Warhammer - Becoming a Sport/E-Sport

[CaptainNippon]

Only if the production quality is up to par. 

As it stands, the Warhammer Community stream and most battlereports for AoS are just not up to modern day standards, as far as the presentation goes. 

Multiple camera angles, closeups on miniatures and dice results, unit warscroll and rules popups at the right time and place, good lighting etc. would do so much to improve the viewer experience. A minimum paint requirement would also have to be implemented imo. 

Even if you put the focus on the competitive aspect of AoS, the miniatures will always be the biggest draw, so you'll have to make sure one can actually see the miniatures well and from convenient angles.

 

 

 

[TheWilddog]

I agree that officiating at an Esport level would be a major issue for a miniature wargame. Magic has a significant issue policing the correct manipulation of cards in the game space at events, with people drawing extra cards, playing extra lands, etc. ect. This would be magnified a hundred fold with a miniature wargame where every (and I men every) time a miniature is moved it provides an opportunity to abuse an already imprecise mechanic (human measurement).

Magic also has a hard time handling slow play (people intensionally playing slowing if they are up in a match to not finish and get a win or avoid a loss). I honestly don't see how a miniature war game would handle this as the manipulation of sometimes hundreds of miniatures can be so subjective time wise that enforcing a slow play rule would be next to impossible.  There was an issue at the 40k LVO event this year where in a high table match one of the player's opening turn took over an hour and monopolized the time for the match. This stuff would be rampant in a competitive environment.  You could potentially go to a chess clock system but then you add two things, cost and a large degree of encumbrance as you must pass time priority back and forth as you role saves, etc. I just feel the issues you would run into are almost insurmountable for miniature wargaming in its current form.       

[GeneralZero]

Lets see:

- too heavy rules

- too many special rules (as per codex/battletome)

- no possible referee as he'd had to know ALL the rules

- no interraction 

- too long turn per player

- dice dice dice too boring for a watcher

- dice too many differents results to know

- math: too complex for larger audience

- report/video : need too much additions (infos/rules/warscrolles/points etc...) so make them too expensive

- parties wayyyyyyyyyyy too long

- too hard to balance the whole game

- game changes too frekently

-....

Game over

I'm personaly working on something to answer most of those points. I hope that I'll be able to present it in the near futur to the whole comunity

[Beliman]

6 minutes ago, GeneralZero said:

game changes too frekently

From my point of view, AoS doesn't change too frekently. I mean, in any e-sport we have one patch every 1 or 2 weeks, and some of them have more impactful patches (new characters, weapons or events) that can even transform the meta. One time you see some character exploiting some infintie combos/ weapons/ overtunned raw numbers in fighting/moba/BR/sport games, and the next week he/she/it isn't even picked/banned. Even championships aren't using the last patch and the company just communicate what patch will be playing when the competition starts. 

[Clan's Cynic]

If I want a very rules-tight, tournament-focused, bleeding edge enviroment I bring out my Protectorate and play Warmahordes.
If I want 'beer and pretzels' where I don't need to scrutinise my list for maxinimumn efficiency I play 40k/AoS.

The only way that Games Workshop products could become 'E-Sports' is if they buckle down and invest far more and far better rules writers. 

[Killax]

3 hours ago, TheDayman said:

Oh gods no, I would hate to see any of GW's games go into an e-sports like competitive scene. Being a casual gamer, constantly going up against supremely optimised lists that would wipe me off the table within the first 3 turns of the game is not fun. @Killax has explained why it would not be a good thing much better than I. But ultimately I think it would drive people away from the hobby rather than towards it, as well as shine a bad light on those who play the game.

I think another great example can be found with Blizzard. While Heartstone is somewhat of an e-sport I think Blizzard has found an ideal balance there that a lot of it is still decided by luck. Starcraft 2 however, balanced as it likely is, is completely unplayable as a casual game. The latter I havn't tested myself but it's something more than a fair share of my friends have told me. To the point of me not getting it for that reason.

I believe that every game has a good portion of luck and tactical skill reward. Most of the time having that 50/50 split between it is actually what attracts a lot of players. Again I see Magic the Gathering as a good example of this also. People do not like to be 'mana screwed' but the fun fact is that they don't like it for 25 years. So for whatever the reason, people don't dislike that design part of their system to stop playing the game basically.

Casual fun is even more important with Games Workshop games too, the prime reason for that is that it attracts hobbyists. People who like to spend their time building miniatures. Sometimes not even painting them or quite often not even playing that much. So in reality all of this isn't an issue and I think e-sports would actually hurt more than do more for the game because of that reason. If only the gaming aspect is important I fear people would leave this hobby and turn to other miniatures. 

