Cold death of the competitive scene
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Viereailijat: 320 users
Update: after several discussions with several prominent scenario and custom map players, I've came up with some palpable demands. Since some people constantly say they don't get the point of this post, let me state it clearly for them. More points will be added in the future.
Without those, CW scene will still be practically and technically locked on EU+ 10k as it is right now.
The extra point of the post is for competitive community to stop being self-centered. I've presented my insight on why the community is dying and offered several options to prevent the cold death. It's the competitive community's choice whether they ignore it, or face the issue instead. Seeing the responses and upvotes to this post, I see many familiar faces from the competitive scene supporting it. For the rest of the community I have a clear message, to stop being delusional.
I am still wondering how much time it has to take to make people realize some apparent things.
First of all, the number of competitive players is constantly shrinking. Since almost all currently active ones registered before 2016 and you can see more and more players going inactive every day, the trend is obvious. Currently active coalitions have at most 100 competitive players, for which I doubt more than half are active. Back in 2016 in the peak period of overall activity, Epic Clan had almost 60 members itself, out of which almost all played CW. Let's not even mention other coalitions like ENIGMA, SM and Mystics all had 20-30 players each. MK and several other smaller coalitions had up to 20 aswell. Unlike in this moment, at that time 90% of the mentioned players were active. The bar to join is very high aswell. All the skills of new players are overshadowed by experience of the old players who are playing the same map for years and years.
Second, the most basic competitive setting, EU+ 10k, has been played out. Since the vast majority of games are played with 6 picks and each team can pick one of the two picks in three parts of the map, there are 8 combinations total to play. Even with a few extra combinations, there is not much change. Adding that the most games are decided in first 8 turns, you can conclude the initial picks as well as the initial picks are the deciding factor in the victory. Now tell me what is the last time you've seen something new happening in CW? All moves have already been seen, they all have been played out. There have been at least 6000 CWs so far (90% of them on EU+) and at least 10 times that many duels on EU+.
The solution to that is obvious, and it's that the competitive scene stops being elitist, exclusive and egocentric. Playing diverse maps, even the other parts of world map, as well as scenarios, would increase the number of people participating in CWs 10 times. There are far more scenario, RP and world map players than competitive players, as it could be seen from several polls conducted in past. The exclusion of them from one of the most interesting features this game offers has to stop, or the game will ultimately suffer. Choose wisely.
Below is the competitive scene, colorized
- Make scenario CWs work. Currently, it's technically impossible to play such game.
- Have a scenario / custom map mod. Currently, there are zero custom map mods, let alone scenario mods.
- Stop mods from disallowing ghosting in scenarios. So far there have been numerous warnings regarding this, I'm not sure have there been more severe actions. Forcing the ghosting rule in scenarios would severely hurt the game.
- Make a functioning map editor. Already discussed in other threads. I've been told it's very bugged and needs a lot more work.
Without those, CW scene will still be practically and technically locked on EU+ 10k as it is right now.
The extra point of the post is for competitive community to stop being self-centered. I've presented my insight on why the community is dying and offered several options to prevent the cold death. It's the competitive community's choice whether they ignore it, or face the issue instead. Seeing the responses and upvotes to this post, I see many familiar faces from the competitive scene supporting it. For the rest of the community I have a clear message, to stop being delusional.
I am still wondering how much time it has to take to make people realize some apparent things.
First of all, the number of competitive players is constantly shrinking. Since almost all currently active ones registered before 2016 and you can see more and more players going inactive every day, the trend is obvious. Currently active coalitions have at most 100 competitive players, for which I doubt more than half are active. Back in 2016 in the peak period of overall activity, Epic Clan had almost 60 members itself, out of which almost all played CW. Let's not even mention other coalitions like ENIGMA, SM and Mystics all had 20-30 players each. MK and several other smaller coalitions had up to 20 aswell. Unlike in this moment, at that time 90% of the mentioned players were active. The bar to join is very high aswell. All the skills of new players are overshadowed by experience of the old players who are playing the same map for years and years.
