plan to spend most of my time in PvE-land, I still hope that GW2 will do well as an e-sport.
To me it seems that Anet got a lot of experience and understanding of what both the casual and the highly competetive players want. Just look at some of the things Anet added to Guild Wars after release:
Monthly tournaments, rankings, skillusage charts, different PvP formats (not all of them great but hey...), observer mode, constant skill updates and a big one with separate skilleffects/cooldowns etc. depending on whether the skill was used in a PvE or a PvP setting.
Still to this day when I see a new guildname pop up as worldwide announcement when they win HA I often go to observer to see their match and to see if they have any GvG's on the list.
Imagine that: PvP'ers that play only for "fame", fun and cosmetic rewards? And their matches even bring enjoyment to casuals such as myself.
I really hope that Anets years of experience pays off. And I am not in the least worried that PvP skill balances will "nerf" my PvE experience!
We dont need casuals in our games!!! Errm... Well we DO need casuals to fund and populate our games - But the games should be all about "hardcore" because: We dont need casuals in our games!!! (repeat ad infinitum)
Still I disagree with a few things OP, but mainly I think you overlooked huge flaw in Anet plan.
Servers browser seems like great idea, you can practice here, but you have to gather 10 people and its more than in GW1. You can play with a few friends here 1v1, 3v3 or anything but it wont help you for 5v5. You can even create game and wait for players to join. This can take a while even in games with huge playerbase (or mainly in these) and you have poor gaming experience even when they join (and not leave after a few secs).
If you look at most games, server browser is good when there is not enough players (so SEO based matchmaking wont work).
You have somehing like ranked matches for full teams of 5 players - automated tournaments. This will probably be the best option for any serious players and teams. But just by nature of it, you can win just buy playing A LOT of tournaments if there wont by any sort of penalty (or ELO).
You probably know where I am heading right now, GW2 NEEDs some kind of ELO because how its designed right now its just mindless grind. You have to LOSE something when you lose!!! Even in GW1 there was ELO for GvG. There should be some kind of ladder so maybe there will be ELO and its just unannounced feature.
Worst thing is, that there are tournaments for teams, there is server browser for very casual training or awfull game experience if you play with randoms. But there isn anounced any solo matchmaking so far. If you look at LoL (this kind of dont affect SC 2 as a solo game anyway ). every pro player plays only a few team matches or tournaments, but they spent a lot of time in game. GW2 doesnt have anything for solo player who want to play serious game. Individual players also need ELO, because otherwise pro player will end up with some noob (who only play a lot) and both will be bored.
So ELO and solo queue lacks from GW2 right now and either of them arent even announced. You also need to make sure players wont leave solo game (implement some kind of leaver system). I think GW2 will fail miserably if serious players wont be able to play 90% of the time (where 10 are the tournaments and team games).
_____________________________ Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
Still I disagree with a few things OP, but mainly I think you overlooked huge flaw in Anet plan.
Servers browser seems like great idea, you can practice here, but you have to gather 10 people and its more than in GW1. You can play with a few friends here 1v1, 3v3 or anything but it wont help you for 5v5. You can even create game and wait for players to join. This can take a while even in games with huge playerbase (or mainly in these) and you have poor gaming experience even when they join (and not leave after a few secs).
If you look at most games, server browser is good when there is not enough players (so SEO based matchmaking wont work).
You have somehing like ranked matches for full teams of 5 players - automated tournaments. This will probably be the best option for any serious players and teams. But just by nature of it, you can win just buy playing A LOT of tournaments if there wont by any sort of penalty (or ELO).
You probably know where I am heading right now, GW2 NEEDs some kind of ELO because how its designed right now its just mindless grind. You have to LOSE something when you lose!!! Even in GW1 there was ELO for GvG. There should be some kind of ladder so maybe there will be ELO and its just unannounced feature.
Worst thing is, that there are tournaments for teams, there is server browser for very casual training or awfull game experience if you play with randoms. But there isn anounced any solo matchmaking so far. If you look at LoL (this kind of dont affect SC 2 as a solo game anyway ). every pro player plays only a few team matches or tournaments, but they spent a lot of time in game. GW2 doesnt have anything for solo player who want to play serious game. Individual players also need ELO, because otherwise pro player will end up with some noob (who only play a lot) and both will be bored.
