Man, I really wish less competitive arena shooters (and games in general) were:
-made to be esports
-relying on harmful stereotyping tropes to make a "character"
-giving every woman in their starting roster the exact same body type

But maybe I'm just asking too much.

I feel like I should explain why I dislike games designed specifically to be esports. Because, in theory, that should be what you want to do. To make a game from the jump that's going to be competitive on a very high, professional level.

The problem is it's incredibly hard to know WHAT will be important to players of any level in practice when you're designing the game. That's true for everything and why testing is so important.

For instance, I remember League of Legends having a very heavy focus on magic damage early on. That shift to end up heavier on physical. Then mixed damage (which only a few champions dealt). The accompanying armors were THE armors.

Speed was everything, to the point that there was a meta where everyone got teleport boots for a minute. LoL is a living game, constantly trying to balance around the meta flavor of the week. It's... exhausting to think about balancing all that, especially with new releases.

Was LoL always meant to be an esport (god, is that even grammatically correct)? I'm not sure. But It didn't really hit that point for a VERY long time. It was a long and arduous and EXPENSIVE road to get there too. It took almost a decade.

Looking at Overwatch (which is probably the fastest success I can think of), it fast-tracked itself and still took 2-3 years to develop a strong enough competitive scene to support a professional league.

(It also took about 5 for them to care about lower tier scenes but...)

Apex Legends, currently in its second year, is still building its competitive scene but doing it actively while also navigating kinda massive balance changes. I would like to see them not go the way of OW and neglect T2/T3 play though...

So I suppose the recipe for esports is:

potentially competitive game +
interested and engaged fanbase =
competitive scene

competitive scene +
active feedback and balancing +
2-3 years of nurturing said competitive scene

which isn't exactly a start goal kinda thing there.

It can be nurtured and cultivated but it's... probably not a great starting goal.

To be fair to Rocket Arena, they don't explicitly say they're trying to do an esports. But it certainly feels that way. For whatever reason, a battle pass like motivator signals that to me.

So yeah. I wish more competitive online multiplayer games would allow their esports scenes to grow more organically. That's it, that's the thread. Nurture them at all levels but... let it breathe.

Okay, Big E gif now.

God, I realized that I didn't even get into the stereotypes and visual design of women aspect but when my first thought looking at one of the characters was "oh... Nidalee... we're here again"? That's a bad sign right there.

So my opinion on the matter?