Is the competitive scene still strong for Crossfire?
Comments
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Point #1
Competitive Cross Fire is NOWHERE near the number it once was. There's roughly 35 Teams at this time. Safe to say? At one point I had 86 Teams under my watchful eye while with WOGL. 86 is an exact number; 35 is an approximate figure. That's a significant drop in numbers. I want people to argue that... It's definitely died off. The competitive community is shattered because there's no value.
why you trying to compare a cup that was only announced in the competitive forum side and had one week to sign up for it to a league like wogl who had a WOGL forum and it was announced all over crossfire.
Most of the teams at O didnt even play. -
[GM]Saidin wrote: ». . . . .
I absolutely feel bad because you went on a long winded post. I have zero insight in Riot services, titles or methods. My knowledge with that game goes as far as knowing it's F2P, and that's where it ends. My knowledge and resources are in FPS titles; Halo, CoD, Counter-Strike, etc... And the market in which they take up. Al though, I do understand most of which your speaking of, there are things I don't. My concerns aren't in the game itself, whether it be bugs, competitive client or weapons. My concern, being a marketing guy myself is the exposure value of Cross Fire NA in the competitive environment. I'm going to list one (1) rhetorical questions you and the company alike can think on;- What steps have you as a publisher taken towards establishing a credible name for Cross Fire NA/UK in the world and communities alike of eSports?
Research and analysis...The key point in progress and success in marketing for any brand and/or product. -
Sorry. I have mastered misleading
'ignorant'?! WELL NOW that's so ironic!
Still see no explanation of the joke, the background of the joke or anything ironic.
If you do understand, it would take so much less effort just to type it out than to use your over stressed brain to come up with terrible excuses. -
QualEOMambo wrote: »why you trying to compare a cup that was only announced in the competitive forum side and had one week to sign up for it to a league like wogl who had a WOGL forum and it was announced all over crossfire.
Most of the teams at O didnt even play.
I'm comparing the numbers that are given. What else would I compare them with? If you only knew. People signed up in the first or last week. The rest of the month for signups was a waste. And it was advertised more in the competitive forum, apposed to the general Cross Fire forum section(s). -
Looks like the competitive scene has been in a declining slope for a while now and no leagues/good drafts is not the only factor in the reason... as people get older they obtain responsibilities, i.e job and school and the people who still play have nearly nothing to do besides mini leagues, scrims, etc.
Lucky for you, you've come at an opportune time..
We (FrostGaming) are collaborating with ESG to get everyone on their feet and see some new players as well as some old ones come into the picture again. -
looks like the competitive scene has been in a declining slope for a while now and no leagues/good drafts is not the only factor in the reason... As people get older they obtain responsibilities, i.e job and school and the people who still play have nearly nothing to do besides mini leagues, scrims, etc.
Lucky for you, you've come at an opportune time..
We (frostgaming) are collaborating with esg to get everyone on their feet and see some new players as well as some old ones come into the picture again.
-
Looks like the competitive scene has been in a declining slope for a while now and no leagues/good drafts is not the only factor in the reason... as people get older they obtain responsibilities, i.e job and school and the people who still play have nearly nothing to do besides mini leagues, scrims, etc.
I wouldn't say that. The Counter-Strike community was actually started by people in school, colleges, with jobs. That community thrived in its early days. Players make time if it's worth investing into. Still today, some of the top players are fully engulfed in married lives, universities, etc...Simply, if it's worth their interest they'll invest the time.
[Edit Note]
Jason Lake. Arguably the greatest eSports manager of all time. And one of the cornerstones in the developments of ALL of eSports. He was a lawyer, married, managed and operated a team, all while establishing and developing a multitude of eSports events and ventures. -
I wouldn't say that. The Counter-Strike community was actually started by people in school, colleges, with jobs. That community thrived in its early days. Players make time if it's worth investing into. Still today, some of the top players are fully engulfed in married lives, universities, etc...Simply, if it's worth their interest they'll invest the time.
