E-Sports potential?
tehwadesta
Join Date: 2012-11-03 Member: 166587Members
Join Date: 2012-11-03 Member: 166587Members
Hey dudes, i just wanna start this post to ask what you guys think about NS2's E-Sports potential. I think this game is great and does the first one alot of justice. Having the RTS element and needing real cooperation to win, among other things, makes me think this game has alot of E-Sports potential and would really like to see it grow. what do you guys think?
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And don't forget to sign up your team for the upcoming ENSL Season 1 for NS2 on <a href="http://www.ensl.org" target="_blank">http://www.ensl.org</a> ;)
Also several casters already around (me included :P) ..so yeah, I think there's a big potential. But we need the new players now form way more teams :)
Edit: Maybe not competitions yet. But say matches between high level players in beta?
Edit: Maybe not competitions yet. But say matches between high level players in beta?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/naturalselection2" target="_blank">www.twitch.tv/naturalselection2</a>
<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/blindns2" target="_blank">www.twitch.tv/blindns2</a>
<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/rwryne" target="_blank">www.twitch.tv/rwryne</a>
& oh sometimes <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/l2pns2" target="_blank">www.twitch.tv/l2pns2</a> streams commander pov in scrims
you can also check out some scarjm's pov <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOIwwKtxn0w&feature=plcp" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOIwwKtxn0w&feature=plcp</a>
The spectating engine is pretty nice actually. It's just omitting that one major thing. Hopefully they can get that put in pretty soon.
As for myself, as a pretty big e-sports fan, and an ex-competitive NS player... I'd say NS2 isn't quite ready for e-sports yet, there's just a few too many niggling bugs, but I think that it will one day be a minor player is a foregone conclusion. NS had a strong history of competitive play. The biggest thing that remains to be seen is how much of a professional community this game can support. I'd be surprised if more than a couple individuals can make a meager living off of playing NS2 at a high level, but I wouldn't be surprised if a couple decent prizes get given out throughout the duration of the NS2 lifespan.
Edit: Maybe not competitions yet. But say matches between high level players in beta?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Blink's answer above covered most of it. Also, you can always check <a href="http://ns2hub.com/" target="_blank">NS2Hub</a> and look at the active streams on the right, a lot of times it's an easy way to check if any gathers or scrims are currently being casted.
Next to no esports potential. Nickel and dime stuff, sure, but no serious potential. Could UWE do some things to help it's potential? Certainly, but as it stands now no.
Edit: Maybe not competitions yet. But say matches between high level players in beta?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href="http://www.twitch.tv/blindns2" target="_blank">blindns2</a>
I try to upload FPVODs to my <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/animamiina" target="_blank">youtube channel </a> as well.
I think it has a shot at becoming an amateur e-sport. Definitely nothing at the level of starcraft, counterstrike, LOL, or Dota, though.
Careful.
For one, the strategic depth would need to be vastly increased. Movement, especially for aliens, is not very good. A lot of balancing still has to be done as well. Making all, well maybe most, upgrades viable.
To be honest, this game seems to aim more for a casual experience, and I get the feeling thats where they kind of want this game to be. It should, by all means be very easy for a casual player who just wants toplay a pub now and again to get in to the game. The two don't have to be separate though. Dota 2 does it very well. Starcraft 2 is getting there, it seems, with HoTS around the corner.
A few things I would like to see in NS2 are stuff like getting together a quick semi-organized 6v6 match in the actual game. Where you could queue up as a commander or fielder and if the strategic depth increases perhaps choosing what life form you're going to play. Getting a system like this in the game and promoting it properly, making that the primary focus of the game instead of 14v14 pubs. Where the actual game is the 6v6 experience.
This would help improve making the game a more unified experience. So that playing pubs -> playing gathers -> playing pcw's aren't so vastly different.
Don't get me wrong, pubs can be good fun, and I have nothing against them.
Other stuff would be joining a pub (or, well, preferably a 6v6 match) as a party. Being able to quick find both Random Team / Arranged Team matches.
Proper spectating has been stated. I would like to see a system similar to that in Dota 2. You get a list of current matches being played (I think they're sorted by viewers, or something as they are "top matches to watch") And you can join up and spectate a game, while still being queued for a match of your own. And of course first person spectating. Different "camera settings", for lack of a better word, so that you could put a game up on your TV, and it would automatically cycle between players.
Other stuff like engine optimization, netcode stuff etc also needs a proper overhaul.
This is what I think would help this game taking a big step into the mythical world of "E-Sports". It's ultimately the developers choice though.
Oh and also, you might think I'm being negative, but i thoroughly enjoy playing this game.
Catering this much to casual is essentially a death sentence in the long run, especially for the competitive scene.
The thing is, when you have a game where the game is so fundamentally different when playing casually (public) compared to playing competively, pubbers get scared off from the comp. scene. If you however stop making the gameplay so fundamentally different between the two, and go for a more unified path. A path where all players are playing under the same circumstances. As in, joining a game is still a time investment like a dota 2 match. When you play you get one marine round and one alien round, played 6v6 with arranged and random teams, you basically have the organised game allready, and people can get in to the competitive scene more easily.
Things like some sort of skill ranking, something simple like games won/lost would basically suffice for getting similar skilled players to play together.
Lot of agression right here ;) Although I can agree to a degree. All of the obscuring of vision, and all of the random ambient noises etc are quite annoying when scouting and being able to accurately judge where your opponent is so importent.
Agreed. Uwe should make us able to turn ambient stuff off and the low health thing is not wanted either. I love how they gave us a chance to turn the camera animations off, love it<3 Next step is the ambient sound on/off because they are really ruining it right now.
Then you have stats. Nothing is better than a great interface for stats of the game, to get a better overview of what's happening.
I've thought of this too. Maybe mapper placable entities that instantly points the spectator camera to give a good overview of a room. It's been a bit disappointing watching the casters trying to navigate themselves but clipping through stuff and ending up filming the fine details of a crate while missing the combat.
Plenty of work to do and some mountains to climb before the game can really sustain a sizeable long term comp community? Yes.
Yeah Flayra's blindfold fetish bugs me also, along with a lot of other people judging by the 20 page thread on vision blocking bull###### in the game.
<img src="http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/588/picmip.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Whoa! Who would want to play a game that looks like that this side of the year 2000? :)
Someone who actually cares about the mechanics rather than the graphical output.
Not sure I'd tune my Q3/QL like that, but I think it's quite wonderful that the game actually can actually stand on its rock solid mechanics and be interesting to watch and play without all the extra clutter that's there only to hide mechanics and create some distraction from the raw base gameplay.
Not every game needs to be a series of grey blocks with attack and movement values slapping eachother