These past couple days we’ve seen a few people come up with frank summations of the games future along with degrees of disgust at the way things are going. The war against cheaters within ET has been lost in many peoples opinion and that has caused many amongst the community to look for an alternative.
A couple of ideas complimented eachother quite well. Charge people to enter the league and then only allow people who have been clean for a defined period to play. That idea to me, is the most logical outside of an effective anti-cheat, but will it make any difference to the opinion that the game is on its last legs?
First of all, I’m personally not satisfied that the game actually is on its last legs. Open Cup signups are the gauge I use for a games activity and last time out they weren’t that bad. Add on top the fact that Quakewars wont be out in time for the next season, and throw on the fact that 24 teams will go to CDC, an increase of 8 from last time out.
However looking at pay-per-play league format as either a saviour or evolution of gameplay is an idea that needs careful evaluation, its a concept that I’m still undecided whether it would work or not, or whether its actuallya good idea.
First of all you’re all going to have to face the fact that after CDC3, Dignitas, TLR & Kreaturen at a minimum are likely to fold. So if you judge a game by the star status of its top teams and would be appalled to see team rbnt (no offence) win Eurocup then you’d better start packing your bags. There is going to be a large player rotation after CDC, and new names will rule the roost.
However does a tournament that charges 10,15,20 euros per player to enter still have an appeal for anyone? For starters it would put up a prize purse, so that’s an enticing factor. 20 Euros a player per season would, with a roster of 6 and 16 teams would generate around 2000 Euros. If you were to run a staggered system like Clanbase, you might funnel some prize money from the bottom leagues towards the top to enforce competitive play at the pinnacle of your league.
Re-calculating on that mindset, and assuming you could at least find 60 teams willing to pay the entry fee, you might offer 3500, 1500, 1000 for first division, second and third.
That is one enticing factor to join any new league, as online prizepurses go, they are extremely competitive, even in comparison to Counter Strike. However you’d need more of a reason for people to enter than just providing a prizepot for the top teams to make people pay, and that reason comes with a league free from cheaters.
However coming up with a mentality that excludes people isn’t easy. For example, take perfo – How do you run a league that deals with his type of case? He burst onto the scene, many people thought he hacked, then he went to LAN and people stopped thinking he hacked, then he got banned and people were left unsure whether he did or didn’t, despite having a cheat ban. If you pay for a league someone would have to make a cut throat decision early on.
If you get that decision wrong and a clean player gets denied to play, you’ve just hurt your game and your leagues future. If you get that decision wrong and a cheater gets to play in league, you kill the prospect that people come back to your league. If you get it wrong and a cheater gets busted mid-season, then you haven’t done your job and maybe people could even ask for a refund. Do you see the dilemma and the pressure? Such a pressure might I add that you’d also have to pay your admins to take.
Then you’d have to come up with a format to decide on who can play. Saying that someone must have played six months, twelve months, or previous seasons isn’t enough. Perfo played some seasons before getting banned. Considering that the anticheat is ineffective, you would actually have to have a panel that reviews demos and says ‘this player is too good’. Perhaps that’s a touch simplified, the system would have to judge progress over a period, or a particular demo.
However this system would have banned torspo, perfo and most controversially, mAus long ago.
I’m pretty sure that in some way you could convince the top teams that its a good idea, however does it matter to the open cup teams? Is money capable of saving ET? Are you willing to let mob rule make cheating decisions and hysteria see clean players banned?
A couple of ideas complimented eachother quite well. Charge people to enter the league and then only allow people who have been clean for a defined period to play. That idea to me, is the most logical outside of an effective anti-cheat, but will it make any difference to the opinion that the game is on its last legs?
First of all, I’m personally not satisfied that the game actually is on its last legs. Open Cup signups are the gauge I use for a games activity and last time out they weren’t that bad. Add on top the fact that Quakewars wont be out in time for the next season, and throw on the fact that 24 teams will go to CDC, an increase of 8 from last time out.
However looking at pay-per-play league format as either a saviour or evolution of gameplay is an idea that needs careful evaluation, its a concept that I’m still undecided whether it would work or not, or whether its actuallya good idea.
First of all you’re all going to have to face the fact that after CDC3, Dignitas, TLR & Kreaturen at a minimum are likely to fold. So if you judge a game by the star status of its top teams and would be appalled to see team rbnt (no offence) win Eurocup then you’d better start packing your bags. There is going to be a large player rotation after CDC, and new names will rule the roost.
However does a tournament that charges 10,15,20 euros per player to enter still have an appeal for anyone? For starters it would put up a prize purse, so that’s an enticing factor. 20 Euros a player per season would, with a roster of 6 and 16 teams would generate around 2000 Euros. If you were to run a staggered system like Clanbase, you might funnel some prize money from the bottom leagues towards the top to enforce competitive play at the pinnacle of your league.
