Competitive Incentives Brainstorm

So I know a lot of ideas have been thrown out and I know we in the comp community have had candid discussions about what could work. I just wanted to throw this out there to see what everyone thought or could come up with.

Right now, it's beta and ranks are being reset so a lot of people are just trying to get a feel for the game. A lot of people are new to Insurgency so they are just trying to learn the base game before jumping into competitive.

I think we all agree there needs to be a fix to the queue system and NWI has stated multiple times (including last night) that they think they have found a fix for the bugged queue system - they're still testing it. The optimization issues need to be fixed first so people can actually play before NWI can divert programmers to competitive (makes sense to me).


Incentives for Playing Competitive


Focus on Positive Reinforcement - these are just ideas not absolute suggestions - not all ideas are my own but from the community.

Also - I believe skins should be banned from competitive play as some skins are more advantageous than others are certain maps. They certainly will at a league level. Default skins only.

  1. Display Competitive Ranks (can be displayed next to the public rank icon). If name too long on scoreboard, shorten with (Namelong...). Unsure if to display in competitive matches only or also in public. I wouldn't show CP as that could be a little trolly and is a bit overkill. "I have 750 CP and you have 740 CP, listen to me!"

  2. Increase XP given in Comp MM. Right now it is really hard to level up in competitive. It takes me 3-5 games to level up depending on the rounds in Competitive MM. In public, I level up after almost every match, and for sure every 2 matches.

1 hour of playing pub per level (estimate) vs. 2-3 hours of play Comp per level (estimate).

  1. Specific skins that can only be earned through competitive.

3a. Every week if a user plays X matches they'll be awarded a skin/bonus in game currency. Can increase the number of matches needed every time they hit the "x". So the first time it's 4 matches for a skin/bonus in game currency, then 8, then 12, then 16... so they must play more matches every time to earn a reward.

3b. Award extra in game currency for playing placement matches or a skin for completely placement matches

  1. Steam achievements for playing placement matches.

  2. Overwatch like peer-vote achievements/nominations such as Good Sportsmanship, Good Teammate, Good Communication. You can't vote for people in your party. You can vote for the other team too (good sportsmanship). You can only vote for 3 people total (number is just a suggestion).

Tie in steam achievements to this, for example (receive 3 sportsmanship nominations). Maybe tie in skins or extra currency somehow. For example give "X currency" for a nomination - has to be balanced though and not ridiculously too much.

This promotes teamwork, people not being toxic, and communication. It works very well in OW, people are really nice and it makes people feel welcome.

A huge issue is people not using microphones in comp.

  1. Your idea?

I am interested to see what you guys come up with / opinions. Again these are just brainstorming ideas and I am sure there are some gems out there that some of you guys can suggest/come up with.

  1. Maybe disable in game voices, like all the talk that goes in between the game randomly put by the game or after doing certain actions so people have absolutely no idea what is happening, kind of like csgo's, really no indication of where enemies are, bomb location, etc, that is unless teammates are talking.

I don't think banning customization from competitive would be a good idea. People love customization and banning them would be counter-productive i think and would make some people mad f.e. "why did i pay XXXX if i cant use it in comp..".

Would also be kinda weird if you can win comp-only skins, but skins are disabled.

Comp ranks should def. be shown everywhere and not only in comp.

I like the rest of the ideas.

@freedn

You know... you reminded me of something someone wanted in the game. They wanted more specific audio queues for competitive. To help new players.

For example if we're on Insurgents and our natural is C. If SEC steps on C, it would give an audio queue "Enemy on C!".

I have mixed feelings about this, what do you think?

I do think the random audio queues that you hear should go away. I spam walls sometimes to try and trigger the scream of enemies. It's like a built in wall hack.

I kind of miss the audio queue of when you flip an objective. You could use this to bait objectives in Source. You could just tap the objective then run off. If the enemy flipped the objective to their position of capping it gave you an audio queue. However, I think it should be "you must cap the objective 10% of the way before it will trigger an audio queue when the enemy flips the objective".

@benz

Yeah we will see what the community wants in terms of skins or not in comp. It's a little different than CS gun skins.

Especially if certain player models give you an advantage - then you have people who have a lot of in game currency who can afford skins that give them an advantage against others who cannot afford the skins.

@link yeah, i can totally see that. maybe just have "sanctioned" skins allowed in comp? but they need to look dope.

( maybe there's also a way to make players in general more visible via shaders or anything in comp? maybe? dunno...might be worth investigating, not sure )

last edited by Benz

Also - I think they should add a "warm up" or "waiting room" for competitive people that are in queue. Either a shooting range, a skirmish TDM game, or just being able to run around the map would be nice.

@link said in Competitive Incentives Brainstorm:

Also - I think they should add a "warm up" or "waiting room" for competitive people that are in queue. Either a shooting range, a skirmish TDM game, or just being able to run around the map would be nice.

  • Yeah definitely. They also should put an accept button to make sure that we don't get random afks or some players that could not play a game they got queued in beside matchmaking issues.

What about specific rank awards ? Like for example, as soon as you get diamond, you get some cosmetics that could show which rank you got in game.
Same as possible titles that could be displayed under the name like "Aim God" after getting 1000 headshots on his account, or also "Diamond Season #1" (if competitive work per season).

Also - I believe skins should be banned from competitive play as some skins are more advantageous than others are certain maps. They certainly will at a league level. Default skins only.

I think that we should step back with that idea of getting rid of skins for now and we will see how it is really going on. I was kind of scared about cosmetics available in competitive mod, but I still did not have trouble to notice someone on my screen because of a darker torso/legs cosmetic because he was hidden.
As soon as we find out that some cosmetics are kinda meta because they help people to get hidden more easily, then we should think about it. I would love to see a 5-players team where everyone is playing with the Too Cool Red Cap or something !

Love you all!

last edited by Kerroro

Havent played any comp matches yet, because it was not enough people queued at the time I was playing, but:

Comp servers should have audio hq messages disabled, just like in insurgency 2. It is different in competitive and can be distracting/annoying when you listen to footsteps and someone fakecaps and/or friendlies attack an obj which you either talked about before or just see at the tactical map.

Therefor more voicecommands have to be added, such as: "Need help" and "Area Clear", that clearly display in a written way when you are in an objective. It was helpful for people that do not speak english very well but stil want to give status of objective work.

Skins should be banned imo, New players will have it hard to identify friend/foe with tons of different skins, when playing versus you might have the time to realize, competetive should be instant recognition. I can think of some classspecific skins though.

A Lobby and a "Ready"-Button is a musthave.

Is there a visible enemy score on scoreboard in comp mode?

last edited by mr.pink

@mr-pink said in Competitive Incentives Brainstorm:

Havent played any comp matches yet, because it was not enough people queued at the time I was playing, but:

This is probably the biggest problem right now. There isn't enough diehard players for competitive so there aren't people that are willing to try it because they would have to wait 15 or more minutes to get a game actually started.

@link I've got a friend that doesnt have a mic and never will for some reason, so yeah def some more commands to actually indicate more things, i liked that source's you could communicate pretty easily with the voice commands. It would be fun if we had the GOGOGOGO! or stop right here, stuff like that