Hello,
Last week in Amsterdam at Casual Connect Europe conference, Mohamed Fadl, Wargaming esports chief spoke about World of Tanks on E-sports:
“We invested $32 million just into the top level of our esports initiative — not even on the whole infrastructure.”
“We spent $10 million the first year in 2012. We started to stream it out and said, ‘Guys, are you happy with esports?’ But we realized quite quickly that we were far from [figuring it out] because we had no idea what esports is.”
RG: Maybe some research on the matter before spending 32 Million Dollars on it would have been a logical idea?
“We have a financially strong audience, but a lot of them don’t know what esports is,” “They are older gentlemen. They’re not spending all their time on Twitch. This posed an interesting challenge because we didn’t know how — or if — we should be appealing to them with esports.”
About being on the right path: “Sadly, I can’t say we are there yet,” “Far from it. Our esports is 7-vs.7, but our core gameplay is 15-vs.15. So when a player goes to watch it, they sometimes have no connection to it because it isn’t the game they play.”
“If you [promote esports] to your audience, your most hardcore players will be interested,” “But the big audience on Twitch that has no clue about World of Tanks, they get enjoyment from the entertainment factor. This is my biggest advice. Focus on that.”
“The evolution is happening,” “We can’t control it. Twitch, YouTube Live, and Hitbox have created a new type of entertainment. If we don’t adapt to this audience, we will miss out on a lot.”
“Esports as a publisher enables us as a brand to build an entertainment source of tomorrow,”
“We don’t make money from selling tickets,” “We don’t monetize there. We monetize through the player journey. We give content that is created and digested by everyone.”
That’s all folks!
Credit to VentureBeat.
Removing the excessive amounts of RNG sounds like a good start before investing $32 million into esports… Just sayin’ 😀
I don’t think so. Any sport has a degree of luck and skill associated with it, if they removed the RNG from the damage system well, then there would no strategies to combat worst case scenarios when you have less luck. It would be an even greater repetitive and boring grind that it can be now.
If by RNG you are referring to anything else other the damage variation between shots, like bounces, ricochets, blind kills, ammo racks…WOT would become a flash game.
to be honest i have to agree with both sides,25% rng is a bit to high however with 0% rng on dmg the game would become to static and predective also HP would make too much of a difference for example you will need 6 shots for an obj. 430 while you will always only need 5 shots for a t62a which has only 50hp less,this would break the balance for sure…
however i think reducing the Rng for damage to 15%-10% and removing or extremly reducing the RNG for Penetration would really improve competetive play.
if you are also talking about accuracy changing that mechanic would just completly break the balance….
HE said EXCESS RNG. +-25% is Ridiculous at tier X where E-Sports is played at now, A reasonable 10% RNG would be ideal. at 25% a T110E5 might only need to shoot 4 times to kill a T-62A but he might also need to shoot 6-7 shots. That’s a difference of 2-3 shots which translated to around 16-24seconds in a battle, which is HUGE. Not to mention penetration is RNG dependant also so a 25%- pen RNG roll could bounce a critical shot when it should never be able to. Remember E-sports should never be ‘rush into a battle and hope you get better luck than the enemy’, it should be about precise tactics with a small amount of rng to make entertaining moments for the audience to gather suspense if it is really close. Professional sports are about skill, not luck. There’s no randomness with Tennis, only conditions that can be accounted for and put into a calculation of where to place a ball.
Can you tell me one real sport where luck has such a big impact as in WoT?
By RNG I refer to accuracy, damage and penetration. Accuracy values should be buffed drasticly, for instance a Leopard 1 gun should have something like 0.05 dispersion. Penetration should not be RNG based at all, and damage should depend on which internal modules that your shot travelled through.
WoT Blitz promotes 7v7, so… Blitz tournament when?
I want to see the pr0z playing in pubbie matches.
it`s kinda sad that WOT E-Sports is so small,because at least for me it`s fun to play and also fun to watch,and i really hope WG will work further on WOT E-sports as in my opinion it has a lot of potential,WG just fucked up a lot in the beginning
And just to warn you WG don`t even try to change the E-sport format to 15 vs. 15 it would remove a lot of tactical depth and no Player will continue playing it on a competetive level when you have to divide the money through 15-20 People…
One of the games biggest strengths, is the diversity of tanks within a match and then players adapting to the opposing team layout. You get none of this with the e sports, T-54 lights or IS 3’s as far as the eye can see. Could they not limit to only 1 of any model of tank per team.
