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EVE Online PVP Tournament Streamed Live
infinitevalence writes "Every few months the good Viking programmers of the north organize and present one of the most geeky e-sports out there. Thanks to them, for three weekends in a row we get to watch player-controlled spaceships fight it out for accolades and unique in-game items available only to the first, second, and third place winners. This year CCP has all of the content live online and streaming in HD for your viewing pleasure. So find a drink, whip up some snacks, watch the shiny explosions, and listen to the soothing words of player experts as they walk you through the action!"
I'm surprised more game companies aren't taking advantage of streaming and even static online video. If you look around youtube, most of the game videos are "Let's Play's" or other fan material, not official content. Maybe they don't think it's worth the effort.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
EVE online has many critics with very valid points, but never in my life have I had a PvP experience like in EVE. I've been gaming for over 20 years and never before EVE had I had a genuine fight-or-flight adrenaline rush. The terror of combat and the thrill of victory are unmatched outside actual combat. I've since quit the game, but I always look forward to watching the 10 man tournaments.
For those of you unfamiliar with the epic scale combat can reach, I suggest you look at the EVE Dominion trailer. It's a moderately accurate depiction of an alliance battle, or at least what it would be if the servers didn't get borked every time 100 ships jump into a system (one reason for quitting).
It's lots and lots of grinding for money so you can experience a battle for a few minutes and then you're back to 10h of grinding. It's hard to find a fair player, most of them will try to scam you in any way possible. Honorable players are rare. It's next to impossible to [find] a fair fight. There are definitely great moments in game, but the amount of negativity is overwhelming and that is the reason so many people leave after trial runs out. Even those who have full accounts take breaks and often complain of boredom. It has a very low ratio of fun/"time invested".
sounds strikingly similar to my life.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
It's funny watching the videos, because they look cinematic enough to be a news event but they're treated as a sports event.
...and the alliance initiated hostilities, killing 10,000 civilians.
...it looks like the scimitar ripped right through that battleships hull. The alliance is doing good damage to those ships. But they'll want to step up their game if they want more kill points.
I'm half expecting the narration to be in a somber, journalistic tone:
Then the sports commentator tone comes in:
It's kinda surreal in a weird way.
When you die, you lose your ship right? What on earth would compel a team to enter a tournament unless they were sure they were in range of the top 4 spots? How isolated are these tournaments? Can random people just fly in and start messing stuff up? Can you run away if you're about to be killed? What are the limitations of the team? What's to stop a really rich team from having a better loadout? Or a really big team? Can you have a large team of cheap ships? How many human players are involved in a battle. Don't you think for streaming purposes they should remove the red/blue overlay which makes a cool space battle look like just a bunch of squares standing around if you don't know the game?
These would be fun to watch if they had decent announcers. They are just saying "Team A is doing a lot of damage to Team B's (insert ship name)" and stuff like that. Even someone who has never played the game could look at the screen and tell you that. I wouldn't listen to a baseball announcer who just said "It's the 3rd inning, and the guy in the middle is throwing a ball at someone holding a bat. Look! He hit it! Now the scoreboard shows Team A scored."
Instead, they need to be informed of the loadouts ahead of time so they can say "Team A is using speed tanking to prevent missile damage by the (insert ship type here). This loadout is weak against smart bombs but works great against Team B's choice of long range missile damage."
I haven't played in years, and it is hard to make the action of a bunch of icons interesting without someone giving relevant background. It's too bad: the game is so highly tactical it really would add a lot of value to have people who know what they are talking about.