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📝 Dev Discussion #60 - Esports 🏟
Glorious Ashes community - it's time for another Dev Discussion! Dev Discussion topics are kind of like a "reverse Q&A" - rather than you asking us questions about Ashes of Creation, we want to ask YOU what your thoughts are.
Our design team has compiled a list of burning questions we'd love to get your feedback on regarding gameplay, your past MMO experiences, and more. Join in on the Dev Discussion and share what makes gaming special to you!
Dev Discussion - Esports
What are your thoughts on esports and player-run competitive events in the MMORPG genre? What type of competitive, spectator-friendly content do you think could be fitting for Ashes of Creation? Are there any tools you’d like that would make competitive events easier for players to run?
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I'd love to see a small amount (3-5) of Colosseum POI's that behave similar to the Harbors mentioned in the most recent stream, scattered across the world in central locations. They would become part of a node once it reaches a certain stage in its development and perhaps even grow with the node. These gladiator style Arenas would serve as PvP event hubs where players could test their skills in combat, whether in bracket style tournaments or duels, a local hangout like taverns but on a grander scale, a place to view leader-boards and gain recognition, and perhaps earn a bit of gold competing or wagering on matches. Events would be automated, occur during server prime time hours and weekends, and be separated into categories of tournaments with intensifying rewards and entry costs including: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly and a Grand Tournament at the end of the year, located at the Highest level Colosseum closest to or at the center of the world map. Daily Tournaments would have a cap of X amount of players that can participate based on node level. Daily tournaments would have free entry for any willing participants. sign ups would open 30 minutes to an hour before hand with a limit of 1 character per account and would have to be done outside the arena walls, not remotely through an interface. Finishing the tournament 1st-3rd place would qualify your team for rewards and the next level tournament. So to get in a weekly tournament you would have to finish 1st-3rd in a daily tournament of that week. To qualify for the monthly tournament you would have to place 1st-3rd in one of the weekly tournaments that happened within the month and so on. There would be many group sizes that follow this format including 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 and 8v8. Each tournament group size would follow the same format ascending all the way to the grand tournament. The Grand Tournament would be an iconic event, attracting hundreds of players from all over the world to watch, cheering on teams representing their region, node or guild, participate, and even setup stalls for trade. Rewards would include gold, unique titles and arena skins that could be applied to a gear piece or weapon of the player's choice. There would also be leader-boards linked to each individual Colosseum and statues representing the image of player's characters, their guilds or team. There would be several permanent Statues or plaques located at each arena for worlds first achievements and winners of the grand tournaments. These memorials would have information on them such as the player's names, guilds, and node citizenship. Games such as Warhammer Online and Albion Online have systems like this and they are excellent for creating atmosphere, player recognition and inspiring others. All of these tournaments would be Last Team Standing, best of 3 rounds and best of 5 for the final match ups for 1st-3rd.
When these events are not live, the remainder of the time in the Arenas will be allowed for open duels and player created events with custom rule sets. Those rulesets could include things like rewards, entry cost/requirements, wagering enabled/disabled, team size, total participants and game mode. Player created tournaments would charge a fee to create, and be done at a registrar or bulletin board. Teams would be created at the Arena, like Guilds are in most games through an NPC or Registrar. The leader of the team would decide team size upon creation which also locks the kind of tournament their team could participate in. Players would be limited to 1 entry of the same tournament and have a timer lock to prevent abuse and multiple entries in the same event under different teams. Flyers for main events and player created ones could be posted on bulletin boards throughout the node the Arena belongs to and allied nodes. Quarterly tournaments would have flyers posted throughout the continent and the Grand Tournament would be advertised throughout the entire world. After the chosen team size is maxed out a team name could be decided (within reason) OR players could choose to represent a guild/alliance if all players on the team are members. Once a team name or Guild/Alliance name is chosen, it cannot be changed. Teams would also list the name of their node or their region if all of its members are citizens of that node. The point of this is to associate teams or guilds with the regions they are from, to build rivalries and recognition. Normally in MMOs certain players or Guilds are recognized for their strength in PvP, but never the region they come from. Mainly because there is no purpose for it in other games. In Ashes, the region and node players come from will play an important role in world building and immersion. That is the issue with teams or Guilds in other MMOs, they have no story or background other than their interactions with other players. In Ashes, the aim seems to be to bring back a social experience dependent on player interaction, enemies, alliances, rivalries, notoriety, renown. These relationships make a memorable experience.
