elbow rage

(INF3RN0) #41

Big plus wan to Firewater!

(BAMFana) #42

Your example is not really on point, because Riot has been paying out huge sums of money to tournament organizers to host tournaments ever since that game was released, in addition to the yearly pro league Riot hosts themselves. Valve adopted a similar strategy with Dota 2, but instead of paying money to tournament organizers, they spend it all on a huge yearly event called The International. The first one was hosted while the game was still in closed beta, with many features still missing and some significant bugs, but it was still a huge success, and Dota 2 is enormously popular both for casual and competitive players today.

What you’ve actually identified is the problem faced by developers who produce games that lack the necessary player base to support competitive play, yet still want to reap the benefits of having a competitive scene. Dumping money on the problem by hosting tournaments isn’t going to solve anything when the real problem is that the game lacks quality and the player base is too small. Opposite to that, if you have a player base that reaches the critical level needed to support a competitive scene, supporting competitive play through hosting tournaments or paying tournament organizers to host tournaments, can have a significant positive impact on both player retention and new player influx.

Should Extraction be a popular success, I think it would be a good idea for Splash Damage to host a yearly event. It won’t be nearly as grandiose as The International, nor does it need to be, but if you fly a few teams out to duke it out for some reasonable prizes on lan with professional coverage, that’s enough to get the desired effect. If it’s done correctly, it’s even possible to turn out a net profit hosting such events. While Valve hasn’t released any numbers, I’m pretty sure they made significant profits from The International 3 (boost in item sales through promotions, compendiums, pennants, huge publicity leading to player influx, even ticket sales, and more).

(INF3RN0) #43

The international tournament is for publicity. The competitive part of the community is tiny compared to the casual player base. If Riot wants LoL to be known as the “top competitive moba” that’s their decision, people still would play it regardless. There’s plenty of successful games that don’t have a huge annual international tournament. After all the game was already hugely successful long before they started putting a lot into their competitive scene…

(C0l0n) #44
(OwNLY) #45

LoL is a MOBA, and XT will be an FPS. Thats a big difference.

LoL is played the same way in comp like it is in public,
that is maybe one of the points of why players are interested in watching eSport matches.
They watch the matches, and maybe learn something for their own gameplay.

That was the problem of most CoDs, they had to use a ProMod in order to get a good and playable game.
Battlefield 3 didn´t even have a spectator/demorec.

CS however is played the same way, and had everything.
Same as Quake.

And here i see big problem with XT.
SD keeps adding lots abilites, weapons and eqipment, but the balancing of this stuff takes ages.
Lets just see the airstrike, the turret, or the mines.
For months now they are messing around with just these features, turrets and mines seem fine for the moment.
Now we have 6-Shot semiauto launchers, invisibility, autospotting, self-revive, etc. and more will be added in the future.
I honestly don´t see good balancing happen in the next few months, even if we go into the beta.

That means the game will probably experience a split between comp and pub in order to provide a 100% balanced gameplay for comp.
Of course that is a bad thing, and the big problem if you flood a game with unnecessary equip, abilities, features and other stuff.
CS and Quake had it easy, the actual gameplay is the core gameplay without fancy but uneccesary additional rubbish.
For me the game was already very nice when i joined february this year and only needed some finetuning.
But with every patch it got worse, and now SD has again a lot of work in front of them before they can release the game.

(Mustang) #46

You might have liked it in the very stripped back form but it was always the plan to add lots of stuff during alpha then balance it during beta.

They only spent so much time balancing so far because we keep asking for it.

(FireWater) #47

Their first tournaments were in the low 5 figure count and even 4 figure count when Riot first tried to promote eSports. Their tournaments weren’t big at all. Granted that was a stepping stone, and the reason why people care so much about LoL is because they can learn what the pros are doing, and relate to it.

Remember: Gaming is primarily about playing, not watching. How many of you when you were kids wanted to watch your brothers, sisters, or neighbors play nintendo and you had to sit and wait your turn. Most of the time personally I would just get up do something else until it was my turn. Same thing happens with watching streams and popularity. The game has to be simple to access and fun, and so far I think they are doing well regarding that. I also believe there are a few things that can be done to assist with that.as well, but I will make a future post about that.

Remember: PC FPS eSports took a major hit when console FPS eSports came out. We have to remember that most players play FPS on console, not on PC. So what can SD to make those players who are in playing PC FPS, play this game, and at the same time, attract new players to PC FPS.