Nobody wants competitive. Stop trying to force it.

@quadsword To be clear, most people play competitive because they're intending to take the game more seriously. By definition, people will have heightened expectations, emotions, and criticism. That doesn't make competitive modes bad, it just means competitive modes might not be for you.

As I recall, in Ins2 they tried to haphazardly appeal to the competitive scene, but at the same time neglected the real needs of the both the competitive and casual scenes as a whole, and the whole thing fell apart into what we have now--the same ~400 people playing Ins2 on the same dozen or so servers.

You've placed the blame for QC's failure on the devs, when it sounds more like a failure on the part of the community. It sounds to me that the community was just a toxic shit-show, if it was as you've described it, and no developmental TLC was going to fix it. For example, League of Legends has had a significantly competitive community for years. The game has been balanced around competitive play, for the most part. And it's popular, casually and professionally. I can't fucking stand it, though. The community drives me up a wall, for the exact reasons you mentioned about competitive players, but I encounter it in the most casual game modes.

I think you might have gone a little overboard on your criticism of competitive modes as a whole based on anecdotal experience, and the overall toxicity of gaming communities in general. I don't blame you, it's easy to come to that conclusion. But as someone who's been in competitive gaming scenes in some capacity across 5-6 popular titles, I can tell you that most people who rage and freak out at their teammates are not representative of the community at large, and are often the rejects and pariahs of the true competitive scenes.

@tedeski NWI attempted it integrate some form of competitive ranking. It didnt really go anywhere unfortunately, the theatre was pretty bad, poorly balanced etc. The rankings were not that well done but it was a bit of fun. I dont for a second believe however it neglected the "real needs" of either scene tho. It was a nice addition. From my understanding it was 1 or 2 guys working on the whole thing so I think it did alright for what we got in such a short time frame. The "casual" scene as you put it (which I can only assume you mean casual players playing skirmish/push/occupy etc) needed no real attention at that point. Straight up, the game was done. No new contents coming out, couple bug fixes here and there et voila. Dust off your hands and start work on sandstorm.

Also League of Legends is definitely balanced, primarily, for the casual audience, NOT pro competitive play (which is what I assume you mean by "competitive" seeing as the main game is literally just a competitive game). I dont play league much but its communities rep is in the toilet and way past the u-bend.

@quadsword I highly doubt that what you say happened in quake would happen in SS. "Competitive" is not the focus of NWI. Theres 3 PVP game modes and one of them has a competitive queue, with some ranks. Thats about as much as we have for "competitive" right now and its not gonna kill the game, people in the community want it and a lot of other shit outside of a mm system is being created. Comp players arnt screaming for a focus on MM or comp either. Most of the issues that I have seen competitive players take issue with and give feedback on, is gameplay balance issues. Movement speed/strafe speed is too fast, weapon recoil is too low, sway is too impactful and random, this part of X map isnt balanced etc.

Your whole issue seems to be that Quake over focused on esports n shit and it all failed. I just cannot see NWI doing the same things. I sincerely doubt that they have huge, wild aspirations for SS as an "esport" or anything other than adding another element to the game for players to have fun. Let me tell you right now, a lot of the old comp players, me included, probably wont spend that much time in comp MM when we could be playing pick up games. I appreciate the inclusion of MM dont get me wrong and Ill still play it, but having MM isnt some huge commitment by NWI to competitive. Its like the lowest bar to entry. esports isnt getting "forced" on this game. If it was skirmish probably would have been cut too and maps would be wayyyyy smaller.

Addressing you main point where you say "insurgency will never be competitive" I figure you mean with other competitive shooters. Consider they just want to provide the option for players to have fun as right now, competitive shit is hot af. MM is, as I stated above the lowest bar to entry. The resources that NWI would free up would probably be like, 2 guys working on it once a week for a day. I.e Not much. The changes that mm has seen indicates that it is actually NOT getting worked on much/at all. So your wish is pretty much already granted. Mostly cos the MM system is pretty much complete. Its not like its some super complicated system either requiring constant tinkering. Its Elo + MM. I dunno what else to say. Hope I have assuaged some of your concerns. 😃

There is very little difference between comp and every other game mode.

Comp has a matchmaking system that utilizes some more parameters than the regular queue system we have.

The game is already tracking your stats, you can order it by Coop, Casual or Comp. No change there.

Same mechanics. It actually uses the same maps.

The player per team limit is set to 5 instead of 16. Round timer changed. Some classes are fiddled with.

