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a theory of the birth and death of the competitive scene

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Squidslinger Gilder:
Actually Summer was also pretty bad for some. I saw less people on during the summer than I have in the past. For some reason a lot of people either had work hours increase or they took vacations. Not only here but also in my SWTOR guild. We went into summer with close to 16 solid for Ops. Then by August we were struggling to pull even 8. Having to funnel friends in to fill. Now we're back up to swinging 16s but we did reach the point where we had a guild discussion about moth balling it till later if the Conquest expansion didn't boost numbers. Thankfully it did but at the same time, work schedules stabilized again and people seemed to come back from vacations.

This is common over the years. I've seen some summers get good populations but most tend to be lower. When I first proposed Red Skies event, I proposed it for summer for that reason. Knowing pop numbers might plummet, a 2v2 Aerodrome would function better. Interest and voice actor availability was horrific so I canned it and it eventually turned into Retribution.

A league approach is an idea, however the big problem is not that competitive is too hard, it is player involvement. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink," is the epitome of GOIO noobs. There are lots of clans in game which are huge that have no idea competitive exists.

I propose to increase awareness, there needs to be a highlight reel stream in game. Something that is in the face of a player where they can see highlights from a competitive week. Maybe even some tips n tricks videos. A GOIO TV sort of thing. Problem is, this takes work and time to maintain. You have to have folks dedicated to doing it and Muse would have to program the functionality in which might be problematic. Dunno how Unity would respond to a video stream page in game. But if Unity could handle it, then it is just a matter of someone recording, commentating, then Muse posting. Likely would be more than one person and from doing Aerodrome I can tell you, you better have a committed team doing it. Deadlines would need to be set and maintained. It wouldn't be a sort of thing you could just slap together when you feel like it.

Piemanlives:

--- Quote from: Mr.Disaster on September 21, 2014, 06:37:22 pm ---Suggestion from top of my head - maybe we need to make competetive tournaments especially for less experienced players? I'd see the "Junior League" for players <1000k matches and "Senior League" for players <2000k matches - it could be just Hephaestus Challenge variations. More players at all would play competetive and therefore more people would be interested in and motivated to grow and learn.

--- End quote ---

That's a rather 2D way to look at experience, though I guess the numbers could be adjusted.

In any case people come and go all the time, we may have less players because they have no reason to stick around, they simply aren't as invested anymore, it may be because they could never get into competitive or maybe a collapse of their friends list, having no one to play with is always disheartening. But there are other reasons, work, life taking hold etc. you can't expect someone to play the game when they're dealing with poverty.

But GoI has always had terrible retention, it's been stated over and over again in just about every form, massive discussions and all that jazz.

Now getting people to participate in competitive is another issue, I know that not every play actually checks the forums, this is a major issue I wish was not true as a lot of important things happen here. So let's take Gilder's suggestion, a video based announcement in game would go a long way to actually advertising events (such as major tournys and weekly casual events) as well as simple notices such as upcoming patches. Yes it would take a while to implement and while I wouldn't want them to take time away from co-op I do feel something like this is extremely important.

Squidslinger Gilder:
Could move the links more to the main screen with some text advertising but people clicking links in game and checking forums out doesn't seem to work that well. Heck people still don't check tutorials or read tooltips.

Hmmm...could develop it with a little GOIO world flare to it. Would need someone to dress up in a GOIO style outfit. Maybe put a green screen behind them with a looping image of somewhere in the world. Maybe on board an airship. Could film that easily with FRAPs in game then just run it in the background. Course would need someone who has experience with that stuff and the software to...wait a min, Halo has a degree in film production. Wonder if he might know...I could ask him if this got serious. Kinda feels like more of a pipe dream idea atm. Logging into GOIO with the weekly competitive/GOIO news being broadcast on the main screen by someone in character. Mouse hover over or click and boom, there it is in all it's glory.

Actually, the Ducks had Sushi and Charon who had some outfits. If it was community done and Muse just approved it and aired it, those two might be a good pair for it. Cake has some folks too that would be good. Jacob and Shadak could reprise their Baron/Princess roles :D.

