A lot of games have the ability to be a very good esport but there are things that hold them back.  Spectator friendly is a big one.  For example Tribes Ascend, Bloodline Champions, Quake Live, are some really deep and hard to learn games with a very high skill ceiling.  They don't bring in the viewship that Starcraft 2, or League of Legends does. 

One of the reasons people slammed WoW Arena as an esport was because of how hard it was to spectate.  In a game like this you have aboslutely no idea what is going on unless you actually play the game.  That isn't the case with a game like Starcraft.  I've heard that more people watch Starcraft than play it.

It really all depends on how they treat the game.  Balancing for PVE and PVP usually does nothing but hurt the competitive pvp side of things in the end, as seen with WoW Arena and Guild Wars 1.

Originally posted by iller

All E-sports lost the right to take themselves seriously when they allowed L.O.L become their poster Child. (purely through popularity)  ...Pity, it really was a good Format before that, and sometimes even fun to watch.

The only reason Esports exist is popularity.

Who do you think is paying for tournaments? Who is paying the casters?

Esports is an entertainment based industry and whining that its a popularity contest is stupid. Of course it a popularity contest, thats the point. It was always a popularity contest.

Originally posted by Ezekel

The only reason Esports exist is popularity.

Who do you think is paying for tournaments? Who is paying the casters?

Esports is an entertainment based industry and whining that its a popularity contest is stupid. Of course it a popularity contest, thats the point. It was always a popularity contest.

THAT'S THE PROBLEM. 

When all you care about is audience, you end up with this:

Originally posted by iller

Originally posted by Ezekel

The only reason Esports exist is popularity.

Who do you think is paying for tournaments? Who is paying the casters?

Esports is an entertainment based industry and whining that its a popularity contest is stupid. Of course it a popularity contest, thats the point. It was always a popularity contest.

THAT'S THE PROBLEM. 

Way to generalize.

I suppose every popular thing ever is crap, after all games that no one likes are so much better.

If you prefer one game over another then fine, but just because something is popular and you don't like it doesn't mean everyone who does is an idiot. Just play the game you want to play, but don't pull out your hipster glasses and pretend that your game is somehow better because less people like it. Its all subjective anyways.

Originally posted by Ezekel

I dont think this game is going to fail as an Esport even if the casting tools are not in at launch, it took years to get any proper casting tools for LoL and that games is doing alright.

If anything it might be good to allow the game to mature a little bit before you start trying to get a competitive scene up and running. Let people get their feet wet and let the meta game develop for say 3 to 6 months then have a big ANET sponsored tournament and release the casting and observer tools then.

     You speak some truth here. I think the E-sports industry has changed since then though. Some of this may be a bit off as I don't particularly remember the specifics of LoL's rise with E-sports but from my understand E-sports at the time was very hit and miss. Casters were searching for more games to add to the stable to gain larger fanbases to, in turn, gain larger revenues. The industry was kind of starving for games to cast. LoL had the luxury of SC2 in that it kind of played off of DOTA's competitive success. I believe casters will willing to wait for it based on those two fronts, to reiterate and summarize:

     1. Casters really needed new E-sports to cast

     2. LoL was based on its kin DOTA and showed all the promise of the industry to bring in viewers and, in turn, MONEY.

     GW2 is facing a different beast now. E-sports is a huge industry that broke a billion in revenue last year, not counting player profits. Big time players such as Idra, Boxer, TitanT, DeFaCto, and rEdeyes make six figures. Recent inqueries claim Idra made over 300 thousand last year combining pot earnings, streaming, coaching, and sales. The inustry is now huge and global. Casters now have TOO MUCH to cast and must alienate games from their stable. Its no longer a matter of what can E-sports casters do for the game but rather what can your game do for us as E-sports casters? That's a huge distinction.

     GW2 is also riding in on a carrage with square wheels and no horses. Its predecessor, GW1, became too heavily unbalanced, lacked casting tools, was not really that easy to follow unless you were already involved in the game, and came in with zero infrastructure. There were no tournies setup and no annual pots for players to get excited about. GW2 doesn't exactly have the luxury of convincing people, casters and sponsors, that they should hold onto it based on its track record. GW1 was a fair shake at it but ultimately dissapated due to the aforementioned issues.