There are very little changes that people want that would not universally help all modes. You have some very loud people but the majority of people are quiet and don't post. It's quite hard to tell who really is in the majority haha 😛

If you think about it, having comp actually helps sustained. It removes all the tryhard kids and funnels them into one area.

Every player, coop comp or casual, agrees the maps need a little tweaking. They all agree on optimization. They all agree on something needing to be done to the movement. They may differ in the degree of change they want but they all pretty much want something done in the same areas.

The reason no one plays comp right now is because it's a beta, ranks getting reset, there is very little reward for playing comp, and the queue system is bugged where half your games in comp don't start and you can spend 20 minutes waiting to get a game that actually starts. NWI is working on this and once some of these changes/fixes get implemented you will see it boom. Plus, Comp will be blasted all over the internet (by me 😎 ) which promotes the game and brings more casual players in. Everyone profits.

We are pretty much all on the same page. We may be at different spots on that page but we are on the same page pretty much 🙂

last edited by Link

I still want competitive. But I don't like people that want to make it competitive by making into CSGO.

@quadsword said in Nobody wants competitive. Stop trying to force it.:

Insurgency will never be competitive. The idea that it could ever compete with other competitive shooters is a bad joke. [...] Stop trying to force an e-sports scene to happen. ...

You are incorrectly equating being competitive with being an e-sport. Being competitive means that the game doesn't break down if you play 100% to win. Being an e-sport is in my impression generally considered a game that has a competitive community that participates in competitions with big prize pools, and has the viewers to feed that competition.

Trying to make a game an e-sport can indeed have catastrophic consequences. Trying to make a game competitive is generally never a bad thing. The competitive matchmaking option is there to provide people an experience versus cannot, it is not there to make sandstorm an e-sport the size of CSGO.

Having played in competitions in ins2007 and ins2014, I can assure you that it is very much possible to play insurgency competitively. Personally, that is what I enjoy the most. I haven't played sandstorm in over two weeks since the competitive matchmaking system is working so poorly.

@quadsword said in Nobody wants competitive. Stop trying to force it.:

Insurgency will never be competitive. The idea that it could ever compete with other competitive shooters is a bad joke.

Just ditch competitive matchmaking and put resources into something the community actually wants. Stop trying to force an e-sports scene to happen. All you'll be met with is failure and a disappointed community. The Quake Champions developers tried desperately to force a competitive scene into existence and all it resulted in was the game being publicly ridiculed by the entire FPS community and subsequently dying off.

Insurgency source had a competetive scene, people want it. You dont want it, you can entirely ignore it so idk why you seem so flustered about it. Once the game releases and has a larger following and is more stable, people are going to be running competitions. It is admittedly a bit odd that there is a competitive option right now in the beta, but whether or not you like it, it will help the game be better and people will play it competitively.

I want competitive Insurgency. Quite a few other Insurgency players also want this. How does the inclusion of a ranked mode hurt you in any way?

This won't matter until RNG recoil and sway are addressed, though, because luck-based mechanics are fundamentally anti-competitive in nature.

@quadsword I want competetive because I'm tired by the salty casuals who keeps leaving games and making the matches so unenjoyable for the loosing team.

I'd like competitive, I like the game but casual just means hopping on for a few matches, getting bored, and exiting the game with an extra level and some money to buy a piece of clothing.
It will get stale and die out quicker if they don't add systems that make players want to keep playing.

I want competitive! I bought the game in hope that it will have more players than the 2014 version. I really enjoyed the 5v5 unranked and ranked as well, but they lost the playerbase somehow. My biggest wish is the smaller scale 5v5. I just cant enjoy the 10v10 games because you can't really control the flow of the game. That's why I can't really enjoy the battlefield games as well.

My all time favourite game was CoD4 (even tho it seems like being a cod player is now a degrading term in this game) 5v5 promod, no matchmaking, and any of that modern stuff. So I was looking for a game for a long time to fill that space. Insurgency had a potential, same settings, with realism and nothing sci-fi like in R6:Siege. But the lack of players willing to play 5vs5 killed the Insurgency 2014 for me.

I could never like CS with that zooming and moving and shooting mechanism. R6:siege is good, but it's getting too much bullshit lately and I wanted something new.
I still hope for a bit more optimalizaton for 5vs5 firefight gamemodes and more players to play it in this game. Otherwise it was a waste of money from my part, sadly.

Well it's not like it matters for players like OP who only want coop or 15vs15 where everyone is shooting from everywhere games.