SmedBlog: eSports Support - Page 11

Notser · 2012-08-12, 03:24 PM

Originally Posted by RoninOni

Lets make 1 thing clear... even high intensity counterstirke 'eSport' matches ARE NOT SPORTS. Period.

Personally, I hate the word with a passion. I hate the entire concept that skill at video games is in any way significant. It's FUN to be good... but really, am I going to put that into a resume? Hell no. Now if I won the Bronze in the 400m of a national level or higher race, you can bet your sweet tukus that's goin in my resume.

You really think winning a race is worthy of being on a resume? Being athletic isn't really a achievement considering everyone should strive to be healthy. The only reason you feel like putting that race result on your resume is the feeling that others would care about that. I doubt companies like Intel or Blizzard would give a shit about some race you won, where as winning or showing skill in their fields of expertise would garner more interest then some little run. Either way that kind of thing is worthless if it doesn't apply to the job. It is entirely different if you've represented your country however so don't counter with something like that.

RoninOni · 2012-08-12, 03:28 PM

No, truth.

The real talent to video games are the designers and programmers, NOT the players. The players are the audience. The fans. And they have their fantasy leagues and their backyard games.

You don't see trophy's being handed out for the best fan at the super bowl do yah?

They get some love and recognition sure. But they aren't taking home the trophy.

We're fans, not the stars.

Game broadcasting I find a particularly odd phenomenon. I see how and why it's popular but the entire concept is just funny to me. Primarily I see advantage in watching how better players play, so that I might learn some tricks of the trade, build orders, or tactics, and in fact that is actually what gave birth to them in the first place (match replays being watched of good matches).

There is even some really interesting potential in Planetside to be covered like a war in a way no game ever has before. It could be pretty fun and entertaining.

But that's all any of this is... entertainment.

Sports are physical contests of skill, wits, and strength. Video games may have contests of intelligence and hand eye coordination, but as a veteran of gaming for 25 years (at least) I can say without question that there is no competition between even FPS and non-arena Paintball (urban/forest type real scenarios).

It's not like I have no respect for skill in games, as it does take skill without a doubt....

but the entire attachment to being a 'sport' I find as laughable and absurd.

Like Chess. Chess is a game. They'll have chess competitions. It's not a SPORT though.

THAT'S why I can't stand the term eSport in the first place. It's so erroneous it almost seems like a back handed insult. But just having a 'gaming' competition doesn't sound important enough... no... they're 'eSports'

To me it just makes it sound like people trying to make it sound more important than it is.

oh, and you win 3rd in the national 400m then you're prolly going to the olympics.... who WOULDN'T put THAT on their resume?!? O.o

If I go to the WORLD championship for a game though... the only way that's going on a resume is if I'm applying to a GAME DEVELOPER

I'm not trying to be insulting or to downplay peoples skill at games..... but... it IS still just video games. People sometimes take them far far FAR to seriously IMHO. And I'm a gamer. I'm a hardcore gamer. Hell, I prolly spend more time TALKING about games (this is only 1 forum I frequent) than most people do playing (and I play much more easily). As I said I've been gaming longer then most of today's gamers have been alive. There's nothing wrong with them JUST being video games though.

I feel like 'eSports' though is just trying too hard to be relevant.

In any case, I fully support "Planetside TV" but am wary of anything to try and create small scale tournaments out of it... if this does end up happening, then ANY balance changes made due to said tourneys needs to ONLY apply to these tournament events and NOT affect core gameplay unless a balance is needed to the CORE gameplay. (and I still don't particularly like the idea either. The stream/shoutcast support built in is all fine and dandy though)

Stardouser · 2012-08-12, 03:37 PM

Originally Posted by Syphus

I have no idea what you are trying to say. It would make it an organized sport because playing basketball is an organized sport. This would just allow people to watch people play it. Therefore it is televised sport.

I don't know why you people are like THIS IS ESPORTS AND IT CAN'T BE ANYTHING ELSE RAAAAAAAGE

What I'm trying to say is that a pickup basketball game isn't truly competitive. It's a team trying to win against another team sure, but once this game ends, the next game might have half different players, and tomorrow's game almost certainly will have all different players. That's not organized competition just because it's televised.

sagolsun · 2012-08-12, 03:42 PM

Originally Posted by RoninOni

No, truth.

The real talent to video games are the designers and programmers, NOT the players. The players are the audience. The fans. And they have their fantasy leagues and their backyard games.

You don't see trophy's being handed out for the best fan at the super bowl do yah?

They get some love and recognition sure. But they aren't taking home the trophy.

We're fans, not the stars.

I disagree. Back in the days of floppy drives and when gaming was indeed meant for kids, we were just passive consumers of content. Today all of that has changed - we've got jobs and PC gamers in particular are very creative and talented people.

