Star Citizen and Esports [Discussion]

[DeepStarCorp]

As we all know by now, SC is going to be the first Game to have "Multiple Esports."

We are going to have: Murray Cup, Arena Commander, and of course "FPS".

So, let's discuss.

[CatCloud]

We will see how this goes, I remember Firefall wanted to be all Esporty and whatnot, so far there is nothing.

Sure SC has potential but if the world don't show interest in it it's not going to be all that appealing. It will just end up as a internal game event.

[Juggernautilus]

It is going to be so confusing with starcraft if Star Citizen e-sport becomes reality.

[iTzPrime]

I hardly doubt it becomes an e-sport. I have watched a few gameplays and whatnot on youtube and it just doesn't seems very appealing to watch (unlike starcraft)

[RJSX1]

As we all know by now, SC is going to be the first Game to have "Multiple Esports."

We are going to have: Murray Cup, Arena Commander, and of course "FPS".

So, let's discuss.

I think it could become an esport. FPS+Arena. 

[Osmium]

I doubt it will become an esport. Competitive games are designed with balance, spectatorship, and a high skill ceiling in mind. Star Citizen really doesn't look like it has the latter two in mind at all. I am pretty fine with this personally, I don't need star citizen to be a competitive game for me to like it. The only aspect I see being remotely competitive is racing however I still doubt it will actually end up being accepted as an esport.

[MattLantis]

I just want to see Star Citizen have some Planetside 2-esque gameplay (as in fighting on planets with s bunch of people)

[VulsaviiK]

Competitive games are designed with balance, spectatorship, and a high skill ceiling in mind.

 

Which is pretty amusing since many of the original esports, like Starcraft: Brood War and Warcraft III just kind of happened. Someone from Blizzard was quoted when he went to Korea, something along the lines of how when they heard what the players were doing, they didn't know how the game would respond to taking that many inputs. They were shocked the game didn't crash, let alone the fact that people were following these games like national sports.

 

But, Osmium raises a good point. I don't see Star Citizen being able to get into the esports scene. It's oversaturated because every game with a multiplayer element these days wants to become an esport, and the focus is on becoming an esport, not making a game people want to play/watch as an esport.

[That Norwegian Guy]

spectatorship, and a high skill ceiling in mind. Star Citizen really doesn't look like it has the latter two in mind at all.

 

You must not have much knowledge about the development roadmap or experience with the game.

 

The FPS module will be a more twitchy, more attrition-heavy Rainbow Six, with larger maps and a fully exploitable and reactive environment. 

 

The racing is, given the extremely high complexity and realism of the physics in the game as well as each ship's naturally-acting thruster arrangement going to be very hard to excel at.

 

Arena commander probably isn't going to be very interesting to watch though. But the prior two will, especially given that individual crews can have full control of a production suite in the form of immersive camera drones.

 

 

But 'high skill ceiling' for eSports nuts usually means "easy to learn highly repetitive actions that I can drink caffeine to do faster" and not actually "hard", if it meant "hard" then Natural Selection 2 would have taken eSports by the nuts, but it didn't because eSports players don't actually play hard games, just easy games where you can push the boundaries of some very repetitive action or reaction to higher limits than other easy games.

 

Of course, I'm not saying Star Citizen will succeed as an esports game. I both assume and hope that it won't. It's going to be impossible for anyone to run at above 90 FPS anyway, which is the one big reason why it won't.

[Osmium]

You must not have much knowledge about the development roadmap or experience with the game.

 

The FPS module will be a more twitchy, more attrition-heavy Rainbow Six, with larger maps and a fully exploitable and reactive environment. 

 

The racing is, given the extremely high complexity and realism of the physics in the game as well as each ship's naturally-acting thruster arrangement going to be very hard to excel at.

 

Arena commander probably isn't going to be very interesting to watch though. But the prior two will, especially given that individual crews can have full control of a production suite in the form of immersive camera drones.

 

 

But 'high skill ceiling' for eSports nuts usually means "easy to learn highly repetitive actions that I can drink caffeine to do faster" and not actually "hard", if it meant "hard" then Natural Selection 2 would have taken eSports by the nuts, but it didn't because eSports players don't actually play hard games, just easy games where you can push the boundaries of some very repetitive action or reaction to higher limits than other easy games.

 

Of course, I'm not saying Star Citizen will succeed as an esports game. I both assume and hope that it won't. It's going to be impossible for anyone to run at above 90 FPS anyway, which is the one big reason why it won't.

