Remember the good old days .....

(PixelTwitch) #101

I think what most people are miss understanding when it comes to Antis example is…

People that are into any moba or any fighting game are able to understand and appreciate in a broad sense what is going on. Actually showing quick clips is far from ideal to make this point. I think its easier to see what is going on in a RTS, MOBA or Fighting than it is in a FPS. This is due to multiple reasons…

Quake is actually a good example of this…
Most people find it easy to watch/understand Quake due to the simple nature (to the spectator) 2 men fight it out on a map over items for kills. The fact its only 2 players means there are only really 2 perspectives to take into account. Fighting games take this one step further and have ALL the information displayed on the screen at the same time. Mobas on the other hand have just the one perspective that does not switch. From a specs point of view this is the most like a traditional sport.

The challenge for any wanna be esports fps right now is framing the action…
You can do it by having a game that is slow and paced enough for multiple points of view to not be a problem (CS:GO)
Or you can focus the action and story all around one convergence. (Shootmania Elite, Left 4 Dead and Bombing Run)

Any game that requires multiple points of view, is fast paced and/or separates points of action is going to struggle in its communication of events.
A prime example of how you can build around this problem however is found in SMITE and Natural Selection.
Where the spectators view and players view is actually vastly different.

The problem is that even if SD manage to answer the problems to do with perspective they still have major issues with pacing.
During game time you need time for exposition, story building and hype building.
You also want different stages/phases of play (Start, Middle and End) to avoid boredom and repetition.

Most of all the one thing that Stopwatch lacks in the first half and Objective lacks completely is contrast.
It is hard to get hyped during the first round of Stopwatch unless the time is amazingly crazy good. Simply because you have nothing to compare that time too… Without a point of reference building hype is difficult and meaningless. The double whammy is often in a small amount of time the second round is over with a large chunk of dead time tacked onto the end of the game. If the first team did a great run and the second team mess up the first spawn. It can be physically impossible for them to win but you still have 5 min left on the map. Or it could have been a full hold for the first team and the second team finish the first objective in 30 seconds.

All this is without mentioning the speed + detail of Dirty Bomb means streams are going to look like pants unless rendered at 4mbs minimum, performance is going to limit the player base, gameplay speed makes seeing what you want to see from a first person perspective difficult in spectator and appreciation of skill is diminished due to lack of lasting consequence for the previous actions.

Little design choices further limit understanding and enjoyment for spectators. The ability to switch Mercs mid round, lack of visual excitement and many other little things all add towards the game being not fun to watch for none HARDCORE DB players.

TL:DR - Dirty Bomb suffers from its spectator points of view and will mean the chance of it becoming a popular esport is very diminished. Other games such as Mobs, RTS, Fighting, Duel FPS and CS:GO have already managed to solve some of the problems that many games suffer from in this department. ET, ETQW, BRINK and DIRTY BOMB always have and to this very day fail massively to communicate the skill, story and hype to anyone that is not already from the hardcore community.

(Anti) #102

[QUOTE=Erkin31;509316]Yes and no.
ET is not easy to be understood for a spectator which is not an expert. But I find that FPS like Quake 3 is enough easy to be understood by classic gamers.
Yes this FPS is complex, but it’s not a problem. You shouldn’t be afraid to make an FPS too complex.

SF is really complex, the people which don’t play to the game will not understand why justin launches his super, why and how Daigo parries (and not block) each move, then his counter attack composed of a crouched medium kick cancelled (timing) by a shoryuken cancelled (timing) by a super.[/QUOTE]

That makes the SF clip even better though, there are multiple levels to the depth that work for both the neutral and the pro. At the base level you see Daigo with almost zero health block a load of stuff and then come back, most people who play games can appreciate that. For the SF initiated there is the subtlety of the parry vs block, the chip damage issue and so on, so it’s even better for them.

