Board 8 > What's the best eports game to watch?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hard mode: what's the best to watch if you've never actually played the game before?

Like sometimes I watch EVO even though I don't play the games featured, and they look cool, but I can't really appreciate the moves or techs if I haven't played the game myself. Like, I can understand "Oh, this dude pulled off a big combo. That looked cool" but I don't really get the intricacies of their movements or understand how the power meters or whatever works so my comprehension of good plays is limited. And then I've tried watching professional MOBA matches and they've all seemed like complete incomprehensible nonsense to me since I don't play those at all.

Honestly? Probably Tekken. Fighting games are already good spectator sports because of their relative simplicity compared to other esports, and Tekken is probably the easiest to comprehend out of the genre - just about anyone can grasp the core concept of "person 1 punch, person 2 kick, when lifebar empty that person lose". Yes there's a lot more going on under the surface, but a) that's not always relevant to someone just looking for something to watch and b) at big tournaments commentators are usually pretty good about breaking down the hypest moments in simpler terms.

I know what you mean.

In my opinion, RTS games like the starcraft or age of empires series are more comprehensible to a non-player. You can visually see the armies and bases and have a sense for what's going on. there isn't information that's obscure to the viewer like items and cooldowns in a moba

the pace is also slower than in fighting games, and interactions have more planning, which allows viewers to anticipate big moves, ambushes, tricky plays, etc

Super Smash Bros Melee for the Nintendo Gamecube

I love watching Dota, but a lot of that is because I have an overall grasp on most of the weird interactions exist in the game from decades of practice at this point. Warcraft 3 is similarly neat to watch at this point, but I could never get into Starcraft.

From a fighting game perspective I like watching those I have played before myself - Smash, Street Fighter 4/5/6, Samsho, UMvC3, Soul Calibur. Not a fan of Arcsys stuff though, and am less a fan of Smash Melee at this point because of my sheer jealousy and inability to do the mechanical bullshit in that game. (I similarly get tilted trying to determine what the fuck happened when a Steve goes ape in Ultimate)

RTS is probably the easiest to get into if you don't play them. It's a shame that it's pretty dead as an esports genre now. Watching SC1&2 during their peaks was wonderful.

Fighting games are probably the 2nd easiest thing to watch imo, but you've already mentioned you're not satisfied with that.

So, tbh, I don't think there's any great options left at the moment. Trackmania would have been a suggestion, but its main esports league went belly-up this year, so that's now gone too.

Pokemon

Rocket League. When two really good teams are flying all over the place, it's truly a sight to behold. And it's not like watching a typical sports video game, because a team can be on the absolute back foot saving a goal on their side, and then have a tremendous scoring opportunity on the other within 3 seconds. It's wild.

And the decision to have regulation end only when the ball hits the ground leads to some really tense end of matches.

Watch the last 30 seconds of this grand finals game 7 to determine the world champion and tell me this doesn't make you feel something.

https://youtu.be/JgJXN6K7V7A?si=udPX6YdYNpfcmPuK&t=3224

That was awesome

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 by far for me. Less time wasted on footsies and more flashy combos and comebacks than most fighters

But I feel the amount of enjoyment you can get watching a game is going to be heavily bottlenecked by your knowledge of the game being honest. This is true of normal sports too. If you don't get why something is happening or matters it's going to mean a lot less to you.

So I'd just say "find the game you're most familiar with that has an e sports scene" or "learn how to play a game with an e sports scene at a passable level"

DireKrow posted...

RTS is probably the easiest to get into if you don't play them. It's a shame that it's pretty dead as an esports genre now. Watching SC1&2 during their peaks was wonderful.

Fighting games are probably the 2nd easiest thing to watch imo, but you've already mentioned you're not satisfied with that.

So, tbh, I don't think there's any great options left at the moment. Trackmania would have been a suggestion, but its main esports league went belly-up this year, so that's now gone too.

Age of Empires 2 has been having a Renaissance lately. Hidden Cup 5 took place a couple weeks ago and imo it went very well and had decent viewership.