So ELO and solo queue lacks from GW2 right now and either of them arent even announced. You also need to make sure players wont leave solo game (implement some kind of leaver system). I think GW2 will fail miserably if serious players wont be able to play 90% of the time (where 10 are the tournaments and team games).
Thank you, and thank you everyone for the great discussion. This is, to me, one of the best threads I've seen thanks to you guys. Actual debate and discussion. I've been involved in E-sports for a while and I find myself learning new things almost every post in here. So thanks for the responses on a topic very interesting to me.
I have my reserves that you must absolutely be playing a game to jump into a game. I think guilds can create personal servers that allow only 5 people to either practice timed runs through maps or strategies in action. Even if you can't create your own practice server though (have they talked about server specifics yet?) I don't think it'll be very hard for most teams to organize a skirming group. Most teams have associated guilds and It would be easy to scrounge up 5 more people every now and then and have a skirmish group. Even if your operating as a seperate team presence for competition it shouldn't be too hard to find 5 people within your combined circles to play a few rounds with.
That's all only necessary IF you can not create designated practice servers.
As far as tournaments are concerned you do have the penalty of not qualifying for the monthly. You must win a weekly tournament to qualify for a monthly, and a monthly to get into the annual to compete for a free trip in the semi-finals and the grand pot.
There is no negative penalty per-say other than not getting into the revered monthly tournament for your shot at an annual placement (where the huge pot rests).
There is a ladder in that sense already. If you lose you are not qualified for the monthly and, thus, don't get to play in the finals. I believe that is like every sport out there. You don't have a ranking ladder in football, but if you lose to much you won't be playing in the playoffs. That's clearly enough for them to mind losing.
I feel it may be the same here. I think rankings and ladder systems just add a layer of agony and frusteration to the experience. Even if you are casual you don't want to go down in rank in SC2. So every time you lose its this big frusteration. While going up a rank out of a hundred doesn't really provide you with much joy.
I know this is human nature (SEE: loss aversion) but still. I think its actually better if there is no penalty for losing as far as a rank ding or anything but, rather, there is a loss of an opertunity. Lose and you can't progress. I think that will give the serious competitors reason to care about losing (they can't get into the big tournaments) without giving casual players angst.
So, in light of that I don't think the game needs an ELO. Its got enough incentive to win without penalizing players directly. Just like in sports, you do not drop in rank if your team losses. I also don't agree that GW2 needs 1 v 1. This is specifically a team affair. All real pro-players will thus have a team. If you are competitive with PUG teams then you are just messing around really. There is no solo que because its not that kind of game. You can practice as 1 v 1 (as you stated) but I don't think there's any need to accomodate a solo scene here. I also doubt it would grow at all, most of the competition is so engrained in team-play with this game.
When you can please give me your thoughts on these points.
Thanks for reply mate and I agree that this thread have some very interesting posts!
I still think there should be some risk in competetive gaming and not only reward. And more important thing is, that you should have more perofrmance levels than two (qualifiers to monthly and the rest). For example I want to be able to know if my team is in top 50, 100 or 200.
If you only have possitive points, it will end up about how often you play, not about how good you are.
There will be practice servers and you can rent a server. But as you could see in latest BWE, server based games are really trash and you cant have much fun there. In latest BWE there were games 1v1 2v2 ... 8v8 and some were even 3v4 , 6v7 or something like that. Thats something serious players wants to avoid and if "play now" button put them on these games, they will leave and will be angry (I was).
If you look at pro LoL players, they often casts from 5v5 ranked games, where they join alone and game get them another 4 players on equal level (and if you are a pro these games could be interetsing). Matchmaking will guarantee, that you end up in game 5v5 with players as good as you are.
Most people want to play when they have some precious time, they dont want to spend it by looking for players or in games 5v3 with noobs. So I am not talking about 1v1, but I am talking about queue for matchmaking (you can join alone or in 2 etc), where you are guaranteed 5v5 game with equal skilled players (and to measure skill, you need ELO, there is no other way).
