I thought it would be a nice idea to collect some thoughts as to what KnC needs in order to become competitive or Esports capable. The idea is to compile the ideas, conclude them in a few bullet points and send them to CT. So if you want to chip in into the discussion go here. I'd greatly appreciate it.|||+1|||perfect balancing.|||I like live cast. It would be nice if we could get useful commands (networkstats, focus...) and observer for the casters.
And if GPG could get it working before the beta starts it would be free advertising for the game!
|||VoW-Kryo|||Get Blizzard as the publisher.|||Falcrack|||Blizzard already has its own games to publish|||Ohmega|||lolnothanks.|||Balanced units & maps.|||Having 'perfect' balance doesn't make a game an esport.|||Eric|||Eric|||I hope you guys know I wasn't serious when I said Blizzard as a publisher. It just seems to me like the old saying "nothing succeeds like success" holds true with Blizzard. They have the aura of success, which will make people want to buy their games even if the game is actually only mediocre. Lots of gamers will play games because everybody else is playing it.Pretend for a moment the original Starcraft had never been published, and some obscure softweare company comes along and publishes the exact game that is currently known as Starcraft II. Would it develop hordes of raving fanboys across the planet praising its perfect balance, nose-to-the-ground camera interface and cartoony graphics with choppy, abrupt movement, as well as its requirement for heavy micro-management? Somehow I doubt it.
But with Blizzards name and reputation behind it, it is a blockbuster.
Hence why I said to get Blizzard as the publisher for KnC if you want Esports, so that all the sheeple will play it so that the critical mass needed for an Esport is obtained.|||Why do people love SC2? It has perfect balance. The cinematic are beautiful. Why? Blizzard pumped 100 million into the game. Is it a great game? Yes. Is the balance perfect? Nearly so. If Blizzard wasnt behind the game, there wouldnt be the $$$$ to do all this. What im saying, is that you cant really seperate SC2 and blizzard. They are one in the same.|||SC2 doesnt nearly have perfect balance yet, from what I've been hearing. Maybe in 10 years after all the expansions have come out and there's a couple of years of patching.|||-Sebra|||Spooky|||The following are essential to e-sports:
-Good support. This has already been mentioned. Good support entails the following; a working and effective multiplayer service with good matchmaking from day one, prompt fixing of serious bugs or design flaws, regular patches, very careful consideration of community feedback, which is often far better at identifying balance issues than the designers themselves, and communication with the community.
A beta patch program was employed for Company of Heroes, and it was really fantastic, so there's a suggestion.
-Skill ceiling. The game needs to have a decent skill ceiling in order for it to be competitive. The game must have well implemented, complex, multifaceted mechanics. There needs to be a reasonable micromanagement dimension to the gameplay, in such a way that attack moving is not really a viable strategy. Obviously KC is macro oriented, but if the scale is anything like Battle for Middle Earth 2 it should be able to include ample micromanagement as well. The game needs to include a deep tech tree, and most importantly, every decision from start to finish should involve more than one viable option. Then again, the rule of quality over quantity should be observed to ensure that the game doesn't overwhelm players with unnecessary choices.
Overall, I'd say that KC is drawing inspiration from the right sources, least ways as far as I can tell. Battle For Middle Earth 1/2, Age of Empires, and Supreme Commander 1 are all excellent influences, and I'm very pleased that Chris called it a "dye in the wool" sort of RTS. I would say there is great potential from what I've seen.|||Another important thing is regular injection of new maps. New maps really help keep interest in a game high, while the same maps over and over become stale, as I'm sure most people here are familiar.|||Yes! A fresh map pool is a very important component of the support side of e-sport management. Map quality is also important, perhaps even more so than map diversity.
Look at Starcraft; a major part of it's e-sport success on 3rd party leagues can be attributed to the fact that those leagues had excellent maps, which were much better than the first party maps.|||I think e-sports will be most successful with games that are fun to watch. Starcraft2 games are very exciting. FA games were fun to watch as well, but they weren't nearly as heart-racing or exciting. This is one of the reasons why I think Starcraft 2 e-sports is doing so well, and I think it's a necessary component for any successful e-sport game.|||KnC shouldn't try to hard to become an e-sport title ... too many games tried that and they all failed.
It should just focus on solid fun multiplayer which is accessible yet challenging. Having Observers and replays is something I definitely want to see though. However its no use to waste money on making it artifically an e-sport title by implementing awesome "e-sport features" rather than just making it a fun game.
"Perfect" balance is way less important than most people assume - more important is that there is a multitude of different styles and strategies possible so people don't get bored by playing the same match over and over again. The Level of Balance FA - maybe even Vanilla, was good enough to not hurt the potential development of the game as a big esport title, it was mainly because :
a) not enough people played multiplayer (and thats nothing you change with some "e-sport" features, if the game has too high system requirements it has too high system requirements; If a game is too inaccessible it is too inaccessible.
b) Livestreaming services at that time were not in HD, which a game like supcom would have needed to be really enjoyable as spectator
Give people a fun game with a decent matchmaking and ranking list and if enough people play it, there will be competitions for it.
What we should really discuss here is how to get more of those people who play singleplayer into multiplayer?
There is a few things which come into my mind:
1) have 1 or 2 optional campaign missions which are co-op missions - if people play them with their friends they can unlock a special bonus for their campaign progress (think of it a bit like the protoss mini campaign in Starcraft 2 - just being co-op)
2) If anyone of you played Cossacks... they had those scenario missions where both sides started with huge armies and each side had to fulfill specific goals to win (usually one was the attacker and another the defender), have a few of those and again provide some bonus to the campaign (even if it is just visually) if you win them.
Those scenarios can be on the normal multiplayer maps (or cropped versions of them so the maps don't look symmetric^^) and just have prebuilt units / buildings and a few triggers / victory conditions. Scenarios could be from 1vs1 to 4vs4.
3) Have achievements like "win a game vs 3 people in your friendslist (lets assume it is on steam) which give you unlockables for campaign/singleplayer skirmishes. The reason I want the majority of those achievements tied to games with friends rather than ranked matches is that people will have a better experience with their friends and thereafter they might try to play some 2vs2 together to claim the remaining achievements.
3)
3)|||Balance can always be improved later, though obviously they should try to avoid concepts that while fun/hilarious, turn out to be impossible to balance and either have to be useless or will ruin any game played seriously. With at least a slight aversion to such things being the caveat though I agree with TBO. Fun gameplay and a functional ladder and community features (It might help if the steam chat room opened automatically with the game by default, and you are returned to it after a game a la halcyon) will lead to competition - and if balance turns out completely broken, well that's what patches are for
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