Rate the Ultimate Empire Showdown Event

Mordelicius · 2013-01-26, 12:32 AM

How would you rate this event?

Idea: Absolutely excellent.

Execution: Absolutely horrific.

Horrific faction balance - Vanu is a breath and win faction.
Horrific stream - slideshow

Consolation prize: Had good 3-way fight at the Bastion.

Kudos to the Waterson NC for fighting tooth and nail.

Vanyaeli · 2013-01-26, 12:36 AM

The TR and NC didn't even try to fight us on Amerish so the VS on Cobalt kind of won by default. Perhaps the VS players were just more organised than you were or had greater numbers present during the event. No need to bring up faction balance at all.

ChipMHazard · 2013-01-26, 06:14 AM

Originally Posted by Vanyaeli

The TR and NC didn't even try to fight us on Amerish so the VS on Cobalt kind of won by default. Perhaps the VS players were just more organised than you were or had greater numbers present during the event. No need to bring up faction balance at all.

Perhaps there's a reason why the good players play VS or maybe it was just a coincidence?

Can't say I'm surprised about them not resetting the territory after each event. It's not a fair competition if one faction already owns the tower they are fighting over. I guess the event served it's purpose but they have got a looooong way to go before being ready for any MLG competitions. At least this gave them some experience on what is required ingame for anything like this to work.

Emperor Newt · 2013-01-26, 07:10 AM

On Miller TR owned the whole continent shortly before the event started. Most VS outfits switched continents roughly 30 mins beforehand. VS and NC were pushed back to their warpgates at this time. TR still managed to completely loose.
We really had to fight hard to get the territory back. But once the defense on the fist forward bases was broken and we started to split up and fight them on several frontlines most of the TR forces dissolved into a headless and mindless zerg without any direction. There were some outfits giving us trouble but once they could not bring superior numbers and focus their forces in one single territory they had a pretty hard time.
I just think there wasn't enough communication and tactics going on from their side as VS on Miller is pretty well organized, especially good coodination between the different outfits.

But to rate the event:

Idea: nice
Execution: Nothing "special". Overall a completely forgetable experience. No need to do this again. At least in this format.

Ghoest9 · 2013-01-26, 08:16 AM

Almost no one understood the event before it started and most people didnt even know it going to be on all servers.
I still dont know if there was going to be some sort of reward.

I have no idea how the it went on the main server but on mine it was kind of a joke.

bjorntju1 · 2013-01-26, 07:11 AM

So if I understand correctly, The VS should have won because they won 2 out of three challanges. But instead the TR won because most people voted for TotalBiscuit? (who is probably the most populair of the three, I didn't even know the other two)

Really?

0/10

ringring · 2013-01-26, 07:15 AM

It was not so good.

1. I had no idea there was supposed to be simultaneous events on all servers. Maybe it said so somewhere and I didn't read the last few emails from the team because I though I already knew this wasn't meant for me on Miller.

I normally ready everything so I don't know how I missed that.

2. Horrible horrible technical issues. How was it that weren't you prepared?

3. Jacehall. He should have done a little homework, ignorance by the commentators is not acceptable. Take sports commentators for instance. They have a good grounding in whatever sports they commentate on, but in addition they also have and do in depth preparation on the terams of the team involved and the strategies thay may be on show. - Amateur.

4. Adrienne. Similar tbh criticism as with Jace also because of her role not quite as important. When she was speaking with the teams, she didn't know their names. Standing next to Levelcap and TRay she said 'Here I am with the, erm, VS team...'. Although, if I was Levelcap I'd have forgiven her anything too when she sat on his lap and bounced up and down a few times.

5. Viewers perspective? Confusing. There were no visible strategies that were apparent over and above people zerging, and dying often and too quickly. Maybe they were there but if so it didn't come out.

Perhaps if you had 1 commentator following each empire exclusively they could follow strategies evolving and then summarise them for the audience.

Perhaps also there should be a special overview map where the progress of the war and strategies can be explained. For example, TV sports summarisers have a screen where they explain things, they can draw arrows and with those show how 'plays' develop and if they break down be knowledgable enough to show the points where a wrong turning was taken.

The results.
The voting thing, what! Surely not.
VS dominated, TR and NC quite a way behind and close together with NC trailing in last. I think this reflects current game balance pretty well.

In Summary.
It was not a particularly good viewing experience. I have seen better in PS2, from Maggie and Jimmywhis included who I think are great.
You need a rethink on how to present a war over and above how to present a simple fps bout.
You need your presenters to be knowledgable, I think Addrienne was fine but Jace needed to do some work beforehand.

+1 to TB for humour.

Lorak · 2013-01-26, 01:17 AM

Was a good idea. But SOE shouldn't have lied and told the player base that the contest was game based.

Should have just told the truth and said it was a voting contest. Would have saved people a lot of time. But I guess you can't "showcase" a twitter vote.

Seems everytime I want to give SOE a little credit for listening to, or careing about the fanbase, they always prove me wrong.

p0intman · 2013-01-26, 01:22 AM

literally the dumbest idea out of SOE since BFRs and the NGE.