Second, the most basic competitive setting, EU+ 10k, has been played out. Since the vast majority of games are played with 6 picks and each team can pick one of the two picks in three parts of the map, there are 8 combinations total to play. Even with a few extra combinations, there is not much change. Adding that the most games are decided in first 8 turns, you can conclude the initial picks as well as the initial picks are the deciding factor in the victory. Now tell me what is the last time you've seen something new happening in CW? All moves have already been seen, they all have been played out. There have been at least 6000 CWs so far (90% of them on EU+) and at least 10 times that many duels on EU+.
The solution to that is obvious, and it's that the competitive scene stops being elitist, exclusive and egocentric. Playing diverse maps, even the other parts of world map, as well as scenarios, would increase the number of people participating in CWs 10 times. There are far more scenario, RP and world map players than competitive players, as it could be seen from several polls conducted in past. The exclusion of them from one of the most interesting features this game offers has to stop, or the game will ultimately suffer. Choose wisely.
Below is the competitive scene, colorized
July 2018 ww2 nevar 4gett
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True, Guess my perspective of Unleashed was a bit bias, based on ww2/ww1 games and some others against, what I believed were one of the better scen players, guess memory is a bitch, nevarr forget Guess i'll just delete that, since it diminish the rest 
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You're correct, I forgot on that. So, over 10 500 cws in total. Still a big amount of games on the same presets which is telling me only 1 thing, competitive players are enjoying it the same way as before. Myself at first place. I am repeating, non competitive eu+ player is holding any scenario player (or coalition) to organise themselves for playing their scenario games as clan wars. But it's easier to spit the map and fill it with random players than to find around an opponent coalition to prepare cw with. Competitive coalitions with barely 20-30 members organised many times and played 5v5 - 10v10 cws on euroasia and world maps, which tells me it's possible. Imagine now if your active coalition filled with scenario players has 100+ memebers. Why is that problem? Many players would be introduced with CWs, CW scene would be extended not only on deafult map, but we would have scenario coalitions competing too. I still don't see why the game will suffer if competitive players don't change anything... I just want to know why scenario players are not changing anything the same way and try to organise themselves a bit better than just applying new memebers into the coalition. They have all doors open to change the CWing criteriums and trust me, it doesn't depend on cca 120 competitive players and their lovely map.
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njab Käyttäjä poistettu |
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If so, easy to make playable; but no one of scenario guys has wish to make it happen. That's why so many years passed and it's still not being done. And many more will pass till you realize it's not problem in competitive players, but on the contrary.
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njab Käyttäjä poistettu |
njab Käyttäjä poistettu
When I say technically, I mean constrained by the current code. Clovis and I tried it already in the past. Scenarios and raw scenario maps are pretty balanced, there are just technical problems.  I'd like you to keep quiet on something you have no experience on. I have never seen you in scenario, hell, I've never seen you out of EU+ preset. I've played all kinds of maps on all kinds of settings so far, so I think I know what's technically possible and what isn't, ok? Stop trying to make me argue about something which this post isn't about. Read it again if you have any doubts.
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Perhaps we should look at what happened back in 2016 that drastically effected activity levels of players. Wasn't 16 the year we had the beginner's room bumped from R4 cap to R6? Since the cap was changed the population of rooms has shifted to the beginner's room. many players in the beginner's room are now are experienced players playing on alts. This detracts from new players enjoying a game experience. The learning curve is sharp enough without having to play against a rank 5 alt of a rank 12 player. I've been asking about this for a while, but why don't we petition to get rid of the beginner's room all together and just go back to letting players choose player rank range for each game. I think choosing rank range is a stupid perk for premium players, we get plenty with access to custom maps and premium strategies. Those are the perks I bought my premium for, not changing the rank of players I play against, because frankly I could give two shits who is in a game with me after 6 years of atwar. If we allow people to set the rank range of a game themselves the beginners can play in games for beginners by simply only playing in games that limit the rank range. If we did this the main lobby wouldn't be so empty. Lack of quick games queued are a major issue for new players in a world of ever increasing instant gratification. The more games in one room, the busier the game looks. The beginner's room was great during the peak of Atwar, but now our player base is shrinking because of a lack of new players and a lack of activity for experienced players.