I agree that pre-made teams are the best option, but if you ever played in some team game, you know that you spend only a fragment of time with this team. Other 90% of the time you are alone or with just 2 other mates from team. That precentage can differ from team to team, but its way more than 50% when you dont have your team available. And ArenaNet need to address this situation in a way that is satisfying for serious players (and server browsers games are FAAAAAAR from that).
_____________________________ Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
The only thing "eSport" (lol...) achieves for a game is a continuous stream of nerfs and dumbing down of all classes in a continuous attempt to balance them all, which is impossible. In the meantime, that ruins classes and sometimes the whole game for all the other players, those who actually pay for the game.
That's why I hope GW2 will never become some "eSport".
Respect, walk, what did you say? Respect, walk Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me? - PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
Hmm, although the Esports thing does sound a bit interesting, as long as its kept seperate from the W v W v W PvP then i don't have a problem with it.
I totally agree. Although I think you'll see more interaction in the WvW side of the game simply because it's quite a bit easier to get in to, and there will be less pressure for the player.
I'll probably dip into e-Sport myself with GW2, but I wouldn't expect it to appeal to everyone. That's what WvW is for.
Comments
I made a long post to explain why i agree with the op, but then i'll just state the obvious: at this point they just need to deliver a final product of the same quality as they shown in beta, and they need to flesh out a bit the infrastructure of spvp before release.
Let people that want to seriously play spvp the ability to do so, and have even more people having fun in this mode, so duels, 3v3, 5v5, ffa maps, a basic rank system, you know the basic deal for e-sport kind of gaming mode.
They plan to allow you to rent your own servers so, should be good.
This is not a game.
Oh I KNOW you did not just pull out the H-word. Get Wrecked and take your shit tier assumptions with you. Lots of popular things are good, but just being popular doesn't make everything good and it especially doesn't make a Scrub game like L.O.L. good. That's just common sense. Competitive Gaming isn't fucking about a bunch of lookey loos on Youtube being mildly entertained for 5 minutes before they flip the channel to the next thing. It's about the players themselves. Comp doesn't need a big audience. It just needs balance and replayability so the people doing it can have something worth mastering. (and lol isn't worth mastering!!)
Your bigger problem that I was TRYING TO POINT OUT before you brought out the personal attack, was the fact that making it all about the money and popularity also makes it all about style and not about substance then you end up with match-rigging and other scandals/drama. Then it becomes all about that shit and eventually you're not even playing a computer game anymore, you're playing MTV.
So I can't call you a hipster for hating LoL and saying that Esports is "ruined" because of it? Fine, your just an ingnorant fanboy then who can't stand that something he doesn't like is popular, better? If you don't like LoL then fine, don't play it and don't watch it, but don't pretend that your opinion of the game is somehow fact.
We are not talking merely about the game being competitive, tons of games are competitive but few games are Esports. Its all about the audience, get over it. The audience pays the players, the sponsors, the developers and everything else. Of course its about money, its always been about money.
Iller is right in this, although you guys are a little more hostile then I would be you both have some key points here. Whether or not LoL is good, for one, is almost entirely perspective. So we won't go into that. It is still, however, an E-sport. To a certain degree that is actually what E-sports are about, the "lookey loos" are the life-blood of anything in entertainment. Competition does need a big audience to sustain it. You need tournaments with large pots. Huge pots don't come from thin air. You don't need viewers to have a balanced game, true. You do need them to have a game with any level of professionalism in it.
Its similarly to saying the audience in football is not necessary because the game can still be competitive. It's not really true because without the money most of the competitive aspect is lost. The audience in E-sports, or just sports in general, provides the money and the money is what attracts serious players. If the game is fun you might attract a tournament audience, sure, but you will never attract the serious competition that is spawned between two teams at the super-bowl, for instance. You see, they support each other. I can play a fun game of tag in my back-yard but its hardly competitive and there's only a certain level that that could ever reach. I can't go out and look up serious strategies of tag to earn six figures a year.
So you are both kind of right. Baeline competition doesn't need monitary influence and you can have competition without money or audience involved. This is similar to back-yard football though and that's as competitive as that will ever be. To get true competition and players that regard the game seriously you need money and audience.
