Duration: Now until May 13th Prize: 10$ per winner to spend on the Diablo 3 auction house Task: There are 3 soundbites in the video, one at the 3 second mark and two at the end of the video. Be the first to comment on the video and this thread in what game/sport each sound occurs, when it occurs and if applicable who wins the game/sport it's from.
First to name each one wins!
Prizes will be paid out on the 16th of May assuming the RMAH is working properly (I'll buy some worthless item from you for $10)
------------------------------------------
The discussion:
Many of the people involved in esports agree that the most important factor for turning a game into an Esport is that it is entertaining to WATCH.
With highlight videos showcasing awesome combos and teamplay, to grudge matches or matches with money riding on them...
Do you think PvP could be fun to watch played at a high level?
----------------------------------------
Below are some further thoughts concluding with what I think is the minimum I want Blizzard to do for the competitive community. Feel free to share your own ideas about competitive Diablo 3 with or without reading it.
Whenever the topic is brought up, Jay Wilson speaks out about how PvP in Diablo 3 is being built for the casual player. From what he has said I've gathered that people will not be able to make private games and there won't even be any in-game way to tell who the best players are.
One direct quote from 9 months ago is the following:
"There is no ranking [shown to the players], there is an invisible ranking that we use for matchmaking."
They have said there will be some sort of leveling progression from playing arena but that losing will level you up almost as fast as winning.
Blizzard is a smart company. They know that people can quit games due to frustration and feelings of failure. It is also certainly true that generally casual players never have any idea how much better the really competitive people are than them and often have misguided notions about their own skill.
Because of these reasons, Blizzard is going to soften the blow on them by putting less of an emphasis on rating, competition and "being the best".
There is logic behind the decision, I honestly don't know if it's the best decision for the longevity or revenue of the game, but it certainly could be.
I'm about as serious about Diablo 3 as anyone else, I want to play and commentate Diablo 3 at the highest level. I know there will be an audience for it but noone can know how big. A lot of other franchises with competitive players are on the decline. WoW and MW to name a couple.
For me, the ability to host private games is the most important.
Rating or not, the best players more often make themselves known through tournaments or streaming/self promoting.
If there are no private games, user run tournaments become impossible since you simply can't play the matches.
Note: This is not the place for a discussion about Diablo 3 PvP balance. It is true balancing the game may never be reached but we know Blizzard will be making SOME effort to balance it. Even if they ultimately fail, the game can still be fun to play and watch at a high level.
I love those polls where 75% of your choices are "yes".
D3 will not be an eSport.
Deal with it or find an eSport game.
The fact is that there will be many who try to get as good as they can at the PvP and have fun competing with each other. There will also be people who enjoy watching high level PvP. This was even true in Diablo 2, without arena.
What I AM having to "deal with" is people who like to come down on what others do and enjoy for no reason, so you got me there!
Oh also, I would call WoW an esport considering it was played competitively at blizzcon for thousands of dollars and many other places.
D3 is missing nothing that WoW has from a competitive standpoint.
I dont know really. If you mean custom like starcraft games why not... but I really really doubt it will ever happen. Custom games doesn't look like something Blizzard is willing to spend time on.
As hope, though Wilson's quotes are 9 months old and PvP is not coming before end 2012 a lot may change.
I would really like high-level PvP to emerge in D3, but unless the dev team shifts its focus to PvP development and balance (to the possible detriment of PvE content), I'm afraid this is a longshot.
Even if they didn't balance PvP, I see no reason not to allow players to create custom arena games. I'd like the option to team up or duel my friends. That's still for fun, right?
From what I've seen, there's a segment of the community that just refuses to like or encourage anything PvP. I personally love it, even just fun dueling is amazing. It keeps a games life longer and is super fun to watch clips of! I don't think people should hate on PvP so much; let the people who like it enjoy it... but I concede that Blizz shouldn't try and build/balance around PvP.
And I'm not even considering all of the AMAZING things you could do with PvP like a dota style setup or a gladiator arena tournament with betting etc...
