Write a letter to a GM(from the competitive community)
How do you think z8 games could help out the competitive community?
For example, advertising tournaments, fixing some of the games problems, ect.
Keep the thread strictly to the topic, I'll have the posts deleted.
Maybe someone from z8 will see this and help us out.
--KNOWN ISSUES--
Widescreen zoom bug
ESL wire not being able to work well with CF
Grenades get stuck/glued on edges of walls in all maps if thrown at
For example, advertising tournaments, fixing some of the games problems, ect.
Keep the thread strictly to the topic, I'll have the posts deleted.
Maybe someone from z8 will see this and help us out.
--KNOWN ISSUES--
Widescreen zoom bug
ESL wire not being able to work well with CF
Grenades get stuck/glued on edges of walls in all maps if thrown at
Comments
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patrick_jane wrote: »If they wanted to help they could of a long time ago, most of their revenue is from the non competitive players (pubbers) so they tend to appeal to them with useless events and giveaways rather than help the competitive community.
So what is a way for them to help us? -
They've addressed the myriads of complaints about the recent "client error issues" and implemented new fixes. Some people say the game got worse... but I don't get client errors anymore when I walk between another player and wall.
Point is, if we get enough people to complain, they SHOULD try to do something about it. Improving the coding in the game (reg issues) might be a stretch since this hasn't been addressed for a very long time... But maybe they will. Idk. -
Zoom/widescreen bug reported since 2010 (maybe even 2009) by BlindRob. Nothing has being done 2 years later. I've sent 2 complaints both with replies of reassurance. Nothing. Received a concern and reassurance PM from Polleus that he will tell Saidin about this bug. Nothing. X-Trap causing problems with ESL Wire (Back in 2011), ESL sents countless cooperation messages to Z8 to help resolve the problem so ESL can run it's proper AC in CF. Nothing. Few months later CF-EU comes out and straight away they start working together with ESL and now ESL Wire works perfect with CF-EU. There was a recent problem with X-Trap again few weeks back. We in ESL sent them an email with the issue and it was fixed in less than a week. Just an example of good cooperation.
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Zoom/widescreen bug reported since 2010 (maybe even 2009) by BlindRob. Nothing has being done 2 years later. I've sent 2 complaints both with replies of reassurance. Nothing. Received a concern and reassurance PM from Polleus that he will tell Saidin about this bug. Nothing. X-Trap causing problems with ESL Wire (Back in 2011), ESL sents countless cooperation messages to Z8 to help resolve the problem so ESL can run it's proper AC in CF. Nothing. Few months later CF-EU comes out and straight away they start working together with ESL and now ESL Wire works perfect with CF-EU. There was a recent problem with X-Trap again few weeks back. We in ESL sent them an email with the issue and it was fixed in less than a week. Just an example of good cooperation.
Sigh... why can't our GMs cooperate with them like EU?... -
patrick_jane wrote: »If they wanted to help they could of a long time ago, most of their revenue is from the non competitive players (pubbers) so they tend to appeal to them with useless events and giveaways rather than help the competitive community.
You might have hit the nail on the head.
I am no expert on this, however I noticed Chinese competitions allow zp weapons and zp characters.
Their competitions are highly promoted on the web, players are treated like stars, wearing uniforms, makeups, with live audience, on camera, for web casts and even live TV broadcasts.
If players can help sell zp, there will be incentives for the companies to invest in competitions. -
The largest problem with the competitive community is the lack of effort from the players. Most competitive players [believe me, I used to think I was one] don't make the effort to Z8Games. The surprising part is that this is the first thread in a while in which an effort was made.
That's problem number one. Problem number two is the community's attitude itself. The community is constantly in a civil debate over their egos.
Problem number three is the lack of participation. Most events, competitively, rarely have as much participation as public events.
Problem number four is the lack of support for ZP. ZP has totally been alienated from competitive gaming. Of course you're not going to get full support 100% of the time when ZP is alienated.
A company tailors to it's best customers first, no exceptions. In the case of a business, it's generally the customers who buy a lot of things, a lot of times. -
Thats why if Z8 held a tourney and hope to god a league we could buy a 10kZP ticket to join (like wogl s1 p). I believe the main problem is the errors and cheaters.
Problem number four is the lack of support for ZP. ZP has totally been alienated from competitive gaming. Of course you're not going to get full support 100% of the time when ZP is alienated.
Ill list some other errors too:
Grenades get stuck/glued on edges of walls in all maps if thrown at.
