Its about time we revived the comp scene

[Arturo Sanchez]

AND MADE IT THE FOCUS OF THE DAMN GAME.

Was just spit balling about the new tourney and pretty much reached the consensus that the usual people will participate and a few clueless noobs will join, get crushed and leave the game.

So thoughts of Junior divisions and minileagues were thrown out to make the special little flowers feel special. Plus with a noob league, you'll get outsiders looking in going... pffft I can totally beat these guys. And the scene would grow as it attracts the right people with the right attitude to actually play.

And as this new generation of try hards begin appreciating the senior league players, you garner interest in the meta of the game (so more people shouting at Eric to stop screwing things up).


*edit.

an open SCS lobby (still private lobby). No team registry. Just join and play and get comments on the gameplay and builds to actually learn to bloody play. I'm noticing alot of new players wanting to get better and join the comp scene but with no in because of lack of an established team.

[Guagadu]

an open SCS lobby (still private lobby). No team registry. Just join and play and get comments on the gameplay and builds to actually learn to bloody play. I'm noticing alot of new players wanting to get better and join the comp scene but with no in because of lack of an established team.

There was an event kind of like this earlier this year, with Back to Basics!!, hosted by KitKatKitty. No one ever really signed up, and it only happened maybe 2 or 3 times. If enough interest is shown, I'm sure we could get a similar event going.

[Arturo Sanchez]

an open SCS lobby (still private lobby). No team registry. Just join and play and get comments on the gameplay and builds to actually learn to bloody play. I'm noticing alot of new players wanting to get better and join the comp scene but with no in because of lack of an established team.

There was an event kind of like this earlier this year, with Back to Basics!!, hosted by KitKatKitty. No one ever really signed up, and it only happened maybe 2 or 3 times. If enough interest is shown, I'm sure we could get a similar event going.

majority of the noob playerbase don't even know how to use most of the UI or memorised the damned buttons because they're too dumb to do the tutorial.

But yes the format the event gave is the issue. People need to sign up and as I said on the above. No noob likes to think, they just want the answers and win. You need to have an open invite like the other events where people join. For this to work though you need to give organisers a kick from lobby option to get rid of trolls. Oterwise we suffer the issue that pub teachers like me suffer.


Heres an email I just sent to muse.

So I noticed your brass tourney in the works.

Personally I think its a bit too soon to be having one since the comp is pretty much in tatters.

The first thing you need to do is increase focus on the comp scene in the first place. To simply expect randoms to simply sign up to fill in the gap many vets left behind is optimistic.

Its under discussion in the forums right now (again).

But here are some simple things to implement.

Competitive ranking system.
Separate Competitive and Pub play match maker.
Graduate achievement (an achievement that unlocks only upon reaching elite status-so thats 43 if i recall) with a focus on extra titles and coupons than exp for players to teach proper mid lvl play. Its pretty much exactly the same as novice but instead for teaching graduates which is lvl 8-29.

Graduate achievement increases the number of vets. Increases the number of vet games. Increases the comp scene.

[Solidusbucket]

I actually see what you mean.

Maybe do the open invite thing via global and whatever.

Then, create a bracket and provide a link? If only links worked in chat. Then I could see it being a viable option.

The people would get the invite, join up, be placed into a crew, and that crew would remain a team and be given a name. Then, they would be entered into the bracket. It could be round robin format where a "team" is one ship and the four teams play three matches and then a winner is declared.

It would also be good to create new teams by introducing randoms to eachother in a competitive format.

[GurasOguras]

I don't wanna come out as a salty or grumpy man, but there is no such thing as "low level competitive". You can either be competitive player or not. At the very beginning I sucked as bad as everyone else and now I cringe every time I look back at recording of my first SCS piloting experience. If you want to be competitive, then just play and git gud. It's as simple as that.

To prove it just look at my clan: I was ALONE at the beginning. I reached out to everyone I knew at that time and recruited everyone I could. Within few weeks we already got second place on blood&brass. So stop whining, because IT IS POSSIBLE.
Here is the solution:

as someone who ran a succesfull competitive Clan I can give you some advice on what you need to do.

if all 4 of you are invested and ready to be competitive, then get ingame and play as much as you can and learn.

