Open letter to Mohamed Fadl on E-sports

eekeeboo: Going to start with pointing out to those who say what is the point in e-sports and no one cares etc. There is a point, in a healhty and popular e-sports scene you are talking about a lot of money in sponsors, branding and technology companies making money and creating products that are more suited to gaming etc. The only reason we have shiny keyboards and nice mice, comfy gaming chairs etc etc all due to "e-sports" and opening a market to allow companies to get to know what people actually want and advertise the right product etc.    I apologise for length but i've tried to make it as structured and easily read as possible while also covering everything I've read in the above posts. I have provided solutions to the issues as seen by myself and brought up by other WGLEU/NA/RU people who have had discussions on this in the past.    Personal opinions and solutions as seen by myself follows: Format Problem: The e-sports set-up is too far from the random battle aspect and as such people cannot emulate what they see in the game like they can in every other popular e-sports game.    Solution:  Though steps have been taken to move to tier 10 to encourage a closer relationship to the random game, the fact that maps have to be altered and changed to suit the e-sports format should tell you about the current set of maps suitability towards competitive play etc. There should be a focus on improving maps that involve attacking and defending objective(s) like a cap etc.    Time   Problem: I like watching e-sports and spend a great amount of time in the different regions channels, but plain and simply sometimes and more often than not the sheer amount of time required to invest into watching such things is far too much. People generally watch streamers because you can leave and come back when/where you like pick up what you want etc. Even in other games where the e-sports is more healthy and popular, during dull moments greater effort is made to enhance what is happening for viewers.    For example: League of Legends; champion selection. What should be quite a tedious process is hyped up with reason, casters use statistics and facts to explain why certain choices/bans could be pivotal, how a certain player on a certain class could make or break the game... or perhaps a certain individual is choosing something that baffles all and not even the casters can explain.    The unfortunate aspect of how teams are set up and how they organised allows for far too much down time between action. I think the fact you have gaps of 5 minutes between actual games and then further gaps while teams change that average upwards of 5 minutes is far too much. Would you stay on a TV channel if after every 7 minutes of programme you get 10 minutes of adverts? No you would switch and MAYBE switch back..... that's if you're invested in actually watching the programme.    Solution:I chose this first to help support a following solution: Have Home and Away games. The teams play each other twice in the season, each chooses the map they want to play on, you then play each map twice, once as attacker and once as defender. You can then have nearly all teams play on one night instead of 2 teams per night. Have the round last no more than 10 minutes. The ready up time is 2 minutes from connection to lobby to loading the game.    Next now you have map choices focus on tank choices by players, explain why certain tanks will be chosen where on the map they will focus or stay, what role are they likely to play? Is there a choice that utterly fails to provide logical explanation. I remember fondly in WGLNA when googblyboppers chose nothing but IS6's/KV5's on MInes and went hill... everyone thought they were crazy, but they bullied the enemy team and the tactic was flawless in victory until the very end of the season where they lost 1 game. After that people opened up explanations, tactics strengths and weaknesses etc, that then resulted in people being excited about that team on that map just to see what would happen next, will they have the balls to do the same thing? etc.    An example of where team organisation can work and I genuinely don't understand why it takes some teams so long to organise themselves and get ready (maybe a pro-player would like to explain?) is and though some of you will find this laughable, the fact that on such a low population game, in World of Warplanes we can play best of 5 over 2 maps in entirety within 30 minutes at most. That includes making rooms, organising teams, connecting, loading and any possible restarts etc.    Casters   Problem: This is where some of you will disagree, the casters actually do a good job, the issue is not in the casters but in what they have to cast. Some will complain at how much the casters are talking and what they are talking about. But if a team for some unbeknown reason (see above) is taking 10 minutes to choose tanks and get ready, what would you like the casters to talk about? nothing is actually happening. That is where I believe the tank choice and map choice could provide opportunities for the casters to get across their knowledge and do Q&A with viewers about previous matches and games etc.    The casters that we currently have for WGLEU are very capable with an ex pro player (laughter) (granted arty) but if you get around to looking at his profile he is no way someone who is weak at the game. And Mitch is an excellent shot caller and play by play because of his ability to speak quickly and clearly. We then have m3lly who does the competitions and Q&A etc    Solution: I believe there's nothing yet to solve, this I believe is not down to the casters but down to the current format and the amount of time filling they have to do, which I am impressed at. Though I greatly loved the random battles played recently during a space between games. Going for WGLNA timmy videos, and big daves auto sales videos RNG etc I think would also help.    Inclusion   Not going to split this into problem and solution as the point stands, if you are good enough, you get on a team, if you're not then you're not. It's not about equality and inclusion, it's about skill and ability to play the game at the highest level/standard. If you are able to do that and put in the time then there are no barriers other than personality to prevent you from getting on to or starting your own team. The same goes for casters etc, the fact that the current casting crew of WGLEU is 50% male and 50% female... how much more would you like there to be more women included?    The point is in no discrimination, that includes against males who are good enough to play but would be unable to play because they are the wrong gender. It comes down to the fact, if you're good enough and you're able to work in a team then you're in. If you're not, then you're not. I would like to point out on the caster crew that both female crew are ex pro players at FPS games.    Action Coverage   Problem: Unfortunately the way the client currently works you are only capable of using the free roaming camera to cover in game events, if you've ever tried to use it you would understand just how difficult it is to use while at the same time concentrating on what you're doing. It is easy to miss events on other sides of the map etc and the fact the client also does not allow first person views.    Solution: This comes down mostly to WG enable their client so that spectators can view action from the first person view while also able to get to a birds eye/third person view of the battlefield. The other issue of what and when to cover and missing things can be alleviated by having your main camera with your current caster, and then have a small window on the screen with what the other caster is looking at, switch between the two and people can see what's happening at 2 different points on the map then.    Rewards for watching   Again this doesn't get divided to problem and solution as rewards are given out for actively participating in chat, rather than having a couple hundred bots spamming the same word in chat and then people complaining about the bots winning. The only way that you prevent the bot prevalence is to make it so that you have to vote etc and so that you have to perform an action a bot can't do to win. Again I would like to see something like the fantasy league that NA has etc to encourage more chat participation etc. No one was happy about bot spamming and with the QR code fiasco so as stated in that announcement moons ago, in chat giveaways were no longer going to happen and were a thing of the past due to some people ruining it for others and the reason we cannot have nice things.    Response coverage   8. Increase the WoT knowledge between your streaming production crew and your commentators. Why cant we see the face of the players in real time when they are hitting or missing the decisive shot? The issue is these players are playing at home in their own environment in their own rooms, not all have webcams let alone ones with high quality. This adds another technical issue that could go wrong during games. As stated above the knowledge the commentators etc have is probably far better than yours.    Entertainment of casters 9. Your commentators need to be entertainers too, why not dressing them with WW2 uniforms and having them to be more enthusiastic and knowledgeable? The commentators are professionals, they are not clowns. They are there to do a job and perhaps have a bit of fun, but it is unfair to turn them into dancing monkeys for your amusement. If you have actually watched the WGLEU you will see and hear how enthusiastic laughter, mitch, lauren and m3lly are at every show.