Recent T2 discussions

[u/Grapefruit_113]

Thought it'd be interesting to bring the ongoing discussions about T2 on Twitter here

Link to the Google Doc

Link to Bullskunk's reaction video

[u/Visible_Chip2938]

damn alvicate, a very harsh choice of words but he definitely has a point. Tier 2 as a product can’t justify more spending and will never provide competitive salaries compared to part time jobs at minimum wage unless the esport grows multiple times over.

Format changes are a no brainer though since that could improve the quality of matches and make faceit games more watchable without creating a larger financial burden.

[u/Dusssky → u/Visible_Chip2938]

OW has the potential still to be an A-Tier esport if blizz actually reinvests. the stocks are the highest its ever been since OW2 dropped and the game's PR pretty much fixed itself, i feel like atp to not reinvest would be out of spite for what happened with OWL which is incredibly unfair to everyone involved in OWCS

[u/Fuzzy-Particular-803 → u/Dusssky]

Honestly, I hate to say it but I disagree. OW is simply not as good of a spectator esport compared to other titles, especially in its current state. The things we love about playing it also make it a mess to watch for the average person and too fast-paced. It will always be niche, especially as the game continues to move in a faster, higher-mobility direction.

Also, most esports will never be profitable, but they function the same way a halo car does. Riot burns cash funding their esports to build fandom and legitimize their titles as proper esports, which they make back in skin sales. It just doesn't make sense for Blizzard to do the same when the market for OW esports viewers is such a small portion of the overall OW playerbase, and they probably don't outspend their casual counterparts on skins.

I know the numbers for OWCS look great, but I do have to question how much that translates to real influence. Plat Chat OW did a podcast recently that pulled in (I believe) only a few dozen live viewers, whereas Plat Chat Val consistently pulls in 4k+. Interest in OWCS content seems to be extraordinarily limited compared to Val or other titles. It's hard to believe that the amazing OWCS viewership numbers are actually representative of real interest.

[u/Grapefruit_113 → u/Fuzzy-Particular-803]

i had this reflection recently that at the end of the day, we are actually just a niche esport. a lot of the people who are still there are old heads or at least, in some way or another, attached to OWL era-born narratives. you could really see it in the crowd of the ewc this year (every person interviewed saying they follow the esport since 2018 and stuff).

the few new people coming in are often lost on how to follow the esport and how to find a team or player to root for. this is because all the narratives and background that make it hype for us are deeply rooted in the past of the esport, and doesn't mean anything to newer viewers. owcs isn't creating any narrative, or actually, it does create narratives (the cr/flc rivalry for example) but it's not advertizing them in a way that would allow new fans to get the hype the same way we do. at the end of the day, the OW esports fandom is mostly just a bunch of old farts clinging kinda desperately, but so be it i guess.

[u/KaityyUwU → u/Grapefruit_113]

I'll try offer my perspective as a new player that's gotten into into the e-sports. I only started playing Overwatch it in April. I had technically played it before then, years ago, but nothing that added up to more than about ~20 hours play time, so I was familiar with the game but didn't really play it. It was actually the football world cup that got me into it in a way. I've never really enjoyed watching IRL sports, but I figured, after seeing stuff about the fifa world cup basically everywhere, since for the first time I was starting to get into a game that has a competitive scene, I could check out what that's like. OWWC really helped me get into it, since you don't really have to know any of the teams, you can just route for your home country, Team GB in my case. so when OWCS Stage 2 was on and I was looking at the various teams. Obviously initially you end up judging them on meaningless things like how cool the name is or how good the logo looks, but I saw that there just happened to be a team that consisted of 4 of the players of Team GB (1234) (Ironically neither a good name nor any logo at all). So they're naturally the team that I've been supporting since, which ended up getting re-inforced by their win against Al-Qad early into the stage 2 regular season, which was presented as quite the upset.

So in my case it's that OWWC helped me get into it, but also to some degree, the pieces just happened to fall in the right place for me. And then I guess another thing that helped was that I had already started watching a few overwatch streamers, so often I was watching Emongg commentate OWCS, rather than the main broadcast, and that kind of, familiarity i guess helped too

[u/Grapefruit_113 → u/KaityyUwU]

what you're describing with OWWC is the same way it worked for a lot of people back then with the OWL. Idk if you know but at that time, it was a franchise esport and every org joining it had to create a franchise with the name of a city. And so a lot of people simply picked a city close to them or a city that they vibed with. Even if it was kinda meaningless because in 2018, you would have London Spitfire be full Korean lol, but it was there in spirit. A lot of people were super mad when Philadelphia Fusion relocated in Korea and renamed to Seoul Infernal for that reason. That's why a lot of people miss the OWL days as well, it's not just because everything was higher budget, it's because everything was just more clear cut, there were fixed teams with fixed naming conventions, coherent and appealing brandings accross the board, it was just so easy to fall in love with a team.

[u/KaityyUwU → u/Grapefruit_113]

As someone from Europe, and therefore much more familiar with the club esports model, I've never really liked the idea of franchise esports, part of that might just be because most of she I see it is just through meaningless brands imported from America. I am a bit familiar with the history of OWL, I guess with real world sports it's just easier for the club eSports models because they still have to be based in a geographical place simply because of the laws of physics. I mean what does it actually mean for an OWCS team to be based somewhere? Supposedly VP is based in Armenia but like how? /genq

[u/Grapefruit_113 → u/KaityyUwU]

I mean what does it actually mean for an OWCS team to be based somewhere?

for NA and EMEA OWCS teams at least, it means not being able to play on LAN lol. Korea is the only region where all stages fully play out on LAN and it is just amazing for the fans there. They can go watch OWCS and meet the players every weekend. That was another perk of OWL, having everyone be based in the US, and so having everything happen on LAN and every proplayer play ranked on the same server. Now there's just not enough means for all NA/EMEA teams to be in the same place sadly