Planetside 2 and Professional Gaming

[Graywolves]

On the Reddit AMA I asked Higby if they would include any small-scale competitive game play similar to when they did outfit wars.

His response was that he is a big fang of e-sports and that later in the future they will probably include something small-scale for competitive play. But right now they are focusing on releasing the game and that means the large-scale warfare (the main game).

[Crator]

If it was event based, every other month or so, I wouldn't care. Might even be fun.

[Graywolves]

The only possible issue would be that you'd have people doing arena-games-w.e instead of the main game's conquest. But I think outfit policies and possibly the need to have atleast a good squad would prevent this from effecting too much.

[Tapman]

I don't think I made myself clear. I do not want instanced/arena games. I don't think they have to be a fundamental part of a highly competitive environment suitable for tournament/professional gaming. Part of the draw to me is that in order to be the best at Planetside, you and your team have to be ready to deal with just about any threat you come across, whether that is a surprise attack from a single organized outfit or a massive push from an entire faction, in an eSports scenario that could mean that the elite team gunning for the big prize has to deal with every scrub or fellow elite player in highly variable and volatile situations.

AFAIK, the devs are setting the game up to have a LOT of information collected about each player and outfit to be used in third party apps, leaderboards, etc. and I think that a system could be developed to monitor and compare those metrics and rank players/teams against others. SOE has alleged that preventing hackers will be a primary focus and as long as they are successful, we have a reliable basis of comparison.

TL;DR Player/team performance metrics could be used in eSports without arenas/instances. No need to get worked up about them in this thread.

[Captain1nsaneo]

Originally Posted by Crator

Perhaps something like a fantasy football system offline, in a web browser, would be neat though.

Could definitely see this happening. Where player performance ingame affects how your roster does. Heck, would be pretty realistic as there would be cheating and bans!

As for pro circuit ingame, I can't see it happening without a devolution of gameplay to a smaller scale. Now you could have tournaments held over a weekend for all 3 sides where whoever has the most territory or holds an objective at a set time gets points or something. Maybe the reward is a giant statue in the foothold or something.
Could also have lan events where those at the lan become ubar commanders and can make missions worth a lot of resources/BEP and if their side wins the people at the lan get a reward of some sort. It would be a competition of leadership and strategery.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Tapman

I don't think I made myself clear.

You made yourself perfectly clear. You'd like to take a game about an endless, knock-down, drag-out, throat-slitting war and turn it into a spectator sport, complete with corporate sponsored supermen, more arbitrary metrics than a baseball fanatic can count, and a crowded event calendar (Brought to you by Fanta!) and my answer is no.

This is not a game about watching other people play a game. This is not a game about some unshaven guy whose wardrobe gets picked out by the video card manufacturer paying his rent clicking away on camera. No heroes, no villains. If somebody in Planetside 2 becomes a legend it should be because they are legendary not because Athlon is footing the bill for their publicity department.

[SavageB]

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

You made yourself perfectly clear. You'd like to take a game about an endless, knock-down, drag-out, throat-slitting war and turn it into a spectator sport, complete with corporate sponsored supermen, more arbitrary metrics than a baseball fanatic can count, and a crowded event calendar (Brought to you by Fanta!) and my answer is no.

This is not a game about watching other people play a game. This is not a game about some unshaven guy whose wardrobe gets picked out by the video card manufacturer paying his rent clicking away on camera. No heroes, no villains. If somebody in Planetside 2 becomes a legend it should be because they are legendary not because Athlon is footing the bill for their publicity department.

Well said. Leave the E sports to, CS, CSS, Sc2, BW, etc.

[Graywolves]

Esports is going to happen eventually. You don't need to participate or spectate it.

[Tapman]

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

You made yourself perfectly clear. You'd like to take a game about an endless, knock-down, drag-out, throat-slitting war and turn it into a spectator sport, complete with corporate sponsored supermen, more arbitrary metrics than a baseball fanatic can count, and a crowded event calendar (Brought to you by Fanta!) and my answer is no.

This is not a game about watching other people play a game. This is not a game about some unshaven guy whose wardrobe gets picked out by the video card manufacturer paying his rent clicking away on camera. No heroes, no villains. If somebody in Planetside 2 becomes a legend it should be because they are legendary not because Athlon is footing the bill for their publicity department.

First off, I was referring to the posts where people seemed to be under the impression I was demanding arenas/instances. I was clarifying that I was not.