Yes, but people who have these responsibilities will not prioritize CrossFire above other things if there is nothing left to 'accomplish' or win in CrossFire which is why we will give them that. -
Yes, but people who have these responsibilities will not prioritize CrossFire above other things if there is nothing left to 'accomplish' or win in CrossFire which is why we will give them that.
Which boils down to INTEREST, not age. It doesn't matter how old you are. Drafts don't really harvest that interest; It keeps them active which I give to you. It's all going to come down to WHAT Kris and Rob have planned. And from what I know it should be pretty good. -
Which boils down to INTEREST, not age. It doesn't matter how old you are. Drafts don't really harvest that interest; It keeps them active which I give to you.
Indeed it does not generate interest, major prizes and a secure anti-cheat will generate interest hopefully. -
I absolutely feel bad because you went on a long winded post. I have zero insight in Riot services, titles or methods. My knowledge with that game goes as far as knowing it's F2P, and that's where it ends. My knowledge and resources are in FPS titles; Halo, CoD, Counter-Strike, etc... And the market in which they take up. Al though, I do understand most of which your speaking of, there are things I don't. My concerns aren't in the game itself, whether it be bugs, competitive client or weapons. My concern, being a marketing guy myself is the exposure value of Cross Fire NA in the competitive environment. I'm going to list one (1) rhetorical questions you and the company alike can think on;
- What steps have you as a publisher taken towards establishing a credible name for Cross Fire NA/UK in the world and communities alike of eSports?
Research and analysis...The key point in progress and success in marketing for any brand and/or product.
There's lots in here to discuss. First of which (and I know you probably don't mean to come off that way) is the fact that we do do this kind of research.
And I won't get too long here, but the demographic for Cross Fire is not the 22-28 year olds who want competitive play. But we do recognize these players play the game.
We do not have the resources to run an entire league ourselves. Especially as the people that run the game we have to find ways to include everyone, because the demographic you speak of is not the main demographic a business like ours can make money from.
The inner workings of something like WCG is very complex, confusing. A lot of /facepalms and who runs this again?? type questions. Suffice to say we do not have the budget to throw $10,000 dollars at a team in which we do not have a specific anti cheat or a web structure or staff that can handle such a wide spread option.
You, of all people, know the shoestring we have for things like this. We are doing all we can to bring people in.
And you of all people know that time is money. Yes, I would love to spend hours of my day scouring the internet for 25 people who play Counterstrike with the sole purpose of speaking to them in a Community Manager perspective, to have them come to our game and play it competitive. But sometimes such a specific job is not worth my own companies dollar. All of us here have a million things to do on a daily basis, not to mention keeping the servers alive and the website active being tops on most of the teams priority list.
But I still have to come back to this whole idea here, (being blunt) that on one hand it seems you want us to grow the competitive community, provide the support for a niche area of the game and spend a massive amount of money which say, for example, is not in the best interests of the large picture or large growth of the game. And then on the other hand you bring up games that have their own thriving competitive communities that are strictly being run by fans, people with lives, wives, kids etc. and have no dealings with the publisher, or developer or whoever it is.
Not to mention the fact that from our impression, over time, what we seem to get is a lot of people who are interested in joining a competitive community, no one being interested in running it, and then when someone does step up to run it the only thing they want is free stuff from us. Many large grassroots organizations and groups start based on the enjoyment of the game, not the desire for free stuff. Which seems to be a hurdle for quite a few people I've "reached out to" and dealt with.
It seems to be that because we run the servers, the impression is we run the competitive community, not to mention that we must be in charge of making every necessary change to the game to support the demands of that community. When the fact is the core elements are there and 99% of the time, in the gaming world, from a core gamer perspective, core gaming experience is run by the gamers themselves.
All that being said, we do have these forums and people like you, Polleus, others (wogl for what it was, was a great partnership despite the bumps and bruises it inflicted) who help us get to know stuff better.
