a theory of the birth and death of the competitive scene

[Mean Machine]

Since I'm very fresh and new to competitive, I can totally feel what few already mentioned about how difficult it is to get on the level to be able to actually compete with most of the active and experienced clans. It for sure is demoralizing when you get absolutely stomped and realize how much work is needed to get at that level where you won't lose every match. As much as it's nice to play against best clans and nicest people in community, it's still terrifying to see when only top clans apply for tournament for example and so you wonder if you should even try or not.  For some people that might be a turn off, they are not ready or willing to put that much effort in.

I think that idea about making a tournament for not so experienced players is pretty neat. There might be some players or clans out there that are interested in competitive, but they are afraid to try it. So making separate league for new teams could be good.

Anyway, I also agree with lack of advertisement. First, like already mentioned, competitive events should be more visible to community, put it on front page in game. A lot of people don't read forums, so in game notifications would be pretty much the only way they could give them information about that. Visible and clear notifications that is!
And second, also already mentioned, game is advertised for casual playerbase and that might be a problem. Of course it's good to have casual playerbase as well, since it tends to be bigger, but the way GOI plays is really more of a competitive game. It's a pvp game after all. So casual players sooner than later realize that this game is too "hard" for them, because most of them are not interested in bothering with tactics, teamwork, communicating in order to be effective. Most of new players just want to jump on guns asap and start shooting. If game was advertised for players that love competitive play with a lot of teamwork, then would maybe get more serious players that would stay in game.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

One big problem with a newbie league and a vet league is the fact that some teams rely on new players to fill rosters. Heck we did Sky Tournament with some people that had only had the game a few days. Now, we won with them but still, keeping a static veteran roster for long periods of time hasn't been realistic. Again with that original roster, summer hit, over half of them vanished. Some came back but it wasn't till winter and by then their real life had shifted and they did not have the time to invest anymore. They also saw new members replace their positions and decided they weren't needed. That forced newer members to carry the load and if they also weren't as invested, they'd come and go rather quickly.

Now, what you could do is run a "new talent" or "mix it up" event where you can still have veteran players but they must play in roles that they don't usually play. Or say, play in roles that they play the least. Promoting new talent into more prominent roles. Could keep it to single ship sign up like in Timmy B but just have teams run in a way that promotes newer players but also allows veteran players to participate and help fill. So say, if I participated, I'd be flying as a gunner or engineer, not a pilot, and then one of our other members with high crew member level but low piloting level would be taking the helm.

[Imagine]

I would like to point out that the "lack of new teams" isn't really all that accurate. While yes, many of the team names are still the same, a lot of those have experienced significant turnover, leaving new players to fill gaps in current teams.

[nhbearit]

So.. I am confused. By your own definition, being a "weaker" pillar is just about how often a team/clan does competitive events. what confuses me is that you seem to think the ducks are now a weaker pillar then they were before.. but honestly I don't think there was a point where we didn't have a team in the kind of 'main' Saturday event. The specific teams have certainly changed, but I think, as a clan, we've always been there.  I now have to question your entire viewpoint and consider it too skewed/narrow. The competitive scene is very much alive, it's just different now than it was a year ago. There's basically always an event to participate in or prepare for. Also, I think the how of winning a competition has changed as well. I don't think it's enough anymore to have just one build that you fly all the time. The community has gotten pretty darn good at counter-building. Now, teams need to be fluid with what builds they bring into a competitive match. As for introducing new teams into the competitive scene, there is a problem. The way I see it is that newer teams are entering competitive tournaments before they really enter the competitive scene. What I mean by this is that new teams don't interact with older teams to see what they need to do to be ready for the tournament (eg. organizing scrims before the tournament.) I think a relatively easy solution to this would be a consolidated thread with contact info for team organizers. Even if it's just a thread that says " I am the organizer for team x", where it's explained how send PMs through the forum, would go a long way towards solving that problem. As for advertising GoIo as a competitive game, a part of me likes the idea, but I imagine it'd be quite tricky to do correctly. If it looks too competitive, you'll have too few fun pub matches, if it doesn't look competitive enough then you get the current problem of new players thinking this game is CoD. (which in my opinion, is part of the low retention rate, while this game is technically a fps advertising it as such attracts people that don't want a team-based game like GoIo.) 

[Mean Machine]

As for advertising GoIo as a competitive game, a part of me likes the idea, but I imagine it'd be quite tricky to do correctly. If it looks too competitive, you'll have too few fun pub matches, if it doesn't look competitive enough then you get the current problem of new players thinking this game is CoD.)

It'sad to say, but for me, pub matches are not fun anyway.

Pub patches have:

-long lobby times
-lots of players that would fit into novice matches,
-lots of players that won't listen to captain,
-trolls/harrasors,
-Inappropriate chat/lobby full of immature players
-impatient players aka "ready-up!!!! guys",
-unbalanced matches (one sided) which leads to non fun matches,
-opponents with AI crew (not fun to fight),
-ragequitting crew, especially it's annyoing when captain ragequit
....

