Do you think HotS will ever become a successful Esport?

[Lesane]

1. Chess is a Sport. If The Vish plays Tic-Tac-Toe against Magnus Carlson - is Tic-Tac-Toe now also a Sport?

If yes: is everything a sport, in your view? If I kick a rock down the road, and my friend kicks a rock further - are we now the dueling world champions at the new sport of rock-kicking?

If no: I interpret a 'no' response here to indicate that you agree there is a gradient for the level of complexity required, standardization of experience required, comprehensible rules required, etc - in which case - depending on the stringency of those variables - League may qualify but Call of Duty / Heroes of the Storm may not.

If enough people would be interested to watch people play tic-tac-toe and companies would be interested to invest in it (because they know they'll make profit), then yes I would consider it a sport. However, in this case both of us know that tic-tac-toe can never be a sport because it's an extremely limited and simple game that always has the same course of action and the same outcome when two players familiar with the game play it: a draw. The "skillcap" of tic-tac-toe is so ridiculously low, that anyone who spends half an hour researching it can reach it. Combine this with the fact that once you pit two players against each other who have done this, there's no way either of them can win, and you have your reasons as to why tic-tac-toe is not a sport. There's no way in hell you can compare this to any video game or sport around these days.

2. You claim that an eSport is any game with a competitive element:

a) does this mean every game to you, and if not - list one game which has no competitive element,

and that 'professional tournaments' can be based on.

b) a professional is a member of a profession who earns their income from that profession. The largest CoD tournament to date was the 2015 Advanced Warfare World Championship. The winning team took home $400k split amongst 4 players plus 2 coaches, 66k before taxes. If they can win that every year reliably, then there are 4 professional CoD players in the world. That doesn't include factoring into their salaries, beyond the obvious risk of not coming in first, that their salary after tax has to also cover their professional costs and benefits and travel, because they aren't salaried employees earning that much - they are prize winners.

Single player games have no competitive element. The only competition you could probably have in those would be speed runs or scoreboards, but those take far too long and have no direct interaction between the two competitors. For this reason I also cannot fathom why people follow stuff as the WoW world first races. So to specifiy my definitions, there need to be a competitive element with direct interaction between the competitors.

Regarding what you define as a professional, fine, label everyone besides the top CoD players amateurs then. That doesn't take away from the fact that CoD would be an eSport. How much of a percentage of the participants need to be able to make a living of the (e)Sport they are competing in to make you consider it as an (e)Sport? All the established sports today started off as tribal competitions with no earnings whatsoever besides perhaps status and glory. Were they not a sport until they became monetized and commercialized, and until people started making a living off of them? Was football just a game until big pools of money got involved? You do consider chess a sport, but how many people really making a living off of chess, which is a game (or sport) that's nearly 2000 years old?

Activision recently announced they will put $11 million / yr into paying for a Black Ops 3 professional and amateur league: because they want to be an eSport. So maybe that will enable more than just a sparse handful who can earn a professional income solely off CoD - but it doesn't exist yet. Even if they do though, under my definition - it's not truly an eSport no matter how much money they throw at it - unless they specifically design it as a sport: as distinct from a 3D Bullet Hell game where everyone just spams grenades over the map.

So if CoD would have LoL amount of viewers and prize pools, you would still not consider it an eSport? I don't know, that just comes across as extremely elitist and nitpicky to me.

For the record, I don't count WoW as an eSport either. We are only at the very infancy of eSports still - so far nearly every video game is just that - a game: but when companies like Riot actively devote their full efforts into building not a game, but a spectator sport - now we are seeing the birth of something not a game.

I'm pretty sure they try to balance and create it with eSports in mind now because they saw the initial reception to their game. I'm not buying the idea that from the moment they wrote down the first line of code for LoL that they wanted it to be a spectator sport. Riot wants to make it one now because they know there's money to be earned. This is why Activision is now pumping money into the CoD scene apparently as you mentioned above.

By your definition, Pong is an eSport - but that strikes me as silly - because League has a global audience bigger than the National Hockey League and players are recognized by governments as athletes when applying for visas: lumping these emerging eSports in with Crash Bandicoot and Sonic the Hedgehog is inaccurate. Norway won't let me move there if I apply for an Athlete Visa because of my Flappy Bird skills: and they are right to disallow that.

