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Anime Overwatch

Gerrard

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It was like 420K on launch of OWL and dropped by half the next day, don't know what the LoL numbers are, but on average from last few months OW has like 39K viewers and LoL has 110K. If they stop pumping money into it it will fall apart.
Shame there's no way to know the active player numbers.
 
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Haven't played since like season 4 or somesuch, came back for a few games and judging by the queues player numbers dropped quite a bit. The whole OWL fiasco (I only watched it once and it was terrible, both gameplay and presentation wise) is just nu-blizzard being nu-blizzard, always 5 years late trying to catch up to trends that weren't any good in the first place. Should have taken a page off of Valve's book and let the scene grow organically with little to no input. They helicoptered the shit out of SC2 scene too and instead of stepping back and reevaluating they doubled down on the retardation.

Also I'm not 100% sure, so don't quote me on that, but weren't OWL numbers hugely inflated due to how it counted people waiting in a queue or just chilling in b.net as viewers or some shit like that?
 

Gerrard

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I think there also was some retarded in-game cosmetic or some shit that you got if you watched it.
 

abija

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But did Dota 2 esports grow organically? Now it's practically same as LoL, only Valve sanctioned events matter.
Also there is a very small number of players (considering the size of the game) that make decent money from Dota 2.
 
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But did Dota 2 esports grow organically? Now it's practically same as LoL, only Valve sanctioned events matter.
Also there is a very small number of players (considering the size of the game) that make decent money from Dota 2.

Well the new Major/Minor system helps upcoming teams, prior to that Valve only did the International once a year, besides sanctioned =/= controlled. Say in SC2 case, you had to pay blizzard a flat fee + % (I think) to host an event (OW has no such options, it's official league only), with Valve you just gotta be registered in their system (https://store.steampowered.com/tourney/) idk what's needed to get onto their pro-circuit, but considering how much small ass cups are there (that I never heard of) it shouldn't be that hard, back in the day you didn't even had to do that, there were a lot of unregulated tournaments (and there's a bunch of them running on daily basis still), especially when in-game tickets were a thing. Don't know shit about LoL, but aside from their official league I haven't seen a single other tournament stream.

As far as money is concerned, I remember looking up some random CIS team in recent OPEN qualifier (so that's not even T2 teams for the most part), a few dudes that I never heard of before had about 50 to 200k earned just from the tournaments, that excludes sponsorships, streaming and other social networking bs and monthly paychecks (which may not be big comparatively speaking, but it's something, especially combined with other shit). In OW I'm not sure people make money aside from the teams currently in the league and that's like 16 teams or whatever the number is.
 
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abija

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Link to those tier 2 players? Because looking at someone like S4 or notail who barely qualified to TI, they made around 30-40k this year from tournaments.
 
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Link to those tier 2 players? Because looking at someone like S4 or notail who barely qualified to TI, they made around 30-40k this year from tournaments.

I think they both made more than enough in sponsorship/salary money, even in CS:GO (way less popular, compared to dotes, smaller prize pools etc.) VP squad that was dogshit for the last year gets 20k/month per player in salary alone. Don't have links to CIS folks, it was one of the open quali teams, I was just checking who's playing who on liquipedia, total earnings caught me off guard hence why I remembered it in the first place.
 

BlackAdderBG

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If you truly think those VP salaries are normal...

They are not normal, but are not the biggest also. North (owned by FC Copenhagen) is said to get biggest salaries in CS.

I think they both made more than enough in sponsorship/salary money, even in CS:GO (way less popular, compared to dotes, smaller prize pools etc.) VP squad that was dogshit for the last year gets 20k/month per player in salary alone. Don't have links to CIS folks, it was one of the open quali teams, I was just checking who's playing who on liquipedia, total earnings caught me off guard hence why I remembered it in the first place.

