Planetside 2 and Professional Gaming

[Effective]

Originally Posted by Captain B

"Will all the PS player play it?" What, you mean all 50-100 of us? That's not gonna' be very epic seeing a few hundred people TOTAL fighting over continents. I'm hoping for 200+ on every side, at once, at a minimum. Take away from that, and it's looking like the battlefield will be dead before year one is up. This is basic mathematics.

I think you're deliberately being stupid. When I said "All PS players" I clearly meant for planetside 2 (That be why we posting in PS2 section derp).

The idea behind outfit wars wasn't for epic huge battles, it was for uninterrupted outfit vs. outfit combat. JUST LIKE THE ACTUAL GAME, but with only the outfit + fill ins fighting. Do you honestly think that if 2 outfits go to a "distant" continent to fight, no one else is going to show up? Are you really that dumb?

Don't like e-sports? You don't have to play. There still isn't a good reason to argue against it for any game nowadays. Provide something other then "IT DOESN'T BELONG IN PLANETSIDE RAWR" please.

Think of it this way. If more people ended up using a esports instance system (if it were added hypothetically) and not playing for territory. What does this imply? It means PS 2 failed to attract the attention of those gamers. Meaning that eventually they're going to leave anyways. If the game is good, then an added e-sports system is barely going to scratch the surface of the population on the battlefield.

Oh sorry guys, it's not like an actual battle, no more Christmas or Halloween events or anything along those lines.

[Crator]

So, Effective got me thinking, what if these e-sports in PS2 integrated with the regular PS2 system in some sort of way. Perhaps winners would unlock some sort of continental or global benefit or something?

[Graywolves]

Originally Posted by Crator

So, Effective got me thinking, what if these e-sports in PS2 integrated with the regular PS2 system in some sort of way. Perhaps winners would unlock some sort of continental or global benefit or something?

Like if a TR won then all TR get Dropship Center benefit? Or something?


Would give incentive for people to participate but I don't think that's necessary.

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Effective

Think of it this way. If more people ended up using a esports instance system (if it were added hypothetically) and not playing for territory. What does this imply? It means PS 2 failed to attract the attention of those gamers. Meaning that eventually they're going to leave anyways. If the game is good, then an added e-sports system is barely going to scratch the surface of the population on the battlefield.

no it would mean they have a higher reward incentive for doing instanced fights rather than open world.

[Effective]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

no it would mean they have a higher reward incentive for doing instanced fights rather than open world.

Then add no reward system other then bragging rights.

@Crator I think anything benefit other then bragging rights/cosmetic changes to armor etc that affect the consistent world is a bad idea

Edit = At best, MAYBE a free sub for a month for the winning team, but that's it (and I doubt SOE will do it since they'd lose money for "x" amount of players for a whole month lol)

[Captain B]

Originally Posted by Effective

Don't like e-sports? You don't have to play. There still isn't a good reason to argue against it for any game nowadays. Provide something other then "IT DOESN'T BELONG IN PLANETSIDE RAWR" please.

Tabletop.

I play 40K and WFB. When I got into the game, I loved the idea of creating my own army and customizing it how I wanted to, around my playstyle, my aesthetic, and so on. I loved it; I had a personal hero on the field and he was designed to support or lead his forces into battle appropriately.

Tournaments have always been run for tabletop. But if you're also in that scene, you know very well what RAW and WAAC mean; for those who don't, it's Rules As Written and Win At All Costs. These are the foundations of what what has ruined the games a little bit at a time with each new edition, each new Codex (although WFB is less susceptible to this, and 8th Edition WFB is an excellent rule system, while 5th 40K is utter shit). Instead of the game being played "rules as intended", people find loopholes in the game, ways to break the game and min/max so that their "strategic advantage" lies in statistics and can easily be played with a calculator rather than utilizing on-the-filed tactics. Now, I'm not saying clear and concise rules are BAD, just that they are abused.

When "professional gaming" (and I chuckle even typing that) becomes incorporated into games, it completely redefines the game. I spend hundreds of dollars on my armies, buying bits to make 'em look cool, all the vehicles and troops and whatever else I want for 'em, but in the end, if the list itself isn't WAAC, that severely limits what I can do. I'm not talking about slight disadvantages; I'm talking about not taking one unit or character and my army losing before it's put on the table (save for some miracle of the enemy rolling all 1s or me all 6s). It means I have to find like-minded players who don't roll cheese-dick lists so that I can have fun, too. So that there's some variety rather than "Oh, you have that Space Wolf guy that blunderbusses krak missiles out of his asshole 18" around his Land Raider every turn... didn't see THAT one coming..."