Client error ESPECIALLY in replays (mad annoying). -
The largest problem with the competitive community is the lack of effort from the players. Most competitive players [believe me, I used to think I was one] don't make the effort to Z8Games. The surprising part is that this is the first thread in a while in which an effort was made.
That's problem number one. Problem number two is the community's attitude itself. The community is constantly in a civil debate over their egos.
Problem number three is the lack of participation. Most events, competitively, rarely have as much participation as public events.
Problem number four is the lack of support for ZP. ZP has totally been alienated from competitive gaming. Of course you're not going to get full support 100% of the time when ZP is alienated.
A company tailors to it's best customers first, no exceptions. In the case of a business, it's generally the customers who buy a lot of things, a lot of times.
Although a majority of the community may troll, disrespect, and talk trash towards each other. Most of us are aiming towards the same goal. The reason for these threads, is not because of our lack of effort. It is due to our impatience with ESG's release, or any "league" which doesn't currently exist. Many of us have been "practicing/waiting/taking months off" because we're literally WAITING for a league. May I also add that we, the community, are the ones who have been taking the responsibility in running these leagues?
I don't know if you've noticed or not, but there is a significant amount of us whom would PAY to play in a league. http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=4fc64e26e4b0d9e6e10390a6
Although, anti-cheats are an effort to improve the competitive quality of gaming. Despite anyone's effort to stop hackers, hackers will always exist. Even though one might be annoyed by the fact that we run moss/bandicam, it is actually VERY good in preventing wall hacks, no recoil (as long as the quality is decent), etc.
My point is, look at the numbers so far. Z8Games could make an effort to promote and create a league in collaberation with ESL, ESG, etc... (There can be a %income taken out as far as revenue goes... however much your cfo/marketing department decides on).
For example, if Z8Games wants to promote ZP, Have an option in the item mall to purchase a "League pass for 20k ZP" (just an example). Of course some of the money will go into the prize pool, but obviously money will have to go to developers and/or staff.
EDIT: Now I understand that z8games hosted a tournament in the past (Autumn Assault). I wasn't playing at the time, but wasn't it free? Whether it was free or not, shouldn't z8games be encouraged to help the competitive commmunity? Especially if we're willing to "buy zp -> season pass". Let me also add, there can be many ideas which revolve around prizes as well. I'm pretty sure people would "pay and sign up/participate" if exclusive sprays/ribbons/awards were available. Although I am no marketing major, I know there are definately ways of approaching this. -
Maybe we should all start working on the community problems, and then start working on the little things. like z8 fixing the bugs, errors and reg. i would think a lot more people would start playing again.we could host small tournys too get things up and running. when ESG comes everything should be lot active again. start with the small things also updating the competitive page on z8. and coming up with new ideas to help the community revive again
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sarddgdysuu wrote: »Maybe we should all start working on the community problems, and then start working on the little things. like z8 fixing the bugs, errors and reg. i would think a lot more people would start playing again.we could host small tournys too get things up and running. when ESG comes everything should be lot active again. start with the small things also updating the competitive page on z8. and coming up with new ideas to help the community revive again
we will get past this and then years later we will look to this day. and say REMEMBER THAT ****ING TIME WE BROUGHT THE GAME BACK TO LIFE! -
this is so true!.
Problem 3
the last event actually given advertising space was the first season of wogl/wem. That seemed to have tons of participation. Maybe instead of doing nothing, they should put up some official streams of the matches, work with tournament organizers to give front page advertisement space, list the times of streams on their and what not. Instead of maybe giving a 1 sentence thing on the forums once and a while? -
So basically after reading this thread there's two things that mostly pop up.
Better advertising on the site/in general for the competitive community, and to get better help have 20k zp be a entry pass for a league. Both should be easy to do for z8 if they can't do these two, they clearly don't give two sh1ts about the competitive community. -
I will try to address a few things here.
Please continue to post ideas and more.
First off. Addressing game issues, we are constantly passing bug reports and suggestions for fixes. Some get implemented quickly, others take more time. There's really not much more point in talking about this specific thing. No matter what we do (or the devs) or what gets fixed, or implemented, it will be deemed not enough by players. This is just a common fact with all games.
Event Cost.
We are not Riot. We do not have unlimited money or a company with hundreds of staff behind it. If a major cash prize tournament were to be run even "charged" for it needs to be able to move numbers to justify the cost of organizing it. Hosting a tournament for 4 teams in North America to yell and complain because they cannot communicate with 2 teams from Turkey and a team from BR is not in our best interests at this moment in time. This is why there is a focus on more casual play. The Gameplay elements are there and there is nothing stopping anyone from running a tournament.
