The recent wave of "is ET dead?", "How to revive ET" or recently published "The future starts here" shows the importance of the topic featured by this column. By this step towards you, the community, we hope for some fair comments and feedback. We want to improve what we offer to you, which in the end is a service by the community for the community !
Whilst this truly is a great aspect of our current competitions scene, there are still some more or less relevant issues where the ET scene has been lacking of from the beginning. This column is not about any public player activities or some random game ranking stats, but the top of the scene and its competitive side.
This is the affair our community has to get into act to achieve a brighter future for our game!
To come back to the professionalism of which the ET scene is lacking off: Of course the teams have to act on their own behalf regarding this issue but nevertheless we already have a few teams which show the needed potential to act as described (e.g.
H2k or 
mamut.si). This does not only regard high skilled teams. Even lower skilled teams can be organized professionally and show that they are ambitious.
What we as the Admin Staff can speak about is, that we only need greater backing and activity from the community side to be able to give back much more. We here speak about general things such as re-joining the ladder systems and fighting for the top spots. This of course needs time investment and stable teams which do not split up after a few weeks. As anybody of you know:
In the end the financial & prize support a league offers a game and their admin staff to spread, is measured by its prestige and activity, often counted as matches per day or month.
In our very special case we would like to give the best support to bring Enemy Territory onto the next level. The Electronic Sports League is, if I am honest, only little loved within our community even though it is the leading, most respected and appreciated league around. This can be made up easily by checking the Sponsors, Partners and special competitions with a lot of prize money like the EMS, Extreme Masters or the Pro Series .
We lately tried our best to give ET another chance in the ESL. While most of the ladders could have been considered dead a few month ago we now e.g. have retrieved 100 active 1on1 players who play about 4 matches per day (124 per month) in our 1on1 ladder.
You also saw our Weekly Cup Series right before the Winter League started. The latter has more than 1000 active Enemy Territory players competing for the top spots! Whilst these can be viewed as pure fun competitions, we also hosted the last online competition with a real prize purse: The ESL Major Series Season II featured Enemy Territory with a stunning final. The Mapping Contest is currently running and the Most Matches Competition only waits to move on to the other ladders such as 3on3 and 6on6.
We can have a bright future ladies and gentlemen, with a great game named Enemy Territory, and even greater online and offline competitions.
The ESL is ready to take this step: In the coming week every ladder, except the 1on1 ladder, will be reseted. We are open for your ideas!
The ESL is now hiring, because we need several new and capable guys to enlarge our admin staff and to be able to run more and regular competitions (e.g. spring,summer,fall,winter)! We search for Admins and Newswriters (from any country). Find out more about the requirements and jobs at the ESL Admin Aplication Page.
If you want to apply make sure your application is written in proper language and has a good length. For simple questions about what to do check the Application Page or ask operators in #esl.et
Next to Clanbase and Crossfire we want to give our best to give this game more opportunities. We want to have more competitions, with greater prizes and a bigger future. Join and do your part!
Flashback:
When we look back in the history of our beloved game Enemy Territory everyone will remember several great moments or games he experienced: Crossfire Challenges 1-5, Quakecon, smaller national LAN Parties such as the Frenchlan, PGA in Poland. In 2009 several of these events will be hosted again and some new events like the recently announced ET Masters are coming up. All together these LAN's will probably offer more than 15.000€ to be won in the new year of 2009.Whilst this truly is a great aspect of our current competitions scene, there are still some more or less relevant issues where the ET scene has been lacking of from the beginning. This column is not about any public player activities or some random game ranking stats, but the top of the scene and its competitive side.
ET's Problem:
We are talking about the ladders, professionalism and stability of teams, players, admins and clans. The major problem ET has and had always to fight with is that the community and coverage is completely isolated. With isolated I actually mean that MGC heads usually do not even know what Enemy Territory is. There is no interest in ET by non-ET players or Clans just because nobody really heard of it on a continuous base. Neither do they see the great coverage, matches and competitions its community pulled of in the last years.This is the affair our community has to get into act to achieve a brighter future for our game!
To come back to the professionalism of which the ET scene is lacking off: Of course the teams have to act on their own behalf regarding this issue but nevertheless we already have a few teams which show the needed potential to act as described (e.g.
H2k or mamut.si). This does not only regard high skilled teams. Even lower skilled teams can be organized professionally and show that they are ambitious.What is this Column about?