Re-calculating on that mindset, and assuming you could at least find 60 teams willing to pay the entry fee, you might offer 3500, 1500, 1000 for first division, second and third.
That is one enticing factor to join any new league, as online prizepurses go, they are extremely competitive, even in comparison to Counter Strike. However you’d need more of a reason for people to enter than just providing a prizepot for the top teams to make people pay, and that reason comes with a league free from cheaters.
However coming up with a mentality that excludes people isn’t easy. For example, take perfo – How do you run a league that deals with his type of case? He burst onto the scene, many people thought he hacked, then he went to LAN and people stopped thinking he hacked, then he got banned and people were left unsure whether he did or didn’t, despite having a cheat ban. If you pay for a league someone would have to make a cut throat decision early on.
If you get that decision wrong and a clean player gets denied to play, you’ve just hurt your game and your leagues future. If you get that decision wrong and a cheater gets to play in league, you kill the prospect that people come back to your league. If you get it wrong and a cheater gets busted mid-season, then you haven’t done your job and maybe people could even ask for a refund. Do you see the dilemma and the pressure? Such a pressure might I add that you’d also have to pay your admins to take.
Then you’d have to come up with a format to decide on who can play. Saying that someone must have played six months, twelve months, or previous seasons isn’t enough. Perfo played some seasons before getting banned. Considering that the anticheat is ineffective, you would actually have to have a panel that reviews demos and says ‘this player is too good’. Perhaps that’s a touch simplified, the system would have to judge progress over a period, or a particular demo.
However this system would have banned torspo, perfo and most controversially, mAus long ago.
I’m pretty sure that in some way you could convince the top teams that its a good idea, however does it matter to the open cup teams? Is money capable of saving ET? Are you willing to let mob rule make cheating decisions and hysteria see clean players banned?
but the idea of paying to play a tournament is pretty stupid
the fact is non of the new games have to offer what et does its all just pretty graphics the game play has nothing on anything plus not many people have the money to put into a computer just to be able to run these new games which are shit anyway
i believe the top end / high level competiton may fade quickly due to many top teams going to newer games in the pursuit of glory and or money, but the middle skill level average gamer type league will flourish simply because et has better game-play the new age games and no one has money to pay for demon beast computers to run them
thats what i think anyway
http://www.xfire.be/?x=forum&mode=item&id=8412
I'm not going to link, but I did say this one of the best ideas when I was busted and the only way outside of technical proof (pbss etc), to "ban" a player.
Your examples were highly subjective, I mean personally I didn't think torpso was suspicious at all. If you think perfo didn't cheat at some point then your probably a (ex)team mate or naive. Even just on public, he did cheat at one point and it caught up with him.
Maus, well, I guess you could class butchji the same as well. Making the wrong decision about these types of players could potentially ruin the league as you warned. But it would be a "easy" way to get rid of players who everyone knows "cheats", like danone or the swedes.
I think paid entrance is a great idea, and would most likely stop the retarded likes of ensam, moof, mythos, and the austrian pair even going near competition. If they entered, just think of it as easy money as you ban them and they entire team who were stupid enough to play with them.
Don't think it would make leagues/competitions more competitive however.
Also, about cases such as Danone, you can't just let the majority of players decide if they should be allowed to play or not (at least for an effective system). If you do, anyone who is slightly anomalous and has some skill will most likely be banned. I'd bet that 90% of these cheating-but-not-really-busted-with-no-proof players from before Nexus days at least are legit. People are simply very paranoid in a competitive environment.
Nowadays, though, some paranoia is good in order to not create a cheater friendly environment.
The perfo thing for me was a convenient cover up. He knew his brother had cheated and used that as an excuse when he was "busted". Why then wait, and potentially ruin his career by not saying something earlier? I find what he did very dishonest and all too convenient.
I have a sister by the way :P
I disagree, it seems unlikely that a sort of "consipiracy" was the case rather than perfo simply being in an unlucky situation. :) Especially for someone who was willing to go to multiple LANs where he performed well unlike, say, rocky.
and perfo never cheated....
Oh come on! It's just a friggin' flag... If I use
(maybe a bit too hard and only focusing on the flag point and not the rest of you well-argumented statements, but who cares ;-) )
The flaw in this logic should be obvious to someone who, you know, paid money for cheats.
It would certainly help weed out the casual cheaters, but the people who are really paying $50+ for private cheats aren't gonna care to much about a nominal entry fee.
Tying the payment to some RL information would help (i.e. CC number), but it also limits how many people can participate and makes complying with various data collection laws more complex.
In my opinion player credibility is a bigger factor than money, if you're talking about taking the eSports genre mainstream. Maybe one goes hand in hand with the other, either way it seems that LAN competitions are the only way forward... is it a pipe-dream? Who else remembers when they all said the internet would never catch on..