     That being said Anet is attempting to do something nobody has ever seen. It has been Anets dream to break into the E-sports scene manually rather than reactively. Its inspiring how much they want it. Their first try with GW1 just barely fell short. They got too ambitious. They talked to a lot of sponsors and even got WCG (World Cyber Games) to hold a few cups for them. They didn't set up any annuel pots though and thus did not attract a large professional following. Pro-players want to make some cash. So by the time the WCG cup was in place nobody cared. By then the game had suffered such balance issues because of its dual class system that it had been blacklisted.

     It looks like they have not been deterred in the least but instead have geared up, shifted strategy, and are preparing to hit the scene with a huge blow. Almost all global sponsors are now on board to differing degrees. Rumors abound that currently Anet has cups setup with WCG, ESWC, MLG, WEG, and WSV. I won't list out all of the full names but rest assured that this is every major E-sports sponsor in the world. Even some minor advertisement sponsors like IGN and Esport are involved. Team Legacy is a farely known competitive guild and is competing day 1 right along with Reddit and, surprisingly, team liquid is considering shifting gears from SC2 to GW2. I doubt they will give up on their lucrative SC2 careers but likely will start a sub-branch to break into GW2.

     Balancing is perfect, game-play is exciting, and on-screen information is plentiful and everywhere. If anyone can force their way into the world of E-sports its Anet. They are putting up the money, connections, and game-play to get it done, and I, personally, can't wait to see them reach their long-standing goal.

If there was an E-sport for making builds, I totally would be on that shiznit.

I made a long post to explain why i agree with the op, but then i'll just state the obvious: at this point they just need to deliver a final product of the same quality as they shown in beta, and they need to flesh out a bit the infrastructure of spvp before release.

Let people that want to seriously play spvp the ability to do so, and have even more people having fun in this mode, so duels, 3v3, 5v5, ffa maps, a basic rank system, you know the basic deal for e-sport kind of gaming mode.

Originally posted by Requiamer

I made a long post to explain why i agree with the op, but then i'll just state the obvious: at this point they just need to deliver a final product of the same quality as they shown in beta, and they need to flesh out a bit the infrastructure of spvp before release.

Let people that want to seriously play spvp the ability to do so, and have even more people having fun in this mode, so duels, 3v3, 5v5, ffa maps, a basic rank system, you know the basic deal for e-sport kind of gaming mode.

They plan to allow you to rent your own servers so, should be good.

Originally posted by Ezekel

Way to generalize.

I suppose every popular thing ever is crap, after all games that no one likes are so much better.

If you prefer one game over another then fine, but just because something is popular and you don't like it doesn't mean everyone who does is an idiot. Just play the game you want to play, but don't pull out your hipster glasses and pretend that your game is somehow better because less people like it. Its all subjective anyways.

Oh I KNOW you did not just pull out the H-word.   Get Wrecked and take your shit tier assumptions with you.    Lots of popular things are good, but just being popular doesn't make everything good and it especially doesn't make a Scrub game like L.O.L. good. That's just common sense.   Competitive Gaming isn't fucking about a bunch of lookey loos on Youtube being mildly entertained for 5 minutes before they flip the channel to the next thing.  It's about the players themselves.  Comp doesn't need a big audience.  It just needs balance and replayability so the people doing it can have something worth mastering.  (and lol isn't worth mastering!!)

Your bigger problem that I was TRYING TO POINT OUT before you brought out the personal attack, was the fact that making it all about the money and popularity also makes it all about style and not about substance then you end up with match-rigging and other scandals/drama.  Then it becomes all about that shit and eventually you're not even playing a computer game anymore, you're playing MTV.

Originally posted by iller

Originally posted by Ezekel

Way to generalize.

I suppose every popular thing ever is crap, after all games that no one likes are so much better.

If you prefer one game over another then fine, but just because something is popular and you don't like it doesn't mean everyone who does is an idiot. Just play the game you want to play, but don't pull out your hipster glasses and pretend that your game is somehow better because less people like it. Its all subjective anyways.