Find people ingame who you like playing with, invite them and eventually create a second ship.

when you have 8 people contact the other active Clans and Schedule practice vs them, take the beating and learn from it. Discuss with eachother what needs to change in order for you to be better.

Sign up for SCS, dont expect to win, but use it as practice.

make friends with other Clans, and you personally with other Clan leaders, their advice will help you a lot.

Expect your players to stop playing or disappear, when this happen: keep your friendship, but replace them on the team and move forward, it happens.

then 2-3 months from now you will be a solid team.

Use tournaments like SCS to take beating and learn from your mistakes. Starcraft II tip box, for example encourages you to look back at your replays and see where did you mess up. SCS VOD are the same here.

[Solidusbucket]

Eh.. guaras, thats a huge turn off to do all that searching, asking etc just to try to get enough people that are interested in trying competitive only to be stomped.

OP is right. An open invite, competitive environment event is exactly the kind of thing necessary to get more people (with limited experience) interested and in one central location (lobby). It will naturally do EVERYTHING you just said regarding asking and searching for others while at the same time giving them a solid platform to start their adventure into competitive playstyle/mindset wothout all the tedious footwork.

Id say having a concurrent event on Sunday along with SCS would be perfect for such an event becuse then it advertises / recruits the types of players that are already on at that time. They join, they meet friends, they form lasting teams, they eventually "graduate" from the open invite event, then they sign up for scs. They wont mind getting stomped as much (they can always go back to open invite if theyre bad enough), theyre accustommed to the rules, and they understand the brackets / competitive mindset. All this without the footwork.

Lobby creators DO need a kick button when lobby is private. Thats necessary. It really is. An event like this would only need one person per 2v2 lobby to stream it / ref / host.

[Arturo Sanchez]

Eh.. guaras, thats a huge turn off to do all that searching, asking etc just to try to get enough people that are interested in trying competitive only to be stomped.

OP is right. An open invite, competitive environment event is exactly the kind of thing necessary to get more people (with limited experience) interested and in one central location (lobby). It will naturally do EVERYTHING you just said regarding asking and searching for others while at the same time giving them a solid platform to start their adventure into competitive playstyle/mindset wothout all the tedious footwork.

Id say having a concurrent event on Sunday along with SCS would be perfect for such an event becuse then it advertises / recruits the types of players that are already on at that time. They join, they meet friends, they form lasting teams, they eventually "graduate" from the open invite event, then they sign up for scs. They wont mind getting stomped as much (they can always go back to open invite if theyre bad enough), theyre accustommed to the rules, and they understand the brackets / competitive mindset. All this without the footwork.

Lobby creators DO need a kick button when lobby is private. Thats necessary. It really is. An event like this would only need one person per 2v2 lobby to stream it / ref / host.

Muse making this systematic will go a long ass way for this. They need to shift the game's system to compliment this (something that should have been done 2 years ago)

[Solidusbucket]

Muse making this systematic will go a long ass way for this. They need to shift the game's system to compliment this (something that should have been done 2 years ago)

The problem is the playerbase, I think.

Although, recently during peak times the player base is sitting steady at around 200. We can't really fix what is out of our control. However, attempting to form an event as I described is a good start to growing the competitive scene. The only issue (which is my hugest turnoff) are the trolls that would join, the people that would not follow the rules (lobby timer, pauses, ship swaps), and generally having to hold the hands of those that choose not to listen or simply can't because of language barriers without any way of ridding the problem thus keeping the event streamlined. Its a double edged sword. Hosting something like this could turn just as many people off of competitive due to having to swap lobbies because of an asshat.

[Arturo Sanchez]

Muse making this systematic will go a long ass way for this. They need to shift the game's system to compliment this (something that should have been done 2 years ago)

The problem is the playerbase, I think.

Although, recently during peak times the player base is sitting steady at around 200. We can't really fix what is out of our control. However, attempting to form an event as I described is a good start to growing the competitive scene. The only issue (which is my hugest turnoff) are the trolls that would join, the people that would not follow the rules (lobby timer, pauses, ship swaps), and generally having to hold the hands of those that choose not to listen or simply can't because of language barriers without any way of ridding the problem thus keeping the event streamlined. Its a double edged sword. Hosting something like this could turn just as many people off of competitive due to having to swap lobbies because of an asshat.