Dunno how much it would do to help retention. Part of the problem is seasonal changes. Might just see things shift for the better when COOP hits. Specially if it starts to add to the lore. Being able to court the PVE crowd will be huge.

zlater75@hotmail.com:
The thing is casual is casual.. An idea would be a mini 4 team division. Every team, not necessary to be one clan, would without points, without casting play eachother for fun in a organized bracket with one ref per match. A social event. Newteams would have priority over an old team that participated most.
A social experience where the referee would not enforce competitive but rather just supervise that people are nice to eachother.
Mixed teams or active people that want to play casually. Not making any win priority but rather just participating to play against and with new people. An introduction to new clans. A relief from competitive and seriousness for the tourn teams. Timmyb is "casual" but it's still streamed, has rules like comp and has points. Not only serious points but still.. They exist.This way all teams would have 3 matches win or lose and not drop out.

Skrimskraw:
hey, it is awesome to see you guys having an interest, and even discussing how to save the competitive scene.

While writing this I kept thinking of causalities, and what could be the problem here.
But all the possible reasons I had would require immense data gathering to argue for.

some of the things I thought about were this:
old players are tired of the current content, this is why they no longer wish to participate
new players are unable to stabilize in both the game and competitive scene
a general idea of fixing both these problems are things such as implementing matchmaking in order to give new players a fair and skill equal experience. Another possible fix is a major balance change ala if you would see league of legends revamp half their content to draw players back into a new meta hunt. Fact is that I myself feel tired of listening to the same record of balance and meta in this game. Fact is for myself that I have played my 7 euros worth of content, and I dont think implementing a map. gun or ship would keep me interested for the future, I need expansion pack worth of content, such as coop.

It is hard to understand this mindset as both an old and new player, because we all have different values. But the old guard you talk about left a long time ago and they are not coming back.
My general though and prediction here is that the competitive scene will crash in 3 months. Personally I am tired of playing competitive, and after R&D tourney I effectively stop playing competitive, stop leading thralls and stop organizing thralls. The attitude towards this inside my clan is overwhelmingly positive, we all want breaks, and we are not willing to promise that we will return.

that is one possible theory of why old teams disappear currently, but there most certainly are other theories aswell. I dont know them, because I cannot speak for any number of clans unless I took the time to gather data about it.

no one of us can control the new players, and the player retention is alarming. You are seeing high skilled veterans and new players playing, there are no inbetween skill level because these players stopped playing. This goes back to the having fun part. The only way currently, that a new player ends up in the system and having fun, is if they tag along on an experienced clan. Clans are where the fun and the community is. But not all players enjoy this way of doing things, because it is a big commitment. and when you constantly lose, get blamed and get called noob, then why care? the only thing to do is say good game, but i played the content of this game and can move on.

as i said in my analysis the professionalization can be seen both positively and negatively. The idea of countering this progress by making a league structure or more casual events is not the solution to the lack of more teams. It quickly becomes a instance of teams keeping eachother active, while newer teams still dont show up - then later the old teams will start to fade away again.

There are so many factors revolving around this, and saying casting isnt one of them is a lie. The casters are doing a job none of us others can do, they have to entertain. good content, is the content that is semi-competitive and above, anything casual is just worthless in the eyes of the strong pillars that perceive competitive events more important. If the events being streamed arent of a competitive nature, they get second to none views. and I know you want to say timmyb is all casual, but it is heavily organized, and the point system makes it of competitive nature for some teams.
Try seeing this from a casters view where he has to entertain, if he is not entertaining enough people there is no reason to stay and the only logical solution is to move on to new projects. Letonator has done a lot for our casting in goio, but truth is that Letonator also has to protect his and his cocasters wishes of a entertaining, competitive enviroment. If this enviroment is dominated by random casual play only there is no competitive scene at all, and these casters move on because their time is being wasted.

but what is the best solution? personally I enjoyed that as a team we no longer had to go through 20 community meetings on how to make a competitive event. But as a team we suddenly also felt like we were being forced to take things more serious while playing.

I think my conclusion on these diffrent factors are that my own opinion is heavily biased by my own feelings, due to lack of actual data revolving around other teams opinions.

I myself think it is too late to save it longterm at this point, but prove me wrong. I presented you with the theory of something like this happening, and you are free to use it if it helps saving the competitive scene.
The only solution I see is a chain of things to happen like this: Matchmaking - balance change to keep new and old players interested and then coop mode as the big invitation to play or buy the game (which is now becoming 2 years old). How many of us buys a 2 year old game to play online? (just something to think about)

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