Arma 3 As an E-Sport

[Nexerius 10]

So people want ARMA 3 to become small-scaled? Im not very happy what E-sports are doing to gaming, and seeing this isnt very nice. Im alright if theres a small scene for it, but i still want ARMA to be ARMA; which is big scale combat.

[Sneakson 1]

There are not as much hardcore e-sports titles as there where 7-8 years ago. It has been on a downhill slope and I don't see light on the other side of the tunnel. Most new games ofcourse hold some competitives ladders but they won't last for years or even months. And like I also said the strategy games are hanging in there with SC2, LoL and Dota2 but shooters? Sure they're doing well on the consoles but I don't want to call this

anything even remotely competitive, its rather disgusting and terrifying and us proper pc gamers should'nt even compare ourselves with that filth.

Tell us more about how big e-sports was 8 years ago and what titles were hardcore e-sports titles back then... nostalgia talking? The only e-sport I ever heard anything about back then was CS and SC and that was mostly basement stuff.

So people want ARMA 3 to become small-scaled? Im not very happy what E-sports are doing to gaming, and seeing this isnt very nice. Im alright if theres a small scene for it, but i still want ARMA to be ARMA; which is big scale combat.

The only way to have big scale combat in multiplayer is to have many players which is highly impractical, or bots with players commanding them like some sort of strategy game which would be even less ARMA than small scale combat unfortunately.

[spanishsurfer 58]

BECTI would make an excellent platform for an e-sport. There is so much required to win; teamwork and tactics required from every level from the grunt to the commander. Teetimes Warfare is good TvT but it's nowhere near as complex and demanding as BECTI.

[RushHour 11]

There are not as much hardcore e-sports titles as there where 7-8 years ago. It has been on a downhill slope and I don't see light on the other side of the tunnel. Most new games ofcourse hold some competitives ladders but they won't last for years or even months. And like I also said the strategy games are hanging in there with SC2, LoL and Dota2 but shooters? Sure they're doing well on the consoles but I don't want to call this

anything even remotely competitive, its rather disgusting and terrifying and us proper pc gamers should'nt even compare ourselves with that filth.

that´s different though then saying E-sports is dying. Wrong choice of words imo.

I´ve seen some documentaries and E-sports in some asian countries is on a different level.

Just to give you an idea, think it was a Korean E-sports player. The national football team called him in to talk about things like pressure and what mindset to have etc.

They have fans and weird people following them around just like all other major sports.

[karbiner 11]

Tell us more about how big e-sports was 8 years ago and what titles were hardcore e-sports titles back then... nostalgia talking? The only e-sport I ever heard anything about back then was CS and SC and that was mostly basement stuff.

Then you've definitely been in some basement without internet for the past couple of years, thats for sure :P At least try to prove me wrong instead of giving these baised/fanboy responds. You can't say SC and what not are doing fantastic because thats something I already agree on, I just want FPS titles that are doing well in e-sports TODAY and I am sure you can't name more than 5 and otherwise you'd have to give me your definition of e-sports..

@RushHour: My argument remains that the amount of games with solid e-sports communities is declining with only a COUPLE of big titles hanging in there like CSGO, Dota2 and SC2. Compare that to a while ago when we had Quake/Painkiller, CS1.6, CSS, Cod1-2-4, UT and MOHAA/SH not even naming the strategy games. IMHO you can't feed a big scene without a lot of titles.

[BL1P 35]

I played CTITC in ofp and Q2CTF in savage league before that... does that count as what you younger generation call E-Sport ?

[roshnak 41]

Tell us more about how big e-sports was 8 years ago and what titles were hardcore e-sports titles back then... nostalgia talking? The only e-sport I ever heard anything about back then was CS and SC and that was mostly basement stuff.

Quake, Unreal Tournament, Painkiller, Day of Defeat, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Team Fortress Classic, Warcraft 3, AvP2, and, to a lesser degree, early Halo and Call of Duty games. Those were just some of the games featured in The CPL, which had total prize values of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The CPL eventually tried to scam its way out of paying prize money, but I would still hardly call it "basement stuff." There were also plenty of other league, some of which are still around, like the OGL, CAL, TGP, IGL, ESL, EAS and WCG.