We had young gamedevs rise to fame by building incredible mods - PC gamers with a little spare time. A lot of games, particularly the ones with a mature audience, rely on the community to build auxiliary utilities. The interesting part here is that while the community might not be the most technically skilled - you'll have few people writing better shaders - they'll respond and fix deficiencies in the game design via external utilities in a way that's simply amazing. MMORPGs are a good example with professional wikis and clever programming. I've played Anarchy Online once and the automated lookup ingame chatbots were amazing. External utilities that helped you do math regarding implants and stacking.

Or Dwarf Fortress - a closed game virtually unplayable without certain utilities like Dwarf Therapist - or better yet, a completely new separate rendering engine, Stonesense.

The only reason we don't see the community come up with even better stuff is because nobody pays them. There's only so much work you can do before you end up needing a few bucks to cover your expenses.

Keep this in mind, players today don't just play - this is why SOE made the excellent decision of opening up their APIs for 3rd party developers. It's because gaming has changed and they have confidence in us.

Originally Posted by RoninOni

Like Chess. Chess is a game. They'll have chess competitions. It's not a SPORT though.

THAT'S why I can't stand the term eSport in the first place. It's so erroneous it almost seems like a back handed insult. But just having a 'gaming' competition doesn't sound important enough... no... they're 'eSports'

The term esports is just a PR-friendly term to describe what you'd otherwise call "I'm watching a guy play a videogame".

RoninOni · 2012-08-12, 03:59 PM

Originally Posted by sagolsun

I disagree. Back in the days of floppy drives and when gaming was indeed meant for kids, we were just passive consumers of content. Today all of that has changed - we've got jobs and PC gamers in particular are very creative and talented people.

We had young gamedevs rise to fame by building incredible mods - PC gamers with a little spare time. A lot of games, particularly the ones with a mature audience, rely on the community to build auxiliary utilities. The interesting part here is that while the community might not be the most technically skilled - you'll have few people writing better shaders - they'll respond and fix deficiencies in the game design via external utilities in a way that's simply amazing. MMORPGs are a good example with professional wikis and clever programming. I've played Anarchy Online once and the automated lookup ingame chatbots were amazing. External utilities that helped you do math regarding implants and stacking.

Or Dwarf Fortress - a closed game virtually unplayable without certain utilities like Dwarf Therapist - or better yet, a completely new separate rendering engine, Stonesense.

The only reason we don't see the community come up with even better stuff is because nobody pays them. There's only so much work you can do before you end up needing a few bucks to cover your expenses.

Keep this in mind, players today don't just play - this is why SOE made the excellent decision of opening up their APIs for 3rd party developers. It's because gaming has changed and they have confidence in us.

The term esports is just a PR-friendly term to describe what you'd otherwise call "I'm watching a guy play a videogame".

#1 You're examples are mostly gamers turned developers....

There's 3 categories, and a person may fall into 1 or more of them (or none I guess but then you wouldn't be here)

Gamer: Player of video games created by developers and oft with modifications made by other players

Developer: Content creators. The guys who make the games. As I said, the real stars of the show. Modders are in this group, usually in a MUCH more diminished sense but there are also some AMAZINGLY talented modders out there

Viewer: New odd (IMO) category of people who watch gamers play the games made by the developers. The shoutcasters themselves fit into this category as they are indeed... watching. They're also relaying what they see, hyping it up, talking about, and if they're any good, get a large following of viewers. This entire concept of video games still boggles my mind, yet as long as it doesn't intrude on the original and IMO true purpose of the game itself.

And I know it's just a PR friendly term for streamed and viewed gaming... it's just such a BAD term though IMO.

Shogun · 2012-08-12, 04:01 PM

smed, thanks for opening up to us like this!

with that blog and the detailed answers you gave here, you have earned my respect!

maybe you should really change the word "esports". the actual meaning of esports seems incompatible to planetside, but the thing you described, that is more like war journalism or watching big real-sports events sounds really cool! it´s time to put some more gaming on tv!

maybe even do some running man like events with celebrities

again, thanks for the communication and for sharing the ideas! most of them sound great and it is awesome, that you seem to be aware of the potential that lies in planetside 2!

Azarga · 2012-08-12, 04:11 PM

No idea why smed called shout-casting esports. If it's just a shout-casting, let it be, I'm no fan of it but see no harm in it anyway.
If it's esports then please let me stay on a server without it, I've had enough of leaderboards, matchmaking and shit, I come for planetside for different things. If people want this so bad, fine, but let them have their deathmatches on a separate servers.

Forsaken One · 2012-08-12, 04:22 PM

Honestly EVERY game i have ever played that attached Esports to itself became shit.

League of Legends balance became shit when they added Ranked mode. The competitive retardation the game has fallen into has sucked a lot of the fun out of the game.

If any of you are playing Natural Selection 2. The game is a load of shitty balance and I'm not talking just numbers wise. BUT NS1 is a blast because the players made that competitive not the devs.

People have forgotten that PLAYERS should make a game competitive. When a game is built, changed to be, or allows flaws to exist for exploiting for the reason of being competitive it sucks the fun out of the game.

Tetris can be competitive at any level. However when you force people to play at super high speeds because that's what the "E-tards" want you not only suck the fun out of the game but you bastardize what was once a good game.