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How can you honestly expect the competitive scene to get revived while the mod team continues banning active competitive players for whatever reason they like? It's just not meant to work this way my friend.. Mods are only strong until you have a strong opinion/valid points. After that, they become scared of you and move your post to the mod forum because they know they got no other way of defending themselves. i can easily make a little rant about it but how long will it last here? 30 minutes? A hour? Maybe 2? Either way, it doesn't really matter and I don't even care, maybe its really time to just give up and accept a 4 months ban for using a submarine as a bridge
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If waffel thinks unleash is one the best scen players i am not suprised he thinks scen players are total noobs lmao,he is below average tbh not to mention its yet another ww fag
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'quantity > quality' yeah sure njab. Army of 200 noobs totally better than a single team of 3 pros. You literally destroyed EC by inviting every randomly found noob in AW. Don't worry, though. What we gave, we can take back. You are dead to us
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This whole thread is pure garbage. Njab has zero idea what is happening and what he is talking about. He thinks if you fill your clan with 500 noobs and idiots you win the grand atwar game of being a fking retard of a leader. EC never had 60 players cwing , made up numbers. Max active cwing players we had back in ec was no more than 15 and even that is a stretch. The competitive scene is not dead Njab , EC is , get that in your head. I told you this hundred times for years but you didn't listen. Just delete this thread and stop embarrassing yourself and tell clovis to delete his acc.
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Ec could be revived if bugs didnt got banned but this nub used a submarine ONLY BUG ABUSER USE SUBMARINE!!! cuz bugs and I were kicking the nubs and njab couldnt kick us cuz we won almost all ec elo but we could be on the top 3 ez and then some lowrank and good player would join for next season. Njab tried to do like pb invite a lot of players to win cws but pb got good and decent players and not decent and nub players. Idk how was ec before cuz i've never seen ec winning a season since im playing njab think like a scenario player quantity is quality this is the most retarded think i've heard in this game even tengri is less retarded zzzzz
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You have busted our balls with dick bunny.No one fucking cares.He wasn't competitive nor he will ever be.Same as you.All you two know is abusing bugs and rushing as well as abusing lb.If rush fails you die t4.You have even admitted abusing too bad I didn't screenshot it. Sorry not sorry.
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XAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXXAXA i found something more retarded than quantity is quality XAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXAXXAXA abusing lb if u know bugs and I u know we only rush with sm and how many times I raped ur gw ukr? and if rush fail I ragequit cuz elo doesnt matter when someone is lucky or better than u mean he abuses bugs and use hacks u suck when u will admit this. And I dont use bugs retard i never admitted it last time u said that bugs said he taught me how to tb u are a fucking nub lier everyone. Retard viva go away nub zzz
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hey apart from the last one, may I know how the others would help prolong the death of the competitive community? Scenario CWs would be a nice thing to have, but in the end they'd just result in a divide between a few clans that played cws in scenarios and a few that played them on Europe+ I completely do not understand how having scenario/custom map mods would help the death of the competitive community. Surely having moderation more favourable to scenario and custom map players would not improve the competitive community? I completely agree with point 3, but I still do not understand how that would help the competitive community Point 4 was unnecessary, we all wish for the map editor to be completed as soon as possible. Everyone would benefit if it is completed. EDIT: Njab has stated that he intends to unite scenario and competitive communities. I still disagree that all of the above points will help unite scenario and competitive communities
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This has 71 upvotes now. All I see here is competitive elitists attacking njab and scenario players. I hope Dave takes a good long look at this and tells the supposed comp community to get fucked. You assholes showed your true colours here and this is not the community it used to be. You all deserve to watch it crash and burn at this point. Disgusting. Secondly the mods allowed this crap which just further insinuates the need for mods who give a shit about the other 90% of players who ain't know it all assholes who bully people daily for simply having there own ideas and suggestions. This whole thread is so fucked up.
----  We are not the same- I am a Martian.
