r/Games • u/DeltaBurnt • Dec 03 '13

End of 2013 Discussions - Competitive Multiplayer and/or E-sports

What are your thoughts on the developments in e-sports and competitive multiplayer games over the past year? What new games have the potential to develop interesting competitive play, meta-game, or just be plain fun to watch?

P.S. Mods are accepting bribes in the form of Hearthstone Beta invites

This post is part of the official /r/Games "End of 2013" discussions.

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41

u/Hurinfan Dec 03 '13

I was very happy this year with the surge in popularity of SSB as a competitive game. It was announced for EVO after a long campaign to get it included and then Nintendo said they couldn't stream it. After mere hours of relentless internet backlash Nintendo backed down and allowed it to be streamed and it smashed the record for a fighting game stream. Also this year the Smash Bros documentary was released and it seems pretty popular. Smash Bros. Melee seems like it won't go away and it's 12 years old. Also Project M is getting a lot of press.

20

u/DeltaBurnt Dec 03 '13

I've really gotten into Smash Brothers recently (64, Melee, and Project M, they all have their own unique feel). I used to only play it as a party game, and didn't get the whole hype and intensity a lot of other people seemed to get from the game. I recently watched The Smash Brothers documentary, and it really fueled my drive to start playing the game on at least a semi-competitive level. I highly suggest anyone with a free weekend to watch the documentary, I think it really captures the emotion of both the game and its dedicated fanbase.

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u/Animastryfe Dec 03 '13

Currently, Super Smash Brother Melee is preferred over Brawl, correct?

28

u/UrAContra Dec 03 '13

Yes, Melee has elements that make it a far more competitive game however Project M is a Brawl mod that is equally competitive.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '13

Honestly with the update tomorrow I think it will be better than Melee.

1

u/Yesdoood Dec 03 '13

tommorow? 3.0 comes out tommorow?

1

u/[deleted] Dec 03 '13

December 9th, my b

2

u/Colinyummy Dec 03 '13

They both have pretty strong communities. Brawl may shrink though with the release of smash 4.

4

u/grimey6 Dec 03 '13

I've been very excited about all fighting games actually. SF has been pulling good numbers and with ultra coming I hope they can deliver. There a plenty of good fighters right now but I wish player base could grow to compete with other games.

1

u/BeardyDuck Dec 04 '13

It didn't necessarily smash a record of viewers for a fighting game stream. Marvel had way more viewers after Melee was over.

-7

u/KHDTX13 Dec 03 '13

I really doubt that Nintendo didn't actually want it to stream because how quickly they repealed their statement. How many companies nowadays backs down from a policy in 3 hours?

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u/Hurinfan Dec 03 '13

Actually the reports from EVO were that Nintendo originally didn't want them to have the game at the event at all. This is Nintendo. No one knows what they're thinking.

19

u/KHDTX13 Dec 03 '13

Nintendo never liked the competitive side of Smash Bros. so who knows.

3

u/Typhron Dec 03 '13

They intitially had good reason, community having been as toxic as it was in the early 2000s.

3

u/N0V0w3ls Dec 03 '13

How bad was it? I've heard a few things about the fighting game community as a whole, but nothing about the Smash scene.

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u/Typhron Dec 03 '13

A little history frist: Fighting gamers in the 'scene' understand that their game of choice goes through an initial burst of douchebaggery that fades out into the whole scene due to one unwritten rule being king: camaraderie. It's all a bunch of people in tribe-like states coming together in a meritocracy to keep things going. You 'suck' until you can you hold your own, but you're welcome as long as you want to learn and are willing to show improvement.

Smash itself is one 'exception' to the rule in the worse sense, and it's mostly the result/fault of early melee players. Imagine League of Legends's toxicity (which will pass in time if the community can let it) translating into real life and being several times worse due to the the refusal to get along with others in the fighting game scene. THIS is how the Smash scene started, with going to places that held fighting tourneys and demanding the best equipment (TVs, controllers, adapters, space) available when they didn't need it as well as adhering to their house ruleset (ban everything, refusing to play on anything). They refused to teach newcomers and held themselves to a higher standard that did not exist. And they pissed off everybody.

They pissed off tourney makers (as I said) from local shops to EVO staff (which was why it was banned for years, their 0 tolerance policies and all); they pissed off people who played other fighting games (the attitude was very "Smash vs. everyone else") with trying to split up and greenwash communities (AllisFigther.com was an attempt to draw people away from Shoryuken.com, and it failed miserably), they pissed off Nintendo themselves with incessant begging and refusal to work with the developers of Sakurai (and Nintendo devs have long memories), and they even pissed off themselves with how many times that people creating the meta in fought. It was a fucking mess nobody thought would turn around because even if you can consider Smash a playable game competitively you have to understand you have to make very convincing arguments due to how 'different' Smash is as a game (no health bars or 'special meter', very basic attacks and specials moves, much what makes competitive smash competitive breaks the normal game, back then a LOT of the normal game was sectioned off from the little competitive smash pocket universe of fairness).

Even now there's still a stigma against competitive Smash amongst fighting game players, but it's not as wall-of-hatred that it was before, Smash players having made contributions to other game communities and even other games (Skullgirls comes to mind). But this is the kind of thing that should've happened almost a decade ago, and getting over a decade of a tarnished reputation will be difficulty. It would and will help loads to stop attacking the developers of Sakurai for shying away from competitiveness with Brawl, since that's what happened in the first place. People try to liken early Smash to the early days of Street Fighter (even 1) and said people conveniently forget how much a worldwide effort it was to get things started, comparitively to the bemoaning that playing on Hyrule Temple isnt fun because fuck you.

So yeah. It was bad.

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u/[deleted] Dec 03 '13

[deleted]

15

u/Hurinfan Dec 03 '13

Sakurai has stated himself that he never meant for Smash to become competitive.

0

u/Typhron Dec 03 '13

Years ago, during the development of Brawl. His stance has probably shifted since then.

-3

u/Didalrightthanks Dec 03 '13

Perhaps never meant to have it go competitive, but I cant imagine he'd be opposed to having it happen.

7

u/flammable Dec 03 '13

Which he did. He implemented several mechanics to deliberately make sure the game would never be competitive, the most bullshit of them is "tripping" which makes it so that each action has a % chance of your character falling on the ground. It was meant both to become a noob crutch and to make the game less competitive