To end this with a slightly broader Community Manager phrase, I would really encourage you guys to bring stuff to us here. No, we don't want you organizing CS teams on our forums. But there's nothing wrong with posting "hey check this site out maybe they would be interested in Cross Fire!" Again, this sounds like I'm putting onus on you, but no company would be anywhere without listening to you guys. So I AM listening, we ARE listening but we need all the help we can get.
PS if you also send this stuff via our support site it gets to the right person, you may not always get a direct answer about something, but I guarantee the right eyes see it.
Guess that was a bit longer than it was supposed to be. -
Indeed it does not generate interest, major prizes and a secure anti-cheat will generate interest hopefully.
Indeed. But it doesn't have to be major all the time. Stability sometimes means more.[GM]Saidin wrote: ». . . . .
Hey, the more words it takes to get your point across the more we must read. It's fine. And I fully understand what you're saying. Being I've got a few resources in other publishing companies, I knew they had an actual PR head that worked in marketing as well. I was ignorant to this situation, I assumed the same was in your office. And I admit, I harness some frustration in the way some things are run. But you guys are doing what you CAN given your accessibility and tools. We, and I mean me too, can't be mad at that. I need to step back and re-review all of this because you mentioned something valuable that made me think. The success of Counter-Strike [competitively] didn't come off the backs of Valve. It was very much community driven. And I think through the time, I and I'm sure other experienced players have forgotten that and have expected YOU [G4Box] to manage the reigns. Although Valve has pulled through for their product. The real driving force was the supporters of the game and the power of individuals within.
To extinguish any idea that all advertisement/promotion is costly. You'd be surprised how many platforms are willing to write reviews, place advertisements, etc... for free. A lot of the higher traffic landing pages ask for top dollar, but we're not always looking for that. A small, simple piece is sufficient too. A lot of communities have little editors blogs now.
And on the topic of prizes; I for one never expected G4Box Inc. to ever be continuously generous in sponsoring $1500 for leagues. I'm grateful. But NOBODY should ever expect that. That's what sponsors are for. And as a community this is what we should be working towards. RAISING THE LEVEL OF EXPOSURE FOR CROSS FIRE NA/UK. Building it's competitive value.
It's time to re-build and re-strengthen... -
It's time to re-build and re-strengthen...
You make very valid, very inspiring points. We do get in a zone here, part of that fact is through the constant updating of the game, it's very easy to "fill a day" so to speak, with work. And once WOGL left the scene it was very easy for us to turn a blind eye to this part of the community. I know that we're trying to do some stuff within our game growth that hopefully helps bring people from within the game.
See the GM tournament. With the major strides we've made against hacking, Ghost Mode is actually a fun and competitive environment and a niche part of the game. Hopefully combining this, clans and the involvement of everyone we can bring the % of players who play Cross Fire competitively up a notch without having to cast the fish nets out and grab random sites and users. (ie promote from within)
That is not to say though that we should not be lazy about reaching outwards. I will make it a point on that to do better for the game, the company and you. And I would ask that you help us help you guys by trying to get word through to us (and the other players) about these kinds of sites and places to play. It's cool if a CM or a GM or a publisher drops by X website, does some interviews, inspires a review but its more when 250 people drop by that website and all request that they cover some Cross Fire stuff! The world works in this fashion just as much as it does big companies throwing millions of dollars towards marketing.
Hopefully moving forward, especially with The ESG who we hope to have a good working relationship with, we can reach out even more. -
[GM]Saidin wrote: »And I would ask that you help us help you guys by trying to get word through to us (and the other players) about these kinds of sites and places to play. It's cool if a CM or a GM or a publisher drops by X website, does some interviews, inspires a review but its more when 250 people drop by that website and all request that they cover some Cross Fire stuff! The world works in this fashion just as much as it does big companies throwing millions of dollars towards marketing.
what i'm learning about saidin lately, is that he is asking us (players) to help him out market CF because the staff there is already loaded with work ^^. I dont know why saidin is telling us why we should market. possibly for money, but what I believe is if we and the community want a better comp. scene and to do that we need to get off our lazy ass and start by possibly making a movement of cf players and start going to X and Y website and ask to start covering some CF stuff.