MaxDamage · 2013-01-26, 01:28 AM

Originally Posted by p0intman

literally the dumbest idea out of SOE since BFRs and the NGE.

The same people who complained about BFRs strangely have no complaints about farming with Liberators which are far more OP than BFRs ever were.

Feels good bro.

KodanBlack · 2013-01-26, 01:56 AM

I had a blast. The battles were intense and a great deal of fun.

I'm simply disappointed that the victor came down to some vote. That's plain stupid. It should have been entirely based upon which faction dominated on the battlefield.

MaxDamage · 2013-01-26, 02:07 AM

Originally Posted by KodanBlack

I'm simply disappointed that the victor came down to some vote. That's plain stupid. It should have been entirely based upon which faction dominated on the battlefield.

Bla bla, TR WINS YOU LOSE.

Reaver · 2013-01-26, 02:08 AM

My opinion does not reflect that of my outfit and I just want to point that out before I post.

What went right: Awesome concept, 3 empires battle it out in an epic showdown across all severs.

What went wrong: Poor stream quality.
Limited to one continent should have used all three.
Poor communication of the event and its victory conditions.
Not localized, eu servers were from what I hear essentially ghost cap'd.
Did not reset the map before each goal resulting in factions having an advantage/disadvantage from the start.

Overall opinion: This event definitely showed soe was a bit unprepared for this, but proved without a doubt that an event like this is certainly possible and tons of fun and they should totally do more. Just make sure you learn from the mistakes from this one soe.

Chewy · 2013-01-26, 03:02 AM

What the others said. The stream was missing about 2 hours or more from their twitch page and what was there the audio and video was crap.

Main thing I'll say is that the 2nd "challenge" was rigged to shit. That was a tower base. A TOWER! How the fuck is someone suppose to cap a defended tower within 30 minutes? The defenders had a near 100% chance to win that crap mission without working for it! VS had only one goal to do, and that was keep the bar from moving. To do that all you have to do is keep 1 faction from getting 2 points. The TR and NC where doing that FOR THEM by both of them being there. Point A was going to be under VS with it in feet of a hard spawn, so that left B and C for BOTH TR and NC to fight over and they not only had to fight each other. They also had to fend of the fucking VS! A WIN WIN for VS no matter how you put it.

I can't even give thoughts of the first challenge because the stream didn't show it. The third was the only fair fight because they reset the map at the start. But only on THAT server. Every other server wasn't touched to my knowledge yet still counted for the "challenge". (though I LOVED TBs face when he watched his ghost capping in challenge 2 get undone. Smart move, bad game plan.)

Many of us called this the moment the event was announced. A PR stunt and not in any way what Planetside should have been. It was in no way a war with not even half a platoon for the leaders. It was a zerg fest. Without the zerg, the event wouldn't have been more than squad on squad fights. No outfits, no communication, no detailed assaults, not anything we in big outfits seen in our custom events or daily for some. The 2 showdowns on Waterson so far have been FAR better fights and events than this "thing".

Reaver · 2013-01-26, 03:10 AM

Originally Posted by Chewy

What the others said. The stream was missing about 2 hours or more from their twitch page and what was there the audio and video was crap.

Main thing I'll say is that the 2nd "challenge" was rigged to shit. That was a tower base. A TOWER! How the fuck is someone suppose to cap a defended tower within 30 minutes? The defenders had a near 100% chance to win that crap mission without working for it! VS had only one goal to do, and that was keep the bar from moving. To do that all you have to do is keep 1 faction from getting 2 points. The TR and NC where doing that FOR THEM by both of them being there. Point A was going to be under VS with it in feet of a hard spawn, so that left B and C for BOTH TR and NC to fight over and they not only had to fight each other. They also had to fend of the fucking VS! A WIN WIN for VS no matter how you put it.

I can't even give thoughts of the first challenge because the stream didn't show it. The third was the only fair fight because they reset the map at the start. But only on THAT server. Every other server wasn't touched to my knowledge yet still counted for the "challenge". (though I LOVED TBs face when he watched his ghost capping in challenge 2 get undone. Smart move, bad game plan.)

Many of us called this the moment the event was announced. A PR stunt and not in any way what Planetside should have been. It was in no way a war with not even half a platoon for the leaders. It was a zerg fest. Without the zerg, the event wouldn't have been more than squad on squad fights. No outfits, no communication, no detailed assaults, not anything we in big outfits seen in our custom events or daily for some. The 2 showdowns on Waterson so far have been FAR better fights and events than this "thing".

If your talking about connary being a zergfest I'll disagree a lot of the outfits were working together behind the scenes, but they did run into serious problems, about half got cut off because of ques meaning not eveyone got their outfits intact on to amerish. I personally didn't get to amerish until the beginning of the third round after being in que from 6est, had two disconnects that put me to the back of the line. Angers me that apparently the TR had 100 people sitting in the warpgate for the first two rounds that's two platoons and a half that weren't doing crap for the TR.