Competitive play spectating
elodea
Editlodea Join Date: 2009-06-20 Member: 67877Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Editlodea Join Date: 2009-06-20 Member: 67877Members, Reinforced - Shadow
<div class="IPBDescription">Survey</div>So, if NS2 is aiming to gain sizable traction in popularity and exposure the following two conditions need to be present.
1) The game is fun to play for the active player
2) The game is fun to spectate
I wanted to try and focus on the second point and hear what you guys all thought of <b>spectating</b> competitive games currently! It might be a bit too early to do something like this, but i figure it would be constructive to start considering this angle with NS2 1.0 being relatively close.
<b>Do you enjoy spectating competitive games? why or why not?</b>
To try and give this some form, here are some general reasons off the top of my head why you may or may not like spectating. You'll probably have reasons i havn't thought of.
<i>-Length of games
-Too much or too little attrition like gameflow
-Map sizes
-Too much or too little consequence of action and strategic depth
-Coherency of each team's chosen strategy/tactic or coherency of gameflow.
-Outcomes too predictable or not predictable enough
-Balance
-Current skill levels too low/high or skill ceiling too low/high
-Feature incomplete
-Lack of first person perspective</i>
1) The game is fun to play for the active player
2) The game is fun to spectate
I wanted to try and focus on the second point and hear what you guys all thought of <b>spectating</b> competitive games currently! It might be a bit too early to do something like this, but i figure it would be constructive to start considering this angle with NS2 1.0 being relatively close.
<b>Do you enjoy spectating competitive games? why or why not?</b>
To try and give this some form, here are some general reasons off the top of my head why you may or may not like spectating. You'll probably have reasons i havn't thought of.
<i>-Length of games
-Too much or too little attrition like gameflow
-Map sizes
-Too much or too little consequence of action and strategic depth
-Coherency of each team's chosen strategy/tactic or coherency of gameflow.
-Outcomes too predictable or not predictable enough
-Balance
-Current skill levels too low/high or skill ceiling too low/high
-Feature incomplete
-Lack of first person perspective</i>
Comments
I enjoy watching the NS2HD streams, I think that's just a matter of getting things figured out more smoothly. Obviously the main camera can't be everywhere at once. I don't think I would do any better at getting where I would want to be than Hugh is doing.
Just one of the random skulks, lmg'ers pressuring a node, etc...
There's no "key" player or important player to spectate at any point. It's extremely situational whether you would want to first person spec the last player defending / pressuring an RT or maybe the first lerk or last fade. But that's really the only sort of scenario where you really want to spectate someone first person.
The other issue is that top down view is just plain and simply... boring. It's not enjoyable to watch at all, except to get an idea of what's going on and see ambushes from a more telling angle.
after that:
-1st person spec would be nice to have
-as locklear said maybe a pre-set position in rooms that a camera snaps to when you go into freelook mode, so that it doesn't clip into an awkward position in a wall somewhere and then you gotta spend a few seconds clipping through more stuff to find a decent angle
-a way to seamlessly switch through the view modes, or at least make transitioning much smoother
I do think the individual impact is a huge thing, but the little and less significant details play a huge role also.
For example I remember when I first time saw Tuplis fading, I was absolutely awestruck by the little nudges, ducking moves and curves he did. While he certainly did also frag a lot, it was equally much the little twists and nudges that played a huge role in creating the feel that you're watching a top level player that knows fade inside out.
The same goes for Brood War. At some point you could pretty much tell it was Jaedong playing by the way the zerg microed his hydralisks while shooting a factory hovering around the outskirts of zerg base. There's just some magic in watching someone pulling off every little finesse and trickery to gain advantage.
1) The game is fun to play for the active player
2) The game is fun to spectate
I wanted to try and focus on the second point and hear what you guys all thought of <b>spectating</b> competitive games currently! It might be a bit too early to do something like this, but i figure it would be constructive to start considering this angle with NS2 1.0 being relatively close.
<b>Do you enjoy spectating competitive games? why or why not?</b>
To try and give this some form, here are some general reasons off the top of my head why you may or may not like spectating. You'll probably have reasons i havn't thought of.
<i>-Length of games
-Too much or too little attrition like gameflow
-Map sizes
-Too much or too little consequence of action and strategic depth
-Coherency of each team's chosen strategy/tactic or coherency of gameflow.
-Outcomes too predictable or not predictable enough
-Balance
-Current skill levels too low/high or skill ceiling too low/high
-Feature incomplete
-Lack of first person perspective</i><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
All games are inherently competitive, there's a winner and a loser, there's no point in making a distinction there. Like many people, I'm a fan of professional sports teams and enjoy watching top-level play. I'm not so enthralled watching high-school or even a lot of college level play in some sports, because regardless of how exciting the game may be, the players aren't.
Sure, but obviously this in the context of organized competitive play where players are trying to min/max with fair and predetermined rulesets. e.g. 6 v 6, no subs etc. Pub game spectating is a bit irrelevant.
It looks like spectating might not be so fun due to low current skill levels and low skill ceilings then. I do agree..
I think CS suffers from this somewhat too, however you generally have people filling slightly different roles, plus with how the dynamic of the maps play out there is generally always a best player to spectate, plus you can just default to spectating the carry player or awper, cant really go wrong spectating players like delpan.
Spectating the game as an RTS can be somewhat interesting, but honestly games play out very similarly you will rarely see suprising tatics or choices at higher level.
I don't believe (m)any teams use ingame voice.