It’d be great if Splash Damage could pull some strings and get coverage on
http://www.fragbite.se/?
http://www.sk-gaming.com/
http://www.tek-9.org/
http://www.esl.eu/
http://www.mymym.com/en/
http://www.rakaka.se/
which are major eSport communities so we can get the competitive community big at release
Also some channels which users can idle on IRC are #Brink (Gamesurge/Quakenet)
Bring back greasedscotsman and the competitive scene will be popular 
I think having a dedicated youtube channel with knowledgeable commentators will help. Bring the personal aspect of the players into it by doing interviews or co-commentate a replay will help players relate and interest them.
If SD could just ship Brink with fully customizable competitive server setting, it might take care of itself.
Waiting months for a “pro mod” just to make the game playable in a competitive environment is not a good way to start. Ship the game ready for comp and there will be comp…assuming stuff like balance and hit reg are not crap. 
HOPEFULLY there will be a TGL/money tourney soon after launch like past games. If the game is good and works well in the TGL/money tourney, it will be a huge boost in getting teams involved in Brink comp.
Lastly, SD MUST MUST MUST have an “Official Quakecon 2011 Brink Tournament”!! Brink needs its chance to be played on LAN and the timing is perfect. Quakecon is just a few short months after Brink’s launch. A crowd going crazy for Brink being played live on stage so soon after launch will no doubt make people want to compete.
I’d really like to see how comp is like with vanilla settings. When there’s fundamental changes to gameplay like how pro mod in quake wars changed the spread of guns, it makes it a bit harder for a pub player to try comp because then its a different game. That being said, pro mod was needed to tweak a game that was designed for more players than 6v6, I wonder if 8v8 in brink will be the standard.
I hope its not 8v8 for comp. play… it be hard to get 8 players to practice regularly…6v6 but with no or little change to vanilla would be great.
Too soon in my opinion.
All the big LANs for ETQW were too soon, resulting in boring long drawn out matches because the competitive community hadn’t ironed out the imbalances present with a 6v6 format yet. This resulted in some big teams turning away from the game which in turn, turned away sponsors for any possible future events.
Hopefully Brink will have a lot of options available for the purposes of clan matches and as such a decent match config and rule set can be drawn up quickly that works well as I suspect just like ETQW there will be a couple of big events hoping to cash in on the early interest of the game and if the game doesnt have a good showing the competitive scene will be short lived, again.
All the big LANs for ETQW??? You mean the ONE big LAN for ETQW? There was that crossfire etqw tourney but the thought that there were multiple big LANs for ETQW in a stretch…
I actually played in the Quakecon ETQW tourney and the competitive community had absolutely ironed out the details at that point. Pro mod was in full swing and all that. The problem was SD/id wanted to use their “comp mod” and didn’t pay much attention to what the competitive community had “ironed out”. What we were playing in leagues before Quakecon is basically the same ruleset/mod that everyone played up until ETQW comp fully died out.
I agree completely about changing too much of the stock game fundamentals. It should be kept mostly the same as pub IMO but some stuff MUST be controlled for comp. Stuff like overpowered weapon usage, radar, etc. It all depends on what is needed to tweak the balance for smaller team sizes and stuff like that. In ETQW is was painfully obvious that stuff like too many hyperblasters, radar and flying vehicles had no place in 6v6 comp.
If SD ships the game ready for comp, and they actually listen to the comp community for tweaks, there will be virtually no need for a third party “pro mod”. Stuff like movement and weapon spread can be kept to what the devs intended and kept in line with the feedback they get… rather than a small group of leet coders and dignitas players.
[QUOTE=BMXer;266308]All the big LANs for ETQW??? You mean the ONE big LAN for ETQW? There was that crossfire etqw tourney but the thought that there were multiple big LANs for ETQW in a stretch…
[/QUOTE]
Private Beta Quakecon(USA), CDC4(EU), i32 or 33(UK) I like how you dismiss the LAN’s you didn’t go to…
There was also quite a few online cash tournaments early on as well.
[QUOTE=BMXer;266308]I actually played in the Quakecon ETQW tourney and the competitive community had absolutely ironed out the details at that point. Pro mod was in full swing and all that. The problem was SD/id wanted to use their “comp mod” and didn’t pay much attention to what the competitive community had “ironed out”. What we were playing in leagues before Quakecon is basically the same ruleset/mod that everyone played up until ETQW comp fully died out.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah that was the second Quakecon, the damage had been done by then, most of the top EU teams left ETQW after CDC4, a couple came back for the 2nd quakecon.
I take it you weren’t part of that small group for etqwpro? I’d rather have a small group of leet coders and top players to tweak the game for competitive purposes rather than having to wait for a developer to do it for us and then wait weeks for an update because everything would have to be passed by Bethesda and their QA before it can be released. (how long did it take for official comp mod in etqw?)
I’m sure SD would love to help out but I guess Bethesda have different plans for them such as inevitable DLC packages and such.