I honestly don't care too much if this game becomes an esport or not. What I care about is that there is a healthy PvP community for me to play with, and not just a game full of these ignorant idiots who think to control how other people plan to enjoy the game because they happen to not like PvP. Also Blizzard seems to be taking a negetive stand point to PvP in Diablo 3 which is discouraging and does nothing but tarnish the Blizzard name. They have always been good about letting the players play the game how they want it to be played, never have they said that this game is designed to be ONLY this type of game and anyone else can play another game, which they have all but said about Diablo 3. If they wait too long on delivering PvP, or make it such an undeveloped waste of time, I may not be playing Diablo 3 past one or two level 60's. (which is what, a few months at most? Get your act together Blizzard.)
When the developers say 'We have no intention of doing things to make Diablo 3 viable for eSports', it's safe to say that long discussions about Diablo3 and eSports are fairly fruitless.
Guys, I got news for you, the most important determining factor in whether a game becomes an e-Sport is NOT if it's entertaining to watch. The ALL-IMPORTANT factor is if there is MONEY involved. Where there is $$$, the competitive players will flock.
Look at LoL. Shit game, absolute shit. But there is $$ there put up by the company that owns the game. They have turned it into an e-Sport by throwing money at it.
Look at DotA2. Less of a shit game. Pretty good game. What's the first thing Valve does with it before it even gets to closed beta? Hosts a $1m tournament. They threw money at it. Now it's an e-Sport.
Look at HoN. It has a "Head of e-Sports Development" employed on its staff whose sole purpose is to find sponsors, host events, and get HoN into DreamHack.
What do these games have in common with Diablo 3? Well, a lot. They can both be considered (to some extent) multi-player online battle arenas. What do these games not have in common? The company that created D3 will NOT be throwing money at making it an e-Sport. There will not be D3 tournaments at Blizzcon (at least none that have $$ involved). This game is not like Counter-Strike or Starcraft where it is incredibly well-balanced and 100% skill based so e-Sports will naturally spring up around it. This game will be highly imbalanced, and item-dependant.
This is why D3 is not, and will not be, an e-Sport, despite what you PvPers think. You need to grow up if you think your favorite game can become an e-Sport just because a lot of people like it. WAY more goes into it than that nowadays.
That said, I want there to be a vibrant PvP community in D3. You PvPers deserve it. There may even be some $100 tournaments or something like that which may be privately sponsored every once in a while. But mark my words. There will be no big tournaments, unless someone really puts a LOT of effort into it. That someone will not be Blizzard. Who will it be? You? Do you have the kind of scratch to put together an event big enough to get D3 on the scene? I don't think so.
I voted "Sure, why not." because I see little reason to oppose a private Arena option. However, the farthest I believe it should go is mirroring the public Arena but letting you set teams. I don't agree to Blizzard devoting resources to implementing features that focus the game towards competitive play in PvP. So while I don't mind them adding private Arenas, it shouldn't really create the eSport environment you desire.
Sure why not, but mostly I echo ecu in the idea that setting teams and such would probably be as far as it should go. The more options piled on to the idea of the custom game the less I'd probably like the idea.
What is wrong with people like you? If you don't like pvp cause you are scared of a challenge then just don't play it. Why so many people don't want pvp in this game if it doesn't affect them at all?
I only like oranges so ban all the apples.
I really find it sad how someone always has to drop back to this anti-pvp idea when someone disagrees with something.
"You said no therefore you hate/scared of pvp. You said no to the idea therefore you don't want pvp in the game at all."
It's like diagnosing someone with a mental illness because they used hi instead of hello.
I voted no. I'm a PvE guy and I don't want to see resources (read developer time) directed away from what I like to go toward what I don't like. Additionally, while people can say that making PvP competitive won't affect PvE because of xyz reasons, it always does. That argument has been made for game after game and, in my experience, it's always been proven wrong. Sure, right now you're just talking about custom arena games, but the more effort and expense put toward PvP, the more PvP players will demand, such as better class balance (in PvP specifically), more arenas, nerf x skill, etc. Frankly, I'd be happier if PvP is never implemented at all.