Since the perfo bust my view on pubcheaters has changed considerably. I'm sure you can appreciate that from Keran's ban. We've encoutered numerous 'known' players with cheat cvars on NeXuS since then which I refuse to pursue to CB level.
If people want to tar everyone with the same brush then so be it. Some of these so-called busts are just farcical in my opinion.
so u do it like valve, ban the account and everythibg is fine...
if someone wants to pay 10 times for a game just because he isn't able to play it "the fair way" or he's just too low... ok ^^
another good thing is, that id will sponsor that for sure! they have no extra work on the game, and can sell it once more....
it would be "a new game" but the gameplay of ET will stay.... and i think thats it what many want rtcw 2be
But then having online qualifiers for an off line event is possibly the worst thing anyone could do.
Think the only competition which has both offline qualifiers and LAN finals is ESWC.
I only know this because SK got beaten in one of the online qualifiers, and had to attend another qualifier (lan) in order to qualify for finals of the Swedish qualifiers. Which didn't matter cause fnatic won anyway ^_^
That looks complicated, but it's wcg so! CGS doesn't count! Although even they have online qualifiers for the draft.
Amateurism seems to be connected to gaming. As is immaturity. The two are connected. See the guy below (Rhand). He actually adminned (Head admin?) one of the biggest competitions, albeit it was just an online competition, this game has. Why does anyone think gaming has real potential to become main stream with people like that actually running competitions?
Does anyone remember Cybergames (I think that was the name) that also featured Rtcw? It was a catastrophe. No one ever saw any of the prize money. The entire event was a disaster. Why? Amateurism. Doubt anyone involved in that ever wants to invest money in gaming again.
The only chance gaming has are consoles. Even playing field. At the moment few hacks. More companies that have an interest in it being a success. Easier to control as well.
The biggest issue has always been money. I wouldn't personally trust any gaming orientated company to fulfill their promises with money/sponsorship etc in a timely fashion. Whereas in the real world you would be crucified for such things.
but nice read.
cheater solution: i think that a busted cheater would be allowed to play on a lan, but permanently (or at least a longer period than 3/6 months) from online competitions, and permanently banned from online competitions that include money prizes. i'm sorry about all the whine over lunatic case.
i like the idea about establishing a group of people who would be given cases of "suspicious demos, and movies", so they could study them and make a conclusion about wether the player is cheating or not (should be a group of neutral people with years of experience, not some 15 years old kids, defending their friends).
i doubt many clean players would get banned this way, but even if they got banned they would still have the chance to prove themselves at lan
The cheating solution would prevent the above from happening. Looking at last seasons Eurocup, the winning team was not EC winning good until they went out and recruited 3 players who under the cheating solution mentioned probably would be banned.
I think that this kind of league only has future if its sponsored - not neccessarily by cash, but by hardware or other benefits.
I can agree on paying for the entry, but I guess many ppl won't
I don't think ET is going to die any time soon anyway. It's just good if there is some rotation about the top teams and others get a chance to be on top as well... so for me it doesn't mean anything if some top teams fold. I don't see ET:QW taking over ET anyway, unless they can fix the fps stuff etc...
But about the topic, if u did a system like that, I could agree on the rules.. let's say an admin decides wrong, and it would turn out later, I could accept it without any demands. Admins are just humen like ball-game referees :)
When the world/sponsors take a serious interest, things may change.
And always before ECs and bigger tournaments many oldschoolers tend to come back. I don't know if it will be the case in the future, but I don't see them all just quitting a game they have loved for long time.
I mean for me at least hardest part in paying is the bank transfer over internets, not the amount of the money
console port
console port
Do you have your xbox 360 controller ready?
But still I'm against online tournaments because, as we all know, a good private hack is almost undetectable when the player uses it the right way i.e. it's profitable for hackers and we potentially have even more of them.
Just try, if possible, to keep up the cdc as long as there's money to host it and aslong there teams willing to attend.
Btw, it is possible to get pretty good in a game in a small amount of time, so keeping out players just because they haven't played long enough would imo be bad.
I vote YES for this idea, I would rather pay 20€ to play in a ET-league, than paying 20€ for a new game that sucks comparing to ET..
lots of people think -> "why should i pay for the 3 top-teams to win the money" (comment by vila in some other journal)
then next its "only" 20€, but hey thats also money and maybe its hard for some guys to get that money together
because there are lots of young players who do not have an own bank account
and their parents will say "20€ for online league? NO"
you need to play in an MGC that pays!
or be older and get that money easily (like in etqw community ;))))
i would pay 20 euros to play in a league where people are as good on lan like on the internet
palypaly tonight?
we need pracczzzz
20.00 cet btw, cu then.
