Making Competition Accesible

(tokamak) #1

Let’s see if we can come up with ways that make competitive play (matches with organised teams) more accessible to the big public. You basically have to ask yourself two questions. I’m not talking about making competitive matches more ‘newb friendly’, this is about making them accessible.

What is holding people back from organising clans and entering competitions with them (in other games)?

and

How can Brink take away those obstacles by catering to those players?

  • I think a big obstacle for most casual players is that next to playing the game they’ll have to put additional time and effort into organising competitive matches. For many the time put into that is simply not worth it.

  • Another issue people can have are the fixed dates in the calendar. You need to agree on a match beforehand and free up space in your agenda for that.

In this day and age games can easily take both those issue away by letting the game organise the competitive matches for the players. Blizzard did an excellent job with this with battle.net, an in-game community where you can easily add friends form clans, enter lobbies and let the game automatically find the right team to fight against. Same thing in wow, you form an arena team, add your team to the lobby and in no time you’ll find yourself pitched against another team.

I have no idea if SD is working on something like this al ready, I haven’t heard much about it but I certainly hope they do.

On top of this ladders can be organised as well. A rating system like in chess gives you a nice ranking system (finally one that really matters), involves people more and helps with finding equal teams to fight against.

Maybe also offer the service to people who want to organise leagues, give them the right tools to add events into an in-game calendar and organise tournament pools.

Let’s brain storm on how to get the casual pubber to enter into the competition scene.

(rekster) #2

Kind of off topic, but I think some main discouraging factors will be the time it takes to finish one game (scrim/match) and the number of players on each team.

-Since Brink’s maps are like campaigns similar to L4D, Im curious to how much time it’ll take. In L4D it takes around 1-2hrs to finish a game. It’d be best if Brink’s scrims/matches can end in around 30 mins like in TF2.

-I think 8’s a lot of players, prolly should be reduced down to 4 or 6.

(Shiv) #3

brink scrims will probably be stopwatch. play 1 map twice, fastest wins, repeat for however many maps the comp requires.

(kilL_888) #4

[QUOTE=tokamak;217734]

Let’s brain storm on how to get the casual pubber to enter into the competition scene.[/QUOTE]

i think thats impossible. i became a casual gamer (there are just no good games out there that grabed me since world of warcraft) myself and just dont have the motivation/time doing something as intense and time consuming like wow.

the casual is the casual for a reason and doesnt want to do any competitive stuff. the casual just wants to start the game, hop into a multiplayer match, play a few rounds and life goes on. games just dont have a very high priority for casual gamers. its not important for a casual player to play in a clan. its not even important if you win a round or not. of course its more fun to win, but the fun of the game itself is important, not who wins it.

casuals also arent interested in communities. even friendlists arent important. all this stuff involves effort/time that casuals better spend otherwise.

implementing stuff like matchmaking (lobby chat maybe), clans (clan chat), voiceover and stuff like that (just like battle.net) is generally a good thing though. but i think the casual will never ever use it. the casual just wants to play the game and have some fun, nothing more and nothing less.

(spazski) #5

Another obstacle in clan matches from the perspective of a somewhat casual gamer (I prefer solo play over competitive unless playing with friends) is the simple fact that the more casual gamers feel like everyone in clans are far too “hardcore” for them to get into the scene and be able to hold their own.

If I had to come up with an idea to remedy this, I would say something along the lines of a clan matchmaking system, where each clan is labeled with a skill level or rank, and beginning clans are set up against other clans of the same level or around the same level as their own.

If anyone has any ideas to remedy this as well, feel free to weigh in.

(Apoc) #6

I think people who want to compete will compete to be fair, and those who dont, wont.

The issue is, getting more people who want to compete, yet dont have as much time as the hardcore, or as much skill to play competitive as atm they just get raped. I think this can be simply done by introducing divisions.

Div 1 - Top level

Div 2

Div 3

Div 4 - Lowest level

This would give clans the oportunity to get better and play against teams their own level (even if playing against good players gets you better faster), making it more medium skill friendly, and clans could work their way up or down.

Also if there was 1 official site with the leagues and schedules of matches i think that would help alot, having it wrote down in 1 place avoid’s confusion and people missing matches.

(.Chris.) #7

Game needs to be suitable for competition in first place.

(INF3RN0) #8

A lot of games that are a bit more competitive actually include a varied number of server options to suit the wants of players. This way mods are not the only way to organize clan battles, apply restrictions, etc. In the case that mods are a necessity, a lot of people who might be interested in trying them, but do not have access to forums or have no way of knowing, usually play the game without knowing they even exist. I think that either making mods available to download via server or somehow having a news banner in the server list would help solve that. As to getting people interested in such things, a simple buddy list would work well, and possibly a matchup system, as in you and 7 friends/teammates are qued against another group in the same situation. I have seen some of these features in a lot of other games that seem to work well, but I don’t know if it is possible for Brink.

(INF3RN0) #9

Agreed. Just because it is a pub, does not mean it should not be competitive. Competitive modes should only bring for more convenient options if needed.