Here we finally come to the point of this column. As we want to take care of the community, its opinions and interests we have big plans in which any of you can be involved in different kinds and impacts.What we as the Admin Staff can speak about is, that we only need greater backing and activity from the community side to be able to give back much more. We here speak about general things such as re-joining the ladder systems and fighting for the top spots. This of course needs time investment and stable teams which do not split up after a few weeks. As anybody of you know:
In the end the financial & prize support a league offers a game and their admin staff to spread, is measured by its prestige and activity, often counted as matches per day or month.
In our very special case we would like to give the best support to bring Enemy Territory onto the next level. The Electronic Sports League is, if I am honest, only little loved within our community even though it is the leading, most respected and appreciated league around. This can be made up easily by checking the Sponsors, Partners and special competitions with a lot of prize money like the EMS, Extreme Masters or the Pro Series .
We lately tried our best to give ET another chance in the ESL. While most of the ladders could have been considered dead a few month ago we now e.g. have retrieved 100 active 1on1 players who play about 4 matches per day (124 per month) in our 1on1 ladder.
You also saw our Weekly Cup Series right before the Winter League started. The latter has more than 1000 active Enemy Territory players competing for the top spots! Whilst these can be viewed as pure fun competitions, we also hosted the last online competition with a real prize purse: The ESL Major Series Season II featured Enemy Territory with a stunning final. The Mapping Contest is currently running and the Most Matches Competition only waits to move on to the other ladders such as 3on3 and 6on6.
It is all up to You!
We just ask YOU to be a bit open-minded for a fresh start with the ESL which, if used correctly, can help to push our game onto the next level of competition. Tell us YOUR ideas, proposals and suggestions. Try to follow the vision if we saw Enemy Territory being featured on just another five Crossfire LAN events. We could see several multigaming clans picking up Enemy Territory squads who also compete in online competitions such as the Major Seriesor recently announced ET Masters, several ESL TV broadcasts and many more to come. Antipro is also just on its way and will do its best to help ET... On a side note, as this might be understood as an anti Clanbase column, it is not. I ask you to join back their ladders and act as professional as possible in their competitions, just as much I ask for the ESL.We can have a bright future ladies and gentlemen, with a great game named Enemy Territory, and even greater online and offline competitions.
The ESL is ready to take this step: In the coming week every ladder, except the 1on1 ladder, will be reseted. We are open for your ideas!
The ESL is now hiring, because we need several new and capable guys to enlarge our admin staff and to be able to run more and regular competitions (e.g. spring,summer,fall,winter)! We search for Admins and Newswriters (from any country). Find out more about the requirements and jobs at the ESL Admin Aplication Page.
Sn4kE (
Master Admin)
smOke (If you want to apply make sure your application is written in proper language and has a good length. For simple questions about what to do check the Application Page or ask operators in #esl.et
Next to Clanbase and Crossfire we want to give our best to give this game more opportunities. We want to have more competitions, with greater prizes and a bigger future. Join and do your part!
E: nice read
I would do some resemblances between ladders and major cups, if you play at ladder and hold good place -> you should be rewarded with good/higher place in cup. Don't really know whether is it working or not, but It would be good idea!
I would prefer to stay with pb, since I hadn't had any major problems with it, but if this new anticheate program is better, then I am ready to support it ( unless I start sucking). Easiest way to attract more MGCs or keeping good clans in activity is that we have to bring money on it, which means that we need more sponsors. Hard thing is that how we get them? Nobody knows.
These came to my mind now, but when I have thought this subject more maybe I can complain increasingly :)
even the actual gun without nades on
with ffe you get 5 seconds from smoke to explosion and you know exactly how many explosions there are and where they will land
with airstrikes you get 6 seconds from the can being thrown to the airstrike occuring
with rifle you have between .1 and 1 seconds from hearing the shot... and before you make the panzer comparison, you can see a panzer and shoot back at him while it is charging which is a little balanced - he has to expose himself to shoot... however with a rifle you can't do shit because he can be around a corner on the other side of the map
and in case you didnt notice you cant shoot a rifle around a corner over the whole map cause it explodes after 2.5secs airtime on first impact (if im not mistaken).
on the other hand i dont really care i just play for fun as well and i like rifle i cant play it but its part of the game and its not as UBER as mortar so i live with it...
This reminds me of some first ETwars at 2k3. I remember trying to get tank @ gr in 6v6 vs #k@ozZ when they had like 5 rifles @ main, god...
helmetprotection
mg
simpleitems
those three are the only gameplay differences. Afaik theres some cvars with slightly different settings too (maxpackets for example), but none of them touch the gameplay.