It's simply too late to fight against the real cheaters. How many nonames are owning the scene nowadays? How many guys with spoofed guids say they came back from a 2 year break. How many cheaters are still enjoying the game without getting caught? Rly, take a look at the new ETH32 bot... It's just insane and it even made me smile. Idle an hour in #pbbans and keep an eye on the bot announcing every new ban. 95% are Wolfenstein ET bans and almost every 5 minutes, a new ban is given. Just to mention some examples and highlight ETs scene nowadays.
I don't like the 20€ signup fee system for every cup. Why can't we make a system with pbguids linked to a customerprofile? If someone pays 20 euros, he receives a unique pbguid which is linked with a profile. Every customer is able to play all cups/leagues. Some cups should be customers only, other should remain free for the mass. Searching 3o3's or 6o6 like "3o3 now skilled cust only" seems a lot more attractive than playing 3 guys you never heard of with an almost non-existing yawnhistory...
I don't know if it's possible to code such a system but i guess it'll divide the community into 2 parts. Those who really give a shit about it will pay the 20 euros without a problem, others can still play for free. Just imagine what a community can do with the money? I don't know if it's legal to make money like this but we could and should invest that money in further development (anti cheat), cups, LANS, ...
If cheaters are caught with this 20 euro key, they would be banned and would have to buy a new key; sounds perfect to me.
You just have to claim that the cups organised for customers only is a priviledge, not a right.
earning money with nolife, probably the best dream that nolifers will always have..
ET is pub game, all of these upgrades and XP system... so when eg xfire starts to sell keys to competition game i dont see problem...Publics will be still working, and if some1 wants to play in competition then he just buy a new key...
And money from keys may be used to hire coder that will make competition system similar to this from CB here @ crossfire...
Maus
Butchji
Night
Ferus
Raziel
KillerPL
Do you denie the whole team or do you just force them to take another 6th?
But I like the idea though, I'd prefer to play in smaller leagues with clean people, than in bigass cups with shitloads of unknowns.
Edit : Who gets the money?
http://www.xfire.be/?x=forum&mode=item&id=8412
Not that I needed more proof, but thanks for showing once again that cheaters also tend to be retards.
it's for a fragmovie :'=<
Also in my opinion busting by demo should be made possible if the admins are trusted by the community.
why would i pay 20 euro for a cup i will never win
but i have been thinking ( oo noos )
why dont we all start playing RTCW again ?
we just put on a date by lets say the monday after CDC
by then we all have RTCW installed or the ppl that dont have it can buy it for like 4 euro's by then
and im sure off it all the skilled RTCW player will come back like raziel
it would be just that easy
we go to CB and ask to put the Open Cup / Euro Cup back up
warleageus still host RTCW so thats no problem
most off the players will agree with me that RTCW was way better the ET is now
so i say why not revive it
if 50 % off the ET players start playing RTCW again the rest will follow + the players who are now playing WoW / CS:S then it would be large again
The whole "new anti cheat tool" thing is funny to with chap.. only like 2 days before that he raged a #et.gather and made everyone leave so is someone that lames like that gonna help making an anticheat tool?
- Yes i would pay 20€ for a key
_> if I could pay by SMS or Phone (:D)
Wait, don't answer that. D:<
If you want to play bigger tourneys you have to pay money and have to send them a copy of your pass so. And if they find out you cheated you first of all "lose your money" and secondly have to get a new diffrent pass somewhere so that you can play there again.
servers can be joined only if the player has a valid account and cause the account isn't free cheaters may be disencouraged ( too hard open another account, pay again and loss the virtual identity specially if builded among a long playng time)
my2c
For example; a player pays 75 euros for a cheat, like he would care to pay 20 euro's extra to use his cheats in a league? :/ (for private hax then, with this we can get rid of those kiddo hackers tho)
And spread the prizemoney more evenly.
Position yourself in that 1 persons position, would you say: "oh it's okay that I get banned as long as "MOST" of the cheaters gets banned aswell."? I'd say not.
Wheras MOST would mean people that have only half a brain, suck at hiding it, or simply don't know how/haven't got/asked for help to customize their humanized bot.
I must say, it is not often I see someone go nexus style in a scrim/offi.
if you dont like the way it is, go play something else...
On the other hand - most lan tourneys are organized this way. Signup is payed per player and winner gets the purse.
aaaaargh
but its usefull
think about why 90% of the community are playing this game every night? Its for fun..its for fun with some friends they maybe know for years. When u come home from school,work or something like that, turning on ur computer and chatting,playing with ur friends, thats what this game is about.
Ok, maybe the high clans are more interested in money, but i dont think so. if im right, we got more than 300 days in a year without LAN. This is a online game, not a LAN game...when u have a look at ET and the old maps, its even not made for 6v6 :X
ps: my english sux..i know :)