In defense of E-sports not a whole lot of match rigging goes on. In fact, I've never heard of a rigged match in my career. I'm not sure if this shows some knowledge or ignorance on my part but I just have not noticed it really at all in the scene. SC2 has some ladder rigging if that's what you mean but nothing follows through to tournaments that are for any money.
You need the audience there because you need the money. Also, lets face it, people especially good at things like this like to be known so the audience plays a role there too.
http://www.wix.com/guardiansofthegarter/home
Nobody promote lame and mindless combat for esport. Look at current real esport games: Starcraft for years, WoW, LoL, CS, HALO and game on same league.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_sports
Every half serious player who tried and juiced GW2 for at least 2 days already know this game will have a good spot in E-Sports, if not the best. Great post OP. I can't wait to see serious hardcore competitive pvp matches on the steams.
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Leagues a good game, enjoyable and skill based. I don't really care if they bastardized Dota in its mechanics. That said ... if not for Sc2 and LoL I would give exactly two flips about E-Sports because frankly the rest are boring to watch. As much as I love my taste of Gw2 I don't think its E-sport scene will get to loud , the game just doesn't make for good casting. The game is chaos , they want it to be chaos ... you won't be able to cast it like you would a Sc2 or Moba game.
Just my thoughts ..
Your right...which is why GW2 is a good contender. The game isn't even released and there have been tournaments and battle between guilds. The game is already competitive and its not even out yet.
http://www.wix.com/guardiansofthegarter/home
Actually thats exactly why GW2 will do well. In SC2 and LoL to understand any of the exciting bits you have to have prior knowledge of the game. Expansions are only exciting in SC2 when you know why its risky and rewarding. LoL is pure chaos to people who don't know about it. GW2 on the other hand is immediately understandable. I'm not sure if you've watched a 5 v 5 yet, which is understandable. Durring our 8 v 8 though it was quite clear to tell what was going on. Its harder to tell what's going on when you have 40+ players but that's only natural. When you have an 8 v 8 or, especially, a 5 v 5 it is extremely easy to tell what's going on. Anet made it that way deliberately. All player effects are visable (crippled players limp, burning players are on fire, etc.). Every buff and debuff can be seen by looking at the character. AoE's have their radius shown on the ground, etc. Nothing takes place under the hood in this game. The audience can see exactly what's going on at all times. If your being damaged by bleeding you will lieterally be bleeding.
That being said I do think it has a good chance and doing very well in the scene. We will see where it goes.
http://www.wix.com/guardiansofthegarter/home
The thing to understand as to why LoL became a huge e-sport, while more "hardcore" similar games like HoN and DotA2 didn't is precisely what makes those games "hardcore". Games that want to be an esport need to be easy to play, but hard to master. They need a high skill ceiling so that the best players stand out from the pack, but the game needs to have broad appeal and be easily accessible. Most people aren't interested in watching tournaments for a game that they don't play, and most casual players don't play games like HoN or Dota2, because those games essentially punch you in the face repeatedly until you've played them for a long time. League of legends took out a lot of the more newbie-unfriendly mechanics from DotA, and added things like bot games to let even bad players enjoy the game casually. It's also easier to look at and figure out what's going on, with the character portraits on the minimap and art style of the game, making it easier to spectate. Even new LoL players can understand what's going on in the games when watching a professional stream or match. It's also extremely easy to get into with the free to play model- there's no monetary barrier keeping people out of the game.
GW2 is making a push to become an esport, by making a game type that tries to be e-sport friendly. They don't have a monthly fee, which removes a lot of the accessibility limitations that MMO's generally encounter. Their combat is largely positioning based, with obvious effects so it's fairly easy to see what's going on, especially in smaller-scale combat (i.e. 5v5 with multiple objectives to split teams up). Instead of having a large number of buffs and debuffs that are only visible as icons on the character portrait, they've got a limited number of shared buffs and debuffs that largely have noticeable effects. These all help make the game easy to watch.