It stales the playing the field. Players get tired of it. For every one "professional gamer" there are at least 100 who don't give a shit (proportions reversed in Korea). It isn't limited to tabletop, either; MMOs become all about the specific stats and gear make-up for your class. If you don't have the right combination of gear, it doesn't just affect your ability to game, but it can often be a point of contention in groups. "Go up and tank that guy with Berzerker Buttfuck Ability." "Um, I don't have that." "But you're a warrior!" "Yeah, but I put some points into archery so I could be a little more versatile." "WHAT?!" "Well, I know I can't shoot bows as well as a ranger class, but I thought it'd be more fun-" "YOU ARE FUCKING WORTHLESS! GTFO MY GROUP!"

Because game devs and players are aware of this trend, whether they want to admit to the source of it or not, they dumb down the game. What happened to skill-based games, where you pick skills instead of classes? "Oh well Classes are easier to balance." No, actually, they aren't; they're easier to NERF and make ANOTHER class outrageously powerful come patch time, but not easier to actually balance. Come next patch, that class will get nerfed and onto the next class! (See DAoC.)

Eventually the game comes down to focusing on making the competitive players happy and forgetting all about the casuals. Free-to-Play is about casuals. It's about getting a lot of people who "like" the game, not "love" it, involved so that there's more than a hundred people playing. On the ground, so to speak, the players themselves become more competition-oriented with people thumbing their chests and challenging each other for best outfit, squad, individual soldier, etc. I don't care if they do, but when mechanics are placed into the game to facilitate that, then mechanics used to expand upon or enhance the epic scale of the rest of the game are lost. You can't argue that. Even if you say "they can do both at once", the argument of "yeah, but they could have taken that time to put even MORE into the actual game instead of these little side games" comes up.

Sadly, there IS precedence for what happens when mechanics are included to allow for this. Actually, there's more evidence to show this occurring than the other way around. If you don't see it, you're either tunnel-blind in your own playstyle or you just haven't been gaming persistent, online worlds long enough to witness it. We've gone from sandbox, in-game world-wide battlefields with open-ended possibilities - that is, the Massively Multiplayer Online Game - to MOBA - Multiplayer Online Battlefield Arena. We've taken the potential for entire armies to face off on scales that make single-player games with multi-player function look like child's play to stuffing them into a gladiatorial arena.

Do I care? No, I don't. Do I have to play? No, I don't.

Does it take away from the potential of the entire reason I'm playing the game in the first place? Yes, absolutely.

You brought up that I was stupid because I didn't think of other armies coming in and crashing the party. I did think of it. If you put instances into the game, you are detracting from the play. You are taking outfits out of the game - outfits that could be 30 large on either side. That's a solid 60 people for just two outfits. What if there are several outfits doing this? It's just dividing the players. It's like adding new lands and expansions to MMOs with a dying populace; thanks for the updated content, but now we're more split up and separated than ever. When the newbie areas are left behind because there isn't more interesting stuff to do there at higher levels/skills, they become wastelands to be traversed alone, and all people can see in the far distance is the higher levels having a party. It becomes "Shit, I gotta' grind fast so I don't miss out on all the fun!" instead of "Hey, let me enjoy all of this shit by myself," or more preferably but nearly impossibly so, "with others."

You could, in all of this, argue that I don't HAVE to play with these jerks who WAAC or focus on e-sport type gaming. On the contrary, I do HAVE to play with them, because if I don't, that's an additional portion of the population I don't get to hang out with and enjoy playing the game with. When the game becomes less and less massively, the game has lost my interest. When I HAVE to use X weapon or Y gear, or die incessantly if I don't, the game has failed. When I HAVE to participate in an outfit battle or get kicked out of my outfit, or I HAVE to participate in these instanced battles for glory and "proof" of my skill, or I HAVE to join these mini-games to get benefits for my empire outside of the normal gameplay, you are forcing me to get involved in some way, either directly through the mechanic or indirectly by keeping me from a significant portion of the game.

Devs can do all sorts of things with every good intention in mind, but it's ultimately the players who define the game. "The road to hell is paved in good intentions." Devs may want players to work together, rely on each other, make dedicated crafters or build up a town or encourage sieging and ship battles (rattling off all sorts of game concepts that have DarkFailed recently...), but if the end-game, the cost-vs-reward, or the difficulty (or more specifically, the EASE) of soloing contradicts those intentions because of faulty or misjudged game mechanics further pushed and expanded by player interaction, peer-pressure and player-level over-(or under-)emphasis of the system, all the happy thoughts and pure intentions are out the window.