 

     I am not going off of what Cloud Imperium says they will do I am basing this off of what I think they can actually accomplish.

 

     However even based on what they say I don't see a rainbow 6 in zero-G type game becoming an esport. A reactive environment means absolutely nothing for map balance or gameplay. And the attrition style firefights in the past haven't been that popular in esports. Usually it is the part twitch-part-tactical style shooters that catch on as esports like Quake and CS. However from what I have seen from their FPS showcase it doesn't look like they are going to succeed with the tactical or twitch shooting aspect at all.

 

     The only way I see FPS becoming an esport is if Cloud Imperium nails the zero-G combat. If Zero-G is done sufficiently well I can see an Ender's Game style war room game developing. Out of all three aspects of SS this is the aspect I want to see fleshed out the most since I think it would be the most unique. However I am not entirely confident that they will get Zero-G playable to a level where players can maneuver around fluidly enough for it to actually work.

 

     Racing I think is the most likely to actually catch on. I believe they will get the atmospheric physics right by the time the game comes out. However I think an aspect that needs to be addressed (which I think will be their most difficult task) is engine mechanics. In other words adding a system of tweaking where there is no straight up "best" set of modifications that everyone uses. I think Cloud Imperium is capable of finding this perfect balance but I await to see how they do it.

 

     The devs keep reiterating that space combat (in the finished product) will be like a game of chess where it will be difficult to actually kill other human ship pilots. I don't see how they will accomplish that but in theory if they do that well than I can see ship vs. ship combat being fun to watch.

 

     Don't mistake my criticism as lack of excitement for the game, I just am just reluctant to believe that any company (even one with extremely talented people on the crew) can deliver so much.

[VulsaviiK]

But 'high skill ceiling' for eSports nuts usually means "easy to learn highly repetitive actions that I can drink caffeine to do faster" and not actually "hard", if it meant "hard" then Natural Selection 2 would have taken eSports by the nuts, but it didn't because eSports players don't actually play hard games, just easy games where you can push the boundaries of some very repetitive action or reaction to higher limits than other easy games.

 

I'm not going to lie, this statement shows how little you understand about esports. I can drink all the caffeine in the world, doesn't mean I'm going to reach Grandmaster overnight in Starcraft 2. If it was all about who can do the same repetitive actions the most, the player with the highest APM would always win. Yet, Protoss players still win tournaments #shotsfired

 

Sure, the games are incredibly basic if you take them for face value. No overly fancy mechanics. That being said, there are things in the games which can be incredibly difficult to master.

 

However even based on what they say I don't see a rainbow 6 in zero-G type game becoming an esport. A reactive environment means absolutely nothing for map balance or gameplay. And the attrition style firefights in the past haven't been that popular in esports. Usually it is the part twitch-part-tactical style shooters that catch on as esports like Quake and CS. However from what I have seen from their FPS showcase it doesn't look like they are going to succeed with the tactical or twitch shooting aspect at all.

 

I want to elaborate on this a little bit more. Let's look at those two shooters, and what it takes to succeed in either.

 

I'll start with Quake. It's generally the 1 versus 1 action that people gravitate to. In an Arena based shooter like this, Unreal Tournament or Painkiller (The latter of which being where Fatal1ty made most of his money), players need to memorize the maps, the spawn locations of every item. While playing, you need to pay attention to where your opponent is, where you think he will be, what items he has, and the cooldowns before certain items like Quad-damage respawn. If you know your opponent, you might know they prefer a particular strategy, so you'll need to pick fights according to how you think you can get the edge.

 

Conversely, Counter-Strike is nothing alike. For starters, it's a team based shooter, with an attacker/defender style of play. Again, knowing the map, attack paths, and coordinating attacks in tandem with your team will lead you to victory. Something like a CTF game mode would probably work equally well. However when done with an arena shooter, you have all that shit to do on top of the objective of the flag.

 

If Star Citizen isn't doing either, it probably won't be very enjoyable to watch. Rainbow Six probably isn't the best thing to model a multiplier off if that's what you're trying to accomplish. As far as competitive FPS, I think the new Unreal Tournament, or Toxikk are very viably entries with Quake being basically dead now. As Toxikk advertises, "No Bullshit, Frag like it's 1999". You don't need tonnes of complicated mechanics. It's why games like Planetary Annihilation didn't go anywhere in the RTS scene