GW1 made a strong attempt at becoming an e-sport- they had a couple of major tournaments held by Arenanet, and a couple of lesser tournaments run by others, but at the end of the day, there wasn't enough interest. I think a lot of the reason behind this was that although guild battles had a lot of depth and an extremely high skill cap, they were too inaccessible to a more general audience, and it was too difficult to be able to tell what was going on without an in-depth understanding of the game. It was hard to get into them, since you needed to have 8 people online in the same guild for what was likely going to be an hour or more to just get in and play a match or two. Understanding what went on in the fights also required an in-depth knowledge of the game- you could get the general gist of things like if a team executed a good spike or a monk made a clutch save, but it was really hard to be able to see the important plays when spectating. Most of the time, the game-changing plays were things like getting a disabling shot on the enemies Aegis, or stripping Prot Spirit before the monk could cover it with another enchantment, which were nearly impossible to see while spectating.
Whether or not GW2 succeeds at becoming an e-sport remains to be seen- we won't know until the game is released and a few tournaments have run. However, they've obviously been working on removing barriers and difficulties that would stop it from being successful as one. In the end, it will come down to if there's enough people interested in watching GW2 tournaments, and whether or not the combat system holds up and has a high skill ceiling that allows the top tier of players and teams to distinguish themselves. Not whether or not it's as hardcore and challenging as "insert game X", but rather if it gets the interest of the masses who will be the people watching the streams and tournaments to generate ad revenue and get the interest of sponsors.
You know what your talking about here, and I agree with most of it. I disagree that LoL is easy for spectators to fully understand. You can get the gist of what's going on but some of the meta decisions and strategy types are almost so minisculy different from each other that you really have to be a serious player to understand why they make a difference. Generally though I see where your comming from with that. its not tough to see when someone springs an ambush and its exciting to see. Its not hard to see when someone snipes a lane or leaves their own, so more over arching game-play moves are easy to notice and have easy excitement behind them.
I also somewhat disagree that non-players don't make up lareg portions of an audience. Now I ONLY disagree because of SC2. SC2 is now the largest E-sport in the world and most of its viewers actually don't play the game. I believe it is the exception though and you are mostly right in that assessment.
GW1 also didn't have any real incentive for profesional players. There were minor tournaments but no structured annuel and no large pots until far too late.
You hit one of the things I'm most excited about as an E-sport contender. The games naturally split up the teams. This is huge. It means more exciting matches with small skirmishe pockets everywhere. It also means that teams won't just run in the middle and clash mobs until one side pushes the other back (although that is actually pretty exciting here too, just not as much so IMO). Of course newer teams and PUG teams will probably still try to stay together and zerg the other team. Luckily though a zerging team in GW2 is the equivalent of an "all-in" in SC2. Sending your whole team out is also borderline suicide for 5 v 5 unless the other team does it too. various strategies have already been thought of in the last BWE to immediately counter team zergs. The strategies range and include doing pretty much anything else besides zerging them back. If even one man is seperated from the group and out capturing points, you win versus a team zerg.
So I liked what I saw there. As I note from my above post I also fully agree that exciting moves be easily noticeable and recognizable. I think they will be based on what I've seen. the visual cues are mostly common sense. The competition is gaurantee'd on the sole basis of its balance and huge annuel pot offering. To get the audience we need some casting tools. Soon as that is in, I think Anet will have a full package to deliver as an E-sport.
http://www.wix.com/guardiansofthegarter/home
How are we polluting anything? What did we pollute? We (E-sports) basically created the NBA out of a bunch of backyard teams.
E-sports allowed people to make a little bit of money (or a lot of it) doing what they love to do. If a game is balanced and fun enough to attract observers it only does good things for it and its fans. You don't have to play competitively, you can still play every E-sport casually for sure.
Even if I'm playing a game casually I think its cool to talk to others about that really skilled player or that play last night or some crazy things somebody did in a match. Especially in a game like GW2, where the competitive scene is completely and totally seperate from everything else. You aren't going to walk into a battlegrounds here and be dominated by some wondering pro. Here the pro teams play in the tournaments setup by Anet and in private servers. Its a great deal like playing football for fun.
Normally you aren't playing football with your friends and T.O. comes in out of no where to smash your face. T.O. and competitive players have their own stomping grounds in basketball and every sport. It'll be the same here
.