Gambling would be the most challenging thing to balance in this system due to the potential of players fixing matches and losing on purpose, so I would understand if it is excluded. However it would be loads of fun to have in the game, and I have ideas to help balance such a system.
1. In my proposed system, rewards for progressing through each tournament level would help disincentivize players from losing on purpose because they would miss out on possible rewards earned, which would be significant at the higher levels. It would also effect negatively their place on the leader-boards, which is actually a big deal for some PvPers.
2. Make the wagering system work like horse races do so that if one team is heavily favored, the payout for betting on them is greatly reduced.
3. Limit the amount of gold that each player can bet per match.
4. Only allow participants to wager on themselves or matches they are not participating in.
5. Limit outside parties from wagering to weekly tournaments and higher
6. If caught participating in fixing matches, make it a reportable and bannable offense
While I acknowledge this will not eliminate the possibility of players rigging matches for their own gain, this will help reduce it. It is important to understand the point of this system would not exist to be perfectly balanced and is more about entertainment, just like it is in the real world. Players should be responsible for understanding the risks involved and having self control. In my opinion, if a player is dumb enough to bet a large amount of their money on an arena match, they deserve to lose it.
@Nightmarelol
@Option
Let’s go for that 3v3 team death match style
E - Sports title
Here’s a thread I started few days ago
With a compromise to smaller scale competitive Arena gameplay and still keeping the aspects of the game in mind
Would absolutely love E-Sports involvement
Either way E-Sports with Arena Teams setting will be one of the best additions to Ashes of Creation and must be 100% looked at or integrated into for the huge PvP community playing this game
Awesome thought starts you made in your other thread!
Looking at this segment specifically: I'm curious if there's anything else you'd want to add or change with the prompt of this Dev Discussion in mind?
3 man arena deathmatches sound fun!
As a reminder, you can read more about our plans for Arenas here, on the wiki: https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Arenas
With that said, are there any tools you’d like that would make competitive events easier for players to run? Perhaps you have thoughts or opinions on Esports in other MMORPGs that you'd like to share?
SWTOR has Huttball PVP games, which to this day are hilarious and fun.
Something like that.
Also, keep in mind. A good PVP arena or battlefield is an area with its own dangers, such a traps, cliffs, and some cases monsters, which means players do not just have to worry about fighting other players.
Maybe looking into Arena Gear that scales accordingly for your class in Arena with a different stat that only applies inside (Resilience PvP stat to stop heavily PvE geared people absolutely demolishing all the competition) could be something else to look at. That exact gear could even change back to normal once your outside the arena so that World / PvE isn’t affected by it
So what role might "canned" PvP play?
("canned" = content premade, with win/lose conditions structured by devs, w/ possble leaderboards)
Honing one's personal skill (duels, 1v1), or to test a "comp" for groups of various sizes (NvN), have definitely proven valuable in my previous experience. So yeah, allowing for some mechanism to do this would be great.
To the point, I wouldn't have a problem with canned PvP in Ashes as long as it doesn't take away from the original vision of the game. (though of little attraction for me)
Note: EVE allows for various "leaders" via kill mail, pretty wicked for a game released in 2003; not sure offhand if this idea lends itself to OW PvP "leader boards" in Ashes or not, just thought I'd throw it out there.
LFG: Open World, tight knit coordination, multiple roles, will travel.
You and your 3v3 team would enter the Arena Tournament for the chance to win 250k (back then, it’s now closer to 1 million) and 100K for 2nd and 50K 3rd. And that’s if your team didn’t get knocked out and made it to the qualifiers.
This was not run by players but through Blizzard and honestly, was an awesome experience, and even for people who weren’t competing or got knocked out during the tournament, they got to watch their idols or favourite team compete on the big screen held once a year.
Like Ive mentioned earlier, there is a lot of objective based game modes already in this game, so having a team death match style in the Arena gives diversity and the “something different” aspect.