From there, we go into why drivers shouldn't be shooters and how the class system would actually work in terms of PlanetSide (or rather making certs incompatible with one another simultaneously if we stayed cert-based), but either way, it isn't the topic of this thread.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by Effective

@Crator I think anything benefit other then bragging rights/cosmetic changes to armor etc that affect the consistent world is a bad idea

Meh, was just a thought. Some global empire thing that doesn't give a very big advantage would be cool. Perhaps to open up a foothold on another continent or something. To sway the tides of battle sort of thing. Was trying to think of something that would lessen the fact that you are taking players away from the main cause.

[Effective]

Originally Posted by Captain B

Huge post

If e-sports types events are managed carefully (run by a GM or some sort of player event manager) and only once every couple of weeks or somewhere around there. Then the amount of people they remove from combat will be minimal, because the majority of the time they'll still be playing PS2 then. Were you not here for outfit wars? Or the kingpin tournament? Kingpin lasted 2 hours at MOST, and removed a grand total of 12 players (+ a few spectators, so maybe 20-25 at the most).

And while outfit wars removed up to 60 players, so what? The impact of 30 players on the grand scale of a game that's supposed to have THOUSANDS playing is so incredibly minimal it's stupid to argue about it. If done right, even if you do participate in outfit wars, if your outfit loses quickly, your obligation to participate (if you had any at all) is done right there, because until the next start up, you can't participate now.

I'm not saying add a matchmaking system or anything along those lines (though I'm not against it either).

[Captain B]

Sorry, but if you think PS2 is going to have thousands of players on a single server at any one time a year after launch, you're sorely mistaken. That's simply not how games work these days. Too many games, too much ADHD amongst gamers - they'll move onto the next big, shiny thing their computer can run.

Also, requiring an event to be run by GMs being limited to 60 people? Why not use that GM to make a global event everyone can play in?

Clearly, you love this kind of e-peen brandishing shit, and there's no sense in discussing it further with you. If you want to play in a massive scale game for shits and giggles just until your outfit match opens and waste precious GM time organizing a "small portion" of the population, then fine. I think it's a serious waste of everything that could be used to better the game as it was intended, and based on nearly 15 years of watching games falter with these sorts of mistakes and devs STILL NOT LEARNING from them, I'm not going to discuss this stupidity any further.

[Effective]

Originally Posted by Captain B

I'm not going to discuss this stupidity any further.

Excellent

[Tapman]

Originally Posted by IDukeNukeml

with this, I have said a thousand times (and actually a couple dumb fucks did it with me but never payed) a wager website where you place bets on kills / deaths / wins... If someone could create this legally, id be sittin' large.

Hah! I bet if the statistics were able to be streamed live, Vegas would have a field day in this business! It's a numbers game after all, they could set the odds and everything. The best part is that you could then theoretically match two even players/outfits up on a server with a fight that is selected by the judges, handicaps could be placed on players/teams based on the conditions and difference in stats. Players and groups can sign up to do it and get a % of the prize money although they have to have valid identification proving they are of legal age, and throw a decent entry fee for players (don't offer discounts for squads/platoons/outfits, but they should garnish more bets and therefore win larger amounts from the bookies) into the microtransactions shop so that you will keep the majority of the population away and force it to support SOE to make up for the licensing and resource-use fees. I wouldn't be surprised to see a drop in hackers overall and none in this field if there was a chance that some thugs could show up at your house to break a finger or two.

Unfortunately, US law has issues with certain types of online gambling. It would need to be set up properly.

[razor851]

Originally Posted by Bags

Planetside is not an e-sport.

Video games are not a sport.

[Bags]

If chess and golf are sports then video games can be a sport.

[Graywolves]

Sports are just games too.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Hamma

This topic was filled with over reactions the last time we had it too - people don't seem to grasp the concept this isn't something that would be every day. It should be built in for very special events, not weekly matches or tournaments.

Not to drag you back into it Hamma, but I wanted to clarify. What you describe would be great, but you wouldn't call it an e-sport any more than you'd say that the annual school Field Day was a "sub-national league". "E-sports" is generally used to refer to videogames aping professional sports, such as Starcraft in Korea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-4DN8RKNDc#t=0m57s

Unfortunately e-sports (not entirely unlike professional sports) tend to create a poisonously overcompetetive atmosphere, Captain B already explained the how and why in his post, and the end result looks something like:
http://www.themarysue.com/all-about-...st-female-pro/

Originally Posted by Tapman

Vegas would have a field day in this business! It's a numbers game after all, they could set the odds and everything.

That's what we need, is it? Planetside re-imagined as a horse race?