To JBRAA’s point earlier football is the ultimate example. My Mum (this is getting weird now :)) knows nothing about the benefits of 4-3-3 versus 4-4-2, or about positional play, but if she sees Zlatan score at 25m overhead kick versus England the excitement and appreciation of the physical skill involved is something she can immediately understand.

A competitive FPS doesn’t need to be easily appreciable by a non-gamer to be a success, they’re not the audience, but where possible the best moments should be obvious at a basic level for a regular gamer. I think a Quake 3 mid-air rocket achieves this, I’m personally not convinced a strafe jumping doc run does by itself.

Which is not to say we don’t need the fine skills and tactics shown in the sqzz clip, more that it’s not the greatest clip in the world to sell people on the awesomeness of the game :slight_smile:

#103

[QUOTE=Anti;509329]That makes the SF clip even better though, there are multiple levels to the depth that work for both the neutral and the pro. At the base level you see Daigo with almost zero health block a load of stuff and then come back, most people who play games can appreciate that. For the SF initiated there is the subtlety of the parry vs block, the chip damage issue and so on, so it’s even better for them.

To JBRAA’s point earlier football is the ultimate example. My Mum (this is getting weird now :)) knows nothing about the benefits of 4-3-3 versus 4-4-2, or about positional play, but if she sees Zlatan score at 25m overhead kick versus England the excitement and appreciation of the physical skill involved is something she can immediately understand.

A competitive FPS doesn’t need to be easily appreciable by a non-gamer to be a success, they’re not the audience, but where possible the best moments should be obvious at a basic level for a regular gamer. I think a Quake 3 mid-air rocket achieves this, I’m personally not convinced a strafe jumping doc run does by itself.[/QUOTE]

The doc run clip could be more easily understood by in shoutcaster mode:

  • showing the buttons pressed (popping up)
  • showing 2nd, 3rd, (a new view for every new shooter) view of people shooting him (think action movie getaway camera angle, where everyone shoots but misses since he takes the turns so good)
  • showing the signal to the other team, that they now move spawn point to join him (its so beautiful)

I can imagine someone looking at the doc run and think he hold W, and press space a couple of times

Think of guitar hero. When you make correct moves/clicks, you get confirmation on screen. The doc run lacks this totally.
He nails it, he makes 10x combo or whatever in strafe speed, and team picks up on it, and SYNC with him. Its so beautiful.

Also a meter of maintaining boost speed. Think nitro moments in Need for speed, but instead of pressing 1 button, you press lots of buttons like in guitar hero, and you need to do it while avoiding being shot, and communicating with team.

Trickjumpers often enable show speed in W:ET, so it just needs a more graphical interface, if speed numbers are available in UT3 engine.

(Glottis-3D) #104

i kinda half-agree with Anti.

mid-air-rocket is 100% eye-candy.

and docrun is also an aya-candy, but not in terms of button-pressing. but in terms of teamplay. docrun are awesome, when the danger is obvious, and you team sacrifises them selfs, or saves you or make miss-leading actions etc. and all that cannot be exciting, if watcher does know the maps. i.e. is not a player of this game.
so its eye-candy not for everyone.

you cannot beat quake without making another quake. i.e. arcade skillfull shooter.

but you can jump over quake easily, by adding depth into gameplay. like it was with ET and ETQW.
i and bunch of my friends came from Quake. we played hours and hours in 2v2 4v4 tdms and duels. but after playing a good object-based team games like ET, ETQW, L4d. we just get bored in quake. because it is flat, comparing to object game.

(Sun_Sheng) #105

[QUOTE=iwound;509164]
Make death fun again.

[video=youtube_share;KXGUpaJIy6g]http://youtu.be/KXGUpaJIy6g[/video][/QUOTE]

+1 !!!

