Judging from what I played, it'll have absolutely no hardcore competitive following.

Dunno, generally don't pay much attention to metagame stuff, but the game is definitely uber fun and the devs will hopefully make sure it stays that way!

it's not as simple as that.  when i was on a team of 3 rollers we got destroyed because fo the limited range.  theoretically if you got a team of 4 chargers v 4 rollers, and were able to kill all the rollers within secs of each other youd be able to corner them to the starting spotand basically base camp.  3 charges could take 4 rollers on that map with the long straight away leaving the 4th charger to win the turf.

That's the opposite of what happened to me, I won most matches when I was on a team with either 3 or 4 rollers, we were constantly dying but the ground those things cover is insane, I was being hyperbolic earlier but I totally think that the game needs a bit of balancing....then again they only gave us default weapons to use.

Does it really have E sport potential?

Splatzone and that tower defense mode definitely have potential. I'm curious as to what the rainmaker mode will be.

Are you sure?

This game can get really crazy. A lot of report of games being decided by 0.1%

It no smash bros melee, maybe, but i would say it on par with  SSB 64, at the very least.