In other words, we won't be in your cool-aid. We're just the suger pack you can choose to add next to it
.
http://www.wix.com/guardiansofthegarter/home
I think some people are mixing up e-sports with elitism in this thread. I never felt directly harmed as a gamer by e-sports state of mind. On the other hand, elitist jackasses are not necessarly into e-sports. Plus, you can be elitist, but not a jackass.
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While I will never be able to compete in the higher ranks and I plan to spend most of my time in PvE-land, I still hope that GW2 will do well as an e-sport.
To me it seems that Anet got a lot of experience and understanding of what both the casual and the highly competetive players want. Just look at some of the things Anet added to Guild Wars after release:
Monthly tournaments, rankings, skillusage charts, different PvP formats (not all of them great but hey...), observer mode, constant skill updates and a big one with separate skilleffects/cooldowns etc. depending on whether the skill was used in a PvE or a PvP setting.
Still to this day when I see a new guildname pop up as worldwide announcement when they win HA I often go to observer to see their match and to see if they have any GvG's on the list.
Imagine that: PvP'ers that play only for "fame", fun and cosmetic rewards? And their matches even bring enjoyment to casuals such as myself.
I really hope that Anets years of experience pays off. And I am not in the least worried that PvP skill balances will "nerf" my PvE experience!
We dont need casuals in our games!!! Errm... Well we DO need casuals to fund and populate our games - But the games should be all about "hardcore" because: We dont need casuals in our games!!!
(repeat ad infinitum)
I'm a unique and beautiful snowflake.
Its not bad thread here
Still I disagree with a few things OP, but mainly I think you overlooked huge flaw in Anet plan.
Servers browser seems like great idea, you can practice here, but you have to gather 10 people and its more than in GW1. You can play with a few friends here 1v1, 3v3 or anything but it wont help you for 5v5. You can even create game and wait for players to join. This can take a while even in games with huge playerbase (or mainly in these) and you have poor gaming experience even when they join (and not leave after a few secs).
If you look at most games, server browser is good when there is not enough players (so SEO based matchmaking wont work).
You have somehing like ranked matches for full teams of 5 players - automated tournaments. This will probably be the best option for any serious players and teams. But just by nature of it, you can win just buy playing A LOT of tournaments if there wont by any sort of penalty (or ELO).
You probably know where I am heading right now, GW2 NEEDs some kind of ELO because how its designed right now its just mindless grind. You have to LOSE something when you lose!!! Even in GW1 there was ELO for GvG. There should be some kind of ladder so maybe there will be ELO and its just unannounced feature.
Worst thing is, that there are tournaments for teams, there is server browser for very casual training or awfull game experience if you play with randoms. But there isn anounced any solo matchmaking so far. If you look at LoL (this kind of dont affect SC 2 as a solo game anyway
). every pro player plays only a few team matches or tournaments, but they spent a lot of time in game. GW2 doesnt have anything for solo player who want to play serious game. Individual players also need ELO, because otherwise pro player will end up with some noob (who only play a lot) and both will be bored.
So ELO and solo queue lacks from GW2 right now and either of them arent even announced. You also need to make sure players wont leave solo game (implement some kind of leaver system). I think GW2 will fail miserably if serious players wont be able to play 90% of the time (where 10 are the tournaments and team games).
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Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
Thank you, and thank you everyone for the great discussion. This is, to me, one of the best threads I've seen thanks to you guys. Actual debate and discussion. I've been involved in E-sports for a while and I find myself learning new things almost every post in here. So thanks for the responses on a topic very interesting to me.
I have my reserves that you must absolutely be playing a game to jump into a game. I think guilds can create personal servers that allow only 5 people to either practice timed runs through maps or strategies in action. Even if you can't create your own practice server though (have they talked about server specifics yet?) I don't think it'll be very hard for most teams to organize a skirming group. Most teams have associated guilds and It would be easy to scrounge up 5 more people every now and then and have a skirmish group. Even if your operating as a seperate team presence for competition it shouldn't be too hard to find 5 people within your combined circles to play a few rounds with.
That's all only necessary IF you can not create designated practice servers.
As far as tournaments are concerned you do have the penalty of not qualifying for the monthly. You must win a weekly tournament to qualify for a monthly, and a monthly to get into the annual to compete for a free trip in the semi-finals and the grand pot.