This is definitely not true. Dota is way more dependent on Valve and The International to boost the interest and for dota to look more popular and sustainable than it is. I would speculate and say without the big push from the TI the esports scene is double to triple times smaller than CS. The semi-pro level in CS:GO is fully present with leagues like FPL and ESEA Rank S, something that in dota2 is nowhere to be seen. If Valve dies tomorrow CS is the game that will get the smallest hit.
 

Drakron

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Even br games are more action packed than football and that racks up incredible viewership. Esports just needs more experience in broadcasting and companies willing to invest resources in improving that aspect. Big LoL and Dota 2 tournaments are already very high quality.

Again, its BORING to watch ... you cannot see shit as a spectator and there been pushes into "mainstream broadcasting" but not only TV is dying but despite e-sports being a thing for about 2 decades now, it never got any interest from general audiences.

Your "action packed" is not interesting for a audience because they cannot see shit, as I said its like watching a sports match from the players POV, we have the technology to do that and we dont, why? because it sucks ... even from batter its better to have the camera behind him so you can watch his arms movement.

As I said, the closest you can get is card games but as I said, those require the audience to know the rules.
 
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Even br games are more action packed than football and that racks up incredible viewership. Esports just needs more experience in broadcasting and companies willing to invest resources in improving that aspect. Big LoL and Dota 2 tournaments are already very high quality.

Again, its BORING to watch ... you cannot see shit as a spectator and there been pushes into "mainstream broadcasting" but not only TV is dying but despite e-sports being a thing for about 2 decades now, it never got any interest from general audiences.

Your "action packed" is not interesting for a audience because they cannot see shit, as I said its like watching a sports match from the players POV, we have the technology to do that and we dont, why? because it sucks ... even from batter its better to have the camera behind him so you can watch his arms movement.

As I said, the closest you can get is card games but as I said, those require the audience to know the rules.

Truth, for a random viewer 95% of what's happening on the screen makes no sense, less so for semi-realistic shooters (CS and the like), but still. Same reason why Baseball ain't that popular aside from select few countries where it's just a part of growing up

If you truly think those VP salaries are normal...

They are not normal, but are not the biggest also. North (owned by FC Copenhagen) is said to get biggest salaries in CS.

I think they both made more than enough in sponsorship/salary money, even in CS:GO (way less popular, compared to dotes, smaller prize pools etc.) VP squad that was dogshit for the last year gets 20k/month per player in salary alone. Don't have links to CIS folks, it was one of the open quali teams, I was just checking who's playing who on liquipedia, total earnings caught me off guard hence why I remembered it in the first place.

This is definitely not true. Dota is way more dependent on Valve and The International to boost the interest and for dota to look more popular and sustainable than it is. I would speculate and say without the big push from the TI the esports scene is double to triple times smaller than CS. The semi-pro level in CS:GO is fully present with leagues like FPL and ESEA Rank S, something that in dota2 is nowhere to be seen. If Valve dies tomorrow CS is the game that will get the smallest hit.

In vacuum, sure (though I think both games would be about even, them dote-likes had a bit of a decline in popularity, but a lot of games are bleeding numbers nowadays, including CS). But with the way Valve treated CS:GO though, if Volvo died tomorrow or 5 years ago, not much would have changed for the game, skins and maps aside (both community made) game had like two major updates (sound and hitboxes) during its lifetime. It's a shame, really. On a bright side CS has an advantage of a long long esport history, the only other thing that's even close in terms of steady popularity is SC:BW (thanks only to Korea though), the game's gonna be mainstay for a long ass time still. Especially if they keep running them tournament drops that massively inflate viewership numbers from 100-200k to 500k or even up to a million at times.
 
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abija

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Again, its BORING to watch ... you cannot see shit as a spectator and there been pushes into "mainstream broadcasting" but not only TV is dying but despite e-sports being a thing for about 2 decades now, it never got any interest from general audiences.

Your "action packed" is not interesting for a audience because they cannot see shit, as I said its like watching a sports match from the players POV, we have the technology to do that and we dont, why? because it sucks ... even from batter its better to have the camera behind him so you can watch his arms movement.