Also, why does every game have to have esport-level, or even competetive, PvP? I really don't understand this. Imagine if someone came to these forums demanding 8-person progressive raiding. We'd tell them, almost universally I think, that this is probably the wrong game for them and that, no, we don't think Blizzard should add it. Why is it different when we're talking about competitive PvP? Neither one is what Diablo is or has ever been about.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
I am a very competitive person when I comes to gaming (it is acutely the only time). I have played the PvP system at last years Blizzconand it was great. It was fun, balanced, very smooth and fun to watch. To the PvE'ers, you have almost a whole year (if not longer) to have it your way. When the PvP is implemented it will be back to this, non-stop confrontation. Blizzard being the referee I would say you won this round, but we will be back. In the mean-time let us PvP'ers discuss it among our selfs. Unless you have something constructive to say (criticism or not) because to me it seams like everybody is running in circles. TO THOES THAT DO, stop acting like you know anything and being so absolutist (like saying things like "no" and "never", it just bugs me and I think it is the biggest reason for all of these arguments, other-wise they would all be heathy arguments).
Diablo 3 would benefit more from implementing a PvP environment far more than it would by added content. I find it safe to assume that the majority of long term Diablo players want a longer more stable item cycle (that was added content rly means in this game). Given item drop rates, PvP support is the perfect implementation to kill time between appropriate content cycles (few and far between please).
I believe a PvP community will expand the item market and help PvE players more than not. I also believe proper E-Sports are emergent and that it is more fitting to make a fun player vs player environment first, with tweaks and fixes on the way, before looking at the E-Sport potential. Some types of games do this far better/easier.
I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree here. My experience in games I've played which have begun to focus on PvP is that it has always had negative repercussions for PvE. Developers and forum-goers always say it won't, and then it always does. This takes the form of changing PvE balance (always happens in my experience, no matter what developers say) and taking resources from new content (and I mean like new areas, new monsters, new champion affixes, etc, not just new items), balancing PvE, bugfixing or what-have-you. By the way, I use the absolute here because as I said, that has been my personal experience 100% of the time. If there are games where adding competetive PvP has not has negative PvE implications, and there may be though I doubt it, I haven't played them.
However, I think your argument that PvP is a good stand-in for new content is generally accepted by developers, and it's a major reason why we see it in so many games. The argument is somewhat valid for the subsection of players who enjoy PvP. For those of us who don't enjoy it, whenever games begin to focus on PvP balance, it makes the game measurably less enjoyable. Virtually every online game caters to the PvP crowd. Why can't I have my one AAA game without it? *SNIFF!*
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
...and if you disagree with me, you're probably <insert random ad hominem attack here>.
I am a very competitive person when I comes to gaming (it is acutely the only time). I have played the PvP system at last years Blizzconand it was great. It was fun, balanced, very smooth and fun to watch. To the PvE'ers, you have almost a whole year (if not longer) to have it your way. When the PvP is implemented it will be back to this, non-stop confrontation. Blizzard being the referee I would say you won this round, but we will be back. In the mean-time let us PvP'ers discuss it among our selfs. Unless you have something constructive to say (criticism or not) because to me it seams like everybody is running in circles. TO THOES THAT DO, stop acting like you know anything and being so absolutist (like saying things like "no" and "never", it just bugs me and I think it is the biggest reason for all of these arguments, other-wise they would all be heathy arguments).
So you want the more PvE focused players to leave this forum because why? Our opinions are just as valid as yours. In fact, since most of the PvP players posting here are competitive PvP players from Diablo 2 that don't fit into the target audience of Diablo 3. This means that people like myself that are interested in casual PvP actually have more reasons to be posting then you do.
Perhaps if the PvP side would stop trying to shove competitive PvP into a casual PvP game, you'd hear less complaints from the more casual players. I can accept additional Arena modes. Hell, I can even accept private Arenas. I cannot accept people trying to sit here and complain about Diablo 3 PvP being terrible because they aren't going competitive, complaining Blizzard is terrible, etc.