Maybe have two configs. Use the CB config + 60-100 maxpackets, FPS IN 40-125 and use it as a general 6v6 config. Next make a proleague config which removes MG, adds helmetprotection, allows simpleitems, forces maxpackets 100, forces FPS > 60 etc. Both CB and ESL could use the same configs. Easiest solution ofc would be CB finally removing mg in which case ESL could add helmetprotection like CB does et voila: you have a global 6v6 config.
though removing mg was not an option for CB at latest talks
helmprotection is stupid :/ it makes this game even more lotto...
you see, i got a habit... when i hear ding ding ding i stop shooting... guess how many times i got killed because some lucky medic left alive with 3 hp :/
3*40 dmg = 120 dmg, you still need one hit :P
but if u miss some shots the med will regen dunno how much hp
4?
Who brings the "remove panzer" in this topic ?
OK LOL
Just learn to use your head and rifle should reli afect you
However, "In our very special case we would like to give the best support to bring Enemy Territory onto the next level. The Electronic Sports League is" - ESL is NOT the place to take ET to the next level, ESL and CB wont support the game with money or promotion.
Ofcourse neither CB nor ESL will give money to ET as they do to CS at the moment. But while e.g. Crossfire higher ET's prestige in its very own way, a greater activity in the big leagues (which ET can provide without any problems) can only help on our way.
Exactly.
For cheating caught inside the ESL it means a 2years ban.
assuming by background you mean the promotion for our event in chengdu, that's pretty irrelevant as those backgrounds are only enabled during live major events (though, personally I don't like them either)
Feel free to commision me 'n I'll happily point out all the failings ^^
As i suggested in that one journal, We should start building a new game as open source. so that, everyone who still have some interest to actually do something about this, can join the team. If you can code, you can be a coder or if you're talented artist who can make textures and 3D-stuff, your effort would be appreciated.
I think you get my point now. This could be also a solution to give some aid for the community. By getting together and making something about it.
You just have to face the facts.. Those kind of competition level changed won't bring the peoples back. Some of the players just got bored of it because, these minor changes had so minor affects what they hoped for.
In the long run, it would be much easier to start from the clear table.
If we observe the mass popularity in online tournaments games, You can be pretty sure that Counter-Strike is popular game still. And why is it ? Why peoples like this to play this game online even more ? A lanparty without cs 1.6 competition is very unusual. Might it because, of the commercial support for this game ? Because of the prizes for the winner what can be tens of thousands euros.
Money makes peoples interested. And big pile of cash even more. Money affect peoples.
But the only problem with it is, how to get the money for these tournaments ? Sponsorship deals or donations comes to my mind.
And why these money competitions are 90% just for the professional teams, whom are invited to the cup or decided by the admin who can play and who not. In my opinion making all depend about commercialism is a curse word for the whole scene. That makes it less pure.
But it's not my problems if peoples are just greed and want to find a way to make money.
It's about having a strong low / mid skill community adequately catered to.
At least that's what I notice in myself. :)
I agree with supporting the low/med players though, without them there wouldn't be any new high players to replace those who leave.
the money of those bulletins goes too tosspot?
=> put money from bulletins as prizemoney for ladders etc and et will revive itself again
OR is he already doing it with the etmasters thingy?
As a player I have definitely no problems to play 2 official ladder games per day instead of searching IRC, that usually is full of waiting, unmature oponents and skill fakers. Take ladder as pracc to cups and LANs and star to generate as much matches as you can.
fuck exams, i wanna play right now! :P
Anyway, the ESL system is kinda weird. Usually when we played there (last time 3 years ago), we always got kicked from leagues for different reasons, or something else like that happened and at least I got kinda bored of the whole thing...
I agree it's good they support ET in full, but still there are some flaws in their systems
maybe put up some interesting 3on3 cup (prizes don't interest me) soon and we'll think about it
i see no reason why would any big mgc take et team to attend a lan twice a year
ET as a game is kind of hard to understand for outsiders (people who never played it) so no1 really can make an opinion about it. I think only the real top can understang how rewarding it is to play it and how to play it. ET have a lot of people playing it but because most of em cant play it "really good" there never is that much top teams around at same time. Also because skill differencies are so big e.g teams are aimwise on same level but other team knows exactly how to play and other team cant result is simply other team getting bashed. And like we all know teams use to fold after things like that sooner or later. Thats always one potential team off the competition. What im trying to say with this that lack of competition is not good for a game when you are gonna show it off in a bigger scale. I believe ET was much more popular in the past when there was much more top teams in the scene (i might be wrong ofc cuz wasnt following any scene at the time).
and what comes to ESL, fix the stupid one player/one clan rule what makes people signupping like visiting the hell, other than that its good
but then...
none multigamings give a shit about clanbase, same as the et scene does, every multigaming you try to apply to asks for esl link, not cb or other craps, but to interest the better ones more, et needs 10 lans per year, not 2 :E
less cheating more fun...and more active ppl
I never really like esl, mostly cause of these points:
site is complicated and too big, too many options (just prefer how simple cb site is)
it always seemed to be kinda comercial thing to me; I get annoyed if I get tons of emails telling me I got a new achievement but I have to pay to see it.
