E-Sports implausibility argument
ArmouredGRIFFON
Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168635Members
Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168635Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Particularly Veteran SC2 and FPS players flock here</div><a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=123998" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/in...howtopic=123998</a>
Please review my argument in the appropriate forum, I just wanted to bring it into your attention and get some feedback.
Please review my argument in the appropriate forum, I just wanted to bring it into your attention and get some feedback.
Comments
I am (was) a very good starcraft 2 player and a pretty good ns2 player as well and I could tell you that any gold league starcraft player could command ns2 at a competitive level, sorry the rts element of the game is not even remotely comparable.
For the most part in NS2 commanders follow a very specific tech path, usually determined by the team before the game even starts and the only dynamic decisions is where exactly to place your buildings.
There are many games where people are required to learn more then 1 skill set, ns2 does not have nearly the depth of memorization as starcraft 2 and thus its easier to learn both skills because ultimately, aiming and movement (the most important aspects of each race) use shared skills even if its a bit different how you aim between melee and ranged. Thus although its definitely true that there could be players who were better at one side or the other, I disagree that people will become as specialized as you suggest, even at a currently unreached very high level. Unreal tournament or quake is an example of games where you had wildly varying skills needed in different weapon use.
I also don't think your using the term skill cap correctly. Hopefully I have addressed the point your trying to make because as I said, it was written in a very confusing manner.
I am (was) a very good starcraft 2 player and a pretty good ns2 player as well and I could tell you that any gold league starcraft player could command ns2 at a competitive level, sorry the rts element of the game is not even remotely comparable.
For the most part in NS2 commanders follow a very specific tech path, usually determined by the team before the game even starts and the only dynamic decisions is where exactly to place your buildings.
There are many games where people are required to learn more then 1 skill set, ns2 does not have nearly the depth of memorization as starcraft 2 and thus its easier to learn both skills because ultimately, aiming and movement (the most important aspects of each race) use shared skills even if its a bit different how you aim between melee and ranged. Thus although its definitely true that there could be players who were better at one side or the other, I disagree that people will become as specialized as you suggest, even at a currently unreached very high level. Unreal tournament or quake is an example of games where you had wildly varying skills needed in different weapon use.
I also don't think your using the term skill cap correctly. Hopefully I have addressed the point your trying to make because as I said, it was written in a very confusing manner.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thank you. Just for your perusal I posted it on my phone ^.^.
From a mechanical point of view, a gold league starcraft player can surely do the job though.
Besides, I'm pretty sure one tournament early in NS1 tried to do matches in the format "choose a map and side" (like you would play veil as marines and then your opponent would choose to play tanith as aliens) but it never really worked.
There was also a mod for marines vs marines and aliens vs aliens and it basically sucked, because the 'shooter' aspect in NS2 relies on a range versus melee equilibrium which is utterly broken in all aspect if you make a mirror match.
As a sidenote, teams usually have between 6 and 10 players in their roster so when they had enough players for a match they would change some players between marines and aliens in order to be at their maximum potential. For example imagine Fana was my best fade (jk) but he sucked as marine (nojk) he would spectate the alien round and someone else would play the alien round for the team.
:D
Pretty much, there were hardly any competitive players who were good at one side and sucked at the other.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As a sidenote, teams usually have between 6 and 10 players in their roster so when they had enough players for a match they would change some players between marines and aliens in order to be at their maximum potential.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Mostly if someone got benched it would be the commander for alien rounds, you'd rarely see big roster swaps because team coordination and cohesion is very important.
There are much bigger issues as far as esports NS2 goes than the ones you listed.
Bad performance, relatively small playerbase, near zero strategic depth or variety at the moment, harder to follow for spectators not familiar with the game due to asymmetry + RTS side, alien strategy centered around boring HP blob rather than fun to watch fades & lerks.
TF2 has something around 1M unique players a week and out of that at the 'esports' / top competitive level there are only about 120 players in the US and EU combined, .00012%, NS2 obviously has a far lower playercount.
In NS1 it was really just a slot for your worst player as long as he could handle a bit of pressure (you usually groomed them a bit for the spot). For long term or 'good' commanders team chemistry and interaction was the only defining factor and ironically often how good they were outside the chair - commanding itself never had and still does not have a significant skillset.
So NS is still an FPS despite being a far worse FPS than the first one. The only question worth asking is, is it a fun&worthwhile competitive FPS?
You needed a few people with a clue, but it didn't much matter if one of those was in the chair or not. If we were short players and had to use marines worse than our commander, we'd swap those in - because there were only very marginal things we 'd be missing out on with an unpracticed comm while all the decision-making was fine with 2 or more people with a clue around.
There were lots of draws to keeping a long-term comm, but skill was definitely not one of those.
Then you could focus more on either Alien or Marine.
Don't see how this is gonna work for pug games,
but in competitive it would be different to see AvA or MvM lol.
The res management and hive scouting is what I miss the most. Ah well.
by hive scouting you mean that the com tries to identify the starting hive? Apart from maps with fixed spawns, that is still possible. Granting, it is boring on tram, but on summit/veil you still can do it.
Mogg. Never forget.