Why We Won't See Replay The Finals For A Long Time (season 3 Talk)
All right So the Embar developers gave us some insights on the direction that they want to take the game in the future through the Reddit AMA, and I'm here to break down each reply to you and give my reaction on the topics, starting off with the major question asked by SLA Yori. This is something that I did mention, of course, in my articles if you've been watching, and the great news is that Ember is planning to get text chat added to season 3.
The advantages of text chat can definitely be helpful for those who prefer to type instead of using voice commands, and in some cases, it can allow players to connect and share experiences during their gameplay. Of course, flaming is the main disadvantage, but this is very prominent in most competitive games.
I do think that Embark will or should have, you know, punishing features in place for those that step too far across the line, but I do hope that it's not completely strict. You know. I know it's hard to balance or draw a line between what is allowed and what isn't in some cases, so obviously I'm not going to be the one here to define that, but I do feel that you know some games can be quite strict and sometimes take you out of context when you may not be intending to be toxic, but they do obviously make muting available on day one of this feature anyway.
The next question is from Turkey, which states that many players think that the finals are an exciting game for eSports. Is there anything you can share about a potential eSports future for the finals now? This is a question that we've seen before and answered if you've been following my channel for a while now, and we know that it's obviously on the Embark Studios radar.
I think features like this are on most FPS games, to be honest, but really, it's kind of down to a few factors in actually having this to grow and work. First, we don't even have spectator mode in private matches. You know, I mistakenly thought that there was one in the game in the patch notes previously.
Basically, it says that there was an option to opt out of the game, so I thought you knew that meant that you could spectate now when I was streaming our community matches on YouTube. Rob and some of the Embark team did actually pop in to check out the game play and mention that this is a feature coming very shortly, possibly at or even just before season 3's start, so this is great news to progress the viewership side of the scene.
I've mentioned before, when talking with L, who is an incredible player from Apex Legends and does dominate pretty damn well in the finals, that the esports scene is likely to need to take a kind of grass-roots approach. Which essentially means that Embar really wants to see eSports grow from us, the community, rather than like a big organization coming over with a blank check and basically monopolizing the entire scene.
We obviously have some early attempts at this, and one of them is a breakout. Esports, as we mentioned before, splits into championships at the end of the year for people that qualify. And I think that obviously, with the additions of private matches and spectator modes, you know it's way better for both viewer and player, rather than just playing in public lobbies, which I actually wanted to take a quick mention of because there's apparently some Discord servers out there still hosting public-based Q-snipe lobbies, which I fit as a pretty negative experience for casual competitive players.
If you don't know Q sniping is when players count down from let's say 5 to one for example, and then basically multiple teams search for a match at the same time with the objective of filling up an entire Lobby of teams facing off against each other now obviously I didn't mind this before private matches were in the game because there was literally no alternative to playing the game against others at your skill level at the level that you want to play but now there is which is obviously private matches I mean sometimes I literally witness some players helping each other qualify on different teams, just so they could continue playing against each other in future rounds and kind of leaving this open and in the air that it's something to pay attention to because I believe it really does kind of make this a negative experience especially if you're unlucky to be filled in as either a solo duo or Trio, against these players mini round over next up is a great question from lenison, who asked is a kill cam something that has been considered.
Valerant was the base inspiration for Unro Engine 4 and did a pretty damn good job, so the difference is that in finals, server-side destruction is a huge talking point. This means that, obviously, elements of the game's environment can be altered or destroyed dynamically. which then affects our gameplay and strategy, so if we did implement a kind of kill cam system in such a context, it's not just about capturing our article footage right to have a replay system; you kind of need to record every single piece of data about those environmental changes, those player movements, and those actions accurately.
Now, the main challenges for embarrassment to tackle actually start off with data intensity, so unlike technically simple games where their environments are quite static, for example, valerant, the finals need to handle the recording of complex interactions and environmental destruction. This can lead to a massive amount of data that needs to be captured and stored, significantly more than a typical shooter's.
Now, having just kill cams takes that burden off massively compared to an entire match's replay mode because, obviously, you can dynamically delete the data on the fly. So, for example, a solution could be that Embar could record the actions of players every second and, obviously, the server and the destruction, but after 10 seconds of that game, play has gone by without an elimination.
Then that data can obviously be deleted. Gadgets used and barrels exploded, as with any online game network latency and synchronization. Issues can affect how actions are recorded and replayed. This obviously makes it even more challenging to ensure that the replay truly reflects the game as it was played.
If you remember, these developers came over from Dice, which you know did previously work on the battlefield titles, and they had actually the particular same issues to face as well, because notice how we haven't had a killcam mode in the battlefield. Obviously, the finals are now the bread and butter and life cycle for these developers, which means that they're not going to be forced or pressured into making, you know, the finals, the DLC, etc., and you know they're forced to stick to a tight deadline.