Nice vid. I really miss the days when you could launch an airstrike and get a multikill. These days you throw a cannister down and it’s like an entire health and safety department comes along handing out protective headgear and sets up a 5 mile exclusion zone. One kill in 3 airstrikes seems like good going and that’s usually the guy who’s just gone afk while he’s putting his cig down and picking up a beer

(rookie1) #106

[QUOTE=Anti;509274]I love this clip because it demonstrates just how hard it is to make FPS games work well as an eSport. This clip simultaneously means the world to ET players and means nothing to players of any other FPS. The ‘skill/tactics/timing’ used here just don’t come across in the clip at all unless you played ET, in fact I’d argue a lot of the detail is probably even lost to pub players of ET.

MOBAs and fighting games have so many more moments of skill and talent that are easy to see and grok if you don’t play the game (or play it that often). I think examples like these come across much better for ‘the neutral’:

(videos)

It’s the combination of the clearer points of view (third person), the very binary mechanics and down time between action for exposition that makes it so much easier to communicate to players what is happening in these games/moments.

It’s something I hope we nail in DB in terms of both gameplay and spectating, and I’d love to hear suggestions on how we might achieve this, because I think we’re missing a trick if the skillful/meaningful/team work moments in DB end up coming across in as subtle a way as they do in the sqzz video does.[/QUOTE]
DB has so many things that can be done/happening by all individual mercs (abilities,obj/sideobjec/teamworking/movements/dualfigthing… in a match that is almost impossible to see everything as a spectator wihout missing cool gameplay.
Spectators need an fast look of what the match objectives will be .Using Bird view from starting point an then Cam dive to point of interests for intro and ingame gameplay could be use at some points .An Split screen cam Zoomed in , of a mini map ,showing the radius of the actual spectated gameplay with dots showing Shooting (Echo style ).Primary screen need to be the center of action but will need to travel fast to bird view to ground often to the other points of interest …even there we will be missing some actions . This could be carefully be done ha a video by pros For a trailer/ teaser one time,for public interest.

(Humate) #107

Just watched that dota video and honestly I have no idea what was going on in the slightest. Some things running around with fire and magic then everyone jumping and screaming because something was blown up I think? Not a watchable esport title for someone who does NOT play that game.

Basically it came down to a base race (both teams attacking each others base), and Navi last second opted to fall back via teleport scroll and defend their base. s4, playing as the blue fairy character (puck) cancelled the teleport scrolls of key Navi players by using an ability called Dream Coil, which locks targets in place. This aloud Alliance to counter-push Navi and eventually win the tournament. Amazingly s4 is no longer with that team anymore.

(warbie) #108

[QUOTE=Anti;509274]I love this clip because it demonstrates just how hard it is to make FPS games work well as an eSport. This clip simultaneously means the world to ET players and means nothing to players of any other FPS. The ‘skill/tactics/timing’ used here just don’t come across in the clip at all unless you played ET, in fact I’d argue a lot of the detail is probably even lost to pub players of ET.

MOBAs and fighting games have so many more moments of skill and talent that are easy to see and grok if you don’t play the game (or play it that often). I think examples like these come across much better for ‘the neutral’:

Uber parry vid

Stuff happening everywhere vid

It’s the combination of the clearer points of view (third person), the very binary mechanics and down time between action for exposition that makes it so much easier to communicate to players what is happening in these games/moments.

It’s something I hope we nail in DB in terms of both gameplay and spectating, and I’d love to hear suggestions on how we might achieve this, because I think we’re missing a trick if the skillful/meaningful/team work moments in DB end up coming across in as subtle a way as they do in the sqzz video does.[/QUOTE]