Only lobbies that are fun are half organized one - high level lobbies, where people invite their high level friends...

A lot of those reasons why "casual lobbies" are not fun is simply because it's not really a game for casual play. At least not in the way how it works now. It might change when matchmaking system comes out ( i hope), but for now, veterans and newbies are playing together and every match like that is not casual match. Veterans, even if they are messing around, they will still fire guns as they know it (they won't miss on purpose), they will pilot at least decently, they will most likely communicate with their crew/ally, engineers will repair as they usually do and keep chem rotation up and so on...  On the other team - low level one, those guys have no idea how to do any of this properly, because either they have no experience and they ignore any advices/commands from crew and captain or they simply don't care and just want to play casually.
The amount of people that applies for our clan, plays for few days and then never show up again, saddens me. And a lot of them says they love the game, when they try it at first, some of them even make review or stream themselves playing and telling everyone how awesome game is. But, after few days, you never see them logging back in. Of course not everyone leaves for this reason, but a lot of them do.

[Wundsalz]

I think introducing league formats which allow teams to face opponents of similar strength would help a great deal to keep new clans motivated.

So.. I am confused. By your own definition, being a "weaker" pillar is just about how often a team/clan does competitive events.

At the moment we only see one team for events. About a year ago you've had 3 teams which all showed up in major events. Hence your pillar in Skrims model has been weakened by 2/3rds since then.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Well to be fair the ducks have taken breaks from competitive. Course most teams have done this. Other times they haven't competed...beats me. You'd have to ask them.

Isn't the Sunday events already sort of an Unranked play day? How bout just doing that. Run Saturdays as Ranked matches and Sunday as Unranked. There you have your vets on one and newbs on the other. Course there will be people that want to play both days. Nothing you can do about that. Maybe limit it so a Ranked team cannot enter an Unranked event with the same roster or if they do the same roster, they must switch up who pilots/etc.

[Skrimskraw]

nhbearit.

My definition is in no way describing ducks as a lesser clan than others. The Weak / Strong description has only to do with the clans participation in various events. a team like rydr or thralls who have been in both saturday / sunday events is in my definition considered strong pillars due to their consistent participation. Ducks however are considered a weak pillar due to participation in only some events, true ducks participated in hephaestus, but so did merry men who still like to take part when something big happens, but weekly events like sunday skirmish they dont participate in.

the idea of this is that to keep clans interested there has to be a competitive scene, and if there is a competitive scene, then it has to have clans. the two doesn't work without eachother. A casual clan in this topic is by definition not interesting to look at. This is about the competitive scene and how we can see that many teams are disappearing. My own clan will probaly go inactive after r&d, I stop playing competitive due to wanting a break, and the general feeling in the clan is that they need a break aswell. We do not promise that we will come back, but we also do not promise that we wont come back. But fact is that when something like this happen that clan/team is gone and no longer relevant to the competitive scene, part of its history yes, but not part of the future.

I am really loving the discussion and ideas coming from everyone, it's interesting to see everyone's perspective.

If you feel like that my definitions are too vague or wrong, it is completely alright to argue that they should change or possible there should be three tiers of clan strenght.

[Hoja Lateralus]

It'sad to say, but for me, pub matches are not fun anyway.

Pub patches have:

-long lobby times
-lots of players that would fit into novice matches,
-lots of players that won't listen to captain,
-trolls/harrasors,
-Inappropriate chat/lobby full of immature players
-impatient players aka "ready-up!!!! guys",
-unbalanced matches (one sided) which leads to non fun matches,
-opponents with AI crew (not fun to fight),
-ragequitting crew, especially it's annyoing when captain ragequit
....

Only lobbies that are fun are half organized one - high level lobbies, where people invite their high level friends...

So much this.

Currently there's too little players to have some kind of haven for experienced players to hide from noobs and for noobs to hide from experienced players.

[nhbearit]

Skrim, my problem with your definition is that, towards the end of your original post, you called the ducks a FORMERLY strong(which by your definition means reliable) team. From a reliability standpoint, I don't think much has changed. I think we still do the same events now as we did before. If there are any specifics you'd like to talk about concerning this, please, send me a pm. I don't really want to clutter up this forum with this topic.

Swiftpaw, I might be a little weird in this regard, but when I said fun pub match, I meant a pub match where I can experiment. It needs to be a lobby where the players are good enough so that I'm not annoyed by them. but the players can't be too good either. If they're too good I'd have to try too hard to win, which means I won't have the flexibility to experiment. To me, pub matches are all about experimentation, and introducing new players to the game.