I believe some sort of PvP gear and/or wheather it be enchanting, augs etc to give PvPers a fighting chance against the hardcore PvErs - it adds a new level of competition without excluding anyone.
After researching all about the Arena thats available for Ashes, including dev vids talking about it, what I would like to see are some ranked rewards to inspire people to compete in the Arena such as cosmetics like a season exclusive armoured mount and title for reaching a certain top % for an example.
Also, a time limit that will mean both teams lose if time limit expires and both teams still standing
Depending on the rank division you are in, you will either lose or gain points to make your way up the tiers to the next division (ELO system which I believe has been confirmed on Ashes site)
If we just discuss the E-Sports tournament and not the already confirmed season in game Arena, then a team of 3 should register their team, everyone has the same gear in a team vs team with the only objective is to eliminate the other team and climb the ladder to qualify to the grand final
And as an additional tool for player-organized competitions - open world arenas with several observation cameras that any player can access.
This, as the basis of competitive arenas.
With the addition of custom matches, customizable settings and possible tournament brackets with things like entry fees and the organizer being able to use gold or items to setup as rewards for such events(all separated from the scores of the base system arena) for both casual and competitive purpose, All with spectator functions.
Aren't we all sinners?
Mostly this.
To elevate most MMORPGs to 'eSports' level content, I believe there are six requirements that cannot be easily attained simply through the effort of the tournament/event organizers.
1) If players are not going to be using premade access characters, some central cross-server arena or instance such as a siege map needs to be accessible to some 'copy' of their characters
2) Multiple camera accounts that are able to connect to the same 'siege/arena map' and be freely controlled by different producers, are required. For Ashes, three would be best, but the number should be higher for larger competitions such as 8v8 tactical clashes.
3) Alternate UI configurations granted to these camera accounts so that they can easily view more information on both sides of any clash most of the time without targeting, including specific HP values, basically 'treating the camera accounts as if they are in both parties (or more, if it's a 4 group or rotating clash)
4) Integration for registration for larger events can be handled by the organizers, but anything that helps integrate the information from the brackets and allows the tournament staff to update the information quickly
5) Methods to change the visual contrast or even default gear appearance of the participants, at least from the perspective of the camera accounts (optimally if the Camera account can swap to the viewpoint of a player, their perception of that player's appearance should not change)
6) Different simplified (no scrolling) UI for displaying skilltree choices and/or certain aspects of the players' actual gear in the same way, available to both participating players, and Camera accounts.
Beyond that, a few things that are more likely to already be available:
If not reconstructed replays, then specific timestamped logs that can be filtered in multiple ways, available to both the players and any Camera accounts.
Some function that clearly displays or communicates when Synergies occur, and similarly, shows a momentary flash in words over a player's health bar when they are affected by a status (maybe have it stay longer if the status is hard CC).
Integrating this with the camera accounts, would be even better. Huge bonus if different Camera accounts can have different localization options for these words, and if you can have a 'duplicate' Camera account that just follows some other Camera account's targeting, but happens to be in a different language.
Finally:
Some way to add a highlighting border to different enemyplayers when 'Tab Targeted' by the Camera Accounts. Then also, a border to that targeted player's primary target.
Optimally the border should have four modal colors, customizable by the Camera Account, reacting to at least these four triggers. Suggested colors are given for sake of argument.
White when not engaged, basically not in range of any target, not targeting anyone else, and not healing or buffing.
Light green when healing or being healed directly by a skill from another player. It is fine for this to be ambiguous about if the player is doing the healing, or being healed, but no harm in difference either.
Yellow Orange (or anything in this hue range more suitable for accessibility) when performing an attack skill on an enemy target.
Reddish Purple when taking damage from an enemy target's skill. If possible, this should flash some other light-greyish color when the skill misses.
The target of the Camera's target can have similar colors, with offsets, or just double the available and set slightly different border colors for each team.
With this, I'm confident that nearly any event in Ashes of Creation that allows the Camera Accounts to be present could be presented in high quality to viewers.
I don't personally know anyone who would take Ashes of Creation content or competition seriously in any form as an eSport, at this time, but that is based only on the limited designs we've seen.