Norway would probably give you one if there's an established Flappy Bird scene with prize pools and international tournaments. Alas, there isn't because it's a singleplayer game. You can compete through high scores but there's no direct interaction. Regarding Pong, Pong actually has enough elements to become an eSport in my opinion since it's a competition between two players directly interacting with each other. Pong is basically just a basic version of tennis on a screen really, and I don't think you can dismiss tennis as not being a sport. However in this case I wouldn't consider Pong an eSport because the definition of eSports pretty much implies there being a competitive scene with money involved. This is because in case of eSports "games" transition from being "just a game" to an eSport as soon as a competitive scene arises and gains ground, so in my opinion that is an important part of the definition.

First off, the same disclaimer I gave in the quoted post still applies. Call of Duty, specifically, is the least eSport FPS in the genre (amongst major titles) - CS's, Quake's, Unreal's, even Battlefield - are all closer to being eSports than CoD: for the reasons I mentioned in the post you quoted. Counter-Strike is by far the nearest FPS (I may be biased), but it has room to grow before it's truly there yet: it needs intentional development to capture the sport of FPS rather than just the Rambo-vision of muzzle-flash and blood.

CoD specifically emphasizes the 3D Bullet Hell aspects - explosions and blood and endless guns screaming - and de-emphasizes the exact things which can make an FPS into an eSport: at least for the overwhelming general audience of CoD players (the informed audience).

I just find it extremely weird when you are talking about those games being partially eSport or have the potential to be one when each of those titles have been proven eSports.

That's not it though. By that definition - every FPS regardless of skill level is an eSport - you have guns, they have guns, you are trying to plant a bomb or take a location or just shoot everyone. The Sport of competitive FPS is not your twitch skills, it's not the wielding of a gun, it's not the planting of a bomb. The Sport is the teamwork, which is invisible in CSGO and Call of Duty from a First Person perspective. The Sport is the precision plays - the perfect smoke / flash / multiple site entry. The Sport is the Strategy, when and what and how much gear to buy versus when to eco round. The Sport is the Tactics - 2 long, 2 mid, 1 B? The Sport is the perfectly executed crossfire that seals off an entry point: even this is often not apparent from a single players first person perspective.

MOBAs also don't show the full picture when spectated. It gets close but you still miss out on info that might be crucial. You're completely dependent on what the observer decides to showcase, and that way you can easily miss important plays. You're pretty much limited to fighting games and FIFA if you want all the information on one screen. Either way, you're putting way too much emphasis on people actually grasping the high level tactics in order to make it interesting to watch. There's thousands of people who watch football and still don't understand offside, or any of the strategies in football for that matter. FPS games are infinitely easier to understand and watch than MOBAs. I personally watch Street Fighter tournaments from time to time, even though I have no idea what the meta is, what the favorable matchups are, who the majority of the players are and so on. Why? Because the game is very clear and simple, you need to deplete your opponent's lifebar before he depletes yours. CS is very similar in this aspect, besides not having all action centered into a single screen. I personally don't enjoy FPS games that much, so I wouldn't bother spending time on watching competitive games, but I'm pretty sure I would be able to follow CS more easily than I would with LoL or DOTA.

The reason not every FPS is an eSport is because not every FPS has an audience and a competitive scene. The ones you mention absolutely do though, CoD included.

Showing someone an FPS and expecting them to understand it at a competitive level - where they are going and why, what they are standing around outside a door for, why they are climbing on a box to look through a crack in the wall - or where their teammates are, and why, etc - is almost as incomprehensible unless you have played the game. This is me restating the same point from before - but League has ~80 million active users who know what Summoner's Rift is, who know what the objectives are, who know who Annie is and what "Tibbers!" means.

Call of Duty has 17 million purchasers - not active users - who may recognize a map, but most will only know it from Ground War and FFA - they won't comprehend the competitive elements of CoD: because the way ~99.9% of the CoD community plays CoD is not the way the competitive players play CoD. Counter-Strike is way better on this, because everyone generally plays De_Dust2 the same way - and that goes back to CoD being not an eSport.

If you get your sister or your mom to play one game of Summoner's Rift against beginner bots - they are pretty much ready to watch World's and enjoy it. If you throw your sister into a 12v12 CoD FFA map, she will not enjoy watching a 4v4 CoD S&D match: the competitive experience is completely foreign to the casual experience (for CoD; far less so for CS and LoL - which is why they're better).

