As a competition player for nearly 10 years i would like to see server or clientside changeable settings:
serverside:
spawntimesettings: maybe mapscripts?
restrictions: class, mines, turrets and supportfire
clientside:
Hudsettings: add fireteam, spawntime overlay and maybe disable weaponoverlay and muzzleflash
demo: record demos
your thoughts?
We’d really like to get the game balance right and avoid adding restrictions or changes in competition that don’t exist on public servers. Keeping the comp scene close to the pub scene is a great aid to keeping it understandable and accessible to more players, something that I feel has really helped SC2 and LoL achieve the eSports success they have.
That said we know how tough a goal this will be to achieve, so some restrictions might be unavoidable, we’ll just have to see how it goes.
I think that making good spawntimes is not really possible w/o involving more comp players (and league admins as well perhaps).
[QUOTE=Anti;415609]We’d really like to get the game balance right and avoid adding restrictions or changes in competition that don’t exist on public servers. Keeping the comp scene close to the pub scene is a great aid to keeping it understandable and accessible to more players, something that I feel has really helped SC2 and LoL achieve the eSports success they have.
That said we know how tough a goal this will be to achieve, so some restrictions might be unavoidable, we’ll just have to see how it goes.[/QUOTE]
I am very sure that we can’t be certain at this point as to what restrictions are actually warranted. I feel like there’s a good counter to just about every class right now. Once the game is refined in mechanics, I would hope that a lot of professional gaming teams come to OBT and see what they can find.
[QUOTE=Anti;415609]We’d really like to get the game balance right and avoid adding restrictions or changes in competition that don’t exist on public servers. Keeping the comp scene close to the pub scene is a great aid to keeping it understandable and accessible to more players, something that I feel has really helped SC2 and LoL achieve the eSports success they have.
That said we know how tough a goal this will be to achieve, so some restrictions might be unavoidable, we’ll just have to see how it goes.[/QUOTE]
Restrictions will no doubt be required, since servers and balance is set out to balance 8v8 games, whereas comp is very rarely above 6 per team. Your alot closer than in etqw which had 12v12 which was completely different. So it may not need much. Just most restrictions are not to do with if the game is balanced in general, but more about making it balanced for the standard competitive teamsize, which often shifts the dynamics.
[QUOTE=Anti;415609]We’d really like to get the game balance right and avoid adding restrictions or changes in competition that don’t exist on public servers. Keeping the comp scene close to the pub scene is a great aid to keeping it understandable and accessible to more players, something that I feel has really helped SC2 and LoL achieve the eSports success they have.
That said we know how tough a goal this will be to achieve, so some restrictions might be unavoidable, we’ll just have to see how it goes.[/QUOTE]
I’ve always liked this idea, even for FPS games, but I feel like most FPS developers have the wrong idea about it. The reason that SC2 and LoL works similarly in a competitive and a casual setting is because the game itself is meant to be competitive at all times, with as little over the top stuff as possible. Look at CODBO2 for example: The devs have added a built in league system and are trying to get console gaming leagues to play the game as vanilla as possible (not much restrictions), however this obviously doesn’t work with all the “extras” the game includes to provide for the casual player, and it results in the competitive PC community restricting almost every “different” item. If you however look at the competitive BF3 community, you’ll see that the game is played almost vanilla, with only a few restrictions.
If you really want the game to be similar for both pub and competitive play, you need to start thinking about this right now. There’s two ways to go through with this. You can either make the game as clean as possible, with little extras (explosives/fancy tech etc.), but this can make the game seem boring for the public and casual player (it’s a F2p game after all). The other way is to include “new” and fancy stuff, but keep it completely balanced. This is of course a much harder route which results in a much more innovative gameplay. I think you need to choose a middle road, where you try to include new and innovative items, but while keeping them so balanced that they can be included in competitive play.
The servers also needs to be kept to a small amount of players. You can argue that public is more fun with more players, but this is completely wrong in my opinion. If you want to reduce the gap between public and competitive play, you need to have most of the servers have team sizes as close as possible to the competitive standard. After having played on both servers with only a few people on and full 16 slot servers, I must say the impression is completely different. With fewer players the game becomes tactical, less noisy, and truly interesting. With 16 people on one server and tightly packed maps, everything seem to turn into a huge bowl of chaos, at least in my opinion. 10-12 people per server would be much better in my opinion and I don’t think it would make public more boring as the maps are quite packed and small anyway. 16 might still be nice for TDM though.
Tl;Dr: If you want the gap between competitive and public play to be as small as possible you need to build the public game with that mindset. I also think objective public servers should be limited to 10/12 players, to keep it similar to competitive matches.
Here are the hurdles I see which will prevent the public gameplay and competitive gameplay from being the same;
Game modes - Comp will choose a mode and stick with it, most likely.