You seem to be suggesting that I am looking for a celebrity culture where corporations pay tons of money to market a couple of assholes that they think will look good on-screen so they can hock their products. The thing is though, if a player wants recognition they will get it by doing well enough to get on the leaderboards. If they want to be, as you said, legendary they will do that by staying on the leaderboards. The phrase "pro circuit" was used because as time goes on there will be certain people who dedicate themselves to maintain their positions on the leaderboards and that level of talent and dedication would warrant calling them a pro. There will be enough of these people that cycle in and out on a periodic basis that you could call it a circuit. If these people want to try and make a living doing it and there is someone out there who will pay them for it, what the fuck is that going to do to you or the majority of the players out there? Here is what just came to mind for me:
- More exposure for the game which means more players on more continents. Don't want to participate in the big bad corporate event? There will be tons of other battles that need to be fought, any eSports involvement would make up a fraction of the total activity throughout the game.
- These elite players are going to exist whether or not they wear a patch on their shirt or exclusively drink slurm while they play. The larger scaled exposure and real-world ramifications are great motivators for people to organize and follow orders.
- If there is ever a player out there who is falsely elevated by a corporate sponsor who you just hate everything about, guess what? You can find him in the game and kill him until he loses his sponsorship and ragequits forever! Hell, you could probably make a case to organize mass groups on every faction to do the same if they were that big of a douche.

One of the main reasons we have all stuck with Planetside over the years are because of the war stories. Judging by the response to my idea about recording battles, most people agree that this game will be awesome to watch. I agree that SOE resources shouldn't be wasted catering to eSports, the only people who would put any work would be in the legal department if it was being used for-profit. The burden of resources is on those who want to broadcast it and those who want to watch, if you don't want to support it then all you do is don't watch! Chances are you will be playing the game already anyway and won't even notice. I actually watch live streams of games sometimes for big tournaments and replays sometimes of popular matches, and I know that I am not alone. I also think there will be a fair amount of interest in studying how the top players/groups play which will make the game more competitive. Don't forget, there will be plenty of top players/outfits who will want nothing to do with it as well.

I just don't see Planetside 2 suffering from any of this.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Tapman

I just don't see Planetside 2 suffering from any of this.

This is why I don't have any problem with 90% of the stuff I hear people complaining about. Why can't the game feature stuff that someone else will enjoy? You don't have to participate. As long as it's done in a way that isn't interfering with regular gameplay, bring it on.

[Captain B]

It's the "not interfering gameplay" that's the problem.

When outfits take 30 people and do a 1v1, that's 60 people NOT fighting for a base. If a few outfits do it at once, that's potentially hundreds of people NOT on the battlefield. They may like the "MMO that's not an MMO" that's become so prolific these days with safety nets and instances, but personally, if this is to be MMOFPS, it needs to STAY an MMOFPS. That means MASSIVELY multi-player, not 30v30.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by Tapman

I just don't see Planetside 2 suffering from any of this.

As I said, if you want to organize events then knock yourself out. I love when I log in and find out that somebody has put together an Ant race across Searhus. It's delightfully emergent and community driven. But that's not what you're asking for. You don't need a thread in the idea forum or special consideration from the devs in order to organize that. What you're asking for seems to be some sort of online genitalia comparison engine and I see no reason the game should try to attract the sort of people that would appeal to.

War is all the competition we need. To ritualize it would just reduce it's unpredictability. To rank, and classify, and assign numerical value to it's participants would just divide them and reduce their coherency. And I don't know about the rest of you, but I liked telling war stories because they're about interesting things that happened to me.

[Raka Maru]

Why not use the built in mission system for this? Commander sets a goal to set up a portable tower in grid xy kinda thing. Then the "sponsors" must create squad leader characters designed to do this stuff. The problem with this is that esport game area may become a battleground.

[Accuser]

Sounds like a good feature that's easy to implement that will draw in more players.
Just allow a self/squad/outfit que system, make a small map with two bases, and let the teams go at it in an instanced version of PS2. Let it end by time-out with the winner being the team with the most kills, if neither team takes a base.

There are a lot of "arena junkies" that play games for the glory of a clearly defined victory, and they'll put out the cash for cosmetic customization...

[Graywolves]

I like esports but I suck at RTS. But I'm good at Planetside....Why does everyone not want me to make money off of playing Planetside forever!?