and what bobby said: It's time to re-build and re-strengthen... +1KrunchySprite wrote: »You have no idea how awesome it is to actually see a intelligent discussion/minor debate on an important topic without insulting the others grammar/mother/life. Like fo shizzle.
da fizzle, you're right -
what i'm learning about saidin lately, is that he is asking us (players) to help him out market CF because the staff there is already loaded with work ^^. I dont know why saidin is telling us why we should market. possibly for money, but what I believe is if we and the community want a better comp. scene and to do that we need to get off our lazy ass and start by possibly making a movement of cf players and start going to X and Y website and ask to start covering some CF stuff.
and what bobby said: It's time to re-build and re-strengthen... +1
He's not so much asking. He's simply inspiring as you said. We want so much more. And there's only so much they can do. There is NO REASON why we can't do what we've ALWAYS been doing. And by that I mean, spam for Cross Fire. Cross Fire has been #1 on how many MMO sites because of this community voting to much? Why can't we the competitive community carry that over into assisting in the exposure value of what we do? We've got the package already to pitch. We just need some legs to run with...
Side Note: How many players/teams are casting anymore? Do we have any regulars utilizing the advertisement and promotion of Twitch TV or own3D? They've got some nice revenue plans right now; So many small channels are making $1000/month. So it's like getting paid to play. You're really not doing anything more than hitting the Go button to go live and carrying on with your regular routine. Its a good little start to bring light to the competitive factor, and it doesn't have to be a shoutcast. Is it worth a try? I know Hammertime was posting scrim vids that were great to watch. I know I enjoyed them. We want the communities to see the COMPETITIVE side of this game, not the casual side. -
needs to be less hacks and the game could be more competitive only place where you still find competitive is alpha 7 and E8
There will always be hacks. The right measures have been taken and will be implemented soon enough. WE need to stop putting the sole blame of this on 'hacks'. The issue is not hacks here. We need to raise the level of exposure. The best way I can put this;
Your driving down I95, headed to sunny Miami, Florida. Once you cross into North Carolina every mile or so you begin seeing signs for strange exhibits, fruit stands, etc... And these attractions some times aren't exactly right off the exit, so they wouldn't normally get the high volume of visitors if it weren't for the precise placement of advertisement. Cross Fire just needs to get its' name in those high traffic areas. Whether we're paying for it, or demanding it via community support in suggesting. We need to get THIS name out there in those high traffic areas somehow, someway. -
It died out a long time ago, but now that KlutchKilleR is back we may have a chance to recover. Without KlutchKilleR the competitive scene would be so bad that no one would want to play.
Troll after troll ... I owned your bro -.- now u arriveee omg where r they comming from ??? A BLACK HOLE ??? -
[GM]Saidin wrote: »There's lots in here to discuss. First of which (and I know you probably don't mean to come off that way) is the fact that we do do this kind of research.
And I won't get too long here, but the demographic for Cross Fire is not the 22-28 year olds who want competitive play. But we do recognize these players play the game.
We do not have the resources to run an entire league ourselves. Especially as the people that run the game we have to find ways to include everyone, because the demographic you speak of is not the main demographic a business like ours can make money from.
The inner workings of something like WCG is very complex, confusing. A lot of /facepalms and who runs this again?? type questions. Suffice to say we do not have the budget to throw $10,000 dollars at a team in which we do not have a specific anti cheat or a web structure or staff that can handle such a wide spread option.
You, of all people, know the shoestring we have for things like this. We are doing all we can to bring people in.
And you of all people know that time is money. Yes, I would love to spend hours of my day scouring the internet for 25 people who play Counterstrike with the sole purpose of speaking to them in a Community Manager perspective, to have them come to our game and play it competitive. But sometimes such a specific job is not worth my own companies dollar. All of us here have a million things to do on a daily basis, not to mention keeping the servers alive and the website active being tops on most of the teams priority list.