(tokamak) #10

Sure, but let’s keep this to competition organisation mechanics.

(Apples) #11

SD should run it’s own meague for brink imo, design some staff mermbers or community figures to admin the stuff, in other words I think if we keep the “community factor” high we can reach moar ppl, a badass looking site where everyteam can put its name from day1 and play against equally skilled team should work, this way we can avoid the CB problem etc etc, external leagues are maybe biggers, but fcuk many times admin for these leagues arent even playing the game theirselves and have no clue about how its done.

We can even donate monies for this site to get comp server everytime with TV and stuffs…

Peace

(Dormamu) #12

Hire a Hero, Hannes, Chris, Syd and bani.

(INF3RN0) #13

Godlike :eek::eek::eek:.

(Qhullu) #14

i think the best you can do is make people who don’t already know aware that there is a more social side to online gaming. maybe display address of some site dealing with such stuff during a loading screen.

the clan stuff is already plenty accessible for people who want to put enough effort into it, i’m assuming an option to click a button to join a random clan doesn’t really help anyone. but i suppose a quakelive/facebook like site where you can check people you don’t know out could be nice in some ways. but without a centralized server infrastructure, where all the servers push data to some server accessible to the website, impossible to do at least statswise.

(PSG_Mud) #15

Biggest thing imo is not allowing the comp to change the game so far, that the game is unrelated to the pub players. All this does is separate the community largely. If I play a game, and enjoy it, I expect to find that same enjoyment the next level up.

If you run and train for track and field for example, you’d expect to utilize those same techniques in a competition. If you play SF4 against computers, then move onto players, you’d expect everything to be the same. Many famous competitive games don’t have a split community.

Another thing, I always thought random team tournaments were fun. Perhaps some kind of in game sponsored monthly event where you can register onto a random team. This lets everyone have a crack at competition into the game, it may not be so serious, but fun non the less. It also encourages players to come back and play every so often.

SC2 ladder system is kinda genius too, sorting out the community based on skill. They have a copper, bronze, gold and platinum league based on an elo system(in this case it should be based off win ratio). Having different skill leagues offer a tremendous advantage to players who feel like they can’t find good games. Perhaps taking it a step further and have tournaments invites for each league. This will give players who are not so good a chance to play competitive against others of the same skill, incorporating everyone. It also dissolves team stacking, because players with high win ratios will be forced to play against the best. Majority of players should have a 1:1 win ratio meaning no one is being left behind, and discouraged from playing because they’re always getting rolled.

The point is that, competition isn’t restricted to only the very good. But, accessible and fun for everyone and anyone. The only difference would be that the community spotlight would be on matches that were either, full of highly skilled players or extremely good matches.

IE sponsored tournament,
8v8 Copper invite
8v8 Bronze invite
8v8 Gold invite
8v8 Platinum invite

4v4 Copper group invite
8v8 Copper group invite
4v4 Bronze invite
8v8 Bronze invite
etc

Copper winners get to succeed to the next event to compete against bronze, etc.

(Apples) #16

Mixed teams will fail anyway, what is the point to play a competition if you dont know and train with your mates? You can keep play pub it’ll be the same result.

Regarding the cvar changes and stuff they are sometimes needed for a better and more intense game, 4V4 vanilla mode in qw for exemple is quite boring and spammy.

Peace

(knippon) #17

I hope SD acknowledges that there is a healthy field of players that would like to compete or watch teams play in an organized competition (pc or console). If they willing to put forth the resources to support that kind of field of play, I think Brink will have a great chance to flourish as a great game to play and to spectate.

A good SDK would be a good start. :slight_smile:
A comprehensive spectator mode is vital. (BC2 messed this up)
TV server support.
But more importantly.

Please Splash Damage. Don’t forget about the competitors. :rolleyes:

(PSG_Mud) #18

[QUOTE=Apples;217844]Mixed teams will fail anyway, what is the point to play a competition if you dont know and train with your mates? You can keep play pub it’ll be the same result.

Regarding the cvar changes and stuff they are sometimes needed for a better and more intense game, 4V4 vanilla mode in qw for exemple is quite boring and spammy.

Peace[/QUOTE]

Why can’t you have both? Players who don’t want to be apart of a team, but still are very good have a chance to play at a higher level than regular public gamess.

(Apples) #19

I say that cuz I tryed :wink: and even high level its quickly boring to play a match without any good organisation or tactics, the best shot wins at the end, and the depth of competition is a bit ruined.

I’m not all no-no here, I just seriously doubt it’ll work

(PSG_Mud) #20

Well, not really, the depth of competition is only limited to its players. I could say because ETQW doesn’t have a large player base that its depth of competition is ruined. However, I don’t believe that competition works like that. I just think it works one way, the players who want to be the best at whatever they do. There could be hundreds if not thousands of NFL football players who never gave the sport a chance. That doesn’t make it any less competitive.

Sure, its not taken as serious as a group invite league for good reason. But, we’re talking about getting more players into competition, to compete against players of their own skill level. Players who want to play RT should have a chance to if they want.

I gtg right now I’ll bbl with more comment.