The Future of Competitive Raiding in SW:TOR

I agree wholeheartedly with you here.

As a long-time WoW veteran, I saw myself what happened when arena people, or "hardcore" raiders, were catered to: next to nothing was done for the rest of us for considerably long stretches, until subscriptions started to dry up, we got enough to keep us interested, then the same old arena/raid lobbyists would again dry up the metaphorical well, demanding the majority of attention for a minority of the population.

What he said.

That's mostly only in Korea, if you compete in GSL, and even then, the most prize money goes to Code S players. MLG/WGC I would say are the next highest paying tournaments, still substantially less though, but those only come quarterly/annually, respectively.

Then you have the smaller tournaments like IPL (IPL 6 just got cancelled a few days ago), Red Bull, Intel Extreme Masters, etc. These do not pay as well as most people make them out to.

Guys like HuK, Naniwa, TLO, hell, even bigger names like Stephano, only make money (and not that much) because of SPONSORSHIP. THAT is where the majority of the income comes from, and even then, it's "just barely enough".

Yes, there are players like Slayers Boxer (now retired) who make a 6 figure income. But he was a top 5 player (in the world, not just SK) since Brood Wars. Then you have guys like LG-IMMVP, DongRaeGu, MarineKing, Nestea, etc, but really, how often do you see those guys outside of Code S (yes, it happens, but not often). Point being, you really DO NEED to be in the top 32-64 of the players IN THE WORLD to be making a decent amount of money.

Boy, could we ever use that. These forums prove it every day.

Perhaps we should work the problem backwards, and ask what SWTOR needs to foster a more competitive, intelligent community. I think you've hit on it here somewhat--part of what keeps people in WoW is the challenge that raiding presents, and the fact that status means something in that community. There's an official ranking system for guilds, and many really strive to be the best they can be. That atmosphere seems to be altogether missing from SWTOR.

For starters, the ability to play a game well has no possitive or negative correlation to the individuals intelligence and any statements made to the contrary is fallacious.

I for one think the game and the community is better off without all that crap. For one, copying what WoW does won't get WoW players to jump ship. Second, there is a core difference between the social aspects of Star Wars as a franchise and that of Warcraft.

If you look at the social dynamic in Star Wars, the one thing you'll find in common is people coming together. Wether its rogue smugglers helping against the Empire, or taking a new student in full embrace to teach them, or even the Seperatist movement in the Clone Wars. Even while most of the media has the backdrop of some huge galactic threat, the feel of them usually is that of cooperation, not competition. Keeping your friend or ally safe is more important than the mission at hand or even your own life. Therefore it should be that any Star Wars game that has multiplayer at the root of it should encourage camraderie more than competitive number games.

However, Warcraft as a franchise was born and has stayed predominantly in the world of PC gaming. It is ALL in competition and conflict, either against the machine or against your friends. While the plot may introduce friends and allies of different characters, it's there mostly to justify the inclusion of new units and to move from one event to the next. Since that aspect of the game(s) is completly absent in multiplayer games, and defeating the opponent is more important than protecting your ally (if you have one), it makes sense that the game encourages competitive behavior. Any warcraft game should have ways to determine who the best player is, and forming cooperative and collaborative nature with other players is only to push yourself further forward.

Hmm... not so. The reason many have left WoW is because of what you described. The catering to a hardcore elite created an environment where the main player base was excluded. The result, WoW flipped-flopped on appeasing the elite eventually leading to Pandas. And those that left WoW because of the elitism never went back.

If you think WoW catered to the elite....

It certainly catered to the elite of its own community. If you look at the expansion history and patch updates, the vast majority of it is slanted towards what the devoted endgame raiders want.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/patch-notes/under-dev

Most of that is raiding oriented.

They've made a lot of effort to cater to the casuals as well, though, in many ways: Adding an extremely easy method of raiding that pretty much anyone can do with their eyes closed (Looking for Raid Finder), adding LOTS of in-game events that happen on a regular bases, adding essentially Pokemon and Farmville, adding a new kind of instance called Scenarios that only require 3 people of any role, and in general making everything about the game far more user friendly, less mathy, more simplified. To the point that a lot of people mock it.

