19 replies to this topic

[Clownwarlord]

OK I have to admit I enjoyed watching the World Championship. It was fun while there was at times boring matches and overall stomping I can see MWO being a competitive esport if the population and support for it grows. I will ever participate (I like the job I have), but I have to admit if they do it again I will watch what I can.

[RestosIII]

I'm sorry, but I really can't think of this game as an e-sport. Player run competitions/tournaments I can understand and promote, but a full blown e-sport? You need to have reliable FPS on average machines, spectator modes, replay systems, and have easily recreatable bugs like the JJ glitch fixed up to make it more than a good chuckle in my book.

Oh, and a stream that doesn't play really unfitting music.

[LordNothing]

i dont know if it was worth it for a mere 3.5k viewers at peak. i expect the whole thing was running in the red and not turning a significant profit. pgi wont run another season if it doesn't turn a profit or promote their game.

[RestosIII]

LordNothing, on 06 December 2016 - 05:00 PM, said:

i dont know if it was worth it for a mere 3.5k viewers at peak. i expect the whole thing was running in the red and not turning a significant profit. pgi wont run another season if it doesn't turn a profit or promote their game.

If they do attempt it again, I'll give them props for determination at least. And, if they do, I hope they learned some lessons from this year. Like, maybe attempt the team promo system again, but this time make sure to have the teams sign an actual contract stating they can sell their logos, with the cash being split. Win-win situation for PGI.

[Pika]

RestosIII, on 06 December 2016 - 04:59 PM, said:

I'm sorry, but I really can't think of this game as an e-sport. Player run competitions/tournaments I can understand and promote, but a full blown e-sport? You need to have reliable FPS on average machines, spectator modes, replay systems, and have easily recreatable bugs like the JJ glitch fixed up to make it more than a good chuckle in my book.

Oh, and a stream that doesn't play really unfitting music.

Reliable FPS? Man ~ what are you running on? I don't drop frames and have a pretty solid 60+ and my PC is pretty average these days.

[RestosIII]

Pika, on 06 December 2016 - 05:37 PM, said:

Reliable FPS? Man ~ what are you running on? I don't drop frames and have a pretty solid 60+ and my PC is pretty average these days.

Windows 10, AMD FX 8300 8 core 3.3 GHz, 8 gigs RAM, GTX 760 GPU. Some maps run at locked 60 FPS, others, like River City, can drop to 15 FPS for no good reason.

[TLBFestus]

There were just SO many things wrong with this competition that I can't be bothered to list them all.

3500 views at peak?

The tournament prize money alone was in the $125,000 range, correct?

Doing that math, it cost PGI about $350 PER VIEWER. Doesn't sound profitable at all to me, especially when you consider that the vast majority of those watching were probably existing customers.

I know that the total number of views may have been more..and that would be a better number to base the math on, but it is what it is as I don't have that figure. At best I'd suspect triple that number of views? So its still over $100 per view as an expense.

If the money wasn't all PGI's then it's not as costly as that to PGI, but as a sponsor I'd not be excited about giving that much money for that little return. For example, Do you think HBS would want to give $100 per person (as a sponsor) in order to sell those same people a $75 dollar game?

Edited by TLBFestus, 06 December 2016 - 05:45 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

The biggest issue with this tournament were team size limitations (no more than 12) and the sheer volume of matches that had to be played. There were a lot of forfeitures from not being ableto field a full 8-man and a lot of burnouts from the same small rosters having to constantly go at it.

[Pika]

RestosIII, on 06 December 2016 - 05:40 PM, said:

Windows 10, AMD FX 8300 8 core 3.3 GHz, 8 gigs RAM, GTX 760 GPU. Some maps run at locked 60 FPS, others, like River City, can drop to 15 FPS for no good reason.

Running Win 10, Intel i7-4770K, 3.5Ghz, 24Gig of Ram and a GTX 770 - So only marginally better than yours in some areas. Didn't think that'd make that much of a difference honestly.

Huh. Well butter my biscuit.

Yeonne Greene, on 06 December 2016 - 05:43 PM, said:

The biggest issue with this tournament were team size limitations (no more than 12) and the sheer volume of matches that had to be played. There were a lot of forfeitures from not being ableto field a full 8-man and a lot of burnouts from the same small rosters having to constantly go at it.

Honestly the only issue I had was the disparity between game numbers. 228th Wild Ones did incredibly well, but the fact they only had to play .. what? 15 games in total vs the 90+ EmP had to?

Didn't seem fair to EITHER team. EmP had WAY more experience and WOs didn't have to play as many games to get to the same point.

TLBFestus, on 06 December 2016 - 05:42 PM, said:

There were just SO many things wrong with this competition that I can't be bothered to list them all.