This is where you make the mistake. You don't have to understand a game at the competitive level in order to watch it, and with an FPS people you can pretty much make an educated guess as to why they are camping in spot X or unwilling to just run into corridor Y. Even if you fail to make such guesses, you have commentators. Again, you don't even need to understand the skill of the players.

MOBAs however, to even understand them at a basic level you need to have played them. I played LoL until account level 10. I know what Annie is, but I have no idea what Tibbers is (I assume it's the bear?). I have no idea what the jungle buffs do. I don't know more than half of the items probably, I have zero clue about the meta and why certain characters are good. I actually don't know half of the characters. And this is coming from someone who has been gaming since I was young, and usually above average in whatever I played, and someone who actually touched LoL for a handful of games. Now imagine someone who never played games to begin with, MOBAs will just be an incomprehensible mess. Show them Street Fighter, CS or FIFA or whatever, and they can watch it. Hell, even Starcraft is more watchable for oblivious people than MOBAs imho.

The idea that someone who played a few LoL games vs bots will somehow understand more of the LCS than a random person understand of a competitive CS game is pretty ambiguous. They'll probably even get their asses handed to them by those bots if they never played games before.

^ Exactly. Which is why WoW Arena is not an eSport - even if you played WoW as a casual player for years (the bottom ~97% of WoW players) - you will be wholly lost watching Talbadar/Reckful/Cdew in an Arena match. You'll be like "Oh look, a shadowpriest, I recognize that spec!" - and that's it - because the piano of abilities with no visual indicator - with faster than 1 ability per second activity per player in the arena for ~10 minutes on end - is incomprehensible even to other arena players. Think about what that means to who the potential spectators are for top end WoW Arenas - basically you need to be a Duelist to grasp the subtle balance of power in positioning and cooldowns and CC cycles / DRs.

Yet it is still an eSport, despite its blatantly obvious flaws. This is my whole point. There's a competitive scene, there's money involved, and there's an audience.

Has she played any LoL? Because I suspect if she did, she'd be able to follow even a World's match - it's extremely spectator friendly for the 80 million active users + unknown inactive users. Far more so than even a CS match, where you can only see one persons perspective and positioning at a time.

As mentioned above, I played LoL until account level 10 and am a seasoned gamer. I could probably watch LCS but I'd probably get no enjoyment from it since it's far too distanced for me since I won't grasp half of what's going on. I'm not even gonna imagine my sister who played nothing past Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts trying to watch that stuff. I can probably let her check CS though and even though the chance of her spotting ANY intricacy is probably zero, she can at least understand what's going on. Heroes of the Dorm was broadcasted on ESPN and there were a lot of tweets from people who said stuff along the lines of "I have no idea what's going on but I can't stop watching" and so on. MOBAs are just too convoluted to follow without actively playing them.

Assume that your audience isn't completely oblivious to your game / genre though. Like I said, LoL can convert ~100% of their 80 million active users, plus untold inactive users - into people who comprehend Summoner's Rift. Worlds has 30 million spectators this year: more than every game in the NHL Stanley cup combined, more than double everyone who bought Advanced Warfighter: of whom probably only 1 in 100 really understand the competitive game.

You need to actively play LoL to grasp those games. Without actively playing you won't understand what's going on and what the meta is about. Either way, no one is arguing against LoL being an eSport so I don't know why you bring it up. LoL did a great job at becoming and being an eSport. That does not mean that LoL is a benchmark for what games have to live up to in order to be considered an eSport. eSports existed before LoL did.

[Deleted]

I think we have too many motives in this topic... People try to ask and answer too many questions. Is hots an esport? Can it become one? Should it become one? What is an esport? Why CoD sucks so bad? Etc... I doubt we will reach any conclusion with all those "distractions". Oh well...

I honestly think Hots doesn't have to become an esport. Personally I would like that but considering the current audience it doesn't require huge competitive scene to sustain itself right now. Although it may struggle on the long run due to very poor player retention.

LoL despite being a simplified Dota achieved enormous competitive scene because of dev's decisions. Huge majority of them was based on "what is good for competitive side of the game". Despite that "pro" focus they've gained the largest game community - that alone should indicate that paying attention to competitive aspect of the game design (or simply put it- pro players) is not only a "good practice" but is also highly profitable. Hots for some reason went other way.

What we have now is this: LoL's devs stripped quite a lot from original Dota to make it more accessible - but Blizz stripped from LoL even more to make Hots. To illustrate it even further, if original Dota was 100% then LoL is 70%. Now comes Hots and it's at 40% at best. Yes, you can argue about exact percentages/ratios but in principle Hots is a simplified game based on already quite simplified design - that's why in it's current form it will not progress further as an esport.

