The real possibility of a large PA esports community

I was watching LiquidTLO's stream today while he was trying out PA. If you don't already know, he is a pro starcraft 2 player and supcom player.

This thread is more of an emotional track to keep Uber on their game than anything, so i just want to say these things:

I have never played TA but i know that it is/was a very great game and had the potential for great esports if there was an esports community back then. I'm sure the same team that made TA can build another, higher tech, balanced RTS that lasts for years.

This is the first game that actually got me interested into the competitive side of a video game, which is very hard to do since i don't have much time to even play video games.

I'm the kind of person that wants the best quality out of everything, and also the kind that likes to see anything succeed or make other people happy. So, me, like most of the community, does not care when version 1.0 is released. There is no rush for release and I'm hoping V1.0 is the best possible quality. Things like ladders are extremely important from day one if a competitive side is desired.

To end this, Uber; please take your time and make this balanced because the community has your back and we want this game to succeed. There is no rush for release. If V1.0 is released at best quality, it benefits everyone, and makes a lasting impression to the people that bought this game.

GG all.

It seems that balance is your biggest concern, because that's the only aspect you mention. Personally, I'd rather have an ambitious unbalanced game than a pedestrian balanced one (which is what the StarCrafts are), which is why the esports community has always favored mediocre games like SC as opposed to stuff like AoE, Cossacks, SupCom, etc.

What I am trying to say, is that there is a fundamental opposition between PA's level of quality and its acceptance by the esports community. If it's too good (which it already is) they won't accept it. Or at any rate not at the level that they would accept something worse. This is the real balancing game that Uber will have to play as it tries to move into the esports sphere. How much dumbing down are they willing to do in order to become accepted by the kind of person who plays "esports"? (I.e. who thinks that moving and clicking a mouse is a sport.)

I hope the answer is none, and I hope whatever minimal esports acceptance the game finds, plus whatever income comes in through sales, mods, etc., will be enough to sustain the continued development of the game for years.

While I would agree with you on principle, we have to remember that esports is all about the balance. If the balance has serious flaws, then it cannot and will not be widely accepted in the competitive scene. I can see the balance coming around AFTER 1.0, and then slowly building a good, solid esports community after that. The only way for this to be sustainable is if we build it slowly, like a house. We cannot just throw up a really big shack and expect it to stay up, no matter how shiny it is. It's all about consistency.

So the game is not decently balanced now? Me and my clan are slowly getting better, but we are still barely intermediates, so our opinion doesn't count for much, but from what I've seen it seems perfectly balanced so far. Even the much-maligned early dox rush can be countered easily if you know it's coming, and I haven't encountered any obviously uncounterable strategies yet.

For those who only know him for that, he was also a big SupCom/FA player back in the day as well.

Mike

I have to agree with some points, if to be successful as an esport, the game has to veer to much in the super aps realm, i prefer it doesn't, i much rather have a strategic game then a clickfest. For me Supreme commander is great wile i find DOTA and Starcraft really boring. So i can only hope this game veers more to the first that the latter.

I don't want a game that overwhelms me with a million things to do per second, if i wanted to do that i would be playing an FPS. I wan a game were decisions matter down the line, were tactics and strategy are what wins the game, not how fast i can click.

So far (despite a few hiccups) PA seems to be the game that is closer to deliver a real time STRATEGY game and not a tactical game disguised as one. An that is it's selling point, I already find it much more amusing to watch then any dota or starcraft matches.

eSports games don't have to be based on super high APM. In fact i hope pa does not become that.

I would also rather it be like a 'real' rts than something like starcraft.

brains over twitch-clicks... any day, all day

It already is based on super high APM. Micro in many situations gives huge benefits. Multiple planets cause much more attack options than a 2d map, in particular someone can attack not only your borders, but any part of your base, on any planet. So I don't see how this game will not be based on high APM. I'd even say that I don't know any RTS more APM-dependant (ok, maaaybe Warcraft3, with all those units' abilities).

As for the claim that balance is not that important - it's the exact opposite. Balance is the most important factor, and by balance I mean that:
- there isn't no unit that has obvious advantage and is very hard to counter (ideally there would be only 1 unit type)
- but at the same time the game is "interesting" - multiple various strategies must be viable and games should not be alike (ideally tons of unique units)
- and finally - players must be able to recover after small mistakes. It must not be allowed that small advantage grows exponentially over time (ergo - there must be a balance of overall power too)

"ambitious unbalanced game" sounds like a perfect recipe for a failure.

This game is centered on macro and with macro usually* comes lower APM.

I'm not saying there is no micro but there is definitely a noticeable difference in attention when playing PA compared to starcraft.

Games like starcraft are pretty much all micro and requires more attention to detail.

I do agree with your principal idea though.

Are APM and micro really the same thing? I guess maybe I'm just disagreeing with a definition, but I don't see them as the same at all. To me, micro is the level of detail with which you control units. PA does have a lot of possibile situations where micro can give you a small edge, but your time is a lot more valuable planning your economy and playing the game with a big picture perspective. To be successful you do need to be able to do a lot of high level things really fast, but you don't always need to micro every unit individually. The focus on macro over micro means that you can make a lot more high level decisions a lot faster than you could in games like StarCraft or Red Alert, but you do still need to think and click fast.

APM is actions per minute.

It is not the same as micro, as micro and macro make up the possible actions that a player can do in a game.

Someone who does more actions then another player is doing more stuff then the other player.

Well, make it "effective APM" then .

How about the fact that PA has been created from the ground up to be played by teams?