0=======================0
The following are 5 separate posts garbled as one:
0=======================0
---
1.)
---
I used to watch competitive Company of Heroes matches put together in video format or audio commentary distributed in podcast format.

most CoH matches were 40 minutes. I had blast just watching that level of play. Usually after watching a few vids, I would throw myself into the ranked 1v1 matchmaker and try out some of the build orders and things discussed on the shows. It was some of the most fun I've had online, as a player and spectator.

NOW. an MMO as a spectator event. There's a HUGE barrier to entry for me to try something I watched 10 minutes ago in a show. Namely I'd have to hit a 100+ hour landmark before I can repeat some of what I saw being done, 100 hours between getting my character to level cap and grinding enough gear to be able to survive the dungeon. MMO raiding is a serious time commitment, with a steep barrier to entry. I'd have to break out my calendar and see where I could fit game time with my work schedule JUST to plan the lead up to the raid.

The previous game I mentioned, you're allowed to have 5 profile names per cdkey. So literally all I had to do was set up my ingame name, and I had instant access to a 1v1 ranked ladder. Zero barrier of entry,[or is this called setup time?] I could watch some pros and try to mimic them in my ranked match, within minutes.


---
2.)
---
SO yeah Topic RECAP Darth_Halford started his bullet point comment with
but he went on to mention:
While that's true for all, if not, most games, I think this statement is a little different when it involves mmo's. Realistically the spectating majority will not have 100+ hours at their disposal to "much rather play" the game [in this case an MMO] "than watch it."
If they are interested enough in an MMO, they'll spectate the high end competitive level of play. [instead of playing it]

But this is SWTOR we're talking about here, it's a licensed themepark mmo on top of a licensed prebuilt mmo engine. You're paying to play a skinned version of a yet to be released MMO originally developed by Simutronics Corporation.

from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27...8video_game%29
so if SWTOR isn't interesting to watch it's because of ^ that
heck there are times when SWTOR isn't even interesting to play

---
3.)
---
SWTOR Raid footage.
Yeah I can't even be bothered to watch the dulfy.net raid guide vids. My guild's raid officers watch those and give us a brief run down in ventrilo before attempting them. After successfully completing a raid twice I feel I've got enough experience to say I know the fights.

But what I'm trying to say is, watching swtor raids are not fun, I don't even want to watch videos for raids I have never done before. I think the boring raid videos comes down to not having any voice talent to provide useful commentary, or make the raid feel interesting strictly using audio cues.

TLDR
swtor vids are boring. You need shoutcasters and audio commentators to make videos seem interesting; especially when the game itself is lame/boring/<insert negative descriptor here>.

---
4.)
---
to the guys saying video games aren't sports:

North America has always been behind Europe and Asia when it comes to turning esports into primetime sporting events. We'll catch up eventually... especially when games like dota2 attract crowds of this size: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4_FTapsFyk some documentary videos on esports

• National Geographic report on World Cyber Games 2005 competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN-X4JivB94 [9min 34 sec runtime; part 1 of 5 (I personally stopped watching after 4minutes, as the vid shifted focus to 1 progamer's day to day activities)]
• South Korea:
  • A good, statistic filled report on SouthKorean esports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPGm94K0wqQ [2min 04sec runtime; aired dec. 2008]
  • CBS News report on the popularity of esports in South Korea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VOaAp_bBJY [2m04s runtime; aired march 2008]

btw, they are called cyber-athletes NOT e-athletes, the old CBS guy is just reading his prompter.

--
5.)
---
I don't see this game having any sort of competitive televised or sporting event-based raiding in the future. So I don't know what competitions you're talking about Dragonbgone; right now, there is no competitive raiding in SWTOR

from what you're saying, swtor.raidranks.com sounds like a raid ladder where guilds self-report their progress, and just about anybody can fib or lie about their guild's progression. The domain is down, so I cant browse the site for any of the detailed mandatory verification requirements my thoughts? the great majority of PVE raiders dont give a damn about that other guilds do, unless they are

1. included in the recipient list for some of the loot gear dropped during the raid [or in the guild's crafting recipient list for RE'd schematic gear],
2. somehow personally getting something in return for caring about another guilds' activities [examples I could think of: a position of responsibility in the guild, or ingame item rewards from guildmasters for providing useful intel]
3. or just have a massive "fanboner" for one of these name-dropped guilds.

0=======================0
P.S. These were 5 separate posts garbled as one. There was some sort order but you're safe if you skipped around by following the numbering.