There is no negative penalty per-say other than not getting into the revered monthly tournament for your shot at an annual placement (where the huge pot rests).
There is a ladder in that sense already. If you lose you are not qualified for the monthly and, thus, don't get to play in the finals. I believe that is like every sport out there. You don't have a ranking ladder in football, but if you lose to much you won't be playing in the playoffs. That's clearly enough for them to mind losing.
I feel it may be the same here. I think rankings and ladder systems just add a layer of agony and frusteration to the experience. Even if you are casual you don't want to go down in rank in SC2. So every time you lose its this big frusteration. While going up a rank out of a hundred doesn't really provide you with much joy.
I know this is human nature (SEE: loss aversion) but still. I think its actually better if there is no penalty for losing as far as a rank ding or anything but, rather, there is a loss of an opertunity. Lose and you can't progress. I think that will give the serious competitors reason to care about losing (they can't get into the big tournaments) without giving casual players angst.
So, in light of that I don't think the game needs an ELO. Its got enough incentive to win without penalizing players directly. Just like in sports, you do not drop in rank if your team losses. I also don't agree that GW2 needs 1 v 1. This is specifically a team affair. All real pro-players will thus have a team. If you are competitive with PUG teams then you are just messing around really. There is no solo que because its not that kind of game. You can practice as 1 v 1 (as you stated) but I don't think there's any need to accomodate a solo scene here. I also doubt it would grow at all, most of the competition is so engrained in team-play with this game.
When you can please give me your thoughts on these points.
http://www.wix.com/guardiansofthegarter/home
Thanks for reply mate and I agree that this thread have some very interesting posts!
I still think there should be some risk in competetive gaming and not only reward. And more important thing is, that you should have more perofrmance levels than two (qualifiers to monthly and the rest). For example I want to be able to know if my team is in top 50, 100 or 200.
If you only have possitive points, it will end up about how often you play, not about how good you are.
There will be practice servers and you can rent a server. But as you could see in latest BWE, server based games are really trash and you cant have much fun there. In latest BWE there were games 1v1 2v2 ... 8v8 and some were even 3v4 , 6v7 or something like that. Thats something serious players wants to avoid and if "play now" button put them on these games, they will leave and will be angry (I was).
If you look at pro LoL players, they often casts from 5v5 ranked games, where they join alone and game get them another 4 players on equal level (and if you are a pro these games could be interetsing). Matchmaking will guarantee, that you end up in game 5v5 with players as good as you are.
Most people want to play when they have some precious time, they dont want to spend it by looking for players or in games 5v3 with noobs. So I am not talking about 1v1, but I am talking about queue for matchmaking (you can join alone or in 2 etc), where you are guaranteed 5v5 game with equal skilled players (and to measure skill, you need ELO, there is no other way).
I agree that pre-made teams are the best option, but if you ever played in some team game, you know that you spend only a fragment of time with this team. Other 90% of the time you are alone or with just 2 other mates from team. That precentage can differ from team to team, but its way more than 50% when you dont have your team available. And ArenaNet need to address this situation in a way that is satisfying for serious players (and server browsers games are FAAAAAAR from that).
_____________________________
Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.
Hmm, although the Esports thing does sound a bit interesting, as long as its kept seperate from the W v W v W PvP then i don't have a problem with it.
The only thing "eSport" (lol...) achieves for a game is a continuous stream of nerfs and dumbing down of all classes in a continuous attempt to balance them all, which is impossible. In the meantime, that ruins classes and sometimes the whole game for all the other players, those who actually pay for the game.
That's why I hope GW2 will never become some "eSport".
Respect, walk
Are you talkin' to me? Are you talkin' to me?
- PANTERA at HELLFEST 2023
I totally agree. Although I think you'll see more interaction in the WvW side of the game simply because it's quite a bit easier to get in to, and there will be less pressure for the player.
I'll probably dip into e-Sport myself with GW2, but I wouldn't expect it to appeal to everyone. That's what WvW is for.
The problem with eSports is the whole mentality pollutes the game design, that way lies instanced battlegrounds and endless balancing.I don't get why you call map control micro. To me map control is strategic, thus macro.