I also really had no clue what was going on in the dota vid. The same is true of the Starcraft vids my friends try and get me to watch - just random stuff happening on the screen! The Diago vid, while epic, is made by the noise of the crowd. Show it without audio to pretty much anyone and I doubt they’d see something special. I suspect even people familiar with SF who never played SF3 would fail to realise what they were seeing. Now take a match on Ice in RTCW. It’s a very simple map (like all the best ones) - first step the attacking team has to capture the spawn point. Second step they have to get the docs and escape. For the most part it’s nice and open and you can clearly see what’s going on - it’s nearly as obvious as a game of football - and as clear and as exciting as any game of CS I’ve spectated. tbh I rarely think of the spectator angle when playing a game, but this strikes me as yet another argument for simple maps with few objectives and open, arena-like environments. In my experience of playing all the RTCW-like games - the ones that were the most fun to play were also the ones that were most fun to spectate. Clear front lines with space to see what’s going on and to allow teamplay. If anything options to make spectating easier would be welcome - transparent roof tops so we can see what’s going on from above, less clutter and weird fog etc

(prophett) #109

Yeah, there is no way I would be able to understand what was going on in that clip or even that game without having played it quite often…

My breakdown = magic spells, explosion, excitement!

Disagree with this (see above comments).

(Anti) #110

I personally find Starcraft one of the easiest eSports to watch despite never playing Starcraft 2.

At the most basic level it’s very easy to understand, player with more bases and more units is likely to win. There is a sense of anticipation whenever one blob of troops is about to meet another, because the match state is about to change as a result. The concepts behind the tactics are easy to get, he’s going to rush the enemy before they are prepared, he’s going to out tech the enemy, he’s going to harass the enemy, he’s going to destroy the enemies economy etc. It’s also very often clear who is winning and who isn’t.

The next level down, which units trump which, the quality of micro and macro skills, the attack timings etc is there for the initiated to get excited about but I don’t need to understand it to see an exciting game or to know which moments are important. It’s a fantastic quality for a game to have.

(potty200) #111

If we are talking about watch-ability we should really consider removing secondary objectives and having ONE main objective to complete. CS and COD have this where it is literally bomb sites A and B or kill the whole enemy Team.

DB you have to repair the pump, destroy the wall, capture this, hack that, stand on spot X for 30 seconds and then do something else. You will NEVER engage an audience with such a verity of things to do. I know maps are going through a lot at the moment but why not look at maps with a maximum of around 5-8 minutes with games being best of 5 instead of 3? Have one END objective only. As DB is in the beta still you are able to give something like this a try. Overlook watch-ability and you’ll drop the ball on this before release.

(Glottis-3D) #112

[QUOTE=potty200;509353]
DB you have to repair the pump, destroy the wall, capture this, hack that, stand on spot X for 30 seconds and then do something else. You will NEVER engage an audience with such a verity of things to do. I know maps are going through a lot at the moment but why not look at maps with a maximum of around 5-8 minutes with games being best of 5 instead of 3? Have one END objective only. As DB is in the beta still you are able to give something like this a try. Overlook watch-ability and you’ll drop the ball on this before release.[/QUOTE]

we do already have CS, dont we?
the thing is to make secondaries important, and make their importance obvious.

like it was in ET

(potty200) #113

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;509354]we do already have CS, dont we?
the thing is to make secondaries important, and make their importance obvious.

like it was in ET[/QUOTE]

If you have never played ET it is ****ing awful to watch, fact. If you have never played TF before it is awful to watch, fact.

If you have never watched CS before it is still a top game to watch.

We already have CS but shortening and simplifying the maps brings this game no where near CS. It would make it far easier to watch. If you want a game like ET or QW it will go as far as 2000 active players and 200 spectators if you strike lucky after 2 months after release.

(Glottis-3D) #114

[QUOTE=potty200;509355]If you have never played ET it is ****ing awful to watch, fact. If you have never played TF before it is awful to watch, fact.

If you have never watched CS before it is still a top game to watch.

[/QUOTE]
that is your opinion.
to me CS is a boring as hell. 10 times watching the same small map with zero TTK instakills…i can only stand 1-2 minuts of this.

