A lot of things like game TV, class/weapon limit cvars etc don’t come as standard with games because they tend to take a lot of time to create and yet are used by a minority. As much as us competition gamers like to think it (and I’m one of you!) we’re not actually that large a number of people, we’re just quite loud so we think we are 
I think the reason Splash Damage and a few other devs have tried to help with comp mods and support before is because we like the idea of comp gaming, we’ve played it ourselves and we’d like to see it grow but the commercial benefits (at present at least) are pretty minimal. Think about it, how many FPS games have you played where the devs actually did something specifically aimed at comp gaming that wasn’t already there as part of the core game or dev tools? There really aren’t many.
Reading through this thread what interests me is the suggestions that we comp gamers always come up with for things we want:
- Good hit reg (this is just a requirement of a good FPS, not comp specific)
- Demos/video support
- Class/Weapon Limits
- Customizable HUDs
- TV client
- No vehicles
- Fast paced
Aside from pacing (which is almost impossible to please everybody on, for every comp gamer who likes ET/Q3 speed there is one who likes CoD/CS) every other request is pretty much a supporting feature request and not gameplay. We’re after the tools to support MP gaming so we can make it what we want, we’re not asking for a specific type of gameplay, that seems a little strange to me because the dev could supply all of those features from day one and yet you might still not like the game itself and may think it’s rubbish for comp play. In fact the more of those features we give you so you can tweek the game to suit what you want the greater the chances of it failing for clans because everybody will be making their own ‘mod’ and the community will be split. Just because you have them at day one doesn’t mean the comp game will emerge straight away, who leads the community in picking the rules if not the devs? Top clans? In the early days of ETQW a lot of players turned away from the early clan scene because a few top clans were driving the rule set away from what they wanted.
I think what competition gamers really want is a game with these supporting features but that ships with a core gameplay experience that is fun in both competition and pubs without many changes being needed at all. This way the ‘pub’ community is big which feeds into the comp community and the game rules of that community are easily found and agreed upon because it won’t stray far from the base game. The best competition suggestions would probably be gameplay ones rather than feature ones, things like:
- Fast fluid movement
- Frequent opportunity for 1-v-1 dueling
- Memorable kills (funny rag doll, humiliating weapons)
- Key moments (full team wipes, “aces”, “clutch” rounds, flag returns, killing sprees, headshots, melee kills, power-up pickups)
These are what people remember and love in the best MP comp games that have been released, these are the games the big communities form around. It’s only after they’ve formed that they start to demand the supporting features that are normally listed and without these things the game won’t last long.
That’s my opinion on this whole debate anyway