There is probably an audience for it, in terms of 'people who like the game itself and then enjoy watching the game be played', but at least in my circles, we don't really think in the same terms for this. There's 'content that a dedicated player watches' (which may or may not be an eSport) and then there's 'spectator-worthy content', content that players have a full interest in beyond either 'seeing a specific personality/streamer', 'learning something for their own play', or 'knowing the result of'.
For the former type of content, there's no real need to make any specific effort, anything one does can help, but making any effort to streamline or shift any content attributes tends to require too much focus. For the latter type of content, certain design aspects that probably don't suit an MMORPG well(?) might need to be integrated or considered.
Few MMOs have entered the e-sports through instanced Arena, WoW, GW2 etc
Riots MMO has already announced they will be entering the E-Sports genre
If you search up the WoW Arena Championships you can clearly see how they rotate the cameras on stream for everyone to see it through different POV of the players
I don’t think it should be a 1v1 as not only do we have dueling but there is no working as a team and it will be very boring game play watching someone just run and kite compared to having a team coordination type Arena to view that adds exciting “clutch” plays
And no offence
L2 total players - 256k
WoW total players -
The numbers are there to make something of it
In an MMORPG due to the complexity of the characters, following what is happening is not easy for spectator unless you have played a lot, and it is even harder if we are talking about 5v5, 8v8 or war modes. Also although, all players are in the same world and have the same posibilities, when the competition starts, every character is different because the gear, the race, the time you spent, etc... (But that is also the beautifull part of creating your history in an MMO).
Of course pro players will always get their BIS gear and be equally in terms of power but thats not the same for the average of players unless you want either, set an easy gear build for pvp (wich would be bad for outdoor pvp) or set an instance mode where the gear doesn´t mind and everyone get the same stats (like lost ark), but that would not respect the character progression wich is a core part of the MMORPG genre and (even if I think a lot of people would like it) it would make pvp competition look like a minigame and it would become repetitive because there won´t be many differences between two characters with the same archeotype.
That doesn´t mean that you can´t make a competitive scenario in an MMORPG, ladders, arena, tournaments are good and an important way to keep the pvp comunity alive. What a I mean is that the desing of the game should not be oriented to that, just create pvp modes that attract the comunity. If 3v3 arena happends to be the lovest mode for the players and someone like a popular streamer want to do a tournament with an equally gear system, you should have the option to do that in the game.
To be clear, I think that the desing of an competitive e-sport scenario in an MMORPG should be leaded by the comunity, let the world you created give the oportunity for the people to make 1v1 tournaments, maybe a an 8v8 league, war modes tournament, etc... and just support the promising ones, with in game tools to make it possible to play and watch and give them publicity then, let the hype do the rest. Maybe you could do a monthly tournament of the most popular mode that leads into a worlds but that only make sense if there is a mode that is so popular that is worth the effort, and becaming that popular also depends of your comunity, not only of the game mode you designed.
I want to clarify that im a PVP player, but i think that designing since the start towards a reduced pvp scenarios, or making changes in our classes before-hand thinking about that, is an error, is not inmersive to have a skill that does big dps outside the world only to be nerfed in the mode i would like it to shine the most.
I would rather build the world as it is, give the players the tools to make the competitions, and make a lot of different modes to figth the way you want. Create a system of influence in pvp with rewards, ladders and cool things to get the comunity interested, and start from there the changes that pvpers need to complete the competition the comunity want to watch and play the most.
Actually, if there were a few switches/toggles for mayors or equivalent to set a regional competition and their conditions, as well as set the prizes/rewards. might be draws to certain nodes
Few things to consider first
1 - esports are generally run by businesses/organisations with teams because that's what esports is now.
2 - we will probably be seeing the same organisations compete against each other ( echo, cloud 9, liquid, etc)
In relation to MMORPG'S E-Sports
1 - competitive arena is usually a fad
2 - arena segregates players from content
3 - most people dont usually care about arena championships. Very low numbers watch it regardless of MMORPG.
4 - race to world first content is much more popular but is also ran by organisations and essentially becomes content farming and item funnelling.
Sounds like Intrepid's goals with their mainstream combat design and feature bloat due to genuine lack of end game purpose is becoming like every other MMORPG they claim they are different from, just without pay to win spectrum.