As I said, the closest you can get is card games but as I said, those require the audience to know the rules.
BORING is not yours to decide. General audiences don't enjoy sports they weren't involved in some way either (practiced it, or family tradition or whatever else).

You cannot see shit in any sport if you didn't practice it or studied it at least a little bit. You might like some highlights but sure as hell you won't even notice (nevermind enjoy) the skill displayed during the game. Random viewers that enjoy sports is pure bullcrap. They might enjoy the company, the vistas, whatever the fuck else, but NOT the sport. I've got plenty experience with tennis, which is pretty far from popular in my country and is a mature sport, very easy to watch with plenty of broadcast time.
 

BlackAdderBG

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There are a lot of people that watch sports they never played. Tennis and American Football have a lot of fans that never played even 1 min of the sport.
 

Gerrard

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And most of them are fucking boring. I don't know how you can watch sports.
 

abija

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There are a lot of people that watch sports they never played. Tennis and American Football have a lot of fans that never played even 1 min of the sport.
You either use the word 'fans' very loosely or I live on another planet. I'm not talking about watching grand slam finals, the only top 10 player your country produced in last decade or your family's favorite team.
 

BlackAdderBG

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You are just wrong. A lot of men can be interested in a sport just for the sake of the competition it brings. Yes, none of them will be traveling around the country to watch the juniors play mixed doubles, but some of them will buy shit related to the sport and that make them fans/viewers/interested whatever. I watched a lot of tennis and even went to some local tourneys, same with volleyball and never even used a racket in my life.
 

abija

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But being interested in competition or watching games with friends does not mean you are doing it for the intrinsic quality of that sport. Same reasons can apply esports too. Check where the discussion started, with Drakorn arguing esports are inherently unwatchable as opposed to real sports.
 

BlackAdderBG

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But being interested in competition or watching games with friends does not mean you are doing it for the intrinsic quality of that sport. Same reasons can apply esports too. Check where the discussion started, with Drakorn arguing esports are inherently unwatchable as opposed to real sports.

Hmm you're right, I was assuming he is talking about Overwatch, not the esports in general. Esports and physical sports are way to different to have big crossover, but inside the esports I can see crossover between games i.e. people watching games they don't play or even like.
 
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I used to enjoy Overwatch enough to check out a few matches of the OWL, and while I can't speak for anyone else, I had a few reasons for why I didn't care.

Firstly, the way the game is setup contributed to why I quit watching, though it was the direct cause of why I quit playing: I used to be more of a support main 'cause I liked being a team player, and Blizzard constantly gave the middle finger to support players. The camera never followed them in OWL, and it never felt rewarding to play in either QP or Ranked. Their general design and playstyle was significantly less interesting than the DPS characters, and the league was pretty obviously aware of it because they never gave a shit about support. I'm more or less over playing support characters/classes, largely thanks to Overwatch, but just about every big play you'd ever see in the league would be from the Genji player and in general the team compositions were incredibly static. It's just not fun to watch. Half the team isn't doing anything interesting, and the other half play as the same DPS heroes every single game. Oof.

Secondly, the spectating was awful. This is an issue I have in e-sports in general. Siege's competitive scene was a lot worse than OWL, but OWL still wasn't very good. Part of that most likely had to do with the lack of character variety and/or the fact that the game itself doesn't do a lot to make non-combat roles more interesting than "stand in the back and left click" but the camera would just be following around whichever Korean god was playing Widowmaker or Genji, and the match would essentially come down to them and even if everyone else on the team put the effort in to let that one guy do his thing, you'd never know it from watching the match. It's kinda hard to tell if that's more an issue with Overwatch in general or just OWL, but either way, it wasn't fun to watch. Bonus points for the dozen times a round that the camera would be following the wrong person during the action, and you couldn't see what was going on.