I also fail to see as stated why 7 V 7 was chosen, when the core game is 15 V 15. I understand the logistics of providing 15 players every day are very difficult, but surely they could raise it to at least 10, bringing the game closer to the unwashed masses.
#1
the WGL is on tier10 now and the diversity is a lot higher there and pretty much every tier 10 and tier 9 has been used at least once for example on the season finals some days ago they used 30 different tanks in 3 Matches so this really changed compared to the old 7/54,however of course some tanks are still used more than others but well that`s the case in any other major e-sport title
#2
7 vs. 7 has some major advantages(at least in my opinion^^)
#2.1first it adds tactical depth as you only have 7 tanks and not 15 you have to be really carefully where to place your tanks and don`t split your forces too much and all in all it becomes a lot more difficult to keep full map control,also if in 7vs.7 a Player fails or gets killed due to a tactical mistake it has a lot more impact than in 15 vs. 15 so every Player has to play perfect.
#2.2
As you already said logistically it becomes a lot more dofficult to get 15 Players each evening even though this problem could be olved by just increasing the max. members in ateam to 20(also another problem is that it becomes pretty difficult to find 15-20 top Players that are also good in competetive/Team play)
the main Problem with this however is very simple,and that`s our good old friend the money:D
because WG hat to pretty much double or triple the amount of money they pay as otherwise no top Player would keep on playing WGL(seriously no player wants to waste 15h a week to get 600usd for the entire season
also there are some more minor issues but i don`t want to write a book about this:D
Just make it where you have to pick different tanks for each round… It gets tiring seeing 15 IS-3s and T-54 Light Weights.
WoT eSports is 7v7 and it is Tier 10. The tank variety is very high at the moment.
WoT is no material for eports and the sooner WG realise it the better.
Focusing on core of the game might be a better idea than wasting resources on some mumbojumbo modes that your paying average customers dont give a fook about.
The pro games are so different from normal play that I do not get much from watching the pro matches. Spend those millions on fixing game issues maybe? What benefit does e-sport create for WG? Is there any return on this huge investment?
wot esports are as boring and dull as it gets is3 t54 lightwieght and the occasional t 32
there is literally nothing fun about watching such a heavily modded laser tag fest with tanks instead of people
not even worth staying for the baited hype 59 bonus codes they try to lure the people that will absolutly never get one in with the dudes that usually even win anythign tend to be people that already have them and then you occasionally see bonus codes on ebay but they have already been used gaurantee’d to get free gold
i think this game has outstayed its welcome and now is just trying its best to use us like milk cows now
whats even changed in wot besides its getting nearly impossible for most low end or older systems to run it and premuim copy’s of tanks or slight alterations and more toxicity?
the new physics is a damn day to late and alot of dollars to short they should have fuckin prioritized that aspect from the day the game turned south but no
lets screw mm up lets remove good maps and limit the rotation to 5 r so maps a day
lets take scouts down to just damage dealers
lets make gold ammo an iwin load the skill memeshot availible for credits and not limit how many you can carry efectivly making anything with any armor to speak of useless to play because your just relying off rng in the first place so why put yourself at the speed disadvantage
make fully aimed shots go wild fo no reason other that ”balance”
put more fake papertanks in that you just nerf and remove later in to buy yourselves time
make playing without premuim account unviable for the majority from tier 5 and up
and limit the cap on how many creds you can even earn according to damage so its only worth getting 3k damage or 4k and just bailing into the nearest lake instead of trying for the most profit and the useless because of xvm statwhores now wins other than daily’s
ive spent far to much money that i would have been better off saving on this dead game and since my gaming pc died its useless to even pay anymore money to try playing on a laptop where even the luxuries of seeing my enemies before i lag out is usless now
wot is gonna crash and burn and alot of people will want there money back wargaming is going to go down more infamously than ea and unlike ea wargaming will just flatline and stop producing content
You’ve missed out a lot of esports mate… they’re playing with Tier 10’s since half a year already… what IS-3 and T-54 lightweight are you dreaming? 🙂
havent watched esports since last year dude its not worth even watching that lasertag match
The E-sports thing and the premium tank spam is right. Everything else… dude how dumb are you? 1) Game not running on older PC’s? Dude the game looks like a steaming pile of shit because it works on shit PC’s, but I’m guessing you are the kind of guy that only plays on max and anything lower than 60 fps is *lag*.
