Planetary Annihilation as an eSport

I was just wondering how much devs focus in the competitive aspect of PA. Could PA become an eSport sometime in the future?

The devs have made a lot of statements supporting the idea of PA as an eSport, so I think we're in luck! They have also put on two official tournaments and several devs have been involved in community events through eXodus and PACE before that. On the technical side, PA's client-server structure allows us to write mods and third-party web services that hook into the game and collect data that we can use to organize tournaments.

Have you had a chance to take a look at the eXodus eSports website yet?

http://exodusesports.com/

PA has had a lot of successful tournaments and events already and we currently have two ongoing series that you might be interested in; Clan Wars and King of the Planet.

You can also follow us on our various social media platforms! (And check the PA Mod Manager on Friday for a new way to keep track of us)

Twitter | Facebook | Google Plus | Twitch | Youtube | Steam

Could someone give me a quick rundown on what happened with PACE? I was told that there was some kind of "mortal combat" between PACE and Exodus, from which Exodus emerged victorious. But apparently "it was bad for them both", as a senior forum member has privately told me.

Anyone care to elaborate?

It's not a terribly interesting subject to me, but as long as we are talking about PA as an "esport", we may as well clear up its history too.

The balance is suited to a casual game and the low strategic variation means that it will be stale as a competitive game. The only way vanilla pa is going to succeed as an eSport is if the balance is changed to suit a wide variety of playstyles, each with many different options available to them.

Yes, I know all about eXodus eSports, thank you anyway.

What I had in mind when I posted my question (should have made that explicit I guess) was the dedree of priority for the implementation of an official ladder of ranked play (I am currently using PA stats, which is great, but I think the competitive aspect of PA should be managed by a specific division at Uber). What do you guys think?

I've seen you post this view before. Is this a widely shared view among good players? From my experience with the game, and from the few top matches I've seen on YouTube, it doesn't seem to be true, but then again I am not a very good player, so maybe I am just not able to tell yet.

Isn't that the exact opposite of how most competitive games play out however?

Stale and repetitive, with the casual games actually having the variety of play-styles?

It is certainly a view that I disagree with. Before the ladder reset I was consistently a top 20 player, but I suppose other good players will have their own opinions. There are definitely things I would change in the balance if I was doing it myself, but I'm sure I would cause more problems than I would fix.

Uber is doing ok on balance. Not perfect, but I'm happy.

Also, how about the issue of 1v1 balance, vs. balance for the more complex configurations? (5v5, 3v3v3, etc.)

Are these all the same thing?

Because in the larger games with larger systems, there is so much variety available that I have yet to see two matches that played the exact same way (though admittedly I haven't watched that many matches).

@elodea shares this view or at least a very similar one. I don't know what his exact thoughts on it are but I do know that he thinks it to be full of problems.

1v1s are the most stale. FFAs have more variation in how you end people and ends up with T2 earlier. Team games almost always go T2.

Multi-planet games may be fairly unique, but they all have one thing in common: they're all ludicrously boring.

Team games certainly do seem to add a lot more different styles of play, but it is still unknown whether that is because the added complexity makes it harder to play perfect or if more players means more real viable strategies. We're only just starting to see competitive team games now with the start of Clan Wars, so there's always a chance that we will start to see a 4v4 meta stabilize by the end of the season. Personally I don't really expect that.

Because of server lag, or inherently?

Because as long as the players know how to use teleporters, multi-planet games are better than sex for me.

Being top 10, (trying to be modest here without being biased ) i have to agree with stuart. I think i made a few threads on the competitive side of a game like this.

Basically the view from most players currently is that single planet 1v1 is highly based on spawns for one, and the lack of units.

T2 is impossible usually and orbital is a death sentence usually. My thought was to make economy more efficient, but i had mixed feedback.

Why dont we play multiplanet? Because teleporters are the only real way to win. Unit canon and asteroids would be a nice addition.

Partially server lag, but mostly because it consists of two things:

a.

1. Build units and mass near a teleporter.
2. Spam orbital fabbers and send them to another planet.
3. Get up a teleporter and hope that your units are able to protect it before it gets destroyed.
4. Rinse and repeat until you've destroyed his base, at which point repeat for the next planet that he's ran to.

b.

1. Spam nukes.
2. Get intel.
3. Nuke his com.
4. Hope that he doesn't move it in time.

That's basically it. Even if you have halleyable objects/death stars all that does is change the target for teleporters/nukes. Superweapons don't feel as awesome as experimentals and rushing something is rather boring.

Well, T2 is expensive. So if you play 1v1 on a small planet, it stands to reason that the conflict will be decided long before anyone has had time to bring out the big guns. I mean, you usually can't activate the Annihilaser in 10 minutes either. But what is the solution to this? And is it even a problem? If we fixed this by making all the big guns available within the first 5 or 10 minutes, then the bigger team games in bigger systems would be deprecated. They would lose value.

The problem with big planets is the huge emphasis on air superiority. It's really a big mess imho, but i have confidence that it will be fixed.

Multiplanet is near perfect, disregarding some obvious flaws with orbital. Once orbital gets some more attention like with more invasion variances, i reckon multiplanet will be the norm for 1v1.

I know this can't be everyone, but it seems like 90% of the games I spectate where someone has just let their production run infinitely (I've only had two games slow down on me) most of that time their units are doing nothing. Just chewing up processor cycles. When they do finally move, only 5-10% of their units ever actually do anything, everything else is just a moving metal carpet behind the spearhead. In one of those two games that I've had it happen in, I won with a very quiet teleporter rush with 20 units on the opposite side of the base from his god-swarm. The other one I lost to an unrelated nuke (of course).

Like, I know its nice to have hordes upon hordes within hordes on hordes of units, but 9 times out of 10, its so completely unnecessary, its the equivalent of a 100+ carpet-nuke.

edit: barring those situations where you actually need 100+ nukes just for 2 to reach the commander.

You are just playing with bad players. Join a clan and come play with us on Clan Wars.

I'm not a big fan of team fights or 1v1s, which the impression I've gotten from reading the forums is that's primarily what goes down

Are there any FFA events planned? I can get behind dynamic alliance on occasion.

Also, a horde doesn't actually have to be USED/squandered in order to be effective. Ever heard of deterrence? The mere fact that I have a horde sitting on the ground between my base and my opponent's, will cause the opponent to look for another way to attack me. Could be air from behind, orbital from above, moon on my head, etc. The conflict simply moves to another level, because I've done a good job of fending it off on the current one. The mere existence of all these levels, which are unmatched by any other RTS, is the beauty of the game. The hordes are the icing on the cake.