Gamescom 2017 ESL PUBG Invitational Afterthoughts
So this weekend we saw the completion of the first ever PUBG LAN event. It wasn’t the first PUBG event, there have been a few smaller ones at Dreamhack and the likes, but it was the first one held on an offline LAN server and also had full support and publicity of Bluehole behind it , so by many metrics it was the first ever major PUBG esports event.
Let’s get a few things out of the way first: this was a showmatch. There were no qualifiers to get here (aside from the 4 total duo slots for TPP and FPP), half the players invited were streamers/content creators, and since the competitive scene is still developing you’d be hard pressed to convince anyone that the invited pro teams were invited because of skill rather than celebrity. This event was, more than anything else, a teaser for audiences as well as a test for Bluehole/tournament organizers (in this case ESL) for how PUBG esports is going to look. Battle royale is a unique game mode compared to the usual 1 team v 1 team setup that other esports have, and so a lot still needs to be figured out on how it will work. What I’m going to be doing here is taking what I experienced at the event and break down some of my thoughts and suggestions on what changes should be made to develop the best esports experience for viewers and competitors.
I’ll start with game mechanics before going into event formats/deciding a winner.
Disclaimer #1: because of the casual, showcase format of the event as well as the small sample size of the days (best of 3 is way small for this but I’ll get into that later) we have yet to see how even our current system works in a “full” esports event. That doesn’t mean that we can’t gather some insight from what happened but it does mean that any ideas had, mine or someone else’s, would have to go through more testing before we’ve developed the “best” system.
Disclaimer #2: I did discuss some of these with players/talent during and after the event and some ideas/solutions may not be original from me.
Because it’s going to inform a lot of the ideas touched down the line, let’s quickly touch on RNG. RNG is always going to be a factor in this game, it’s a factor in literally every game (crit chance in ARTS, bullet spread in FPS, straight up coin flips in card games, etc), but the most competitive games are the ones that minimize the effects of RNG.
First way to minimize RNG: squads. Squads needs to continue to be the main competitive mode. This event did feature both solo and duo (twice with FPP and TPP) but that had more to do with variety of the games as well as broadcast testing. I can’t imagine there’s anyone out there arguing that solo/duo is the preferred competitive mode. The reason squads minimizes RNG more than solo/duo is because the more people there are on a team, the smaller chance as a factor in deciding games becomes. When it’s full teams controlling territory as well as scouting out and taking ground you are significantly less likely to end up walking up to the lone guy chilling in a bush and catching you out.
But even with squads there’s still an element of chance that occurs with so many teams on a single battlefield and so I propose that there should be a smaller map developed to play this game on, say with 12–15 teams on. That way you can keep track of where enemy territory is more easily, but you also aren’t screwed over so easily by where the safe zone occurs.
The safe zone and the blue were also shown to have issues. It was rare, but there were a few times that we saw a game get decided more or less by end-game safe zones. I like how the circles aren’t just the direct center, but I feel like the smaller a circle gets the closer it should stay to the center and by the time it gets so small there are about 5 or so people left alive it should be dead center (even the final closing point should be centered).
We also saw a LOT of abuse with the blue zone. I like the idea of sacrificing some health/meds to loot longer, but we saw people stay in the blue 80–90% of the game and were easily able to heal up. One way to change this is actually a mechanic already used in H1Z1 where the longer you stay outside the safe zone the more damage it deals. This will mean that you can still venture out into the blue for a few moments, but you can’t live there. There was also the idea that if you die to the blue zone you subtract a flat amount of points from what you would otherwise have won by your placing (not to go below 0). This would not only discourage living in the blue but would also make edge playing much riskier. The current meta is that the risk:reward of edge playing is heavily on the reward side, and while it should stay a legitimate strategy I think it discourages proactive play which not only is boring to watch but also gives more power to RNG because of the circle.
The timings of the blue is also something that I’ve been thinking of for a while. Obviously it would be different by default if we were to move to a smaller map, but compared to what we have now I think the blue should move with less time in between movement. In causal play the time we have is fine, but when you look at organized practiced teams the amount of time given is more than enough and we see a lot of dead time where everyone’s just waiting for the blue to move. That could be done with strictly tweaking the numbers, but one idea given was to decrease the speed of the blue as well, so that it starts moving earlier but ends at the same time we have now. This idea I think would only be good if combined with unknown safe zones (where the blue moves to a smaller circle without any warning shown on the minimap where the new safe zone is), which is an interesting idea but one that I’m still on the fence on.
Finally, the water controversy. It’s an issue that you’re basically invincible when you enter the water. I think it’s okay that you aren’t allowed to shoot when you’re in water, and I also don’t want it to be a death sentence either. I think the best way to balance water is keep the visibility the same but make bullets treat water like air. That way you can hide underwater and swim away, but you can’t just hang out with virtually no threat of death like we saw so many pairs do in game 2 of TPP duos.
Now, on to the events themselves. I’ll say again that we had a small sample size of games, but the biggest thing is that, in my opinion, FPP was shown to be superior to TPP. The only argument I need I feel is the end of game 3 of TPP duos where the TSM duo was up against the solo player hanging out in the balcony of a house third person peeking over the wall. The circle could’ve easily allowed him to stay there rather than push him out.
It’s an old conversation at this point, but the free information you get from TPP is unfair. I’ve seen comparisons to the high ground in Dota, but the difference is that it’s not only 1 team v 1 team, it’s also a significantly smaller map, you have wards, and there is no safe zone to potentially force you up there. In a battle royale with up to 100 players it’s unreasonable to play like there’s someone watching every window.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody, but Bo3 is way too small of a series for a tournament. Even with all the ways to minimize RNG it’s still a factor, and so the final way to minimize RNG is to play extended series because it lowers the effect of each single game that has small elements (kills, exact placement) still decided by RNG, albeit in minor ways. Esport tournaments last entire weekends, so playing games for 3 days straight is the obvious PUBG parallel. I foresee games be held in AT MINIMUM best of 11. We could also see an event have a 12 team format and invite 24 teams and split into groups for a few days and the top 1/2 of each group advance to the “playoff” series.
The issue that will exist no matter what, though, is how do you give incentive to the teams at the bottom of the scoreboard to continue to play if they know they have no chance at winning the whole thing. I suppose this could be solved by prize money going up at each placement so there’s at least a monetary incentive to get the best score possible even if winning #1 on the last game won’t get you the gold.
There was no way for this event to get it right on the first try, but nonetheless I’m pretty sure we all know the scoring was flawed. For starters, the disparity between #1 and #2 was way too large. It jumped from 500 to, I believe, 360 points. I don’t know if we want to make it a linear increase across the whole scoreboard, but definitely not that big of a jump.
There’s also the issue with kills. Survivability should always be more important than kills, we don’t want school-fests every match, but kills should mean something. The exact numbers will have to be balanced with placement scores but what we saw at Gamescom was way too low. There should be the possibility that if you get enough kills you could get more points in a game than the player who placed 1 bracket ahead of you. How many kills needed for that will have to be figured out with the balance of map size, team number, place scores, etc.
I don’t have any way to close this in a grand fashion, this was mostly an unorganized rambling. This was also never meant as my 1 true manifesto on the game. PUBG esports is still in its infancy and the solution to a number of these issues could be completely different from what I’ve suggested.
Thanks for reading, have a nice day.