Remember when there was a Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel edition of basically every type of peripheral or hardware? He wasn't famous for playing CS or StarCraft. He made most of his money playing arena shooters like Quake and Painkiller. You may not personally have been aware that these games were big, but people into competitive video games definitely were.

E-sports were definitely bigger a few years ago. There are fewer studios willing to design games that require such high degrees of skill, and with good reason. People who play games more casually find it off-putting to get beaten over and over again by people who take games more seriously. It can feel hopeless in the same way as playing chess against a Grand Master (or a computer). It's not fun to lose all the time, so developers started putting more equalizers in their games. Movement speeds were lowered, so aiming became easier. Advanced movement virtually disappeared. More random elements started being introduced into games like bullet spread and critical hits. These features serve to limit the effectiveness of high skill players, which prevents newer players from getting frustrated and losing all the time, but obviously makes those games less suited to serious competition. This has the effect of drawing new players to games which offer less opportunities for real advancement. There was a time when Counter-Strike was the most popular multiplayer video game in the world, and it was immensely more deep and complex, and had a significantly higher skill ceiling, than any of the Call of Duty games.

I played CTITC in ofp and Q2CTF in savage league before that... does that count as what you younger generation call E-Sport ?

E-sports aren't something that is particularly common to the "younger generation." They were probably at their peak in the early 2000s when games like Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, and StarCraft were a big deal.

Also, no, I wouldn't really call anything played in Arma or OFP e-sports, which typically feature large, tournament style competitions and cash prizes. The Arma series really isn't suited to e-sports. It has a relavtively low skill ceiling and doesn't have a lot of advanced game mechanics. In typical e-sports games you can put thousands of hours into learning the game and never fully master it. There are typically advanced game mechanics that players can learn like bunny hopping, Tribes' skiing, countering recoil and walling in CS 1.6, or micro in RTS games like StarCraft.

Arma doesn't really have anything like that. There's nothing that players can really sink a ton of hours into getting really, really good at that will grant them an edge in competition.

Arma also features a lot of opportunities for players to get into situations in which it is impossible to succeed. Because of Arma's combination of high lethatity and low movement speeds, the player who sees someone first or is already aiming usually wins. The best e-sports games aren't like this. In those games, the better player will win the vast majority of the time, and if they lose it's because they made a mistake.Even the most teamplay oriented e-sports games allow for a high degree of individual skill.

These traits aren't specific to video games, either. Every sport or popular competitive board or card game has the same requirements.

When it really comes down to it, I don't think anyone really wants Arma to be an e-sport, because it means a totally different set of design principles. E-sports are incredibly "gamey." They have specific and fixed rules. Arma is a sandbox. Turning Arma into an e-sport would compromise its very design philosophy, and it still wouldn't be as good at it as games that were designed with that kind of gameplay in mind. So, in the end, what's the point? There are games out there that are good at being e-sports, while Arma is good at being something else. Why would you want to water down the strenghts of those different types of games by trying to combine them?

I'm not trying to diminish the value of Arma in a PvP setting. It's arguably more interesting in PvP than it is PvE, but I don't think people should try to force it to fit into the e-sports mold. Groups like Shacktac do lots of cool, fun stuff with Arma. Play to the game's strengths. E-sports style competition isn't one of them.

Boy, that sure was a lot of words about taking video games seriously, huh?

[TG Stuffed 10]

This is a WIP, but we got our first map running on our server for final tests. :)

http://www.brotherhood-of-asgard.com/tdm

[Sneakson 1]

Then you've definitely been in some basement without internet for the past couple of years, thats for sure :P At least try to prove me wrong instead of giving these baised/fanboy responds. You can't say SC and what not are doing fantastic because thats something I already agree on, I just want FPS titles that are doing well in e-sports TODAY and I am sure you can't name more than 5 and otherwise you'd have to give me your definition of e-sports..