I like the game that Diablo 3 has become and I actually am interested in it's PvP. So no, I'm not going to stop posting. Perhaps you guys can start posting GOOD suggestions given the current design of the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf5jQoLZsFY
Small contest for fun:
Duration: Now until May 13th
Prize: 10$ per winner to spend on the Diablo 3 auction house
Task: There are 3 soundbites in the video, one at the 3 second mark and two at the end of the video. Be the first to comment on the video and this thread in what game/sport each sound occurs, when it occurs and if applicable who wins the game/sport it's from.
First to name each one wins!
Prizes will be paid out on the 16th of May assuming the RMAH is working properly (I'll buy some worthless item from you for $10)
------------------------------------------
The discussion:
Many of the people involved in esports agree that the most important factor for turning a game into an Esport is that it is entertaining to WATCH.
With highlight videos showcasing awesome combos and teamplay, to grudge matches or matches with money riding on them...
Do you think PvP could be fun to watch played at a high level?
----------------------------------------
Below are some further thoughts concluding with what I think is the minimum I want Blizzard to do for the competitive community. Feel free to share your own ideas about competitive Diablo 3 with or without reading it.
Whenever the topic is brought up, Jay Wilson speaks out about how PvP in Diablo 3 is being built for the casual player. From what he has said I've gathered that people will not be able to make private games and there won't even be any in-game way to tell who the best players are.
One direct quote from 9 months ago is the following:
"There is no ranking [shown to the players], there is an invisible ranking that we use for matchmaking."
They have said there will be some sort of leveling progression from playing arena but that losing will level you up almost as fast as winning.
Blizzard is a smart company. They know that people can quit games due to frustration and feelings of failure. It is also certainly true that generally casual players never have any idea how much better the really competitive people are than them and often have misguided notions about their own skill.
Because of these reasons, Blizzard is going to soften the blow on them by putting less of an emphasis on rating, competition and "being the best".
There is logic behind the decision, I honestly don't know if it's the best decision for the longevity or revenue of the game, but it certainly could be.
I'm about as serious about Diablo 3 as anyone else, I want to play and commentate Diablo 3 at the highest level. I know there will be an audience for it but noone can know how big. A lot of other franchises with competitive players are on the decline. WoW and MW to name a couple.
For me, the ability to host private games is the most important.
Rating or not, the best players more often make themselves known through tournaments or streaming/self promoting.
If there are no private games, user run tournaments become impossible since you simply can't play the matches.
Note: This is not the place for a discussion about Diablo 3 PvP balance. It is true balancing the game may never be reached but we know Blizzard will be making SOME effort to balance it. Even if they ultimately fail, the game can still be fun to play and watch at a high level.
Care to elaborate?
The fact is that there will be many who try to get as good as they can at the PvP and have fun competing with each other. There will also be people who enjoy watching high level PvP. This was even true in Diablo 2, without arena.
What I AM having to "deal with" is people who like to come down on what others do and enjoy for no reason, so you got me there!
Oh also, I would call WoW an esport considering it was played competitively at blizzcon for thousands of dollars and many other places.
D3 is missing nothing that WoW has from a competitive standpoint.
As hope, though Wilson's quotes are 9 months old and PvP is not coming before end 2012 a lot may change.
A QUADRILLION MAGIC FIND is worthless if you can't kill shit!
Each skill has a seperate data field for how it affects players as opposed to monsters, the PvP balance need not touch the PvE.
Or did you mean something else? regardless just because you can't see how doesn't mean there is no way.
Even if they didn't balance PvP, I see no reason not to allow players to create custom arena games. I'd like the option to team up or duel my friends. That's still for fun, right?
And I'm not even considering all of the AMAZING things you could do with PvP like a dota style setup or a gladiator arena tournament with betting etc...
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Curse PremiumI'm not sure where peoples PvP obsession has come from, MMOs and FPSs I guess, but Diablo has never been and never will be about PvP.
You'll get your PvP arenas. That's it.