But I still have to come back to this whole idea here, (being blunt) that on one hand it seems you want us to grow the competitive community, provide the support for a niche area of the game and spend a massive amount of money which say, for example, is not in the best interests of the large picture or large growth of the game. And then on the other hand you bring up games that have their own thriving competitive communities that are strictly being run by fans, people with lives, wives, kids etc. and have no dealings with the publisher, or developer or whoever it is.
Not to mention the fact that from our impression, over time, what we seem to get is a lot of people who are interested in joining a competitive community, no one being interested in running it, and then when someone does step up to run it the only thing they want is free stuff from us. Many large grassroots organizations and groups start based on the enjoyment of the game, not the desire for free stuff. Which seems to be a hurdle for quite a few people I've "reached out to" and dealt with.
It seems to be that because we run the servers, the impression is we run the competitive community, not to mention that we must be in charge of making every necessary change to the game to support the demands of that community. When the fact is the core elements are there and 99% of the time, in the gaming world, from a core gamer perspective, core gaming experience is run by the gamers themselves.
All that being said, we do have these forums and people like you, Polleus, others (wogl for what it was, was a great partnership despite the bumps and bruises it inflicted) who help us get to know stuff better.
To end this with a slightly broader Community Manager phrase, I would really encourage you guys to bring stuff to us here. No, we don't want you organizing CS teams on our forums. But there's nothing wrong with posting "hey check this site out maybe they would be interested in Cross Fire!" Again, this sounds like I'm putting onus on you, but no company would be anywhere without listening to you guys. So I AM listening, we ARE listening but we need all the help we can get.
PS if you also send this stuff via our support site it gets to the right person, you may not always get a direct answer about something, but I guarantee the right eyes see it.
Guess that was a bit longer than it was supposed to be.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE FAILING TO UNDERSTAND IS YOU CANT COMPARE CF TO CS
cs came out in 2000in the demo verisons and instantly became the number 1 game everyone played it besides quake or cs and when 1.6 came out it blew up in the international scene basically world wide, from 2003-2007/8 cs / css flourished amazingly worldwide with lan events/sponsors and backings from thousand of companies/business partners.
CF is a free to play fps that came out well meh a little past its time, its got poor reg, compared to cs1.6 ( not to mention 1.6 is smoother cleaner, all around better running game and came out years before ) but CF again is free, ( didnt start like cs did and become a major game that basically the world did play. -
[GM]Saidin wrote: »While some of my focus has not left me the time to scour the Competitive Forum as much as I used to I feel the need to put some points in here.
In fact my whole purpose for coming here would be to ask, to who are you comparing us to to get such opinions? (though this tends to start rambling a bit towards the end)
Secondly, while you may be able to speak to someone at Smilegate or Neowiz about something like this, I can assure you that it was not as close as I was when I was having lunch with them in Busan Korea discussing the game, direction and competitive community. Yes they are very interested in the development of the game. [read: growth, read: profit] There are plenty of issues that need/are being addressed within the game. Are we going to get some sort of a Competitive client for CF? Likely not.
I'm not quite ready to put the gavel on the competitive scene here, thankfully we have some light at the end of a dark tunnel with the ESG.
But I get the feeling that you are trying to compare us to someone like Riot, who has millions of players, millions of dollars and a team that would rival any AAA development studio. Imagine having an entire department for customer support, an entire department for marketing, an entire department of CM's, an entire department dedicated to the competitive growth of the game. Then compare that to a company like ours where we have a lot of people here who fill a lot of rolls because we simply aren't that big.
Additionally, I would ask what you mean (ie be more specific) in terms of marketing. There would be, for example, no way we could run a google ad campaign that would advertise a specific tournament, or competitive-specific feature of Cross Fire. Google ads are too expensive and the campaign would be way too niche for it to be worth spending the money on. (you would be surprised how much it costs to put an ad on a page like say.. xfire)
When you think about that, then it becomes more apparent how much we've managed to achieve with what resources we have.