(Finko) #115

[QUOTE=Glottis-3D;509356]that is your opinion.
to me CS is a boring as hell. 10 times watching the same small map with zero TTK instakills…i can only stand 1-2 minuts of this.[/QUOTE]
Tr00, for me CS is boring like hangover morning in november, even SC2 is more fun.

(Glottis-3D) #116

SC2 is is fun, the only thing that bugs me is the win conditions. and the length of a full win.

(Kendle) #117

Once again this man speaks the truth :slight_smile:

I’ll add my voice to those saying the vids posted previously leave me completely cold as well, no idea what was going on in any of them, even people’s attempted justifications presuppose some small understanding, which if you don’t have it you’re not going to feel anything.

Football is a good example of a spectator friendly sport, because you don’t need to understand the rules to know putting the ball in the net is a good thing, or to appreciate the physical skill required to run with the ball, get past players, and / or score from distance etc… because you can see how it’s done (unlike a computer game, where you can’t see the keys the player is pressing), and you can imagine yourself attempting it and appreciating how hard it must be.

With the fighting game I had no clue what constituted a “good” move as opposed to a “bad” one, no clue how any of them were achieved, and no idea how easy / difficult any of it was to do. Similarly with the little things doing magic stuff, it’s just a mess of moving shapes and colours as far as I can tell.

Of course the same can be said of the Sqzz clip, unless you play the game you don’t know how easy / difficult it is to move like that, and unless you know the rules of the game you don’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing.

The most salient point raised here IMO is what Pixel said and what warbie has also alluded to. Football works because you can see the entire arena. RTCW worked for the same reason, the action almost always took place within a box, a walled off arena which you could take in at a glance. The fact the map may have several “arenas”, played in succession as something triggers the action moving from one to the other, doesn’t dilute the experience because you can pretty much see everything important that’s happening all the time.

DB is generally not a collection of arenas. Each stage is an area segregated into intersecting corridors by tall buildings, with several of those corridors in play at any one time, meaning it’s harder to visualise what’s going on and to follow the action.

Once again DB’s maps let it down. The game needs RTCW style maps, simpler, more open, clear font lines, clear boundaries, and less clutter within those boundaries.

(prophett) #118

[QUOTE=Kendle;509363]
Once again DB’s maps let it down. The game needs RTCW style maps, simpler, more open, clear font lines, clear boundaries, and less clutter within those boundaries.[/QUOTE]

There have been some very minor improvements over the past year, but in the grand scheme of things, the only big win in this category has been White Chapel (and even that map could be so much better with minimal effort).

Visiting London in November for work related training. I’ll have to straighten them out! :wink:

(INF3RN0) #119

You can’t ignore all of the people that watch LoL, Dota, SC2, CSGO, etc. Not surprising we like to watch the games we like to play, well so does everyone else. Either way, as long as there’s a lot of possible outcomes and opportunity for exciting moments aside from simply skill based execution then you’re in good shape. If all a caster can ever really point out is that A killed B, interest eventually fades. There’s a lot of dynamism in games like LoL, Dota, SC2, CSGO that you can’t find else where, which to me makes them interesting to watch and play too. An overly simple raw demonstration of skill just doesn’t cut it- imagine how less interesting quake duals would be without the item timing for example.

(prophett) #120

On Dirty Bomb being spectator friendly, aside from a few exceptions (CSGO), the majority of games are difficult to understand if you have not played them.

I would rather give shoutcasters (and spectators for instances when there is no shoutcaster) the tools they need to help spectators understand whats going on, rather than simplifying the game itself. As Kendle mentioned, in the case of Dirty Bomb, more sectional/traditional map design could also help with this.

Here is what I think is a great example that can be understood by most people. The exceptional casting made it all the better - showing the 14-14 score and explaining the 2v4 situation and talking the crowd through what was happening was amazing. Obviously some editing involved, but that’s where some of the onus falls on the community to create content such as guides, tutorials, and commentary to further engage the current community, and appeal to others not yet playing the game.

//youtu.be/yEWIuueem_M