2) Physics too late? Let me guess, and when the update hits the game you will be all like: OMG!!! Why did WG introduce this? I just god hit by a tank that did a drift! OP TANK PLEASE REROLL!!?!
3)What? When did they change something with the mm that made the game worse? All they did was make it better so idiots like you wouldn’t have to meet E100 in their t6 tanks like they used to back when matchmaking was really shit. If you mean lack of skill mm, yeah that’s bad.
4)”lets take scouts down to just damage dealers”… huh?
5) that’s because then people would just fucking whine about tanks with OP armour.
6)”make fully aimed shots go wild fo no reason other that ”balance””. NO for actual balance. Otherwise idiots like you would keep whining how the game is pay 2 win
7)game unplayable after t5 without premium? dude the game is perfectly profitable until t8. at t9 and t10 you bleed credits, but even without premium tanks you still make a 10k profit on t8 tanks if you actually have any kind of understanding of the game.
8)”and limit the cap on how many creds you can even earn according to damage so its only worth getting 3k damage or 4k and just bailing into the nearest lake instead of trying for the most profit and the useless because of xvm statwhores now wins other than daily’s” that paragraph almost gave me cancer. there is no cap on credits, and 3k dmg on anything up to t8 will make you a big profit. if you just suicide you are just a cunt worse than artillery.
how terrible seems you cant handle opinions
without resorting to shit slinging
there is a cap mm does unbalance teams gold ammo is op and will be changed has been stated allready
lights cant passive scout anymore most of the time
i wont give a damn about physics it will be nifty thats about it
my computer i am lucky to get 30 frames on the lowest settings with fps increasing mods like fog removal i cant even run minecraft get out -_-
your biggest response is people whining and people whining specificly about pay2win
thats why your fucking username is anonomous you legitimatly had to hide your gay name to troll me
im not in the mood for your asanine shitlicking 🙂 goodday subhuman
I still find it better and more entertaining to actually play the game than watch someone else do it.
[…] Q&A: Mohamed Fadl on E-sports […]
Not sure about the other servers but NA esports is 7v7 (68 tier points) and each team cannot have more then 2 of same tank. 99% of the time it will be 6 tier 10’s and a tier 8 light like the RU251 or AMX90 although once in a while a team will bring a tier 8 arty. If a team accidentally enters a game with 3 of same tank, they automatically lose that game.
Oh, it’s Tier 10 now?
Also at ESL or is that completely different stuff again?
(As you might know by now, I rarely (very rare) watch twitch at all and
neither had much played TB since the revamp of team battles)
Also, as I very seldom play my E100
– is there any reason for me to even have a look on what I am missing out on esports ?
(Weird work schedules made it impossible to do CW also – apart from the lack of interest in my peer group)
It’s clear most of you has not seen an e-sports game in a while. It’s tier 10, tanks actually rotate quite often, 7v7 is much better than 15v15 because it’s more tactical, cap placements make attack/defend more tense, dull periods may occur but are more rare, and that’s just how the game works in random or CW’s too. And the whole “RNG makes it bullshit” etc. …. No. Every tanks has maxed out crew and best possible setup reducing the RNG slightly, it not being 1v1 but 7v7 and lots of rounds played means lots of shots are fired and one, even a few unlucky/lucky shots won’t decide who wins, it’s always about skill. Just watch the damn games and you’ll see better team wins.
[…] See also: Q&A: MOHAMED FADL ON E-SPORTS […]
WG should stream the WG Cup on Youtube too. It’s better than Twitch for me
And why should hardcore players waste their times watching e-sports instead of playing?
For ordinary tomato it’s like any other random, they have no clue what is going on except “tanks rolling and shooting”.
[…] Q&A: Mohamed Fadl On E-sports: Q&A: Mohamed Fadl on E-sports […]
[…] Q&A: Mohamed Fadl On E-sports: Q&A: Mohamed Fadl on E-sports […]
[…] Q&A: Mohamed Fadl On E-sports: Q&A: Mohamed Fadl on E-sports […]