What an inspiration to the genre...
What's really cool about a system like that is the prestige that comes with it. I remember being in awe when I first walked around the city and suddenly saw this guy doing dailies, and I knew he was a top 5 player from the cool outfit and the title he had. Also, it helped me in the beginning to see what skills and combos the top players use and how they fight, etc.
Also, it's just good motivation for PvP players, like "right now I might be a level 10 noob, but if I keep practicing PvP and advancing my character, I too can be a top 5 player and have a cool costume and title." (The title would, by the way, also show in chat).
I think in Ashes, having a team mode for something like that would be cool too, since the classes are going to be more balanced around groups than 1v1. 1v1 should still be possible though, in my opinion.
To tie it into the game world, it could be an upgradable option of a martial node that has an arena to host such tournaments. Alternatively, martial nodes on a certain level could flat out organize PvP tournaments, deciding team size, game mode, participation requirements, and price. After that, just like adding a building, organizing this tournament would cost resources. When resources are paid, an invitation with the date and location is sent to everyone on the continent of the node (or even in all of Verra) that meets the participation requirements. Those who want to take part have to travel to the actual node of the tournament and sign up, like 10 minutes before the tournament starts or something. In group tournaments, you have to sign in with your group, obviously. After that, the fight card gets randomly generated (who fights who in the first round), and then the elimination tournament begins. Every battle consists of a best of three between the two fighters. The loser is eliminated, and the winner moves into the next round until we have a winner. The winner (or top 3/top 5, whatever) gets the prizes. There could also be a fee you have to pay to even enter the tournament, and the winner gets all fees, for example. As for titles, I think having them tied to the location could be cool. For example, if the tournament is held in Windstead, then the winner gets the title "Champion of Windstead" until the next tournament is held in Windstead. I think there should be a time limit until the same node can launch the next tournament. For example, one tournament per month or one tournament per season, for example.
Personally, I'm completely against the idea of changing stats or gear inside or outside the arena. I haven't played a single MMO yet where that felt good. Also, I don't think PvErs will have better gear than PvPers on average because the higher-level bosses make materials available that crafters can use to craft and sell good equipment, instead of directly dropping the PvErs the good equipment. This equipment is then accessible to PvP and PvE players alike in the node.
As long as PvPers have an option to gain gold instead of some extra currency thats pvp only like in other games i dont see an issue here.
It would be cool if you or someone else could explain to me why you think PvE players will have some form of advantage against PvP players that needs to be balanced out by giving PvP players something extra.
As a PvP player myself, I strongly believe all that will do is make it completely impossible for a PvE player to beat me, which feels frustrating for him and boring for me.
What a delusional take xD
1. Closed PvP arena (access only for these two groups after registration)
2. Observer mode (flying camera for everyone except participants)
3. Restore mana and refresh cooldowns (before each fight the game should probably save the states of all players and restore them after the fight to prevent abuse)
4. Custom restrictions and rules (such as blocking the use of some rare consumables, buffs, debuffs, etc.)
5. No rewards (maybe a title or cosmetics, but not gear)
I'm not sure about "esports" though. I don't think it's popular enough to be consistently competitive. MMORPG players rarely enjoy “fair” combat. But sometimes it's fun to fight by the "fair" rules. If I'm wrong, I think tournament brackets once a week would work.
I'd like to see an implementation of a caravan race.
Where multiple caravans compete to deliver a set amount of goods from point A to point B, or even have it be a relay race to have resources travel to multiple different points across the world of Verra.
This can be a fun event where caravan groups are challenged from all the risk/rewards associated. PVP, PVE, and different environmental traversal options, etc. I'm sure a set group size would be a rule of the e-sport. This would be an amazing challenge of skill, cooperation, organization, and leadership.
With the relay race style, I would love to see some legs of the race where Caravans are kitted for speed, and other legs be kitted for battle.
I believe this esport would be successful because these races are much longer than a traditional race would entail. I would enjoy watching this kind of event and rooting for a team to do well on their Journey. I believe that some of the best esports are the ones with the best combination of game mechanics and player engagement, so why not utilize what the game is great at and find a sport with the most player engagement.