Hence why I'm emphasising how impossible this will be unless we have moderator abilities as an event organiser. The most basic being lobby kick (and lock out timer) ability for all private lobbies.

My goal is essentially setting up the ground work to bring in people joining purely for the comp scene. The current losers in pub can gtfo for all I care. The sooner they leave, the more easily we can actually find the people within this give away event that actually want to play. They've been cancer since the early days of gaming and no gaming community of any kind wants them around.

But I did suggest to muse a pub match maker and a comp (or in fighting games ranked mode) match maker.

My main concern for this is that it will suffer what overwatch is suffering. Trolls joining ranked play. We need mod powers for that. But a step in the right direction is in fact start it only on private lobbies at first (this encourages organised events as a norm).

Then set up a trial period for public lobbies where moderation can be applied.

[Hoja Lateralus]

Let me just say that this thread is just hillarious.

>Ceres says "we need noob leagues"
>first response: we did, no flying fuck was given
xdddd

>Noobs don't want to sign for tournaments
Wasn't that partially the purpose of launcher?

>"For tournament to work people need votekick"
Good luck with that m8 xddd

>"if only links would work in chat"
Oh god, stop, I can't catch my breath

>we should make this event, like, visible or something
Like events used to be in the server browser?

>recently during peak times the playerbase is sitting around 200
You're saying that like it's a good thing. Also, stop... my ribs... god...

To be fair I've been suggesting the junior league for players with <500 / <1000 matches played for a while, but you do realise that
i) somewhat similar attempts has been made and miserably failed
ii) following your discussion; creating your version of the event is virtually impossible at this moment (i.e. votekick issue)

I think you confuse cause and effect here. Low population isn't cause by lack of events. Lack of events is caused by bad game design leading to low population. It's clearly visible: there are people eager to organise tournaments but nobody* wants to play. Even popular things like Iron Fork or Munker Madness have troubles to fill in lobby. Devs throw up their arms and say "well, low population, what can we do..." except they have had 4 years to get [more] people to play.

*except for tryhard vets that we don't consider in such discussions I think

[CogHead]

...
>"For tournament to work people need votekick"
Good luck with that m8 xddd
...
ii) following your discussion; creating your version of the event is virtually impossible at this moment (i.e. votekick issue)
...

While I mostly agree with you, or don't know enough to form an opinion on other aspects, it looks like you misunderstand what votekick means. Votekick, where players vote on who to kick, can be abused, and Muse is against it, but it was never even mentioned in this thread. For the lobby moderator, to kick someone, the moderator would NOT need to put the question up to vote, he/she would simply kick the player from the lobby.

I think this would be a welcomed feature - since it doesn't interfere with matchmaker, it's already private - in any password protected lobby, alongside with other moderation tools like forced map and gamemode change, timer manipulation, force start, ship lock, etc.

[Hoja Lateralus]

I think when devs are afraid to give people votekick, they would be very reluctant to allow 'one' person to kick people out as he desires, even if it's only in private lobbies.
Edit: Fair enough though, I've written to hastily and shouldn't have said 'votekick'

[MightyKeb]

I think you confuse cause and effect here. Low population isn't cause by lack of events. Lack of events is caused by bad game design leading to low population. It's clearly visible: there are people eager to organise tournaments but nobody* wants to play. Even popular things like Iron Fork or Munker Madness have troubles to fill in lobby. Devs throw up their arms and say "well, low population, what can we do..." except they have had 4 years to get [more] people to play.

*except for tryhard vets that we don't consider in such discussions I think

..?
"We can't make an event because the game is designed badly" - I don't see how that makes sense. And frankly coming from someone who, as far as my knowledge goes has never been in any mildly serious event nor cares about said events, I'd like to hear your perspective on what part of the game is badly designed, because you haven't explained it yet.


There aren't a bazzilion teams playing in the tournaments because a majority of the clans that have interest either cannot organize or don't have more than one ship worth of people interested. To testify one of these points: Cronus League, a 1-ship tournament held in January 2015 managed to accumulate up to 25 teams. For the playerbase of such a game, I think that is a more than acceptable amount.