Oh I KNOW you did not just pull out the H-word.   Get Wrecked and take your shit tier assumptions with you.    Lots of popular things are good, but just being popular doesn't make everything good and it especially doesn't make a Scrub game like L.O.L. good. That's just common sense.   Competitive Gaming isn't fucking about a bunch of lookey loos on Youtube being mildly entertained for 5 minutes before they flip the channel to the next thing.  It's about the players themselves.  Comp doesn't need a big audience.  It just needs balance and replayability so the people doing it can have something worth mastering.  (and lol isn't worth mastering!!)

 

Your bigger problem that I was TRYING TO POINT OUT before you brought out the personal attack, was the fact that making it all about the money and popularity also makes it all about style and not about substance then you end up with match-rigging and other scandals/drama.  Then it becomes all about that shit and eventually you're not even playing a computer game anymore, you're playing MTV.

So I can't call you a hipster for hating LoL and saying that Esports is "ruined" because of it? Fine, your just an ingnorant fanboy then who can't stand that something he doesn't like is popular, better? If you don't like LoL then fine, don't play it and don't watch it, but don't pretend that your opinion of the game is somehow fact.

We are not talking merely about the game being competitive, tons of games are competitive but few games are Esports. Its all about the audience, get over it. The audience pays the players, the sponsors, the developers and everything else. Of course its about money, its always been about money.

Originally posted by Ezekel

Originally posted by iller

Originally posted by Ezekel

Way to generalize.

I suppose every popular thing ever is crap, after all games that no one likes are so much better.

If you prefer one game over another then fine, but just because something is popular and you don't like it doesn't mean everyone who does is an idiot. Just play the game you want to play, but don't pull out your hipster glasses and pretend that your game is somehow better because less people like it. Its all subjective anyways.

Oh I KNOW you did not just pull out the H-word.   Get Wrecked and take your shit tier assumptions with you.    Lots of popular things are good, but just being popular doesn't make everything good and it especially doesn't make a Scrub game like L.O.L. good. That's just common sense.   Competitive Gaming isn't fucking about a bunch of lookey loos on Youtube being mildly entertained for 5 minutes before they flip the channel to the next thing.  It's about the players themselves.  Comp doesn't need a big audience.  It just needs balance and replayability so the people doing it can have something worth mastering.  (and lol isn't worth mastering!!)

 

Your bigger problem that I was TRYING TO POINT OUT before you brought out the personal attack, was the fact that making it all about the money and popularity also makes it all about style and not about substance then you end up with match-rigging and other scandals/drama.  Then it becomes all about that shit and eventually you're not even playing a computer game anymore, you're playing MTV.

So I can't call you a hipster for hating LoL and saying that Esports is "ruined" because of it? Fine, your just an ingnorant fanboy then who can't stand that something he doesn't like is popular, better? If you don't like LoL then fine, don't play it and don't watch it, but don't pretend that your opinion of the game is somehow fact.

We are not talking merely about the game being competitive, tons of games are competitive but few games are Esports. Its all about the audience, get over it. The audience pays the players, the sponsors, the developers and everything else. Of course its about money, its always been about money.

     Iller is right in this, although you guys are a little more hostile then I would be you both have some key points here. Whether or not LoL is good, for one, is almost entirely perspective. So we won't go into that. It is still, however, an E-sport. To a certain degree that is actually what E-sports are about, the "lookey loos" are the life-blood of anything in entertainment. Competition does need a big audience to sustain it. You need tournaments with large pots. Huge pots don't come from thin air. You don't need viewers to have a balanced game, true. You do need them to have a game with any level of professionalism in it.

     Its similarly to saying the audience in football is not necessary because the game can still be competitive. It's not really true because without the money most of the competitive aspect is lost. The audience in E-sports, or just sports in general, provides the money and the money is what attracts serious players. If the game is fun you might attract a tournament audience, sure, but you will never attract the serious competition that is spawned between two teams at the super-bowl, for instance. You see, they support each other. I can play a fun game of tag in my back-yard but its hardly competitive and there's only a certain level that that could ever reach. I can't go out and look up serious strategies of tag to earn six figures a year.