In the past they were a "opponent" to cb, hard to say for me though if esl is to blame on that or cb. Just to remind of some things: config, 5on5 policy
But that's the past, just try to make it better in the future (and the community should support it).
et is dead, et is alive and blah blah blah
Et is dead and noone can revive it
And when wolfenstein will come out, this game will be killed forever
it happened with rtcw and it will happen with et
bihbuy
I think what you described is an effect caused by something else. The forlying problem is that there are just no big competitions for ET since the userbase for ET, clanwise, is very small compared to games such as CoD and CS.
With a small userbase the big companies which sponsor the LAN events and ofcourse the online prizes for tourneys, won't put time, effort and especially money in ET.
This is simply because they can make a lot more money of of bigger games by sponsoring events and therefore advertising at the events.
In plain terms, there is no money to be made of ET competitions so no one will invest in it.
Then there is the issue why does ET have such a small userbase?
I think this is because the game is too hard. When comparing the game to games like CS and CoD which are very popular, the complexity of timing/classes/multiple objectives on one map, let alone the huge tweaking of configs that can be made with the quake engine, of ET is huge. That put against the simple 5on5 plant-the-bomb-or-kill-the-enemy gameplay of CoD and even a monkey can tell the difference.
For example, if you ask an ET player to play CoD4 he will easily adapt. Yet if you ask a CoD4 player to play ET he will have a very hard time to understand the game.
This can be confirmed by a common used term like CoD4's "Spray-and-pray" x)
And to state the truth, the human race just doesn't consist of smart people or people can't be arsed to put the effort in that it takes to get good in a game like ET.
In conclusion, I just don't think there is a way to take ET to a much higher level, simply because there are not enough intelligent/motivated players to increase ET's userbase. Thus resulting in no sponsoring because there is not enough money to be made.
All we can do is put effort as a community in our own leagues and we could get a little more competitions with maybe a few small prizes.
games would look redicoulsly
stupid match, followed by random places and stupid actions
i'd rather see some cool stuff made by uQ / parodia / idle
there is also a problem with the players that probably don't even know about competitive side of ET, mostly players that play on etpubs, no quarter, jaymode etc
Punkbuster
time passes and cyclically u read same bullshits about the game dying or about the cheaters.
People get more phantasy or it's gonna be a whole and fucking déja vù
and btw the biggest problem of ET is the competition but watched under the wrong light.
Nowadays, everyone tries to steal people's attention, tries to get the lights on hiself and when it's impossible to do it, there is always the cheat's solution. So , here we have the phenomenons that came from nothing that make people talkin about them.
And this is the competition?
Old school times were different. People were used to try to get better singularly to make the clan stronger and compete at higher level with other clans. At least this was for me but i think for many many other players or i would have met more cheaters (sincerely in rtcw i never met one)
My english is poor and it's hard to express what i want to say so bibuy and fuall :)
but you know: bielefeld does not exist!!!
I mean, the game get more players if they think "yeay ET is so n1 and not so hard and not too late too start"
(sry for bad english)^^
greetz
well that and the everlasting problem of hitboxes and antilag
once that is fixed we just need a perfect anti cheat
maybe some1 of esl likes me^^
EDIT: rofl, feel pro
e-sports in general doesn't have that .. not even the top teams work semi-professional or act like that and if there won't be some MAJOR changes in the whole scene it will not be different in the next 10 years.
It's up to everyone in the ET scene to be a little bit more professional. Don't join teams that are lead by 14 year olds, don't join a different clan every week. Try to build solid teams, try to take competition a bit more serious, try to treat your enemy with a little bit of respect.
But I don't think that the community in ET is able to do this. It's mostly an immature community and because of that I don't think this game will have a bright future.
sadly...
And stupid admins in cups make the game fall even more ,
for example Forced matches on one day of the weak ( the player has only one day that he can't play and it's that day they force the match on even though they know that there is aproblem with players and admins dont care) and other stuff , because i guess admin wants to go out drinking or something , it's okey to do something but then dont do admin stuff and gtfo
too much haxxors