SmedBlog: eSports Support - Page 3

brighthand · 2012-08-11, 08:06 PM

Originally Posted by super pretendo

The problem is that if it has support it will crowd out the scope and perception of the game. The fun, emergent and dynamic aspects of the unplanned war (read: the entire game of planetside) will not get the public perception that the run-of-the-mill FPS crap will get. So players will not come for the main planetside game, but for the CoD of Battlefield cut.

EVE online is known for people watching the amazing videos of its battles, and even non players reading about the politics, wars and changes in territory. That's how I came to that game. If I saw EVE videos that were all generic arena battles with wannabe announcers talking over it, I would just close the video and never think about the game again.

It's disenchanting to see such people in this thread that lack this kind of basic scrutiny.

And for anyone thinking that PS2 needs to clone CoD to compete with it, you're silly. PS2 doesn't need to compete with CoD, it just needs to innovate out of the stale CoD formula.

I agree with you fully; that is what killed bf3: the need to compete with COD and other games that are NOTHING like it.

To supporters of this idea I say: Esports should be kept far away from this game. You have to look further down the road and see what decisions can lead to. Imagine this hypothetical situation:

You play HA and you appreciate the heft of your rocket launcher and its usfulness running into huge battles. You fire and it has a nice AoE that at least reduces alot of HP of surrounding soldiers on impact (have no idea what its actual AoE is, I am just saying it does x damage for this example). Well now that esports is big in planetside, the devs found from feedback from avid eports twitch "pros", fresh out of the COD circuit, that the AoE of your beloved rocket launcher is too wide and great, and makes it overpowered in an the eports setting- so they NERF it. Now you and your boys are rolling arround Auraxis with ROMAN CANDLES for launchers, pegging each other like a bunch of highschoolers in the back of a Walmart parking lot at 2:00am. This is one of the many 'positive changes' that the armies from all three factions are dealing with after the latest patch and it sucks- but thats OK, because the esports guys are having a BLAST in their inky dinky 8 v 8 arenas!

Even if they created seperate servers wtih seperate balancing, they might still have to allocate valuable development time that could have gone into making epic space battle contintents, or floating mountains or advanced command tools or something. Think about the losses.

Syphus · 2012-08-11, 08:07 PM

Please don't link our Titan kill in your whine.

EightEightEight · 2012-08-11, 08:07 PM

As long as the E-Sport Servers are separate from the regular game play servers and the E-Sport is separate from the game I don't have an issue with it. It just gives the people that enjoy that type of thing the ability to do it. I however am not interested in that sort of thing.

super pretendo · 2012-08-11, 08:08 PM

Originally Posted by Syphus

Please don't like our Titan kill in your whine.

wanna talk about it?

Stardouser · 2012-08-11, 08:14 PM

Originally Posted by brighthand

Even if they created seperate servers wtih seperate balancing, they might still have to allocate valuable development time that could have gone into making epic space battle contintents, or floating mountains or advanced command tools or something. Thank about the losses.

I seriously doubt that the development time will take away from other things and in any event, it's not for us to say about development capacity. And we still don't know what they're planning for this, but if e-sports follows the e-sports seen in other games, they're more likely to turn vehicles off for e-sports.

As for rocket launchers, there are people who want them nerfed against infantry independent of e-sports. I'm not one of them, but the point is, you have to deal with them before worrying about the damage e-sports could do.

Duskguy · 2012-08-11, 08:15 PM

dont see how this would work between factions. would be like they are friends just competing.

if it were interfaction, would be like as someone said a sport thing between outfits.

my idea of it would be:
-an announcement for a competition forms, outfits sign up and after x time, applications close and battles start.
-would work like a normal tornament, 3 resource nodes and then the home spawn.
-first team to claim all three nodes for x time wins, or the game ends with whoever holds the majority of nodes after x amount of time. or it could work like Battlefield's ticket system based off of spawning and ticket bleed.
-the winning team moves to the next teir and battles the winning team of another pair.
on it goes till there is one winner.
-then like the olympics, the top team of the three factions battle in a three way fight over 7 nodes, and win based on the same conditions as the previous battles.

super pretendo · 2012-08-11, 08:17 PM

If there has to be vapid esports support, make it like the EVE alliance tournament. Outfits can sign up for a special event that happens every so often with predetermined rules and battle space.

RoninOni · 2012-08-11, 08:18 PM

Originally Posted by JPalmer

How?

It will not change vanilla at all.

And it would pull more players in to the game. How do you think all these Outfits will practice Planetside 2? Mo' players. Better game.

The issue will be if a separate planet side is basically made that ends up drawing more people to it instead of the big battlefields they're supposed to be crowding.

If they add streaming and voice broadcast support so that streamers can showcase some famous outfits assault on a base known to be held by an enemy factions famous outfit...

then I'm all for that.

That's just free publicity for the real game.