Lastly I even think that if people actively want to make AoS an e-sport I believe other platforms would do it better. One of the reason why most players don't even leave the country for playing is because of this actually being quite unpracticle. Age of Sigmar, like Warhammer 40.000 is a mix of a game and hobby. There is no hobby element in any of the e-sports as far as I understand.

From a sportmanship perspective the same applies also. Not all sports should lead to tournaments. Because tournaments only reward those who practice the most often and smart. Not all have time for this. This shouldn't prefent people from starting a sport, ever. 

12 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:

The only way that Games Workshop products could become 'E-Sports' is if they buckle down and invest far more and far better rules writers. 

I'd even go one step further, while I do agree.

If GW would want to become an e-sport like game they would need to sell miniatures pre-painted, pre-assambled and lay out how tables should look and have a active role in supporting and organizing Tournaments.

The biggest downside of it remains is that if you put the focus there then Tournaments will become the only way to play. Now Games Workshop puts tons and tons of time in the casual/narrative/hobby aspects, as such this is what Age of Sigmar presents the best.

Ultimate balance for games is also not required to have a good game. Likewise having an ultimate balanced life doesn't mean you have a good life  Fun is way more essential because I feel most play miniatures game to escape from stress, planning etc. It's a hobby, not a job.

To come with another Warmachine/Hordes example. One of the reasons why I locally couldn't get a big gaming group had to do with the game being 'ideally balanced' in a Tournament setting. It means that investment in this hobby can't be done casually or without care. You really needed to plan ahead and be willing to continue updating your army with the newest competitive trend.
The latter even seems to be the case now with PP's design still. My Juggernauts became more expensive, my Berserkers completely changed in functionality... That game is constantly changing, I know the rules can keep up, but I also know I can't keep up with that when I look at my personal time for hobby related tasks. 

Turning it back to Age of Sigmar again. I am very happy second edition of Age of Sigmar doesn't seem to be a massively drastic change (like 7th to 8th was for 40K). I like this because it means it's very likely my current army (and backlog) doesn't need to be completely revamped. At the same time it's also the reason why I focus less on 40K now. Many changes in a short period of time can be nice if you have all the time to follow up on it. I don't have that, I know most players in my area can't keep up with it all.

 

[Mr. White]

I tabletop game for the stories and camaraderie.

Could care less about the winnings and losings.

[Beliman]

26 minutes ago, Killax said:

Lastly I even think that if people actively want to make AoS an e-sport I believe other platforms would do it better. One of the reason why most players don't even leave the country for playing is because of this actually being quite unpracticle. Age of Sigmar, like Warhammer 40.000 is a mix of a game and hobby. There is no hobby element in any of the e-sports as far as I understand.

From a sportmanship perspective the same applies also. Not all sports should lead to tournaments. Because tournaments only reward those who practice the most often and smart. Not all have time for this. This shouldn't prefent people from starting a sport, ever. 

That's another point. Doens't matter if you have a game with perfect rules. Every videogame can do that, but only a few just make the jump over the e-sports wagon. Rules are just one little part, even the rng from card games or just the crit/flee based characters abilities are just that, RNG mechanics, but it's not something really important in that matter. I'm trying to say that the supporting community behind the game is what really matters. You need to create something that they like (doesn't matter if your whole game is based in RNG or just mental games or full skills).

In other words, without streamers (not people, STREAMERS) streaming your game you will not have enough community; without enough community your championships (and the reason to become an e-sport) will be just parody; without championships, you will not have enough pr0-players to support your game, without pr0-players, you will not have streamers to stream your game... you get the point.

And that's only the begining, then we need the main features and characteristics of our product to have players, viewers, streamers and pr0-players happy with it. I can't stop laughing seeing PewDiePie, Rubius, Lirik, Coh, Strippin, SivHD, etc... all of them in the same room with miniatures, dice and rules... don't know how it will work, but it don't seems to have a happy ending for the game or viewers.

[GeneralZero]

....and I forgot to add: randomness. RNG is too present in the game to make it a serious e-sport

[chord]

This would be horrible IMO.  Warhammer should not be a list building game, but turning it into an esport would make it so

[Twisted Firaun]

No, this should never happen. The thing that makes AOS and 40K great is the narrative, if it becomes an E sport you can bet all your miniatures there will be retcons to certain parts of the lore(goodbye Slaanesh, servitors, pyskers powering the golden throne, and Dark Eldar).

 

[Sactownbri]

Isn’t Shadespire GWs attempt at a super tight, super competitive and fast tournament ready game? Leave 40k and AoS out of that please. 

