Why eSports fail…
TOPIC: What changes need to be made to OW to make it tournament worthy?
I’ve watched this video days ago and it was only about fighting games sadly even though LoL was the first game to be called an “Esport game”. Fighting games aren’t esports, they are one-on-one LAN tournaments.
To the topic i think they should just cancel OWL for a few years, let the balance to change naturally and then start the idea again. Blizzard wanted to hard copy the Esports format LoL uses and failed. They need to find their own ways to organize an Esport and to balance the enjoyment of the athletes, the viewers and the casual playerbase as well.
A MOBA Esport prioritizes viewership enjoyment over players because the matches are that long but it compensates with very frequent balance changes and new characters. OW in return introduced match replays, 30 perspectives of the same match, a replay viewer and a custom client while the base game got… a colorblind option with the colors being the same as the palettes used for the 2016 team recolors. Too much for the viewers and almost nothing for the core playerbase.
OW’s gameplay is three times shorter and for the viewers, especially if they never played the game before and want to know how it feels to play it, is just too much in a short time and is very overwhelming. Pink gundam mech flies around, blinky girl teleports around the map spraying bullets and all that. It doesn’t attract new players to watch and the diverted resources make most of the players just ignore its existence so only a small minority watches them and not for the drops only.
To summarize: You look at a soccer match first time, you already will figure out that they score a goal by kicking the ball into one or when you look at a race you know how the racers have to drive their car but its just missing from OWL. You show it to a friend not knowing what OW is and they just don’t understand what is happening on the screen.
I don’t know if this is a hot take but OWL was doing amazing but Covid really killed it. It had a big irl presence. Their homestand idea was amazing and the atmosphere in the arenas seemed great. Online viewership was also very good. Then covid happened and they really struggled.
Right now I’m doubtful the funding is there anymore to go forward withthe original plans. Still I’m hopeful even smaller audiences can give the league more life. They did the right thing in the right place at the wrong time.
Basically imo if there is a solution, it is in person events.
Eh, they already had CoD stuff running before OWL I believe, as well as WoW Arena stuff, Hearthstone, and I believe Heroes of the Storm had something for a little bit as well.
Heroes of the Dorm was a little bit later than OWL but it was so unsuccessful that they’ve had to pull the plug on the HOTS game development as well.
People get super interested in the concept, play the game with a broken matchmaker, realize something is bogus or they lose all hope and then they don’t give a s***.
These devs will never learn, some people were born to struggle.
Trying to make it an esport game is what ruined it
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This guy pouring water the whole vid, but the snowman was good