Planetside 2 and Professional Gaming

[Dairian]

There are plenty of other games that appeal to the e-sport market. The e-sport market if very small and planetside is for the masses. Bringing this to planetside will bring an ego that changes the way people perceive the game. And how people act as well. I played WoW in an Elite Raiding guild. And at one time we were 10th in the US. And I know first hand what this can do to a game. We do not need that kind of mindset for PS2.

I know there will always be trolls and people with big egos in every game. But the Elite ego is much different.

[james]

Originally Posted by zomg

Good luck getting 100-200 players to be around at the same time for 2 to 5 hours... It would rule out almost all but the most professional and organized groups.

Even in Counter-Strike where teams are 5vs5 or 6vs6 it can be hard to get a group of people to show up at the same time. Of course the teams are smaller, but the time requirement from them is smaller as well.

I mean it's cool and all, but it doesn't feel very practical to me

I agree, Getting 6 players together for COD Competive without major planing is a pain. Then move to a game like battlefield, 16 v 16 or 32 v 32, its just so much work and such a pain in the ass to get everyone together. If you move up to 100-200 players it will be near impossible to have a majority of your outfit/clan all on the same time.

[Otleaz]

Originally Posted by james

COD Competive

wut

[Espion]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=43196

[kaffis]

Not to mention, by the time you're talking 100 vs. 100 teams, that's some RIDICULOUS prize support, not to mention participation rates. Instead of e-sports being about the top 100 players in the world, or whatever, you're talking about the top 2000 players in the world... and e-sports just aren't big enough, even if you accept the assertion that Planetside e-sports would subsume the whole market, to support that many professional players.

Finally, Planetside *is* the metagame. Restricting a match to one map castrates and handicaps 90% of the strategic and tactical considerations that go on in Planetside warfare. Look at Planetside 1 command decisions, and then look at the gameplay shown in the E3 stream. All of the *most* interesting choices have been removed, leaving some pretty basic shooter mechanics and mostly individual twitch-skill gameplay.

E-sports are a way for the masses to see their favorite game played at very high levels of skill. Planetside, by virtue of being a game OF the masses, already allows you to fight alongside and against those elite players, and still have a part to play.

[RandomNPC]

Originally Posted by Irish

since planetside is going to be a kinda a catalyst in what i feel the fps genre is heading towards wouldnt it be nice to see it catapulted to new heights by capturing a NEW genre of e sports?

...with the support and MONEY that comes from the fame competetive gaming brings to a title, comes potentially new funding and attention from the game creators....to feed into the hysteria.

tournaments bring in HUGE numbers i dont see why we cant be open to the idea of 50v50 or 100v100 hell even more outfit style battles, on custom BALANCED maps, in a lan setting.

could you imagine the coverage, and beauty this game can bring if it would be covered by MLG or sponsored by intel.....

The problem is if you take Planetside and scale it down for a tournament, it ceases to be Planetside - it's not a new genre of esports, it's just more of the same.

Tournaments bring in huge numbers, most of which watch online, having dedicated streamers that can spectate freely and comment on the action would effectively bring in the same numbers as a tournament, because of how unique the scale of the battles will be. If not more, because it will maintain it's uniqueness instead of just being another generic FPS tournament.

[Sensator]

Originally Posted by Irish

Original post

I agree that it would be awesome if there was some mechanic to challenge an outfit in a controlled 50v50 scenario, and to add tournaments would be awesome. The problem is that it just isn't feasible, you played CS and probably know the perils of fielding 5 players, imagine fielding 50+ players for practice scrims and tournaments.

How would prizes be split with teams of 50 people? A large sum of money for a game like Quake or SC2 is 50 grand for first place, but each player on the winning team for PS2 would get a measly $1,000 with such a prizepool.

Also, the logistics of having a venue that has to accommodate teams of 50 or more is almost out of the question. Not to mention how hard it would be to get an outfit to and from a venue when you usually play with people all around the world.

I can give a pass to the whole 'it just wouldn't be planetside' argument though, because I don't see what's wrong with having controlled Outfit vs Outfit scrimmages. It would provide extra competition and show which outfit really reigns supreme.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love a 'dueling' mechanic between outfits, and I think it could have the potential to be much more than just competitive dueling--but eSports really has yet to work for the MMO genre (outside of WoW Arenas), and I doubt the format would work for Planetside.

[GreatMazinkaise]

It's all tacticool now... there's no e-sport to be had.

[SKYeXile]

This again :/ somebody post up The Architect picture.

[RandomNPC]

That said, there's nothing stopping SOE from hosting live events.

If there is ever a competitive scene it would have to play out more like a RTS than a FPS to be feasable as having prizes and on location players. 3 Empire leaders (or a team of leaders) who we would watch make the decisions, they get a couple outfit leaders under their command, with multiple platoon leaders under their command, with squad leaders under their command, with a squad, all filling up a 2000 player continent - no footholds for competitive mode.

How bad ass would it be to watch the Empire leaders try to organize a real war? Sure it would take days to play out, but that's awesome. There's your NEW esport genre, real war simulation.

[GreatMazinkaise]

There's your NEW esport genre, real war simulation.

Er, real wars are boring most of the time, and feature mostly guys hanging out, milling around, or even possibly starving to death. As soon as you've become bored to tears the excitement hits, and it's as quick as a horror movie aural sting but it feels like it lasts for a thousand years.

I'm no Rudyard Kipling, but I'm sure that's a fair description of the lack of suitability for a war simulation as an e-sport.

[Dacrim]

I dont think its a bad idea. it would definietly take some tailoring to make it work but i think its doable if people really wanted to do it.

Maybe a private server could be used to isolate the 2 outfits, the outfit leader and platoon leaders could go to the actual location of the competition and be the ones to recieve a cash prize while the other members of the outfit could recieve some sort of ingame reward (provided that SOE is affiliated with or are the ones holding the competition).

To prevent ending up with outfit members who decided not to show up, outfits of 150 or more players can be chosen and provided that your in a 100vs100 match or even 50 vs 50 there will be 50 to 100 alternates. I really believe if an organization REALLY wanted to organize a competition like this then they could make it happen with a few conditions as previously mentioned

[Dacrim]

In my mind im imagining a couple air support platoons, a couple tank platoons and the rest would be infantry platoons and Max platoons...Seems like it would work fine to me if,like i said before, certain conditions were met to make up for potential problems

[RandomNPC]

Originally Posted by GreatMazinkaise

Er, real wars are boring most of the time, and feature mostly guys hanging out, milling around, or even possibly starving to death. As soon as you've become bored to tears the excitement hits, and it's as quick as a horror movie aural sting but it feels like it lasts for a thousand years.

I'm no Rudyard Kipling, but I'm sure that's a fair description of the lack of suitability for a war simulation as an e-sport.

Just like RTS esports, the strategy would be the draw more than the action, seeing how an Empire leader delegates and moves his resources and whatnot.

Besides its not really real war simulation, its real fake war simulation, with infinitely respawning soldiers :P (until they get cont locked).

Honestly, if people enjoyed playing it in PS1 (was a lot of waiting around organizing things), there's an audience for it to be streamed in what appears to be a faster paced sequel.

[Xaine]

I threw up a thread like this a while ago and got my head bitten off by angry fan boys.

I really like the idea, think it could be really good. Biggest 'competitive' game ever? Yes please.