@RushHour: My argument remains that the amount of games with solid e-sports communities is declining with only a COUPLE of big titles hanging in there like CSGO, Dota2 and SC2. Compare that to a while ago when we had Quake/Painkiller, CS1.6, CSS, Cod1-2-4, UT and MOHAA/SH not even naming the strategy games. IMHO you can't feed a big scene without a lot of titles.

Well what are you trying to argue really? You're sort of going all over the place.

Are e-sports dying? Wrong. Were e-sports bigger then? Wrong. Were e-sports harder then? Wrong. Was there more variety? I doubt it. So what's up?

Out of the ones you mentioned Quake, CS and CoD are still alive. Counting the games that have been played at DHS/DHW/MLG/WCG in the last two years (that’s 2013, 2012) and that have been announced for this year (2014) there’s: BF3, BF4, CoD:BO2, CoD: Ghosts, CS 1.6, CS:GO, CS:O, DotA, FIFA12, FIFA14, Halo: Reach, Halo 4, HoN, Infinite Crisis, Injustice: The Gods Among Us, Killer Instinct, King of Fighters XIII, LoL, Mortal Kombat, PlayStation All-Stars, SC2:HotS, SC2: WC3, WoL, Soul Calibur V, SSFIVAE, Super Smash Bros Melee, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Quake Live and I’m having a hard time seeing what’s been at DreamHack Valencia recently but apparently there’s going to be Hearthstone this year and DH/MLG/WCG aren’t the only active e-sports events…

Not to mention I bet there’s any number of smaller tournaments in other shooters that are bigger than the oldies were back in the day.

Destiny is coming up soon by the way and considering it’s PC/PS4/PS3/XBO/X360 if it isn’t terrible I bet it’s going to compete with CoD.

Quake, Unreal Tournament, Painkiller, Day of Defeat, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Team Fortress Classic, Warcraft 3, AvP2, and, to a lesser degree, early Halo and Call of Duty games. Those were just some of the games featured in The CPL, which had total prize values of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The CPL eventually tried to scam its way out of paying prize money, but I would still hardly call it "basement stuff." There were also plenty of other league, some of which are still around, like the OGL, CAL, TGP, IGL, ESL, EAS and WCG.

Remember when there was a Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel edition of basically every type of peripheral or hardware? He wasn't famous for playing CS or StarCraft. He made most of his money playing arena shooters like Quake and Painkiller. You may not personally have been aware that these games were big, but people into competitive video games definitely were.

E-sports were definitely bigger a few years ago. There are fewer studios willing to design games that require such high degrees of skill, and with good reason. People who play games more casually find it off-putting to get beaten over and over again by people who take games more seriously. It can feel hopeless in the same way as playing chess against a Grand Master (or a computer). It's not fun to lose all the time, so developers started putting more equalizers in their games. Movement speeds were lowered, so aiming became easier. Advanced movement virtually disappeared. More random elements started being introduced into games like bullet spread and critical hits. These features serve to limit the effectiveness of high skill players, which prevents newer players from getting frustrated and losing all the time, but obviously makes those games less suited to serious competition. This has the effect of drawing new players to games which offer less opportunities for real advancement. There was a time when Counter-Strike was the most popular multiplayer video game in the world, and it was immensely more deep and complex, and had a significantly higher skill ceiling, than any of the Call of Duty games.

E-sports aren't something that is particularly common to the "younger generation." They were probably at their peak in the early 2000s when games like Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike, and StarCraft were a big deal.

Also, no, I wouldn't really call anything played in Arma or OFP e-sports, which typically feature large, tournament style competitions and cash prizes. The Arma series really isn't suited to e-sports. It has a relavtively low skill ceiling and doesn't have a lot of advanced game mechanics. In typical e-sports games you can put thousands of hours into learning the game and never fully master it. There are typically advanced game mechanics that players can learn like bunny hopping, Tribes' skiing, countering recoil and walling in CS 1.6, or micro in RTS games like StarCraft.

Arma doesn't really have anything like that. There's nothing that players can really sink a ton of hours into getting really, really good at that will grant them an edge in competition.