They've made it clear they are going to add PvP arena options into the game, just not for release. People are acting like it's never happening.
Look at LoL. Shit game, absolute shit. But there is $$ there put up by the company that owns the game. They have turned it into an e-Sport by throwing money at it.
Look at DotA2. Less of a shit game. Pretty good game. What's the first thing Valve does with it before it even gets to closed beta? Hosts a $1m tournament. They threw money at it. Now it's an e-Sport.
Look at HoN. It has a "Head of e-Sports Development" employed on its staff whose sole purpose is to find sponsors, host events, and get HoN into DreamHack.
What do these games have in common with Diablo 3? Well, a lot. They can both be considered (to some extent) multi-player online battle arenas. What do these games not have in common? The company that created D3 will NOT be throwing money at making it an e-Sport. There will not be D3 tournaments at Blizzcon (at least none that have $$ involved). This game is not like Counter-Strike or Starcraft where it is incredibly well-balanced and 100% skill based so e-Sports will naturally spring up around it. This game will be highly imbalanced, and item-dependant.
This is why D3 is not, and will not be, an e-Sport, despite what you PvPers think. You need to grow up if you think your favorite game can become an e-Sport just because a lot of people like it. WAY more goes into it than that nowadays.
That said, I want there to be a vibrant PvP community in D3. You PvPers deserve it. There may even be some $100 tournaments or something like that which may be privately sponsored every once in a while. But mark my words. There will be no big tournaments, unless someone really puts a LOT of effort into it. That someone will not be Blizzard. Who will it be? You? Do you have the kind of scratch to put together an event big enough to get D3 on the scene? I don't think so.
I really find it sad how someone always has to drop back to this anti-pvp idea when someone disagrees with something.
"You said no therefore you hate/scared of pvp. You said no to the idea therefore you don't want pvp in the game at all."
It's like diagnosing someone with a mental illness because they used hi instead of hello.
Also, why does every game have to have esport-level, or even competetive, PvP? I really don't understand this. Imagine if someone came to these forums demanding 8-person progressive raiding. We'd tell them, almost universally I think, that this is probably the wrong game for them and that, no, we don't think Blizzard should add it. Why is it different when we're talking about competitive PvP? Neither one is what Diablo is or has ever been about.
I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree here. My experience in games I've played which have begun to focus on PvP is that it has always had negative repercussions for PvE. Developers and forum-goers always say it won't, and then it always does. This takes the form of changing PvE balance (always happens in my experience, no matter what developers say) and taking resources from new content (and I mean like new areas, new monsters, new champion affixes, etc, not just new items), balancing PvE, bugfixing or what-have-you. By the way, I use the absolute here because as I said, that has been my personal experience 100% of the time. If there are games where adding competetive PvP has not has negative PvE implications, and there may be though I doubt it, I haven't played them.
However, I think your argument that PvP is a good stand-in for new content is generally accepted by developers, and it's a major reason why we see it in so many games. The argument is somewhat valid for the subsection of players who enjoy PvP. For those of us who don't enjoy it, whenever games begin to focus on PvP balance, it makes the game measurably less enjoyable. Virtually every online game caters to the PvP crowd. Why can't I have my one AAA game without it? *SNIFF!*
So you want the more PvE focused players to leave this forum because why? Our opinions are just as valid as yours. In fact, since most of the PvP players posting here are competitive PvP players from Diablo 2 that don't fit into the target audience of Diablo 3. This means that people like myself that are interested in casual PvP actually have more reasons to be posting then you do.
Perhaps if the PvP side would stop trying to shove competitive PvP into a casual PvP game, you'd hear less complaints from the more casual players. I can accept additional Arena modes. Hell, I can even accept private Arenas. I cannot accept people trying to sit here and complain about Diablo 3 PvP being terrible because they aren't going competitive, complaining Blizzard is terrible, etc.
I like the game that Diablo 3 has become and I actually am interested in it's PvP. So no, I'm not going to stop posting. Perhaps you guys can start posting GOOD suggestions given the current design of the game.