Declaration of Intent
The Pentastorm Invitational showcased both the potential possible downfalls of Pentastorm as an esport.
Editor’s Note: Pentastorm is a LoL/Dota style game for smartphones that’s recently received a lot of buzz due to 1.) its publisher, Netmarble, being a multi-billion dollar company, 2.) high game quality according to multiple reviews and 3.) a concerted marketing push to make Pentastorm into an Esport. This article reviews Pentastorm’s fledgling esports scene.
OnGameNet (OGN) recently hosted the Pentastorm Invitational, an event where teams competed for prize money of ₩13 000 000 across two showmatches, held at OGN’s e-stadium in Digital Media City. This event provided the world with the first glimpse at what Netmarble hopes to be the next big esport. There was a great deal of excitement and spectacle, and production value was typical of OGN’s high quality. However, there were some shortcomings to Pentastorm itself that will need to be overcome in order for it to be better-suited to be considered a viable contender to established esports like League of Legends or CS:GO.
Off to a good start — quality pre-game content
There were many positive aspects to how the Pentastorm Invitational presented this new challenger to the mobile MOBA esports throne to its viewers around the world. The first of these was the strength of the pre-game provided about the game, teams, and players.
The Invitational began with the casters briefly outlining how a game of Pentastorm works, and showing the terminology that would be used to describe each of the lanes and positions in the game.
As someone who has not watched Pentastorm before, this was incredibly helpful. It helped me wrap my head around the general shape of the map, its key objectives, and the names of the lanes, helping me to place each area in relation to the all of the others.
After this introduction, the casters introduced us to the first two teams competing at the Invitational: Penta Legend and MVP. This was done through more high-quality video content, giving good insight into the composition of each team, and which players played which role. There were also short interviews with the players, giving their opinions on Pentastorm as a game.
However, the pre-game content that I found most interesting was the discussion of the Key Player of each team. This is vital information for someone new to an esport — it gives them a player to focus on, to watch out for. Rather than have to try and figure out who I should keep my eye on for big plays, the organizers had done their homework and helped me along. The concept of outlining a Key Player is a remarkable tool for getting into an esport, and I hope it is something that is continued in coverage of Pentastorm esports.
Get to the meat — the game itself
With the pre-game content completed, I was ready to watch my first match of Pentastorm. I was struck by how similar it looked to League of Legends. The stylized characters and bright colours made for a eye-catching scenes, and I was drawn into the series between Penta Legend and MVP instantly. The teams faced each other off in each of the lanes, feeling out the balance of power between them. Within two minutes, the first teamfight flared up, with MVP leaving as victors. A few flashy fights and less than 10 minutes later, the first game was done, with MVP the clear winners. ‘Alright,’ I thought, ‘that was all over awfully quick. Maybe the next game will be less one-sided.’ It wasn’t. MVP once again took the lead early and never let it go until the Penta Legends were routed and left defeated 2–0.
The next series, between 슈퍼한국네임드 and Five God Mouth, proved to be a much closer affair. Five God Mouth won the series 2–0, but the two teams were more evenly-matched than MVP and Penta Legend proved to be.
Across the course of the two series, viewers were treated to how eye-catching and fast-paced Pentastorm can be. No game lasted more than 15 minutes, and yet there was still a good deal of action to be had in that short space of time. Each game was enjoyable, but by the end of watching two full series, I felt like I was done with watching Pentastorm for a while. This was mostly due to a number of shortcomings that I saw within the game that were hampering the viewer experience.
Who am I, and why am I here?
The first of these was the lack of a dedicated observer. For each of the four games screened across two series, the matches were viewed by an observer switching between different players’ game displays. This was disorienting and distracting for me as a viewer new to the game for a number of reasons.
When the observer switched between teams, the colours of each team’s health bars would change from red to blue, or vice versa, and the selected hero’s bar would be green. This made following the outcomes of the flashy, quick teamfight skirmishes that Pentastorm has to offer very difficult, as you as an observer had to look at the screen names of the players in order to determine which team was which. While this might not sound like an onerous task, it detracts from the engagement with the action in the heat of a clash between the teams. The viewer is forced to frantically scan the screen to see which player is on which team, and this is distracting where it needn’t be.
Having the observer tied to each player perspective also means that the camera view is not likely to be perfectly positioned at any point in the game. Whether it is trying to capture the spectacle of a five-on-five engagement or simply scanning the lanes during downtime in the action, being forced to center the camera on a single player’s character restricts an observer greatly. Using player perspective also includes superfluous information like the players’ movement scrollers and attack buttons on the sides of the screens. These might be vital to the players, but clog the screen for viewers and are completely unnecessary. Finally, as in the image above, following a player might result in short periods where there is no real action on the screen.
Creating dedicated observer functionality and training observers to use it would greatly improve the look of the game when streamed, as a good observer can capture every worthwhile moment in even the most boring of games and make them exciting to viewers.
Shallow end of the hero pool: an underdeveloped metagame
After four games of Pentastorm, I had seen a number of heroes multiple times. At time of writing, Pentastorm features over 27 heroes, with new heroes being released on a regular basis. I was not expecting the hero variance of a day of watching Dota 2 or League of Legends, with their hero pools both more than 100, but I was expecting a wider variety in team composition than I received. Sure, it was cool to see the guy that looked like a demon stomp everyone around him, but after seeing him multiple games running without seeing some heroes even once, I was left disappointed. For an event meant to showcase the entirety of Pentastorm, there was a good deal of left unexplored. This will likely improve dramatically as new heroes are added to the game, which needs to happen soon in order to prevent my own personal fatigue becoming an experience shared by many others.
Call the banners: the need to reconcile titles
Arguably the most significant obstacle to Pentastorm as an esport wasn’t directly visible on the screens of the Pentastorm Invitational. This is the fact that not all players of Pentastorm actually play Pentastorm. Currently, Pentastorm is one of three versions of the same base game, with none of the player pools being shared between titles. These three titles are 王者荣耀 (King of Glory) in China, Strike of Kings in the West, and 펜타스톰 (Pentastorm) in Korea. In order for any of them to succeed as an esport, they all need to be reconciled to one version of the game. This is because the most important part of any esport is its players. The players of any game are more likely to watch content of that game, and all of the professionals who would become a part of the esport scene of a game have to play that particular game. If the players are split across three playerbases, this dramatically restricts the potential size of the esport. The companies in charge of Pentastorm and the other variants need to decide which version will be the definitive version, and phase out the other versions. However, as they are all recent releases, this seems unlikely to happen in the near future. This may mean that, no matter how much money organizers spend on Pentastorm tournaments, the game may be strangled by its own fragmented nature, and peter out before it ever catches on.
The Pentastorm Invitational aimed to herald the arrival of a new esport. The high-quality pre-game content, attractive visuals, and fast-paced gameplay hooked the viewer in quickly. However, as with anything new, Pentastorm’s esports aspirations are not without problems. Until there is dedicated observer functionality, a more diverse metagame, and a reconciled playerbase, Pentastorm risks languishing in the pool of potential esports that just didn’t quite make the bigtime.
All images taken from VODs of the Pentastorm Invitational, available at OGN’s YouTube Channel. Check out Penta Legend vs MVP here, and 슈퍼한국네임드 vs Five God Mouth here. If you would like a review of Pentastorm as a game, check out our review of it here.