Arma also features a lot of opportunities for players to get into situations in which it is impossible to succeed. Because of Arma's combination of high lethatity and low movement speeds, the player who sees someone first or is already aiming usually wins. The best e-sports games aren't like this. In those games, the better player will win the vast majority of the time, and if they lose it's because they made a mistake.Even the most teamplay oriented e-sports games allow for a high degree of individual skill.

These traits aren't specific to video games, either. Every sport or popular competitive board or card game has the same requirements.

When it really comes down to it, I don't think anyone really wants Arma to be an e-sport, because it means a totally different set of design principles. E-sports are incredibly "gamey." They have specific and fixed rules. Arma is a sandbox. Turning Arma into an e-sport would compromise its very design philosophy, and it still wouldn't be as good at it as games that were designed with that kind of gameplay in mind. So, in the end, what's the point? There are games out there that are good at being e-sports, while Arma is good at being something else. Why would you want to water down the strenghts of those different types of games by trying to combine them?

I'm not trying to diminish the value of Arma in a PvP setting. It's arguably more interesting in PvP than it is PvE, but I don't think people should try to force it to fit into the e-sports mold. Groups like Shacktac do lots of cool, fun stuff with Arma. Play to the game's strengths. E-sports style competition isn't one of them.

Boy, that sure was a lot of words about taking video games seriously, huh?

E-sports were definitely not bigger a few years ago. Counting event visitors, viewers, prize pools... it's all going up to my knowledge.

A while ago some Swedes won $1.42 million… divided into a 5 player team.

Your talk about games today being easier is also trash talk. Shooters may have been marginally more three-dimensional when Quake and Unreal Tournament were at their biggest but Quake is still alive and CoD has lots of 360-noscoping, bunny hopping, dolphin diving and whatever. Halo is also undeniably three-dimensional, come to think of it.

Basically we’ve traded Quake, Tribes and UT for Quake, Halo and CoD.

By the way TF2 is still alive and extremely popular, outside of e-sports and there was a new Tribes (not e-sport) not long ago that to my knowledge was a good one.

Basically if we lowered the bar of e-sport to the standards of 5-10 years ago I'm pretty sure these games and many others would count. They're just not in the spotlight any more because they're not the biggest.

CS is still very popular by the way. Not the biggest any more but still at most big events I see that aren't exclusively SC.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Sneakson

[RushHour 11]

IMHO you can't feed a big scene without a lot of titles.

This clearly not true. That´s like saying the sport of Soccer would die out if there were no other sport on the planet. I´d say it has the opposite effect.

Titles come and go, but they are not dependent on each other for survival.

You can take all those sports 8 years ago and they would not even equate to 25% of all the starcraft players in the world, let alone all the other E-sports games that we have today.

The industry is quite obviously blossoming remarkably fine which is further shown by price money.

Edited May 14, 2014 by RushHour

[karbiner 11]

This clearly not true. That´s like saying the sport of Soccer would die out if there were no other sport on the planet. I´d say it has the opposite effect.

Titles come and go, but they are not dependent on each other for survival.

You can take all those sports 8 years ago and they would not even equate to 25% of all the starcraft players in the world, let alone all the other E-sports games that we have today.

The industry is quite obviously blossoming remarkably fine which is further shown by price money.

Fair enough, but I still don't think our goldie oldies will last as long as soccer tho:P

@Sneakson: Saying that there was hardly e-sports back in the day and than giving a shitload of titles that are still being played today is also in the "all over the place" category :P But nevermind I will agree with you on the e-sports still being here, altho you mix in consoles and I won't. And you can't say Quake and CS are as easy to learn as Cod and Halo :P Any skilled pc gamer would laugh their ass off if they see a "proffesional" console team playing cod/halo :P

Back OT, since we drifted off to far: I think we can conclude in this thread that Arma3 is not suited for serious e-sports leagues BUT there is all the material to host some very nice tournaments and small ladders for teams to compete on :) Will it catch on with the casual masses? NO but it sure should be fun for the community that arma has today :)