[Burf]

6 hours ago, TheR00zle said:

No, this should never happen. The thing that makes AOS and 40K great is the narrative, if it becomes an E sport you can bet all your miniatures there will be retcons to certain parts of the lore(goodbye Slaanesh, servitors, pyskers powering the golden throne, and Dark Eldar).

 

Why? Why would they bother? League didn't do that when it got popular. Evelynn's actually gotten rape-y-er since release. Smite's character's are mythological characters dressed like cosplay hookers.

This is mostly the argument of people who saw half an overwatch game one time and think that's E-sports.

[Burf]

6 hours ago, GeneralZero said:

....and I forgot to add: randomness. RNG is too present in the game to make it a serious e-sport

Tell that to Hearthstone.

[Saiken]

So my 2  cents about this, as someone who worked in the gaming industry.

Most e-Sports  game tend to follow more or less the following pattern : Easy to pick-up, hard to master.
That's what draw the crowd in, and allows the best players (0,01%) to stand-out from the rest and become bankable etc ...
Problem is : Warhammer is none of this. The barrier to entry is huge. Even chosing which army you're going to start with is terribly complicated. Add the rules to this ...  add the cost and time required to get a competitive army ... and you'll figure out quickly it's definitely not made to appeal to the masses. 

Plus I have a feeling that under 2k point, the strategy aspect of the game is too diluted to really be as interested. However, a 2k points game is too long to really maintain interest.
Games like LoL manage to still make long games interesting because there is perpetual action, and clear (and different) objectives/phases at various points in time.

And finally, the worst is : I have yet to see a battle report without a misplay, or someone forgetting to attack ( for instance with mounts), or without illegal lists ...
That's how bad it is really. And this is a big NO NO in my opinion.

TL:DR : I don't believe that, with it's current format, AoS has any chance of becoming an eSport, or even being close to get any "mainstream" traction.
 

[Kirjava13]

3 hours ago, Burf said:

Smite's character's are mythological characters dressed like cosplay hookers.

I don't often agree with Burf but this is so on the money it hurts me ? 

[silentdeathz]

6 hours ago, Burf said:

Tell that to Hearthstone.

I touched on this before, but for a game like hearthstone, it's largely  only an 'esport' because it has money pumped into it by blizzard, and a large player base. Much akin to WoW arena - we saw how quickly that fell from relevancy once prize pool subsidy was cut. And its worth noting its still getting hundreds of thousands of dollars put into it once again, and the scene outside is (to my knowledge) pretty lacking in terms of £ tournaments. And this is for an extremely popular game...

On a side note, these things are just very fickle in general. Look at the culling - that was HUGELY popular...very briefly... Now its dead. But the battle royale style genre? Well, we know whats happened there...

There are countless new card games - some of them are actually very solid (Gwent) but the scene simply exists because there is cash pumped into it by these companies. And even in the case of Gwent - where they are shovelling in cash I would hardly call it a particularly popular 'esport' game. As for the others, well, you probably dont even know their names since their lifespan is typically not very long. If you take Gwent too, if they weren't ponying up the prize pool for the masters then there wouldn't really be a scene at all from what I can tell.

http://redditmetrics.com/r/gwent

Even just from a quick look at a metric like this, you can see how quickly interest peaks and then dwindles out.

Also, note, these fill the free to play, low barrier to entry, runs on just about anything, etc category.

I can't ever see GW putting the same levels of investment into tournaments, for a start. And if they did, I just don't see how it pays off. One of the biggest issues being if you get a ton of viewers and interest spikes, they cant just download the game, start playing, and get hooked.

It's, 'oh that looks neat'. Time to spend a huge chunk of £ on models, then time putting them together etc, then finding people to play with, then learning the rules, and so on. I'd imagine the vast majority of people who get interested would look at the webstore and nope the hell out of there real quick.

 

 

[Beliman]

3 hours ago, silentdeathz said:

There are countless new card games - some of them are actually very solid (Gwent) but the scene simply exists because there is cash pumped into it by these companies. And even in the case of Gwent - where they are shovelling in cash I would hardly call it a particularly popular 'esport' game. As for the others, well, you probably dont even know their names since their lifespan is typically not very long. If you take Gwent too, if they weren't ponying up the prize pool for the masters then there wouldn't really be a scene at all from what I can tell.

It's not only Gwent that does that. Every single e-sport have done the same. Like I said before, you invest alot of money to make an e-sport; doesn't matter if your product use full rng mechanics or is just a failed survival videogame (Fortnite, coff..coff...). And remember that Hearthstone was made with 15 developers (before it become an e-sport). 