What in my opinion Hots needs to have a shot at really big esport scene: one more gameplay mechanic that influences the game's pace and deeper hero customization/adaptation during the match. Explaining what exactly I have in mind would require quite a lot of typing and I'm on the phone now before meeting in conference room soo.. ;P yeah. I'll do it later.

[Chickat]

Not insanely like Dota 2 or LoL. I imagine it will reach about the same level of success that Sc2 has had in recent years. 20-30k for tournaments. 2-10k other times on twitch. Pretty successful but nothing amazing.

[Botutu]

Not insanely like Dota 2 or LoL. I imagine it will reach about the same level of success that Sc2 has had in recent years. 20-30k for tournaments. 2-10k other times on twitch. Pretty successful but nothing amazing.

I think I will agree on this one. Its just so hard to compete with a game with already how many million users?

[Frozen Death Knight]

Making inconsistent rules more consistent is dumbing them down, lowering the level of knowledge required to understand the game.

That is a pretty dumb and overgeneralising thing to say. A game would be outright unplayable if you went with this type of logic. In that case Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on the NES would be considered a good game despite the rules being completely nonsensical and inconsistent throughout the entire experience.

[Mormolyce]

Making inconsistent rules more consistent is dumbing them down, lowering the level of knowledge required to understand the game.

That is straight up a defense of bad design.

IMO if a game's only challenge is due to an inconsistent ruleset then it's an abject failure. The answer is to create new complexity that makes the game more fun, not retain old complexity that makes the game shitty.

[Every Pwny]

I enjoy playing hots, I just don't enjoy watching it. It's just early game where kills don't really matter, lane soaking and the teams showing up for objectives. There is very little chance for outplay or solid individual performances. It's mostly about just getting to level 20 and then whoever loses a team fight generally loses the game because the spawn timers are long and the structures die too fast.

It's too formulaic to be interesting to watch, but I still like to play it and I find the heroes more fun to play than other mobas, but that doesn't translate over well into a spectator esport.

[Fallen Angel]

So heroes is sitting at 42.5k viewers (4th on twitch). About normal for a tournament. Is that enough for those saying it isn't a successful esport?

[Nerraw]

So heroes is sitting at 42.5k viewers (4th on twitch). About normal for a tournament. Is that enough for those saying it isn't a successful esport?

EU Road didn't go above 26k. This is very nice to see.

[Fallen Angel]

EU Road didn't go above 26k. This is very nice to see.

I guess my basic point is, what is good enough for the naysayers? Even sc2 gets about the same, and it is THE RTS.

[ttak82]

I guess my basic point is, what is good enough for the naysayers? Even sc2 gets about the same, and it is THE RTS.

There is still some potential for this to increase.

As long as people are interested, the numbers will go higher.

Someone earlier mentioned star players and the lack of these in HoTS (by design or otherwise);
There was a great thread about one of the Korean league finals which was a nice way to present tournament summaries (outside of hero stats) because it presented summaries of some of the players as well. So there is some following that is already building up.

[eschatological]

I think HotS needs a *little* bit more complexity, to be a really good eSport:


1) More balance in a talent tier. Having a talent being good against a certain comp is fine, having a talent ALWAYS be the best is problematic. This is a WoW complaint with cookie-cutter talent trees back in the day. It's just like how a mandatory item in DotA/LoL feels like shit too.

2) More options per tier. Maybe this is a result of feeling forced into options from point 1, but to extend the items comparison, you can build dozens of viable items per toon, per phase in the game in LoL/DotA....but it's never more than 4 in HotS, and since experience is regimented and it's hard for one team to get super ahead of the other, early game, mid-game, late game talents aren't really decisive to the game like a good item build can be. About the biggest thing you can do in HotS is fuck up your ult pick.

3) Maybe a talent buyback option to offer more counter-picking to your counter-picking, with some sort of innate difficulty in constantly switching. That would be an interesting mechanic to me, and would allow individuals to shine a bit more. Because leveling is so even, I find that it's actually kind of harder to coordinate builds with pugs, or even to coordinate builds against how the other team is building, because you're rarely more than 2 levels away from them. I don't know how to set a CD on it, maybe have it "per team kill" or per objective reached, but I think that would add a layer of complexity to see a team realize they need a bit more CC so they buy back a talent to get a stun somewhere, and then the other team finds out it needs to be able to dive better and buy back something else. This would also add a bit more of an important, secondary "race" to the game, to reach the plateau where you can switch something up. IDK, the idea is rough, I thought of it while I was writing this post, but that's my general idea.