     So you are both kind of right. Baeline competition doesn't need monitary influence and you can have competition without money or audience involved. This is similar to back-yard football though and that's as competitive as that will ever be. To get true competition and players that regard the game seriously you need money and audience.

     In defense of E-sports not a whole lot of match rigging goes on. In fact, I've never heard of a rigged match in my career. I'm not sure if this shows some knowledge or ignorance on my part but I just have not noticed it really at all in the scene. SC2 has some ladder rigging if that's what you mean but nothing follows through to tournaments that are for any money.

     You need the audience there because you need the money. Also, lets face it, people especially good at things like this like to be known so the audience plays a role there too.

Nobody promote lame and mindless combat for esport. Look at current real esport games: Starcraft for years, WoW, LoL, CS, HALO and game on same league.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_sports

Every half serious player who tried and juiced GW2 for at least 2 days already know this game will have a good spot in E-Sports, if not the best. Great post OP. I can't wait to see serious hardcore competitive pvp matches on the steams.

 Leagues a good game, enjoyable and skill based. I don't really care if they bastardized Dota in its mechanics. That said ... if not for Sc2 and LoL I would give exactly two flips about E-Sports because frankly the rest are boring to watch. As much as I love my taste of Gw2 I don't think its E-sport scene will get to loud , the game just doesn't make for good casting. The game is chaos , they want it to be chaos ... you won't be able to cast it like you would a Sc2 or Moba game.

Just my thoughts ..

Originally posted by catplay

Nobody promote lame and mindless combat for esport. Look at current real esport games: Starcraft for years, WoW, LoL, CS, HALO and game on same league.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_sports

     Your right...which is why GW2 is a good contender. The game isn't even released and there have been tournaments and battle between guilds. The game is already competitive and its not even out yet.

Originally posted by Redemp

 Leagues a good game, enjoyable and skill based. I don't really care if they bastardized Dota in its mechanics. That said ... if not for Sc2 and LoL I would give exactly two flips about E-Sports because frankly the rest are boring to watch. As much as I love my taste of Gw2 I don't think its E-sport scene will get to loud , the game just doesn't make for good casting. The game is chaos , they want it to be chaos ... you won't be able to cast it like you would a Sc2 or Moba game.

 

Just my thoughts ..

 

     Actually thats exactly why GW2 will do well. In SC2 and LoL to understand any of the exciting bits you have to have prior knowledge of the game. Expansions are only exciting in SC2 when you know why its risky and rewarding. LoL is  pure chaos to people who don't know about it. GW2 on the other hand is immediately understandable. I'm not sure if you've watched a 5 v 5 yet, which is understandable. Durring our 8 v 8 though it was quite clear to tell what was going on. Its harder to tell what's going on when you have 40+ players but that's only natural. When you have an 8 v 8 or, especially, a 5 v 5 it is extremely easy to tell what's going on. Anet made it that way deliberately. All player effects are visable (crippled players limp, burning players are on fire, etc.). Every buff and debuff can be seen by looking at the character. AoE's have their radius shown on the ground, etc. Nothing takes place under the hood in this game. The audience can see exactly what's going on at all times. If your being damaged by bleeding you will lieterally be bleeding.

     That being said I do think it has a good chance and doing very well in the scene. We will see where it goes.

The thing to understand as to why LoL became a huge e-sport, while more "hardcore"  similar games like HoN and DotA2 didn't is precisely what makes those games "hardcore".  Games that want to be an esport need to be easy to play, but hard to master.  They need a high skill ceiling so that the best players stand out from the pack, but the game needs to have broad appeal and be easily accessible.  Most people aren't interested in watching tournaments for a game that they don't play, and most casual players don't play games like HoN or Dota2, because those games essentially punch you in the face repeatedly until you've played them for a long time.  League of legends took out a lot of the more newbie-unfriendly mechanics from DotA, and added things like bot games to let even bad players enjoy the game casually.  It's also easier to look at and figure out what's going on, with the character portraits on the minimap and art style of the game, making it easier to spectate.  Even new LoL players can understand what's going on in the games when watching a professional stream or match.  It's also extremely easy to get into with the free to play model- there's no monetary barrier keeping people out of the game.