We cannot code anything involving the game. And while yes, changes to the game which may benefit the competitive community (as small as it is) may happen. But they would also have to happen on a Global Scale for the game.
At a fundamental level the game exists in a state right now (random crash problems or 24_3 errors aside) in a state where there is all the tools necessary to play the game in a competitive environment.
With the nature of the community of these kinds of things, an anti cheat and a way to match one group of players versus another group of players is about the only thing anyone else needs to make it work.
The difference between CF and say, counterstrike is that Counterstrike is not tied to a central server. This gives full control to the server owner for how they want to set up the rules.
And arguably it seems that this is where the crux of all the problems is. Because the competitive community wants a way to set up a public tournament, (ie anyone can join) but have a specific set of rules so that players can only use X item on X map etc.
This is actually IN the game already, you just have to keep track of it manually. There's no way to automatically do this. In addition this gives zero benefit for the company. I'll bring up riot here in saying that they do not unlock accounts (give all champions) to people competing in these events.
Lastly, I'll speak about riot again and try to hammer home a point I'll quote from you here.
Riot provides a competitive page, and so do we, admittedly our page is much more difficult to update because it seems that our community (besides rant threads on the forums) is a lot less visible and a lot smaller. The tournament/competitive page was supposed to be a supplemental section of the community. Another homepage dedicated to the competitive people, but all we ever received from them was complaints. However it was updated at times for major tournaments and happenings. It's not perfect but some groundwork is there.
Riot also provides some way to track teams based on their results. This is also a product of their larger departments, more money etc etc. But those results are taken purely from outside sources. Those leagues and ladders and tournaments and lans are set up completely independant of Riot Games. And often times they don't even have to sponsor.
So once again, because I've said this before, I don't want to sit here and put the onus on the players, but if you want a competitive league go run one yourself.
The ESG sees the potential and is working towards that goal. We can encourage it or discourage it. But ultimately the ESG works independently of us. It's still up to the players to decide whether or not to make it successful.
So I hope this isn't too negative because I respect the comments. We have to continue to do whats best for the game on all fronts. And while a competitive client that has everything (or certain things) unlocked is not likely to happen, we can still continue to encourage things when we see them and provide whatever support we can for that part of the community.
Feels like I just got stabbed in the heart. I'm glad you've shed some light, thanks. -
elaborate please.
Feels like there is no hope for any competitive growth in CF, even if ESG is "around the corner", it's taking a while to release and I'm afraid that there may be no competitive "revival". However, nothing else to do atm...so I guess I'm sticking around. -
He's not so much asking. He's simply inspiring as you said. We want so much more. And there's only so much they can do. There is NO REASON why we can't do what we've ALWAYS been doing. And by that I mean, spam for Cross Fire. Cross Fire has been #1 on how many MMO sites because of this community voting to much? Why can't we the competitive community carry that over into assisting in the exposure value of what we do? We've got the package already to pitch. We just need some legs to run with...
Side Note: How many players/teams are casting anymore? Do we have any regulars utilizing the advertisement and promotion of Twitch TV or own3D? They've got some nice revenue plans right now; So many small channels are making $1000/month. So it's like getting paid to play. You're really not doing anything more than hitting the Go button to go live and carrying on with your regular routine. Its a good little start to bring light to the competitive factor, and it doesn't have to be a shoutcast. Is it worth a try? I know Hammertime was posting scrim vids that were great to watch. I know I enjoyed them. We want the communities to see the COMPETITIVE side of this game, not the casual side.
I've been attempting to upload scrim/match videos about us scrimming recently, they've gotten quite a bit of attention, and I was hoping they would shed some light on the competitive scene. The Twitch/Own3d idea might be worth looking into, perhaps the community can muster together a group, I'm pretty sure Gex would enjoy doing some shoutcasts. It would be nice to have some some streams of matches rather than scrims though, but it might be a good idea to start with scrims. I'm going to look into this over the next few days, perhaps I can get something going...thanks for your suggestions.
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