3500 views at peak?

The tournament prize money alone was in the $125,000 range, correct?

Doing that math, it cost PGI about $350 PER VIEWER. Doesn't sound profitable at all to me, especially when you consider that the vast majority of those watching were probably existing customers.

I know that the total number of views may have been more..and that would be a better number to base the math on, but it is what it is as I don't have that figure. At best I'd suspect triple that number of views? So its still over $100 per view as an expense.

If the money wasn't all PGI's then it's not as costly as that to PGI, but as a sponsor I'd not be excited about giving that much money for that little return. For example, Do you think HBS would want to give $100 per person (as a sponsor) in order to sell those same people a $75 dollar game?

While I know you're not especially excited for it, consider the potential future gain from stuff like MW5 being announced as well as ticket cost, merchandise costs, profit from their cut of sales at the venue. Then consider on Twitter, Russ asked if he felt we had enough 'mechs and the vote currently stands with "no" way out in front. Seems Mech Packs are selling just fine. And I imagine PGI are doing just fine in terms of money made, and if any loss is happening, that they can take the hit to try their damned hardest to appease a community that just won't go of the past.

Edited by Pika, 06 December 2016 - 05:57 PM.

[Nullmancer]

I been thinking for awhile now that the runners of future tournaments should throw in some wrenches for our 'leet competitive, money-winning players.

Possible wrenches include; disallow veto of maps or have never before seen tournament only maps, ban certain overperforming mechs or at least limit to one per team, give them a pool of lesser mech's to build teams out of, maybe also have a drop weight limit.

take 'em out of their comfort zone and have these players be challenged.


maybe do something stupid fun like an all stock vindicator 1R match.



Honestly, the only time I got mildly excited watching the tournament was when EON slaughtered EMP, but EMP still won. Boring.


I guess what I'm saying is that the tournament was not exciting to me cause it was the same old, same old throughout with the options allowed to the players reinforcing boring meta playstyle. I would've been more entertained if they had to play on Mordor, or couldnt use clan mechs in certain matches, or had only one kodiak, madcat, grasshopper, jenner, spider ECM variant, arctic cheater whatever. I would've loved to see them have to use ****** mechs to achieve a win.

[RestosIII]

Pika, on 06 December 2016 - 05:45 PM, said:

Running Win 10, Intel i7-4770K, 3.5Ghz, 24Gig of Ram and a GTX 770 - So only marginally better than yours in some areas. Didn't think that'd make that much of a difference honestly.

Huh. Well butter my biscuit.




Honestly the only issue I had was the disparity between game numbers. 228th Wild Ones did incredibly well, but the fact they only had to play .. what? 15 games in total vs the 90+ EmP had to?

Didn't seem fair to EITHER team. EmP had WAY more experience and WOs didn't have to play as many games to get to the same point.

They've always had some weird optimization issues with this game. Using River City as an example, again, because it's the worst offender from the entire map line-up for me... When I drop on River City, if I turn my camera quickly, I see buildings and terrain loading/popping in reliably. The less players there are alive, the better the map runs. Doing drops on River City in the testing grounds, it doesn't run that horribly. But in QP, with 12 vs 12? One of the worst spots to drop for me is the dropship landing strip. Dropped there last night, and as long as I was looking out towards the rest of the map, 15 FPS. Maps they've touched up also hurt me as well. I lost a good 30 FPS on Crimson Straits after it got its touch-up. New TT isn't fun either.

[Pika]

RestosIII, on 06 December 2016 - 05:53 PM, said:

They've always had some weird optimization issues with this game. Using River City as an example, again, because it's the worst offender from the entire map line-up for me... When I drop on River City, if I turn my camera quickly, I see buildings and terrain loading/popping in reliably. The less players there are alive, the better the map runs. Doing drops on River City in the testing grounds, it doesn't run that horribly. But in QP, with 12 vs 12? One of the worst spots to drop for me is the dropship landing strip. Dropped there last night, and as long as I was looking out towards the rest of the map, 15 FPS. Maps they've touched up also hurt me as well. I lost a good 30 FPS on Crimson Straits after it got its touch-up. New TT isn't fun either.

Try turning shadows and particles down? Those two are the biggest offenders in the Cry Engine I find without much return but, man. That sucks D:

[RestosIII]

Pika, on 06 December 2016 - 05:57 PM, said:

Try turning shadows and particles down? Those two are the biggest offenders in the Cry Engine I find without much return but, man. That sucks D:

That's with particles set to low. And dear lord I'm not turning my texturing down again. I set everything to the lowest for 5 matches maybe... 4-6 months ago. I got an average of 10 FPS more, but the game looked worse than MW2.