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On a serious note: After having followed this scene since EU became the standard in early 2011, I believe the biggest issue has always been a lack of options and opportunity with that map alone, considering the entire game has since be designed around it specifically. Color me surprised that people are only just now finally starting to get sick of it damn-near eight years later. I would advise making at the bare minimum, two other competitive maps that can be mainstays to spice gameplay up. And don't get me wrong- they don't have to be custom maps. They could even be variants of EU+, but they must have some sort of dynamic that EU+ does not have. I'll go ahead and write a lengthy blog-tier post in a few minutes on what variables competitive players need in their maps and what mapmakers should think about when designing them, using EU+ as a base. That being said, no scene can last forever without progressive change in the metagame. Only now has Dave (seemingly) nerfed Lucky Bastard. I haven't played a game for a month or so now to test this change, but I'm sure it wasn't without consequences. With this change however, I must implore again that we need to all sit down one of these days and discuss the true meta-ranking of every strategy in the game from Shit-tier to God-tier in order to fully mobilize an effective protocol for balancing/nerfing/buffing strats every few months after a metagame has been solved. Said protocol should prioritize a few things: (1) Evaluating the current metagame and comparing it to an initial base tier-list made at the beginning of each year, (2a) Nerfing strategies in the S+-tiers that have become abusive, (2b) defining what an abusive strategy is per metagame circumstance(s), (3) Buffing strategies in C or lower tiers to fit into newly-changing metagame paradigms and create incentive for their usage, (4) Implementing new content in the form of competitive map variants and new strategies to mimic abused strategies in a controlled environment; use new ideas in the metagame; spice up or create assurance in some roles of gameplay not often fully utilized. I think it goes without saying that with Dave at the helm, anything can be done now in AtWar, and I've personally never felt this optimistic for the game. But Dave doesn't know the game as well as we do just yet, hence why we do need to discuss these strategies in a controlled environment and in an objective manner if we want anything done unanimously and efficiently. As well: We really need the Test Server to be updated more frequently. We also need to allow Supporters, a new role of people, or select individuals to have access to test strategies or have the ability to make their own on the test server to gather information and test them out for the base game. I'd be willing to pump a few hours a week on their doing just that if I had the ability to do so, and I'm sure many of you would as well.
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its obvious this thread was an unneeded attack towards competitives, as sphinx said live and let live, now you guys are getting buttfucked cause of this cheeky thread. tfw njab made the thread though. hes more competitive then scenarist but he doesent admit it. lmao
---- ''Everywhere where i am absent, they commit nothing but follies'' ~Napoleon 
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>They get a mod >Bad mod >Cry about it and ask for his demotion >His own scenario friends rat him out for nothing >logic.exe has stopped working
---- ''Everywhere where i am absent, they commit nothing but follies'' ~Napoleon
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I agree with Njab and have been saying the same thing for years, that competitive play would benefit from more variety in terms of settings. I disagree with the sentiments that competetive play is dying, and as far as I can tell, cw is at the same activity level since 2014. - Different map settings would be a truer testament to players' ability. - More players would be attracted to play cw as at present the competitive scene is, in my opinon not living up to its full potential. - Personally it is more of interest playing cw on such settings such as africa, la, na, eurasia. Digression: One of the many "promises' that were made by the previous devs which never materialised was in an in game tournament engine and league platform, with ingame notifications and capabilities to use different map settings inc. scenarios, as standards within a given tournament, having both official and unofficial tournaments coexisiting. Back in the day I seem to remember the standard setting being 3/3 4/4 on europe 5k.
---- intelligence + imagination = extraordinary result
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So am I though, the people who play everything have unique insight to the overall issue. But come to find out, you guys like your private club and will do anything in your power to protect the status quo. Which just isn't right, all fields of this game need to be accessible to everyone, and they need to evolve and grow. Regardless of what you think the way many of you handled yourselves when speaking to others is unacceptable, and is a core reason why more people don't join competative, no one wants to be attacked like that for any reason. Even if you are right, which I don't think you are, the way it was handled was distasteful and full of hate and aggression.
---- We are not the same- I am a Martian.