Wundsalz, I didn't think that the third team ever actually competed, those were pretty hectic times though, so I could have missed/forgotten it. But, regardless, It would have been a VERY brief spike. As for only having one team currently competing, well, this is why I called the original post too narrow. When you're taking the entire history of competitive GoIo into account, you're going to see spikes and fluctuations. If we want to help the competitive seen, we need to be able to see through those fluctuations and identify any underlying problems, if there are any. Now, I don't think that the league format that you suggest would work for very long, you'd get the same few teams competing against each other repeatedly, which would get boring really quickly and wouldn't really help newer teams grow because of that repetition. (Which might have been seen in an old version of cogs, I'd have to double check that though)

I think in general, having a separate tournament for newer players is a bad idea. Just like what's currently happening in novice matches, you'll probably see them start to specialize in builds that wouldn't work in higher tier competitive matches. I think that our goal, as a community, should be to get these new teams ready for real competitive matches. I think we can all agree, that the more good competitive teams we get, the better the competitive scene (and this game) will be. So, how do we get more teams up to a competitive level?

[DMaximus]

Wundsalz, I didn't think that the third team ever actually competed, those were pretty hectic times though, so I could have missed/forgotten it. But, regardless, It would have been a VERY brief spike.

I believe that the Paddling, the Brood, and the Raft were all competing in the last Cogs, and all did very well. One of the older Ducks probably remembers the specifics better than I do, but I know from competing against them that none of them were teams to be taken lightly.

[N-Sunderland]

Wundsalz, I didn't think that the third team ever actually competed, those were pretty hectic times though, so I could have missed/forgotten it. But, regardless, It would have been a VERY brief spike.

I believe that the Paddling, the Brood, and the Raft were all competing in the last Cogs, and all did very well. One of the older Ducks probably remembers the specifics better than I do, but I know from competing against them that none of them were teams to be taken lightly.

You are correct. In fact, those three teams occupied three of the top four Cogs for a few weeks, and all three were participating in a number of events for a period of several months. So a little bit more than a "very brief spike"

Using Skrim's definitions, I'd absolutely agree that the Ducks are a "weak" pillar at this point, at least compared to the way it was last year.

[nhbearit]

Sunderland, You are correct. I had forgotten that Brood had played at the same time as
Paddling. However, when tournaments generally span several months, having three teams for
only a couple months is a small spike when talking about the ENTIRE HISTORY of the GoIo
competitive scene. Which, for the third time, takes me back to calling the original post too
narrow. The fact is we are talking about years worth of competitive play and tournaments. If
we want to make the competitive scene better than it is now, we have to think long-term.

DMaximus, I am surprised that a CA has forgotten how to send Private Messages through the
forum.I mean, it LOOKS like you read my post so the only other explanation I can come up
with for not sending me a pm is that you don't respect me enough to open a dialogue with me.

But you're a CA, I can't imagine that you'd feel that way.

If there are any specifics you'd like to talk about concerning this, please, send me a pm. I don't really want to clutter up this forum with this topic.

Seriously people, I thought I had made my opinions and reasoning clear. If you feel like I
haven't, then feel free to send me a message so I can try to explain it better. I might even
edit my original post as a result of the dialogue.

As for the original topic of this thread,

I think a relatively easy solution to this would be a consolidated thread with contact info for team organizers. Even if it's just a thread that says " I am the organizer for team x", where it's explained how send PMs through the forum, would go a long way towards solving that problem.

That's probably the best idea I have for improving the competitive scene. I think a lot of
people are unhappy with how it's currently handled so, let's try to figure out a way to make
it better as a community.

[DMaximus]

DMaximus, I am surprised that a CA has forgotten how to send Private Messages through the
forum.I mean, it LOOKS like you read my post so the only other explanation I can come up
with for not sending me a pm is that you don't respect me enough to open a dialogue with me.

But you're a CA, I can't imagine that you'd feel that way.

If there are any specifics you'd like to talk about concerning this, please, send me a pm. I don't really want to clutter up this forum with this topic.

Seriously people, I thought I had made my opinions and reasoning clear. If you feel like I
haven't, then feel free to send me a message so I can try to explain it better. I might even
edit my original post as a result of the dialogue.

I was merely providing some background friend, sorry if that offended you.

As for the original topic of this thread,

I think a relatively easy solution to this would be a consolidated thread with contact info for team organizers. Even if it's just a thread that says " I am the organizer for team x", where it's explained how send PMs through the forum, would go a long way towards solving that problem.

That's probably the best idea I have for improving the competitive scene. I think a lot of
people are unhappy with how it's currently handled so, let's try to figure out a way to make
it better as a community.

That's not a bad idea. There's a stickied thread in Community Events that's fairly similar:
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php/topic,1379.0.html

And a Steam group Skrim setup for helping contact other clan leaders:
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php?topic=4544.0

Unfortunately, neither really sees much use. There's also the Currently Available Clans thread on the Dock, which lists the clan leaders for many of the clans.