What's the APM of my 5-person clan when all of us are playing?

it's been created from the ground up to play as teams and solo.

I like where this is going all this juicy conversations around here...

Now for my own 2 cents: as an avid SC2 player, i can say that everything that has been said here so far holds some truths anyways. The argument that, to become an e-Sports, PA has to be balanced stands. There is no way around that. Any of you here that have played SC2 know that it was (and still is) plagued by, be it sometimes minor, imbalances that have the team crunching numbers over and over again... But the community plays a big part in this too. A community (like SC2's) that constantly whines about their so-called racial imbalances, and then get served by the balance team, unleashes another whine wave on the forum by the other 2 races. It's always something. I've tried, and so far mostly succeeded, to keep out of balance discussions and just try to get better at the game, which i think is the better mindset.

But where does PA differ from SC2 for that matter (in an e-Sports view)? A lot of things actually:

First of all there are no different races. Everyone literally has the same set of units and buildings! This means that any imbalance between units is eventually available for every player! Dox rush OP? Well no problem, i can use it aswell, lets win me some games. Air is the new meta? Well well, adjustment time!
While the focus in PA differs a lot from SC2 aswell, it does not mean that the 2 biggest factors within any RTS game aren't present, be it Macro and Micro. But this is where the 2 games mostly begin to differ from each other. While the core concept stays: build base, get eco, get production, get units, win; the way the 2 games achieve this purpose uses a different subset of skills. Read on:

Decision making and being on top of your enemy plan (i.e. scouting) is the same for EVERY RTS. But the focus macro-micro tends to be different. While in a normal SC2 game most races get their optimal production vs income rate stalls at around 3 bases worth of eco, in PA, due to the streaming eco, this is not the case, production will always and forever ramp up until one of the players budges under the others production. Enough about macro.

Is there no micro in PA? Absolutely not! A player that can use his units more effective by dodging and always moving around will normally have a better battle outcome! It just doesn't use the same micro intensive tricks as SC2 does (special abilities)! A lot of players stated, and it is somewhat true, that SC2 has been artificially made more difficult by doing this. Abilities call for high APM, thats it, and that is what makes SC2 so APM-intensive. PA benefits from micro, but just not the APM-intensive sort.

Does PA has what it takes to become an e-Sports? Absolutely! This game screams competition, and a small mistake will (most of times) not cost you the game. Relocating on another planet and keeping the enemy off will allow you to stay in the game and even force a victory! But what is needed to make it e-Sports ready:
Something to measure our skills, i.e. a ladder/league/ELO system. With this implemented, from the moment the game hits, "pro's" will emerge and show us the way. They will be the spearhead of PA's assault into the e-Sports fray!

Just a little comment to @icycalm : Do you really think SC2 is a mediocre game? I'd beg to differ, not only because i play it a lot, but also this: if the game was mediocre, the level of balance (while not perfect) achieved between these 3 very different races, both in mechanics and abilities, wouldn't be possible... This is why i keep out of SC2's balance crap. It IS almost perfectly balanced. The community just got too spoiled by the team going on every whim the races desired... If you still think it's a mediocre game, i'd have you to show me exactly why

The problem with something being overpowered is when it designates other strategies obsolete.

There should not be 'one meta' or one strategy that makes all the other ones impossibly/very hard to win with. dox

I think that's the biggest (maybe even the only) problem with balance right now.

To be honest, PA has some decently big issues right now from unit behaviour to the smoothness of the control ui that will prevent it from going seriously competitive. There are things that will turn off people who try to play this at the highest levels. Most balanced game isn't necessarily fun if the control experience is sometimes frustrating.

The base game has alot of potential and fun though, which is why I'm sticking around for when the game gets more polish. Keep it up uber!

Balance has almost nothing to do with the quality of an RTS. I say the StarCrafts are mediocre, and the first thing that comes to your mind is balance. I couldn't care less how balanced they are: the coin toss is also perfectly balanced but it's a boring shallow game that no one bothers to play when there's no money on the line (and when there is, they only play it because of the money, from which fact you can draw some conclusions about some of the reasons for the popularity of "esports" games).

I've said this before and people don't like it, but quality in an RTS has been synonymous with increasing scale and complexity from day 1. That's why PA is the best RTS ever, while SC2 is a mere remake of a game that came out in the mid '90s (and which was already outdated before it was even released). What is the unit cap in SC2? A couple hundred units? It is ludicrous that anyone even bothers to talk about the game in this day and age, never mind compare it to masterpieces like SupCom and PA, and the only reason people do (though they don't understand it) is money.

You know why people love "balance" so much? Because they hate to lose. But I'd rather lose in a complex, unbalanced game, than win in a shallow balanced one, and as every game designer knows, balance is a million times easier to achieve in a shallow game over a complex one. The EASIEST solution to balance a game as quickly as possible is simply to dumb it down, and that's why all the esports games are by no means anywhere close to the maximum complexity possible in their respective genres. They are not shallow turds either, but they are by no means the complex masterpieces they could have been if balance had not been made the highest priority in their original design and continued development.

tl;dr scale and complexity come first, and then come aesthetics, and quite a long way afterwards comes balance, which can anyway be fine-tuned by modders if need be, while the highest priorities really can't -- or at any rate not to the level that balance can. And I am glad to see that, from TA to SupCom to PA, this is exactly the order of rank of priorities that the developers of these games have pursued, and I hope they continue down this path forever, because this is the path of quality as opposed to popularity.

Woah!!, TLO played PA!! Any chance of a link...