Systems that this falls under are high skill high reward, "annoying to do/play so more power given", weakening what some may find fun because people bitch that "it doesn't take skill" and other such nonsense.

PhoenixDog · 2012-08-12, 04:26 PM

My fear...And I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in this thread yet or not...Is balance. The big problem WoW had was balancing a PvE game in regards to PvP, moreso towards e-Sports. I'm concerned that if SoE pursues a e-Sports type environment, even with a dedicated server restricted to invitees...That certain flaws with this type of structure may be pronounced, and thus balanced on the live servers, skewing the balance of the real game.

Obviously balancing WoW between PvP and PvE is much different than with Planetside 2 which is 100% PvP...But having a game balanced around massive 2000 player battles is much different than with say 50v50 or even 100v100.

All I'm getting at is as long as they don't try and tune the game we are all enjoying to balance a smaller version of it...I really don't care either way. XoO may even delve into the idea as an outfit. But I play this game for the large scale PvP. I don't want it to be balanced for small scale.

sagolsun · 2012-08-12, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by PhoenixDog

My fear...And I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in this thread yet or not...Is balance. The big problem WoW had was balancing a PvE game in regards to PvP, moreso towards e-Sports. I'm concerned that if SoE pursues a e-Sports type environment, even with a dedicated server restricted to invitees...That certain flaws with this type of structure may be pronounced, and thus balanced on the live servers, skewing the balance of the real game.

Obviously balancing WoW between PvP and PvE is much different than with Planetside 2 which is 100% PvP...But having a game balanced around massive 2000 player battles is much different than with say 50v50 or even 100v100.

All I'm getting at is as long as they don't try and tune the game we are all enjoying to balance a smaller version of it...I really don't care either way. XoO may even delve into the idea as an outfit. But I play this game for the large scale PvP. I don't want it to be balanced for small scale.

Agreed.

Balancing asymmetrically is a bitch. SC1 and SC2 are one of the very very few esports games that manage to have different abilities and strategies for each side. Development took so long because balancing asymmetric factions is very difficult. You need to get loads of data to do that - with SC2 you can just let alpha testers loose and parse the data, afterwards tweak the stats, rinse repeat until you get even wins.

PS2 however.. balancing is going to be very difficult. War is inherently unbalanced and I think PS2 is supposed to be more of a war simulator than a sport. Those two are opposite directions and I'm pretty sure that features which make it a better esports game also are detrimental to the war simulator experience.

Edit:
In addition it's hard to get reliable metrics with PS2. It's open nature means you can't reliably quantify the context of the events on which you're collecting data. With PS2 everything is interlinked, not segmented, therefore the only metrics of use are low level (kills per weapon, most preferred weapon, K/D ratios ect) - but if you give a AOE howitzer to NC and a nerve gas bomb to NC, comparing those two becomes impossible.

And I'd like to have different weapons for different factions. I really would.

shamE · 2012-08-12, 05:03 PM

Ahhh, all the old out of touch vets thinking it will affect the normal gameplay.

NewSith · 2012-08-12, 05:30 PM

Originally Posted by super pretendo

But it does, showcase high skill or being competitive isn't what the term esport is used for. Read the post below yours.

So you're all FOR bringing competition to planetside 2, yet you are AGAINST making it an esport?

Because I don't see what part of my post you are countering.

Originally Posted by shamE

Ahhh, all the old out of touch vets thinking it will affect the normal gameplay.

No, from my experience it's that people are afraid of players doing only the competitive thing, whilst claiming that they are the best (while not playing the mainstream, "public" game, in which they will obviously suck balls according to first players' logic), what a psyhologist can describe as hidden jealousy. I saw plenty of that when we hit "the best" mark in EU Global Agenda AvA.

super pretendo · 2012-08-12, 05:32 PM

I'm not for adding competition to planetside, because competition implies sterilizing the game for the sake of pre-matched arena balance. I am for it being a fun, persistent game

Warruz · 2012-08-12, 05:36 PM

Originally Posted by RoninOni

Lets make 1 thing clear... even high intensity counterstirke 'eSport' matches ARE NOT SPORTS. Period.

Personally, I hate the word with a passion. I hate the entire concept that skill at video games is in any way significant. It's FUN to be good... but really, am I going to put that into a resume? Hell no. Now if I won the Bronze in the 400m of a national level or higher race, you can bet your sweet tukus that's goin in my resume.

So, if you strip away this fake, inaccurate attachment of actual sports to 'eSports' then it opens up the definition to basically any video game being broadcast for the purpose of entertaining viewers.

EDIT: oh and competitive minesweeper is todays first facepalm

Chess is a sport

NewSith · 2012-08-12, 05:38 PM

Originally Posted by super pretendo

I'm not for adding competition to planetside, because competition implies sterilizing the game for the sake of pre-matched arena balance. I am for it being a fun, persistent game

You are wrong in this regard, I assure you. To make a game competitive, all you need to is set the "rule of default". A good example is old BF2 pcw matches, where use of any unlocked items was prohibited.