For me it's Dota by miles, but that wasn't true until I'd made a huge investment into learning what in the world was happening on screen.

For things you can enjoy immediately without doing hours of homework, my votes go to Rocket League and StarCraft.

With fighting games is that I feel like it requires a good deal of knowledge about the specific game to understand why what you're seeing is impressive.

I think RTS his the sweet spot where it's generally pretty apparent what's going on and who's winning and losing when armies fight. But also the scale of the game can be apparent as well and you can see that the impressiveness that one person is controlling workers and buildings and upgrades and making small adjustments to the army positioning, etc.

Does geoguessr count as an esport? It's super entertaining and very easy to understand even for someone not into gaming at all.

Other options are Rocket League or (Blitz / Rapid) Chess (if that counts). Obviously not classical chess but blitz and rapid is very watchable for anyone with at least a slight interest in chess.

I used to watch a lot of Counter Strike when I played a lot of Counter Strike. Counter Strike is fun...it's been so long since I've watched a match though.
Weirdly I never got into watching Rocket League the same way. And I play a LOT of Rocket League.

Games I don't play? iRacing.
I don't watch it that much TBH but I love racing though and It's kind of a dream though to have a full racing rig setup. Maybe some day...

Counter strike and EVO.

Nothing else compares

Rocket League (> Geoguesser, since it was brought up) > Smash > Other fighters >= RTS >>> League of Legends > Other Mobas >= Shooters

I think this is the "I don't know these games" list, so basically just "ease of understanding without knowledge" crossed with innate hype. League beats other Mobas for having solid visual clarity even if you don't know the game. I tried getting into watching Dota a few times and the lack of knowledge was not the reason I couldn't follow the game. They're all very low tier for this though. Shooters, I also had a lot of trouble trying to follow and understand, though that could just be the specific ones I tries (OW,CSGO) specifically being specifically awful zero-knowledge watches

Smash beats other fighters for sheer breadth of iconic characters.

I would put shooters above MOBAS.

Yeah callouts and strategy won't make sense but the basic gameplay of like Siege or Counterstirke feels easier to follow than MOBA gameplay where I watch and have no idea what is happening or who is winning unless it's really one sided.

The most hype and fall out of my chair moments come from fighting games (and Smash Bros specifically) but my favorite to watch is probably high level Dota. I haven't even played in 5+ years but it's still fun to watch how the game evolves.

Rocket League is absolutely the answer for watching without ever having played it. It's soccer with rocket cars, immediately easy to understand and enjoy.

i think card games are pretty neat to watch competitive games of depending on how "healthy" the meta for them is at the time

lowkey also i liked watching competitive pokemon unite when the game was close to non-toxic too since it was still really straightforward to follow

oh yeah also arcade style puzzle games are amazing to see multiplayer in an overwhelming amount of the time. i'm much more a puyo fan than tetris (and much more panel de pon than puyo for that matter) but they're all a great time. i wish some of the more hectic ones out there that i've played had a competitive scene, like say Magipon, or Moepon/Hoepon, or Kasiori, or Akashicforce. those would be godtier to watch at a high level imo)

#1 is Starcraft 1 and it's not even a little bit close. Partly because the game might legitimately be the best esport of all time, but also because it has the best casters with like, decades of synergy together and they know how to make even a total newbie grasp how the game functions.

#2 onwards is trickier. I kinda wanna say either Marvel 2 or a King of Fighters entry? Both are absolute hype machines and always get massive reactions from any crowd, and they're on exact opposite ends of the 'wtf is going on' spectrum -- Marvel 2 is such a mad scramble that the sheer insanity takes over, KoF is so clear about what's going on that you can track it easily even if you don't know a single thing about it.

When there's a good story going on EVO can feel like the peak event.

For regular season, I like League of Legends as its a pretty simple follow and the nexus can act as a goal so the viewing angles is closer to a regular sports broadcast.

I tried watching some CS, but the POV changes always leave me lost.