Then there's the novice side of things. You have to be a bloody archeologist to dig through to the events page and figure out what's what. And when you do, and take your pure novice team to a big tourney, you probably have no practice, no idea how to play and no idea what to expect because now you have to be a master archeologist to find all the tournament uploads on youtube and watch them to get an idea of who you're going up agains't and how this game is played up there. And 99% of the time, you aren't. So you get smashed and you stop attending. There are examples of this in Blood & Brass aswell as 7 Deadly Ships. I guarantee you Big Brass could gather atleast 3 novice teams at worst if this event was advertised through the big window on the right of the launch screen.

While both vet and novice section of this community have different troubles in regards to signing up to events, it all stems from a lack of streamlining for competitive. You don't consider tryhard vets because those are the only type of people who usually play in those events,because for anyone and everyone else it's too much effort to even sign up. It's been a while since I've agreed with ceres, but he makes a fair point.

Eh.. guaras, thats a huge turn off to do all that searching, asking etc just to try to get enough people that are interested in trying competitive only to be stomped.

OP is right. An open invite, competitive environment event is exactly the kind of thing necessary to get more people (with limited experience) interested and in one central location (lobby). It will naturally do EVERYTHING you just said regarding asking and searching for others while at the same time giving them a solid platform to start their adventure into competitive playstyle/mindset wothout all the tedious footwork.

Id say having a concurrent event on Sunday along with SCS would be perfect for such an event becuse then it advertises / recruits the types of players that are already on at that time. They join, they meet friends, they form lasting teams, they eventually "graduate" from the open invite event, then they sign up for scs. They wont mind getting stomped as much (they can always go back to open invite if theyre bad enough), theyre accustommed to the rules, and they understand the brackets / competitive mindset. All this without the footwork.

Lobby creators DO need a kick button when lobby is private. Thats necessary. It really is. An event like this would only need one person per 2v2 lobby to stream it / ref / host.

Muse making this systematic will go a long ass way for this. They need to shift the game's system to compliment this (something that should have been done 2 years ago)

[Schwalbe]

Keb, what Disaster implies:

bad design -> low population -> the percent of people who would actually be interested is too miniscule for such event to actually become a thing.


By bad design he can mean anything that keeps some people away from the game: high learning curve, chaos ensuing when you have no clue, matchmaker leading to growth of a numbness when it comes to stomp the newbies, or just simple fact that one guy who doesn't know what he is doing or is outright trolling is able to ruin your day and make all your effort/skill worth shit.

Because, let's face it. New players are not jumping into competetive events right from the get-go, they first spend some time in pub matches - and when you have certain factors in pub matches that ruins your experience, then why would you stay in the game at all, not to mention jumping to competetive, right?

Disaster, if I'm mistaken in anything, point it out - we both know I'm a retarded fuck.

[Urz]

As a person who spent years trying to convince Muse to focus on the competitive side of their game, let me inform you—it's not going to happen.

Muse has devoted nearly all of their development efforts on a non-competitive PvE expansion, which in the meantime has crippled Skirmish mode. This de-prioritization of Skirmish has led to: lack of new content, bad client performance, unfixed bugs, lack of regular and necessary balance changes.

You talk about a "competitive queue", but this already exists: veteran matchmaking. The problem is with the game population so low right now, separating out queueing players into "buckets" just means the less popular buckets will never actually fill. Ditto for "MMR"—the game theoretically takes a hidden MMR into account, but there are not enough players to find balanced opponents, so after 30 seconds it gives up and matches you with whoever.

You say that "open lobby" events are the answer—but between Iron Fork, Munker Mondays, Chaos Skirmish, and other one-time or more sporadic events—these have not helped the competitive scene grow.

The only path I see for future growth of competitive Guns is the following:

1. Alliance is finally released, and fails to maintain a meaningful playerbase.
2. Muse Games isn't immediately dissolved.
3. Howard finds the light of our Lord Jesus Christ.
4. Muse decides to leverage the strength of their game as one of the most unique competitive experiences on the market, refocusing entirely on Skirmish development.