[Stealth_Hobo]

I don't think Warhammer is going to be serious e-sport anytime soon, it's just too spectator unfriendly because of long matches and generally being too clunky as it's actually a physical game with too many moving parts. One other problem is that Warhammer community overall is just too unprofessional to make it a possibility. Just look how poorly LondonGT was run and that is supposed to be the biggest Warhammer tournament in Europe. I was watching some of the streams from the event and I had trouble seeing what was going on half the time. In comparison, I don't know anything about Starcraft, but I don't have any difficulties following some high-profile tournament match because there the commentators are actually doing their job.

Funny that people mention Hearthstone, I actually think Warhammer is not that random. Rolling dice has a lot to do with probilities and I've always thought that strategies are there to mitigate the luck factor. It seems every major Heathstone tournament had some sort of major RNG event (Yogg Saron, Paveling book) but I don't remember that sort of issues in Warhammer. In AoS/40k you are constantly making decisions in every phase of the game and each of those decisions will have consquences in following turns. But when your general gets shot down it's easier to blame the dice than look back at your own decision-making. 

[Sheriff]

e-sports can't have powercreep, so warhammer is ruled out massively. 

[Stealth_Hobo]

20 minutes ago, Sheriff said:

e-sports can't have powercreep, so warhammer is ruled out massively. 

Card games are no strangers to powercreep and yet they seem to be accepted as e-sports.

[silentdeathz]

10 hours ago, Beliman said:

It's not only Gwent that does that. Every single e-sport have done the same. Like I said before, you invest alot of money to make an e-sport; doesn't matter if your product use full rng mechanics or is just a failed survival videogame (Fortnite, coff..coff...). And remember that Hearthstone was made with 15 developers (before it become an e-sport). 

Every big modern game does it now yes, but that doesn't mean that is historically how it's happened or the only way. Especially if a game is an esport but a smaller game in terms of popularity. 

If you go back to old CS games etc they can easily be esports without the huge company investments. 

 

Take Cs source. That had the strongest UK esports scene of any Cs game. And there were dozens of leagues and tourns that were home grown / not dev funded etc. 

It just coincides now that money in outweighs the money out for esports prizes now so devs heavily fund themselves now. 

Idk why fortnite's origin (it wasn't a survival game BTW) or the original hearthstone (funded by Activision blizzard) is of consequence. 

 

But that's going down the lines of whether a game is an esports simply because money is being put up for tourns - and going further off topic. 

[silentdeathz]

5 hours ago, Sheriff said:

e-sports can't have powercreep, so warhammer is ruled out massively. 

Lots of esports do. League dota etc all have power creep. New champs come out and have to have cool new mechanics etc. 

But the time it takes and the financial  cost for gw to rebalance is far higher too. 

[Beliman]

3 minutes ago, silentdeathz said:

Every big modern game does it now yes, but that doesn't mean that is historically how it's happened or the only way. Especially if a game is an esport but a smaller game in terms of popularity. 

If you go back to old CS games etc they can easily be esports without the huge company investments. 

 

Take Cs source. That had the strongest UK esports scene of any Cs game. And there were dozens of leagues and tourns that were home grown / not dev funded etc. 

It just coincides now that money in outweighs the money out for esports prizes now so devs heavily fund themselves now. 

Idk why fortnite's origin (it wasn't a survival game BTW) or the original hearthstone (funded by Activision blizzard) is of consequence. 

 

But that's going down the lines of whether a game is an esports simply because money is being put up for tourns - and going further off topic. 

But we already have that. Alot of shops and communities are playing their championships and campaigns. The only diference is the way that the viewers can reach/eat the product. With warhammer tv orany other platform, Age of Sigmar is expanding in other new ways that were not created to support this type of games. Now, if we return to ol'counterstrike, or EVO or BackToWarhammer, they are still building some championships every week, exactly like us. 

From the OP, I feel that he wants to go in another direction (like you said, Fortnite, Hearthstone and other ongoing e-sport games).

P.D: Yeah, Fornite was a failed game XD. Zombies vs players (I tested the game in closed beta). But still the battleroyal genre is moving in the same direction of any other e-sport, but they need to work alot more (the championships are a bit meh). Time will tell if the game will have a community supporting it after 3 years. 

[Killax]

19 hours ago, Sheriff said:

e-sports can't have powercreep, so warhammer is ruled out massively. 

I think the term powercreep even came into excistance thanks to e-sports... Or at least online games, same with metagame I believe...
In any case, with 'free summonning' this whole game could turn into a e-sport... Or basically who can sling their wallet the fastest and shoot out the most money.

In general I hope GW won't do it, but that doesn't mean they won't do it. Same with completely eliminating WFB instead of doing it gruadually. Or specialist games for that matter, which are now returning.