And yes, randoms will enter the territory who just want to get in on the stream, and some will probably try and troll... but there will supposedly be moderators in game to help control true trolling (a really bad pilot I don't think needs moderation... just instruction and told to go practice where it's safe lol). and likely accounts that have a history of trolling will be banned. Sure, they may be free, but it will take cert points and resources to get the best stuff to troll with....

The more I think about segmenting planetside continents to showcase a quick battle the sicker I feel. It just doesn't feel right.

Stream support, yes, but nothing that compromises what makes planetside, planetside.

Revanmug · 2012-08-11, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by JPalmer

How?

It will not change vanilla at all.

And it would pull more players in to the game. How do you think all these Outfits will practice Planetside 2? Mo' players. Better game.

Depending oh what he meant by "eSport"... It CAN. There is so many possibility but if they chose the wrong one, it is just going to be awful for both side.

Saying eSport support is soo vague that I'll be waiting until more precision.

Arcsilver · 2012-08-11, 08:30 PM

sounds good to me, as long as it doesn't mess up the core of the game.

super pretendo · 2012-08-11, 09:14 PM

Originally Posted by Arcsilver

sounds good to me, as long as it doesn't mess up the core of the game.

But it will. New players will be generated by exposure that is strictly esports. How many hits do you think some official esports channel will get versus a chanel of community made videos of real player-driven battles throughout the world?

The lack of foresight worries me. Officially supporting esports turns this game into such a tragic malinvestment. Why spend resources on making an amazing open world if ALL MEDIA EXPOSURE will be to some cookie cutter, cancerous esport? Why are you wasting money on what an apparently obsolete playerbase cares about, when you are trying to just get a piece of the CoD pie?

You can't have your cake and eat it too. F2P model doesn't work well for esports either, but is ludicrously profitable for persistent games where players feel continuously invested in the state of the gameworld.

Why? Because esports by definition garner consistent exposure as a spectator "sport". Having a "real" planetside game, then an unrelated, planetside-style esport makes no sense. There will be asymmetric exposure between PS2, the game we are all waiting for, and PS2: Super eSports CoD Edition. There cannot possibly be a balanced potential-player perception between these two unrelated games with the same title. A community made youtube channel with videos of epic battles and emergent fun fights cannot possibly compete with an official, professional esports channel and streams. When you mention PlanetSide 2 to someone, the latter is what they will probably think of.

Splitting up the game into two unrelated games seems to be SOE's ludicrous attempt to have its fingers in both pies. It has a monopoly on the MMOFPS, and good for them, they deserve monopoly profits for innovating out of the astronomically stale and rehashed FPS genre. But now it seems they also want to follow the leader, and somehow take the game in the complete opposite direction. A direction that doesn't even work as well in the F2P model. F2P mmos are ludicrously profitable (Nexon) because players have a sense of persistence, and something being at stake. Something they buy has an effect on the continuity of a gameworld that is always there. The more the gameworld matters and the more immersive it is, the more people want to spend. Generic FPS #420 is nothing special though. But it will cause a flood of players who don't give a shit about what makes PS2 such an amazing game. And this will tip the focus in development and the balance of the game. There will never be a small, side-game of eSports that doesn't get development or media focus, and the two sections of the game live hand-in-hand, and the vision of planetside remains as if the esport part doesnt exist. Utopias don't exist. eSports exist to get as much attention and as many spectators as possible.

I just want a game that doesn't need to be compromised for a vocal minority of players that would love to see the amazing vision of the game compromised so they can have a reskinned Call of Duty, for whatever reason. If you want just another esport, why don't you go play one? it's the hot thing right now, there's a fuckton of them out there. I want PlanetSide. And it totally looks like SOE is going to make a killing, and they will because they innovated. Not because they copied.

vVRedOctoberVv · 2012-08-11, 09:46 PM

I really don't like the idea of "Esports", personally. Sounds like something they're set on doing, or at least trying out, though. I don't see it being a good thing long term.

Braveliltoaster · 2012-08-11, 09:52 PM

this game gets less and less like planetside every day

sagolsun · 2012-08-11, 09:55 PM

Sport is fundamentally incompatible with war because war is not about sportsmanship and a fair fight. Neither is PS2.

The only way e-sports could work in PS2 is a separate server that gets wiped every match. Not sure how much that has in common with PS2.

RSphil · 2012-08-11, 09:58 PM

if they make separate arena style game play will make it like every other game and suck big time.

i dont think this kind of game would be good for Esports. it could be good as a program to watch maybe as in live stream but with free view cameras for the streamer. like a documentary sort of thing. good commentating by people who know what they are talking about.

i think a game of such scale that would be the only way to go. if it put into a crapy small place fighting for 1 base its the same as the rest and no reason to make people watch when they have battlefield, cod, MW ect ect to watch already. this game is different because of its scale and this is something they should not take away.

only my opinion of course and i dont watch esports anyway lol. rather play then watch

BUT i would watch it if it was like i said free view cam with commentary from knowledgeable people. it would like a war doc