I would say that the gladiator arena could easily fit into the concept the OP has presented. Would at least be a good place to.recruit for the teams.

@ Fuma Centuri: Seems to be working for everyone else, try clearing your browser cache. From my understanding of the presentations at FF (I was there and spoke to a few of the Devs) The Gladiator Arena is not set in stone as yet. I know I'm biased but I reckon my way would better integrate the E-Sports side of Dust into the universe. Thanks for yr feedback though :D

There would be gambling and corruption, Real world sports leagues don't make money from gambling (not officially at least) they make money from sponsorship and the sale of broadcast rights.

I fully expect an underground economy to arise which would cater to the seedier side of professional sports.

huh so esport and betting using the gladiator arena . . .

theres no chance that a certain corps. won't manipulate the betting to get even more filthy rich Oo
Hell if i could get some billions of isk out of it, i would hardly hesitate to lose on purpose, gotta repay some very nice folks who helped me with eve. . .

yeah i cant see how they can stop people rigging this

It's the same way with alliance tournaments. There is no way to prevent people from rigging the results.

I don't want betting to be shady. Betting on gladiators needs to be NPC-controlled. This is the only way to guarantee a fair cut of the earnings to the gladiator himself. Broadcast rights are crap and a dime a dozen (and also should be free) compared to earning a percent of the whole bets pool.

[quote=Fuma Centuri]Dust is an offshoot of EVE. Corruption, underhandedness, Machiavellian machinations, and meta-gaming are part of the universe. Get used to it and start practising, The big alliances in EVE have had a decade of practice and unless you're ready they will completely dominate the Dust E-Sports scene, whatever form it might take, by fair means or foul.

CCP's attitude is that as long as it doesn't violate the ToS and EULA (hack the client, exploit a known bug, etc etc) that it's fair game. You're going to have to get used to that in Dust as well.

There may well be an official and legitimate channel for betting, but this does not preclude there being an underground culture for it. Makes life in New Eden more interesting, and more interesting is more fun.

The true income for gladiators will be:
A) Set % profits of bets placed - The official CONCORD-sanctioned betting mechanic which guarantees that if you bet X on player A and he wins, you will get your money. You could still make bets between players and omit the fees, but it won't guarantee fair dealings :)
B) BRIBES! - Also known as sponsorship. For example funding your gear for the battle so you will surely win. Or lining your pocket with money if they want you to die in the third round, making for an unexpected twist.

Betting on gladiators needs to be NPC-controlled. This is the only way to guarantee a fair cut of the earnings to the gladiator himself.

Your website does not work, so I'll just comment here on how CCP plans to make DUST514 an e-sport:
(This is what the developers said on fanfest)
DUST will eventually have a battle mode called "gladiator arena" and in this arena, players will fight with a set of rules. This allows equal items and only player skill to matter. Or who thought of a better fitting for a battle, etc.
Now the brilliant part: EVE players (and normal ones too, I guess) can place bets on the results of gladiator battles. Imagine an e-sport that is not only an e-sport, but an actual sport within a game within a game. Crazy good idea :D

@vermacht Doe: What? How is that relevant to the discussion at hand? Put it in Feedback/Requests (Ain't gonna happen though)

Everything is optional, that was the general idea of the original concept. To create systems and mechanics which widened the options available to both Dust and EVE players. None of it would be compulsory, just as taking and holding 0.0 space as part of a big alliance in EVE is optional.

I still get the feeling that we're talking at cross-purposes. Your concern is the micro-economic scale of the individual player, mine is at the macro scale of how an entirely new entertainment industry could be introduced to New Eden.

I think it should involve a third person melee system to differ it from regular combat. To give people a good chance without having to be the best in dust/eve

There is nothing forcing you to go 0.0, but there are some aspects of the game that are specifically tuned to groups, like exploration. This is a personal example since I wanted to be an EVE explorer. Back when I started, the whole thing was extremely tedious and took over ten minutes per scan to do, and the rewards weren't much.
Now with wormholes, exploration has become much more exciting, but it's impossible to do alone. You cannot have an exploration ship fitted with probes that can at the same time solo any wormhole encounters. So while I technically have choice, it is impossible for me to actually do wormhole exploration alone. Doing it in groups is forced on me.

As such. I do what I can to voice my concerns about forcing anything on the player in DUST. I won't mind people doing metagame selling of broadcasts deals with other people and doing stuff related to the game outside of the game. They should get more rewards for putting more effort, but in no case should it be that a player who chooses not to bother, will be unable to use this feature at all, because without an audience they won't earn anything.


I think you are right, but the micro-scale concerns me much more greatly and dearly than some grand economic scheme I have no interest and time to care about :)


No. You will simply have selectable rules for the arena.
Like for example: No gun. No REs. No knives. No jumping. Fox only. Final destination.

only error i've noticed so far is the Starcraft 2 comment, saying e-sports came from that game. It actually took off when Starcraft came out, and the Koreans got into it... but yeah, I'm going to continue reading it.

Edit: another thing, E-sports is actually fairly major on many computer games. IeSF is a major example, look it up.

Has selectable rules been confirmed? And if so who decides them

Nothing has been confirmed yet, merely that e-sports is something that CCP is looking at introducing. There is nothing set in stone as to the form(s) it will take.