EVE General Discussion

all organized ingame with already existing ingame risks and abilities, which is good, but changing basic game design to make tournaments easy and safe is just moving away from EVE

Unlikely to happen on Group-A level, game's following is abysmal even by 2007 standards, since you cannot count on the the total active player count all to follow. Realistically, the streaming levels would propably mange to break 20 000 viewers, and expecting everyone to return for the viewing is out of the equasion.

The success of Alliance Tournaments gives an inaccurate indication how well the competitive scene would do, since AT is a yearly event there's much more anticipation and hype revolving around it. E-sports on a constant basis usually establishes itself, but on a level where only the most dedicated fans will stick around and actively follow it.

Besides, pro players hate randomness in their games, and competitive EVE is very, very random indeed. The premise is the same as in any other competitively played game, much of the success is determined by tactics, strategy and careful planning, but space is empty which brings me to the randomness of EVE.

Group A eSports rely on the hairfine details for the engagement, but emphais on different fields; in Counter-Strike is all about spread patterns, Unreal Tournament is all about reaction speed and map knowledge, and Halo is determined by power weapon management. In EVE, a competent player only needs to take a look at the enemy's ship and one can instantly tell what the ship is bonused for and what the module layout is, which alone usually tells a bit how the opponent is fit.

The problem of randomness which professional players hate, arises from the question of "how", because despite the native bonuses and the module layout, the actual stats in most of the ships are very flexible by default, fits always allow room for experimentation regrdless of the situationally best setup. Everybody hates to take wild guesses, especially pro players.

One might argue "but how about League Of Legends for example, you cannot see the opponent's items", which is very true. However, MOBAs, shooters and strategies are metagame eSports. Every competitive player has already built their setups, be it guns, sights, grenades, armor or whatever you're rolling with, around the very best items of the game at that current. They know every single detail about the assets in the game and with a mere glimpse of the worldmodel can instantly tell what the enemy is using, and because of this the matches are resolved by player input and tactics alone. They include very little randomness because the very best approaches are already in use, there are no wildcards.

EVE on the other hand, will always permit room for a random wildcard, due to relatively constant changes to statistics this game does not have a determined metagame on pro level like DOTA for example has. This does not mean EVE cannot be competitive, but it cannot be top tier competitive either because again, nobody likes to take wild guesses that can potentially cost the entire progress in the ladder.