[Y E O N N E]

Pika, on 06 December 2016 - 05:45 PM, said:

Honestly the only issue I had was the disparity between game numbers. 228th Wild Ones did incredibly well, but the fact they only had to play .. what? 15 games in total vs the 90+ EmP had to?

Didn't seem fair to EITHER team. EmP had WAY more experience and WOs didn't have to play as many games to get to the same point.

I'm going to be brutally honest here: the OCE region never had a chance. They play primarily at weird hours that don't interact too much with the much larger NA scene, meaning they don't have the breadth of experience. Them going into the tournament looking to defeat teams like EmP, SJR, and EON was like tossing the Americans into the Western Front of World War I: under-equipped, haven't learned the lessons that everybody else did in 1914-1915. You could see it in how OCE matches had a tendency to go brawl which, if you followed NA/EU, you saw teams who did that get absolutely demolished by long-range, high-DPS power-positioning. Even by the time they got to the finals, 228th Wild Ones were still systematically dismantled by both EmP and EON in this fashion.

[rolly]

RestosIII, on 06 December 2016 - 04:59 PM, said:

Oh, and a stream that doesn't play really unfitting music.

Jesus wept that music was horrible. Remixing Dolly Pardon "Jolene" looped.... I'd settle for musak at that rate.

Frankly the Championship was pretty predictable and in that pretty unexciting. There were a few highlights, perhaps when the other two tried something different or it wasn't just Canyon ad nauseam. All the teams were good, but when you have a predictable map, team load out its a predictable outcome.

They need to get an event planner and they need to throw in surprises for the final. Like showcase a new map, (ie. the Steiner Coliseum) have the Team Captains actually bid their forces and do a Trial of Possession with one choosing the map, the other choosing what forces etc. This way you really see the teamwork, adaptation and leadership instead of just rote practice.

Edited by rolly, 06 December 2016 - 06:30 PM.

[RestosIII]

rolly, on 06 December 2016 - 06:29 PM, said:

Jesus wept that music was horrible. Remixing Dolly Pardon "Jolene" looped.... I'd settle for musak at that rate.

Frankly the Championship was pretty predictable and in that pretty unexciting. There were a few highlights, perhaps when the other two tried something different or it wasn't just Canyon ad nauseam. All the teams were good, but when you have a predictable map, team load out its a predictable outcome.

They need to get an event planner and they need to throw in surprises for the final. Like showcase a new map, (ie. the Steiner Coliseum) have the Team Captains actually bid their forces and do a Trial of Possession with one choosing the map, the other choosing what forces etc. This way you really see the teamwork, adaptation and leadership instead of just rote practice.

The only way they could have made the stream music worse is if they had taken tips from John Mulaney on what to play.



And I still think that if they run another e-sports situation, they need to run with the Solaris bit.

[Davers]

Without sponsors there is no profit and no Esports.

[NoiseCrypt]

Nullmancer, on 06 December 2016 - 05:53 PM, said:

I been thinking for awhile now that the runners of future tournaments should throw in some wrenches for our 'leet competitive, money-winning players.

Possible wrenches include; disallow veto of maps or have never before seen tournament only maps, ban certain overperforming mechs or at least limit to one per team, give them a pool of lesser mech's to build teams out of, maybe also have a drop weight limit.

take 'em out of their comfort zone and have these players be challenged.


maybe do something stupid fun like an all stock vindicator 1R match.



Honestly, the only time I got mildly excited watching the tournament was when EON slaughtered EMP, but EMP still won. Boring.


I guess what I'm saying is that the tournament was not exciting to me cause it was the same old, same old throughout with the options allowed to the players reinforcing boring meta playstyle. I would've been more entertained if they had to play on Mordor, or couldnt use clan mechs in certain matches, or had only one kodiak, madcat, grasshopper, jenner, spider ECM variant, arctic cheater whatever. I would've loved to see them have to use ****** mechs to achieve a win.

They need mech bans instead of map bans. Watching the same 6 chassies trot around on canyon got pretty boring pretty fast.

[Y E O N N E]

NoiseCrypt, on 06 December 2016 - 06:55 PM, said:

They need mech bans instead of map bans. Watching the same 6 chassies trot around on canyon got pretty boring pretty fast.

Not feasible due to the customized nature of 'Mechs.

What they could have (and should have) done is what MRBC does, where they provide an "only one duplicate chassis per team" restriction. They could have even expanded it to "no dupes at all."

There are only a tiny few first-line T1, 'Mechs, but the second-line is a bit more diverse.

[TLBFestus]

Davers, on 06 December 2016 - 06:42 PM, said:

Without sponsors there is no profit and no Esports.

What he said. Based on my earlier math somewhere above this post, it was not a commercial success and sponsors aren't likely to dole out bucks like that again based on the measley numbers that it drew.