Guild Wars 2

http://www.planetside2.com/news/2013-roadmap-mlg

“Over the next few months, the PlanetSide 2 and MLG teams will work closely to develop ideal competitive gameplay features and settings to showcase the game…”

Very interesting to see a game that unlike GW2 never promised anything or even was designed for competitive esports is jumping on the twitch and MLG bandwagon.

I am very interested to see how long it will take PS2 to develop ‘competitive gameplay features and settings’ when we have been sitting here for 6 months in spvp and only now are testing single matches.

Is it possible that planetside might have an esport event before GW2? With this and the Smite announcements, I really wonder what is going on at Anet.

I’d take this thread seriously if it didn’t involve planetside.

As much as I’m kitten with A-net atm i have to defend them here, these games are uncomparable, PS2 is a first person shooter and infinitely easier to balance than an MMORPG were each profession has a plethora of abilities to balance. PS2 has 3 professions and a hand full of weapons, there is very little to balance there its dow to player skill.
Its like comparing chess with tic tac toe…

As much as I love planetside2.
It’s not the same.
Planetside 2 is entirely pvp on a huge scale.
GW2, is pvp, and pve.

It’s a cute marketing ploy, and maybe it’ll pay off for them, but I’m not particularly impressed. The Roadmap would look better to me if all of the verbage surrounding it wasn’t screaming “Hey, dissatisfied because other developers aren’t telling you exactly what they’re doing? Come be satisfied!”, without any detail as to how it will specifically influence the development process. Are they taking demographic analysis on those members of the community participating in the roadmap? Do they know what percentage of players are participating? Is the roadmap integrating into the game to give it more visibility? What percentage of the project plan will be determined by the roadmap?

Imagine if GW2 released a roadmap, and just had generic scoring from the entire GW2 community. Do you think any real competitive PvP concerns would see the light of day over casual/PvE desires?

Look at the February features. Account Level Unlocks are top-ranked by a substantial margin. Just the sort of competitive feature for their game to hit the ground running ASAP with the MLG.

All I see is more hype, and as much as I would be fine with PS2 succeeding, most of the hype I’ve seen in the gaming community just leads to eventual disappointment. I’ll wait until something actually happens before deeming any victories for PS2.

It does, however, make me wonder if ANet has considered partnerships like this.

FPS games draw a bigger crowd, so I’m not surprised by the initiative of both parties in forming a partnership.

Geewoody.2017:

I’d take this thread seriously if it didn’t involve planetside.

and yet mlg reached out to them to work to build something, and not GW2. Says a lot.

Sprawl.3891:

Geewoody.2017:

I’d take this thread seriously if it didn’t involve planetside.

and yet mlg reached out to them to work to build something, and not GW2. Says a lot.

Or did Sony reach out to MLG? I can’t tell based on the two articles I’ve seen.

Either way, odds are Planetside 2 has in-game advertising space that will financially benefit MLG via visibility and potential conversions, so it looks to me like a mutually beneficial business decision. Of course, that’s what a partnership is, so none of this is surprising.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if one of the competitive features is an MLG PS2 stream browser built into the PS2 client. You’ll be able to watch PS2 matches from within the game. Oh, if you have the appropriate MLG membership, of course. Which Sony will probably get a cut of if it originates from the PS2 client.

Personally, the second I smell a capitalist business decision involved in my game, it’s a major turn-off. I guess it’s a savvy e-sports maneuver, but the last time I watched a Planetside stream, the person was sitting in a tank and firing off into the distance for several minutes, or crouching behind a wall and healing people who were popping out trading pot shots. I wish it well, but no thanks.

Volrath.1473:

As much as I’m kitten with A-net atm i have to defend them here, these games are uncomparable, PS2 is a first person shooter and infinitely easier to balance than an MMORPG were each profession has a plethora of abilities to balance. PS2 has 3 professions and a hand full of weapons, there is very little to balance there its dow to player skill.
Its like comparing chess with tic tac toe…

True the games are entirely different, but it is a case of 2 companies trying to develop an ‘e-sport’. Balance has nothing to do with holding events and creating partnerships.

Also, one would think GW2 is a lot closer to an e-sport than planetside, so why isn’t it working with MLG?

Cogbyrn.7283:

All I see is more hype, and as much as I would be fine with PS2 succeeding, most of the hype I’ve seen in the gaming community just leads to eventual disappointment. I’ll wait until something actually happens before deeming any victories for PS2.

It does, however, make me wonder if ANet has considered partnerships like this.