GW2 is making a push to become an esport, by making a game type that tries to be e-sport friendly.  They don't have a monthly  fee, which removes a lot of the accessibility limitations that MMO's generally encounter.  Their combat is largely positioning based, with obvious effects so it's fairly easy to see what's going on, especially in smaller-scale combat (i.e. 5v5 with multiple objectives to split teams up).  Instead of having a large number of buffs and debuffs that are only visible as icons on the character portrait, they've got a limited number of shared buffs and debuffs that largely have noticeable effects.  These all help make the game easy to watch.

GW1 made a strong attempt at becoming an e-sport- they had a couple of major tournaments held by Arenanet, and a couple of lesser tournaments run by others, but at the end of the day, there wasn't enough interest.  I think a lot of the reason behind this was that although guild battles had a lot of depth and an extremely high skill cap, they were too inaccessible to a more general audience, and it was too difficult to be able to tell what was going on without an in-depth understanding of the game.  It was hard to get into them, since you needed to have 8 people online in the same guild for what was likely going to be an hour or more to just get in and play a match or two.  Understanding what went on in the fights also required an in-depth knowledge of the game- you could get the general gist of things like if a team executed a good spike or a monk made a clutch save, but it was really hard to be able to see the important plays when spectating.  Most of the time, the game-changing plays were things like getting a disabling shot on the enemies Aegis, or stripping Prot Spirit before the monk could cover it with another enchantment, which were nearly impossible to see while spectating.

Whether or not GW2 succeeds at becoming an e-sport remains to be seen- we won't know until the game is released and a few tournaments have run.  However, they've obviously been working on removing barriers and difficulties that would stop it from being successful as one.  In the end, it will come down to if there's enough people interested in watching GW2 tournaments, and whether or not the combat system holds up and has a high skill ceiling that allows the top tier of players and teams to distinguish themselves.  Not whether or not it's as hardcore and challenging as "insert game X", but rather if it gets the interest of the masses who will be the people watching the streams and tournaments to generate ad revenue and get the interest of sponsors.

Originally posted by Freyas

The thing to understand as to why LoL became a huge e-sport, while more "hardcore"  similar games like HoN and DotA2 didn't is precisely what makes those games "hardcore".  Games that want to be an esport need to be easy to play, but hard to master.  They need a high skill ceiling so that the best players stand out from the pack, but the game needs to have broad appeal and be easily accessible.  Most people aren't interested in watching tournaments for a game that they don't play, and most casual players don't play games like HoN or Dota2, because those games essentially punch you in the face repeatedly until you've played them for a long time.  League of legends took out a lot of the more newbie-unfriendly mechanics from DotA, and added things like bot games to let even bad players enjoy the game casually.  It's also easier to look at and figure out what's going on, with the character portraits on the minimap and art style of the game, making it easier to spectate.  Even new LoL players can understand what's going on in the games when watching a professional stream or match.  It's also extremely easy to get into with the free to play model- there's no monetary barrier keeping people out of the game.

 

GW2 is making a push to become an esport, by making a game type that tries to be e-sport friendly.  They don't have a monthly  fee, which removes a lot of the accessibility limitations that MMO's generally encounter.  Their combat is largely positioning based, with obvious effects so it's fairly easy to see what's going on, especially in smaller-scale combat (i.e. 5v5 with multiple objectives to split teams up).  Instead of having a large number of buffs and debuffs that are only visible as icons on the character portrait, they've got a limited number of shared buffs and debuffs that largely have noticeable effects.  These all help make the game easy to watch.