[ttak82]

Found the thread that I mentioned in my previous post:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/hero...er-league-2015

The game just needs more people to be familiar with the heroes, mechanics and comps/tactics and f it gets detailed coverage like in the link below, there's interesting content for any HoTS / esports follower. Note that the posts linked even gives some historical notes here and there like Team555 lol, so this will happen over time.
Games like LoL and DOTA2 do have an extensive history which all adds to the esports coverage and hype that they get.

As for HoTS, Blizzcon 2015 is near so lets wait and see..

- - - Updated - - -

I think HotS needs a *little* bit more complexity, to be a really good eSport:


1) More balance in a talent tier. Having a talent being good against a certain comp is fine, having a talent ALWAYS be the best is problematic. This is a WoW complaint with cookie-cutter talent trees back in the day. It's just like how a mandatory item in DotA/LoL feels like shit too.

2) More options per tier. Maybe this is a result of feeling forced into options from point 1, but to extend the items comparison, you can build dozens of viable items per toon, per phase in the game in LoL/DotA....but it's never more than 4 in HotS, and since experience is regimented and it's hard for one team to get super ahead of the other, early game, mid-game, late game talents aren't really decisive to the game like a good item build can be. About the biggest thing you can do in HotS is fuck up your ult pick.

3) Maybe a talent buyback option to offer more counter-picking to your counter-picking, with some sort of innate difficulty in constantly switching. That would be an interesting mechanic to me, and would allow individuals to shine a bit more. Because leveling is so even, I find that it's actually kind of harder to coordinate builds with pugs, or even to coordinate builds against how the other team is building, because you're rarely more than 2 levels away from them. I don't know how to set a CD on it, maybe have it "per team kill" or per objective reached, but I think that would add a layer of complexity to see a team realize they need a bit more CC so they buy back a talent to get a stun somewhere, and then the other team finds out it needs to be able to dive better and buy back something else. This would also add a bit more of an important, secondary "race" to the game, to reach the plateau where you can switch something up. IDK, the idea is rough, I thought of it while I was writing this post, but that's my general idea.

Point 2) would counterbalance point 1). I would like more options per tier as well, but it will be harder to balance for all heroes. As for your 3rd point, I a not i favour of this because it makes some choices meaningless. "Why bother with Tier X talents when I am going to change it anyway in late game?" Even in this scenario, players will come up with one optimal buyback strategy. It is also ulikely that any team will give up stun talents, even at high levels of play. They are just that good.

[DarkArchon]

It's way way to early to be making those sort of judgement calls, in a lot of ways HOTS is still in beta. Plenty of features haven't made it to game yet and HL is still in preseason, also the game needs more time for Hero expansion/other additions. If it's done right HOTS has potential to overtake DOTA in coming 2-3 years but LOL is to well established it's equal to WoW of MMO's.

[Slant]

I guess my basic point is, what is good enough for the naysayers? Even sc2 gets about the same, and it is THE RTS.

To be fair, SC2 is considered dead by now.

[Deleted]

If it's done right HOTS has potential to overtake DOTA in coming 2-3 years.

greatest joke of the year right here

D2 was top 3 watched in early beta when keys were still needed to play
HOTS been out for a while now and cant even make it to top 20

[apepi]

greatest joke of the year right here

D2 was top 3 watched in early beta when keys were still needed to play
HOTS been out for a while now and cant even make it to top 20

Honestly it does make the tops 20s all the time, the only reason it is not is because most of the people who would be playing HotS and watching it are now streaming/watching Overwatch. Both are Blizzard games, they have the same audience.

[Deleted]

Honestly it does make the tops 20s all the time, the only reason it is not is because most of the people who would be playing HotS and watching it are now streaming/watching Overwatch. Both are Blizzard games, they have the same audience.

Actulay it isnt even in top 25 now. And ihave nothing to with streamers and people watchin ovewatch. Every month HoTs have less and less players.

[Nerraw]

Actulay it isnt even in top 25 now. And ihave nothing to with streamers and people watchin ovewatch. Every month HoTs have less and less players.

Everyone's watching Bob Ross. I know I am.