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Incorrect, they loved Aetius, I had him demoted because he was allowing certian people I don't agree with access to mod forum information. I was then vilified by segments of the scenario community for it. Btw anyone who knew me and Aetius, we where never friends, we where once rivals before he became the obvious power house map maker he became. But that's it.
---- We are not the same- I am a Martian.
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you mean youre a snake who was jelaous of his modship, and in turn fucked your own credibility and trustworthyness. 
---- ''Everywhere where i am absent, they commit nothing but follies'' ~Napoleon
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Can you prove that? Can anyone prove that? I'm tired of that fucked up narrative aimed at destroying my credability. I really wish the mods I went to would stop sitting on that information and clear my name but alas they left me to deal with it myself. Unless you got some secret knowledge on the issue. There are only three sources of information on the topic. My own, Aetiuses, and the mods. Anything else is just made up bullshit, another bullying tactic.
---- We are not the same- I am a Martian.
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njab Käyttäjä poistettu |
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http://prntscr.com/mcvsrs http://prntscr.com/mcvt6y http://prntscr.com/mcvtdw http://prntscr.com/mcvtn5 http://prntscr.com/mcvtvn Here is a interesting read for you guys. Now Tell me all about it guys.
---- We are not the same- I am a Martian.
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>Better mapmaker Look I ain't claiming that Hellykin is a cartographical savant or anything, but saying Aetius has a better grasp on how to make a nice-looking and well-playing map than Helly is ridiculous. See below for the truth:
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Not gonna start flame war here keeping njab post to topic. Hope helly does same as sign of respect to him. thanks, 
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The thing is, after talking to you, and some other scenario people i've noticed that its much less dramatic than you make it out to be. You guys seem to fail to elaborate what you mean and want. Take your first point for example: Make scenario CWs work. Currently, it's technically impossible to play such game Why is it technically impossible to play a scenario in a CW game? Because all we've heard in forums is basically this phrase. None of you guys mentioned that nobody ,besides the host, could join a scenario clanwar, literally nobody. I had to talk with one of you guys and luckily asked this question myself to get the answer to it. Which could be fixed by just simply reporting it on the bug forums (as I directly did, and you guys seemed to neglect). Have a scenario / custom map mod. Currently, there are zero custom map mods, let alone scenario mods. Ofcourse this subject wasn't missing in my conversations, and again, I asked why the scenario community is in need of a scenario mod, and why aren't the mods we have now, capable of doing the tasks you guys desperately need a scenario mod for. The answers I got were basically: - The mods we have now, aren't refreshing the maps/scenarios list by themselves, and we (scen-community) have to ask them constantly to do so. > Which could be easily fixed, by just making a forum post, asking if the mods would refresh the maps/scenarios list more frequently, and making it their daily/weekly task. - The mods we have now don't know the political stances/views of specific people, which could lead into a lesser or stricter punishment. > I explained, that to my knowledge this isn't one of the tasks of a mod, since, again to my knowledge, mods should be kind of objective and cannot do favourism due to the political stances/views. - The mods we have now don't know about the new released maps because they aren't as much involved with the scenario community, and I have to constantly pm/pr them to feature them in the map/scenario list > My response to this was basically, that it was such a small thing, like basically just pm/pring a mod to do so, and if they did not respond or do it, to make a forumpost about it. And that imo these reasons for a scenariomod aren't really groundbreaking to solely select a mod based on its playingfield. Most of the problems that are getting mentioned, are basically things that could be fixed if the scenario community actually shared stuff like this in the forums and reported bugs/glitches in their maps/scenarios, instead of letting it all pass and at the end of it make a thread blaming it all on the competitive side. Like Sun and garde said, sure it would be great if the competitive side played more maps outside of EU, but telling them that they must play outside of EU or else their community would die, is just not the way to do it. Like Sphink said in his thread, we do vary to other maps, like Destoria, Dreamworld, Eu/Asia/ME/Africa/Sa/America. Its just that most stick to the default map because it seems to be the most balanced map. Again here I am, wasting my time writing all of this down, when you guys will probably just ignore it anyways.
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