 

GW1 made a strong attempt at becoming an e-sport- they had a couple of major tournaments held by Arenanet, and a couple of lesser tournaments run by others, but at the end of the day, there wasn't enough interest.  I think a lot of the reason behind this was that although guild battles had a lot of depth and an extremely high skill cap, they were too inaccessible to a more general audience, and it was too difficult to be able to tell what was going on without an in-depth understanding of the game.  It was hard to get into them, since you needed to have 8 people online in the same guild for what was likely going to be an hour or more to just get in and play a match or two.  Understanding what went on in the fights also required an in-depth knowledge of the game- you could get the general gist of things like if a team executed a good spike or a monk made a clutch save, but it was really hard to be able to see the important plays when spectating.  Most of the time, the game-changing plays were things like getting a disabling shot on the enemies Aegis, or stripping Prot Spirit before the monk could cover it with another enchantment, which were nearly impossible to see while spectating.

 

Whether or not GW2 succeeds at becoming an e-sport remains to be seen- we won't know until the game is released and a few tournaments have run.  However, they've obviously been working on removing barriers and difficulties that would stop it from being successful as one.  In the end, it will come down to if there's enough people interested in watching GW2 tournaments, and whether or not the combat system holds up and has a high skill ceiling that allows the top tier of players and teams to distinguish themselves.  Not whether or not it's as hardcore and challenging as "insert game X", but rather if it gets the interest of the masses who will be the people watching the streams and tournaments to generate ad revenue and get the interest of sponsors.

 

     You know what your talking about here, and I agree with most of it. I disagree that LoL is easy for spectators to fully understand. You can get the gist of what's going on but some of the meta decisions and strategy types are almost so minisculy different from each other that you really have to be a serious player to understand why they make a difference. Generally though I see where your comming from with that. its not tough to see when someone springs an ambush and its exciting to see. Its not hard to see when someone snipes a lane or leaves their own, so more over arching game-play moves are easy to notice and have easy excitement behind them.

     I also somewhat disagree that non-players don't make up lareg portions of an audience. Now I ONLY disagree because of SC2. SC2 is now the largest E-sport in the world and most of its viewers actually don't play the game. I believe it is the exception though and you are mostly right in that assessment.

     GW1 also didn't have any real incentive for profesional players. There were minor tournaments but no structured annuel and no large pots until far too late.

     You hit one of the things I'm most excited about as an E-sport contender. The games naturally split up the teams. This is huge. It means more exciting matches with small skirmishe pockets everywhere. It also means that teams won't just run in the middle and clash mobs until one side pushes the other back (although that is actually pretty exciting here too, just not as much so IMO). Of course newer teams and PUG teams will probably still try to stay together and zerg the other team. Luckily though a zerging team in GW2 is the equivalent of an "all-in" in SC2. Sending your whole team out is also borderline suicide for 5 v 5 unless the other team does it too. various strategies have already been thought of in the last BWE to immediately counter team zergs. The strategies range and include doing pretty much anything else besides zerging them back. If even one man is seperated from the group and out capturing points, you win versus a team zerg.

     So I liked what I saw there. As I note from my above post I also fully agree that exciting moves be easily noticeable and recognizable. I think they will be based on what I've seen.  the visual cues are mostly common sense. The competition is gaurantee'd on the sole basis of its balance and huge annuel pot offering. To get the audience we need some casting tools. Soon as that is in, I think Anet will have a full package to deliver as an E-sport.

Originally posted by RefMinor
I think they should make games for esports so they don't pollute other game genres.

     How are we polluting anything? What did we pollute? We (E-sports) basically created the NBA out of a bunch of backyard teams.

     E-sports allowed people to make a little bit of money (or a lot of it) doing what they love to do. If a game is balanced and fun enough to attract observers it only does good things for it and its fans. You don't have to play competitively, you can still play every E-sport casually for sure.

     Even if I'm playing a game casually I think its cool to talk to others about that really skilled player or that play last night or some crazy things somebody did in a match. Especially in a game like GW2, where the competitive scene is completely and totally seperate from everything else. You aren't going to walk into a battlegrounds here and be dominated by some wondering pro. Here the pro teams play in the tournaments setup by Anet and in private servers. Its a great deal like playing football for fun.

     Normally you aren't playing football with your friends and T.O. comes in out of no where to smash your face. T.O. and competitive players have their own stomping grounds in basketball and every sport. It'll be the same here :).

     In other words, we won't be in your cool-aid. We're just the suger pack you can choose to add next to it :p.