I agree there are no details, but if MLG is willing to partner and help them develop competitive features there it isn’t crazy to believe there is some level of merit to the claims.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Personally, the second I smell a capitalist business decision involved in my game, it’s a major turn-off. I guess it’s a savvy e-sports maneuver, but the last time I watched a Planetside stream, the person was sitting in a tank and firing off into the distance for several minutes, or crouching behind a wall and healing people who were popping out trading pot shots. I wish it well, but no thanks.

Greedy company = tournament ticket system
Boring gameplay = capping and defending empty points, bunker or burst stale meta

Its not like GW2 streams are doing that great either. PS2 dev stream events that can use free form camera get like 10k+ viewers easily.

PS2 just seems to me to be a lot closer to an esport than GW2, and it wasn’t even supposed to be one.

Also GW2 is more guilty than anyone of using e-sports as a marketing ploy.

PS2 is a different game than GW2.

PvP or whatever it is there is completely different. (I don’t recall FPS games ever calling their fights PvP though… not specifically at least. PvP seems to be a term for games that have PvE content and PvP… like for mmoS).

I do think you all are missing the OP’s point. The point is that this game was developed and marketed as a PvP esports game. Many people came to this game with these hopes. We got here, and the PvP side is kind of an afterthought with very little development while PvE is one of the most supported and feature rich experiences I’ve ever seen in an MMO. Monthly content updates, some of them gigantic?

Some of you also saying “this game has PvE and PvP”, I’m not sure why you bring that up. In development they touted a system that “separated PvE and PvP and made them able to be balanced, updated, and augmented as separate entities”. Also, they have specific PvP devs that do nothing but the PvP side (just not enough of them IMO).

So, all in all, what has happened is this:

GW2: Touted as an esport, been out for 6 months and still far from e-sport. The e-sport side seeming to have a lack of support
PS2: Game released 2 months ago with no mention of esport, has been contact by MLG to make it into an e-sport.
Smite: Game that just entered open beta has announced a $100k tournament (and is fast tracked to e-sport)

I think the game itself has a ton of e-sport potential, they need to make some tweaks (such as the MUCH needed 1v1 tournament system which after 6 months is finally here) take another look at conquest(or at least give other game types to give the players the option to decide if conquest is the most fun) and add some basic e-sport features (ladders, etc) and we’ll be there. The only frustrating part is that they weren’t in at launch, and now we’re just starting to get there. This update and the February update will really determine if they are serious about the PvP in this game.

Jacobin.8509:

PS2 just seems to me to be a lot closer to an esport than GW2, and it wasn’t even supposed to be one.

GW2 streams definitely aren’t healthy, but I personally don’t see the appeal in PS2, is all.

Also, business-wise, it does seem like PS2 is closer to being an e-sport than GW2. However, it would take a whole lot of convincing for me to believe PS2 wasn’t supposed to be one. They may not have advertised it as an e-sport, but the game released November 20th, 2012. They partnered with MLG on/around January 25th, 2013.

So basically, the game that wasn’t supposed to be an e-sport suddenly realized it had e-sport potential and moved in to create a business partnership with MLG in 2 months?

Sony isn’t small. They know what they’re doing. Kudos to them for not advertising it as an e-sport and dropping it on the community after the fact, because it’s another savvy marketing move.

I’m not trying to take away from Sony’s savvyness. They’ve made a clever move. It makes you wonder if a game can business its way into the e-sports world instead of reputation its way in via gameplay. It could be a very legitimate method for injecting a game into the scene, and it might work splendidly.

ANet has other concerns besides PvP from a company-wide standpoint, and it’s very possible that’s getting in the way of their e-sports agenda. It’s difficult to compare their situation to PS2’s, though naturally, perhaps ANet could have pumped their breaks on the e-sports talk as well.

I’ll always believe ANet should have kept the e-sport aspect in their back pocket and advertised other sPvP features instead, but ah well.

EDIT – Can someone link the article that says MLG reached out to Sony, as opposed to the other way around? That’s twice now I’ve seen it worded like that.

They care more about making this a competitive game than you realize. Also, just because they don’t make everything public does not mean they aren’t doing anything.

Follidus.8027:

They care more about making this a competitive game than you realize. Also, just because they don’t make everything public does not mean they aren’t doing anything.

releasing pvp in the state it was/is while trolling the e-sport promise and when its ready pre-release tag line dont really jive with caring more than we realize.

people have been requesting basic features since beta 1 that still aren’t here.

Follidus.8027:

They care more about making this a competitive game than you realize. Also, just because they don’t make everything public does not mean they aren’t doing anything.

Blind faith is just not good enough for most people these days, especially on this long of a time frame – just look at what happened with DWi.