Thirdly, none of the teams actually felt like they represented the areas they claimed to. I suppose that's arguably an issue with all sports, given that sports, such as American Football, allow for trading players between teams. To be totally honest, I have never paid the slightest bit of attention to sports in general so I don't know how common that is and only know that because I have friends who won't shut up about it. But even so, sports teams will have a home stadium/court/field, and that's their base and it'll be located in their namesake. Conversely, Overwatch has a bunch of teams pretty much exclusively full of Koreans (wait, am I talking about Starcraft?) and yet they're trying to play up local pride? There's absolutely nothing tying your local team to the location in the name they were given. I would've preferred normal team names.

As a final note, I'd comment that I'm aware of how incredibly subjective all of this is. I'm thoroughly aware that none of these reasons are particularly rational, or even coherent. I struggled to figure out how to communicate some of my gut feelings here, but I hope the above is legible. I'd look for more specific, objective reasons for why OWL didn't work, but Blizzard really tried making it into a "real sport". I think they were trying to tap into the same type of emotional engagement that gets people so darn worked up over muscle-y dudes kicking a ball around. And at least personally, they absolutely failed at providing a game or an e-sport league that I connected with in that way.
 

Unkillable Cat

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Zombra

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So I bought the game during the sale last week after fooling around a bit on the free weekend. Addictive, I'm filling a lot of my spare hours with this, it speaks to my need for TF2 after my TF2 community died, although it's weird that the typical game lasts for freakin 5 minutes and then you're kicked back to main menu. Looking at this thread it seems odd that there is a lot of drama about whether OW is a successful "e-sport". Should I care about that in any way? I'm having fun learning the characters and getting good. Quick play matches seem to matchmake a lot faster than comp matches and matchmaking balance seems equally fucked in either mode, plus comp players are SO ANGRY COMPLAIN BOSSY so it seems like QP is the way to go for actual fun. My current "strategy" is to play characters I have low win % with to understand how they work better. With just a few victories my Reaper % went from 10% win rate to over 40%! Plus I found the mariachi outfit. That's about the level of serious investment I have in the game. OK, OK, I'm still a little drunk from last night, take this post fwiw.
 

Dzupakazul

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Looking at this thread it seems odd that there is a lot of drama about whether OW is a successful "e-sport". Should I care about that in any way?
Do you watch e-sports at all? If so, probably not. Do you care about becoming highly ranked? Probably not.
Personally, I really like Overwatch for what it is (and my reasons are pretty much the same as yours), but haven't seen a lot of the actual e-sports from it despite the fact that I follow a lot of competitive Starcraft, for instance. I don't think it's particularly interesting to watch, and a highlight reel of some Korean dunking on people with perfect Ana sleep darts or something is going to fulfill my "wow" factor with the game.
If you don't follow gaming media much then the e-sports push hardly bothers you, and by the time you get good to start poking holes in design (many people criticize the reliance on barriers and ultimates, and how a low-skill ceiling hero like Mercy or old Symmetra (with the auto-aim beam) can completely alleviate the need of tougher to play heroes that are punished by mistakes [ergo, getting good feels like it can carry a mediocre reward]) you probably got your money's worth from it anyway.
Myself I can't play it anymore because latest patches tank on my toaster and turning the game on causes the fans to go into overdrive, which was only alleviated by wearing sweaters and playing in an open-window environment at -15*C outside. Models don't even load in the summer. :(
 

TheHeroOfTime

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My advice is this: Don't bother about what the others do. Just play the game the way you enjoy it the most.

In my case is through ranked matches and getting better with the characters I play. Seeing competitive shit and stuff. But it can not work for you. Maybe you enjoy it in quickplay playing characters you like. Maybe you play the arcade modes, or the deathmatch. Maybe you plai it for the salt. Maybe you take it even more seriously than I, playing high level ranked and stuff. It is just different for each person.
 

Unkillable Cat

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I have been accused of cuckoldry by a useless Codexer because I enjoy watching and commenting on a game that I haven't even played (or paid for).

Fair enough, some Codexers are (possibly) retarded.

But let's see what this gets me:

U3f0FJl.png
 

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