Classes - It’s inevitable that there will need to be some sort of restriction on # of classes per team, at least in objective.
Deployables - Turrets and mines, as an example, could become too spammy in comp.
Friendly Fire… the ultimate anti-pub-nub setting. Incidentally I think this should be universally ON this time around… BUT…
… a variation on W:ET server settings/filters could be enough for what Splash wants to achieve with the vanilla mechanics, like the limitation on how many noob tubes were allowed to be manned at any one time, could have a 1-per-class 5v5 mode (kind of like a variation on a campaign rotation). A handful of these wouldn’t necessarily go astray.
Depending on where the cooldown weapons go though in terms of spammability… the way things are set at the moment, it seems far from spammable to me.
We need more stopwatch game modes. Escort missions are fun for public games but in competition they get extremely dry. So I personally think we need more of those multi part objective game modes. As well as on the end score screen showing the times when those objectives were accomplished (mostly for reference). This will offer a game mode that works well with different tactics and will give you truly nail biting games.
And if need be a white list or items.
dedicated servers!
haven’t found any thread about it yet? but will there be third parties dedicated servers?
One thing it does need is a god damn pause button. Reason I moved away from brink was because of this!
no pause please ! play the map point to point without any interuptions.
Simple administrator acces like a new tab in the limbo menu for admin with
all simple options with easy access can be perfect
Sometimes you need pause, for example if someone loses connection.
I think everyone would prefer to win fair and square, not just because they had the 6v5 advantage.
I agree with Friendly fire always being on, it makes it so much less nub friendly, and I love it.
I also agree that smaller players= more competitive. 6v6 is nice, 5v5 would be awesome.
Will there be a game mode like CS/CoD Search and Destroy? 1 life type deal.
[QUOTE=SyncFx;424471]I agree with Friendly fire always being on, it makes it so much less nub friendly, and I love it.
I also agree that smaller players= more competitive. 6v6 is nice, 5v5 would be awesome.
Will there be a game mode like CS/CoD Search and Destroy? 1 life type deal.[/QUOTE]
5v5 is the way to go in this game imo
FF on yes, but for this to really work we need to see clear distinction between teams first, and also collision model on with your teammates, as I dont think they are on at the moment.
I have used to play games with friendly fire on mostly. And I personally prefer it as well.
BUT: There is a big point in keeping the game similar comparing pub and comp. To achieve this I would accept FF to be kept out of the game. This wont be a K.O. for comp. It will work fine without teamattack i am sure.
I dislike health regen, as it is atm, quite a bit more.
Comp players will most likely want health regen to disappear, while health regen is quite important in public play. As long as you have no healthpacks spawning like in q3,ut,tf2,… , you need reliable medics on your team. on public servers? I dont think we will see a revolution of players’ attitude in this game. So there will be rambo medics.I dont say there will be only rambo medics. But a good part of players on pub will not revive and heal enough to make health regen completeley redundant.
So what? Why dont we meet in the middle and allow health regen up to 30% or 50 % or mabye even 60 % ? You wont get a dramatic advantage in comp play, if the regen speed will be kept at a sensible level and wont regen you to full health.
While on Pub its more easy to hide behind friendly players as you have 7 mates. Not 4/5 mates like in comp.
just my thoughts from what I’ve seen so far. But I think keeping the game playable in comp (almost) like on pub is a big point that should not be missed. Otherwise this game wont be a success. Just look at cs and lol and compare them to etqw in promod and on vanilla.
Promod just split some players from the whole community. To become a successfull game comp scenewill have to relinquish some features they knew from ET or ETQW. The game must still work in comp though.
Things that IMHO competition NEEDS would include :-
pause / timeout function - players lose connection, teams might want a “tactical” break, team captains should definitely be allowed to pause the game, although there should be a limit to how many times a round they can do so. I can’t see the game working in leagues / ladders without this feature.
spec lock - can’t have players from the other team joining the server and spying on the opposition before they join their own team.
ref / shoutcaster - join the server with a separate password, immune from the spec lock applied to everyone else.
restart function - restart match and restart stopwatch round.
restrictions - hard one to call, on the one hand I hope the ET Medics don’t get in here and start demanding everything better than them gets taken out, cos their leet SMG skillz are all that matter after all, but on the other imagine a defence full of engie’s planting turrets all over the place.
I’d hate to see class restrictions, they should all be balanced to the point they’re all useful and all used, and everything should have a counter (albeit not everything is countered by everything else, it is a team game after all).
But you can bet once the wider ET scene gets it’s hands on this game they’re gonna want to restrict the **** out of everything, and they’d have a point in some respects if not all, unless we can balance the game before then.