Just curious on what people are leaning towards initially, 6v6 or 8v8? IMO, 8v8 is not that far a stretch from 6v6. The team i was on for qw usually had at least 1 extra person around for backup. And if the game is popular, picking up people shouldn’t be too difficult. I would like to see the game played 8v8 at least initially, seeing as how the game is currently being balanced.
[QUOTE=BMXer;266308]I agree completely about changing too much of the stock game fundamentals. It should be kept mostly the same as pub IMO but some stuff MUST be controlled for comp. Stuff like overpowered weapon usage, radar, etc. It all depends on what is needed to tweak the balance for smaller team sizes and stuff like that. In ETQW is was painfully obvious that stuff like too many hyperblasters, radar and flying vehicles had no place in 6v6 comp.
If SD ships the game ready for comp, and they actually listen to the comp community for tweaks, there will be virtually no need for a third party “pro mod”. Stuff like movement and weapon spread can be kept to what the devs intended and kept in line with the feedback they get… rather than a small group of leet coders and dignitas players. :)[/QUOTE]
SD has said Brink will be their most configurable game yet, this gives me high hopes that everything needed to add any kind of limits the community agrees on would be built into the initial game. Hopefully the other things they added to ETQW in their comp mod (pausing and time outs) will be there day 1 as well.
So color me optimistic
The one thing I have to wonder about is if they will have different default spawn timers for stop-watch (shorter spawns for attackers vs objective mode). This should be true for that mode regardless, or at least some kind of mechanic which gives the attackers a bias. Even if they don’t though, I bet you will be able to tweak them in a map script.
Also, hopefully comes with “Brink TV” day one as well.
[QUOTE=.Chris.;266317]Private Beta Quakecon(USA), CDC4(EU), i32 or 33(UK) I like how you dismiss the LAN’s you didn’t go to…
There was also quite a few online cash tournaments early on as well.
[/QUOTE]
True, i forgot about that first qcon when the game wasn’t really out yet. I don’t remember i32 but whatever… thats kinda my point regardless. If SD ships the game with competitive settings in mind (like Cankor thinks they will), those initial tourneys and LANs could actually be good!
Fair enough, maybe over time a third party pro mod would be smart considering, but the more stuff they include when the game ships the less the pro mod people have to mess with. There will no doubt always be room to tweak and improve but being able to play without soft rules and with stuff like pause and weapon/attachment limitations from day one could be key.
And I still think 6v6 is plenty. 5v5 would be better IMO. Yes, we could always get 6 for etqw but it wasn’t always easy. And having at least one as backup when you play 8v8 means you need 9 players. Getting 9 players together is going to be a huge pain regardless of how popular Brink is. Also, I always think LAN and getting 8 peeps to buy plane tickets is no fun… getting 6 sucked. 5 would be doable/perfect if you ask me.
I don’t think taking someone’s disguise would be too effective on smaller teams, would be easier to get the back stab on 8v8
anyways I see your point. Hopefully there is at least one 8v8 vanilla league out there because im sure its a different experience, may be more enjoyable, might not.
Totally agree, having the basics in place from the word go would be awesome then the rest can be left up to the community to tweak and refine and such later on, afaik this is what they trying to achieve like Cankor states.
True beans. 5v5 seems to be working well in ET now although when the change was made there was a lot of rage which is understandable as they had been using 6v6 for years hopefully Brink will find it’s ideal team size early on and stick with it.
It will most likely be 6v6 as a comp standard. I hope Brink gets advertised on those major eSports sites which I posted!
Go MLG competetive scene for the console! 
And I hope the rules stay mostly default, as I think it’s kind of dumb when they change loads of things for it to be more competitive.
Logically 6v6 would be doable even higher (although I’d be partial to 5v5) due to the fact that every map is optimized for exactly 8v8 team size on all platforms, unlike most other games with ~32 max servers ect ect. It’s completely viable to see larger leagues up for show matches or something of the sort.
Where are all those baddies that trolled me earlier??? Where are you now!
Competative angles NEED TO BE CONSIDER IN GAMES.
you can make a game, people will play
you can make a coop game, and friends will play together casually and more people will stay
you can make a modifiable game, people will play and more people will stay because when you evolve in gaming,… some stuff gets old really fast (insert previous comments here)
then you get TV, then you get commentators, sponsors, and suddenly,… it’s not just a game but a sport. which is a WIN for any game that can deal with that.
What SD really needs is to have a Competative thread, where we can start posting ideas, discussing what we know, what we can suggest and hopefully the SD guys listen.
I agree fully on the FAIL SD comp mod…
I suggest that they take some people from the comp community and invite them into design meetings. Then and only then it will be truly succesful. I am part of many design meetings and you can only come up with so much insight, till you actually bring in the users and some community representatives who suddenly add light and dimensions to many things.
This i snot to say they can’t do it themselves, but usability is ultimately achieved by preprocessing rather then postprocessing.