ESL is almost non existent for CF in NA. Regardless of whether the wire was working. The ESL EU division is much more vibrant. We have tried cooperating with NESL in the past and most of the organizers have left. ESL is still a "player driven" league/event/site. And while the CF EU team has done a great job at making sure the wire works and helped sponsor tournaments, we can't do the same because we are not the EU version of CF. And NESL is poorly run or non existent.Sigh... why can't our GMs cooperate with them like EU?...
E-Sports in general is way bigger over there than in North America. It's only an emerging market in NA to this kind of level.Their competitions are highly promoted on the web, players are treated like stars, wearing uniforms, makeups, with live audience, on camera, for web casts and even live TV broadcasts.You say the competitive community doesn't put in the effort, well you couldn't be more wrong. What brought in wogl? not z8. What voted in wcg to host CF, not z8. What is running tournaments for the competitive community right now, not z8. Seems like the community is putting all the effort in this one.
No, we did not bring in wogl. We simply worked with them. And we've also worked with (recently though casual) with Frost Gaming. And before the IP restriction we sponsored many ESL tournaments.
WOGL didn't invent themselves. It took time and dedication from a very small team of people (3-5 if I remember) and it took them a lot of time to set up the infrastructure and dedication. There was plenty of communication and it was great for the game.
We never asked for a "wogl" to be created. It simply was because someone else saw an opportunity and capitalized on it. This motivation still exists today and there is nothing stopping someone from doing it.
All the stuff about promotion, ad space etc goes out the window when the most we have is a few players who have spent their time organizing a forum tournament. Which we also love to see, and have sponsored many forum tournaments. My hope is that moving forward we will have more time to dedicate to keeping up with competitive news.So what has z8 put forth? Not much, sure they partly did WEM 2 years ago. But since then what have they done? Put out some WCG style weapons so they could cash in on it? Other then that, all they've done was drive away leagues. Yes at one point ESEA did look to pickup crossfire as a trial. Why didn't they? Not because of the "maturity" of the community, but by that of the z8 offices. z8 refused to allow access to there servers, so ESEA couldn't run their client, z8 would not allow them to have their own dedicated server (which without esea refuses to run any leagues, (see league of legends)). So it seems like the "has to give effort" goes to z8.
This entire paragraph is filled with misconceptions. First off, z8games does not develop the game.
This directly relates to the fact that you seem to think that it was z8games fault for not being able to work with the ESEA. Which required a dedicated server, which can't happen in the infrastructure of Cross Fire, at the very least without massive contracts, legal signings, and full business partnerships. Of which the ESEA, G4Box or Smilegate were not prepared to move on.
Additionally, for the organization of the World Cyber Games last year, the ESEA took over the American qualifications from a direct representative of Smilegate and WCG. However the qualifications were wrought with hacking, cheating, match manipulation, lack of coordination, lack of communication etc. All attempts by Z8Games (behind the scenes) to add structure and input positive direction towards that tournament was not listened to and inevitably almost every time we reached out to them we were ignored up until we actually flew to Korea.
Streaming is new for us, and as you've noticed from the casual side Twitch is something we're working towards.Problem 3
The last event actually given advertising space was the first season of wogl/WEM. That seemed to have tons of participation. Maybe instead of doing nothing, they should put up some official streams of the matches, work with tournament organizers to give front page advertisement space, list the times of streams on their and what not. Instead of maybe giving a 1 sentence thing on the forums once and a while?
We would love to see more streaming stuff available. We have tried to get this ball rolling with these major events so that the community can take hold and stream their own events/tournaments etc. We haven't seen this, however this is not stopping us from streaming more competitive style matches.
Riot's "cash cow" produces more milk (so to speak) and as such they can afford more staff. It is difficult to compare the two companies on stuff like this beyond "free to play". For example, in the first year that LoL was out there was only minor poorly run tournaments. Most of the stuff was being held outside of riots control. However an opportunity was seized and they were able to make necessary changes (being the developer) and staff increases so they could handle running their own things. It should also be noted that beyond their "major" tournament, they still rely on outside 3rd party companies to run and organize leagues and events. (this explanation is simplified for ease of posting)Look at LoL Riot actually tries to make the game competitive they Care about the game unlike this game thats just a money cow getting milked until its dried up
There is a cost/benefit relationship that needs to be addressed, and part of our goals is to be able to include all players of Cross Fire with the hope that we can grow the competitive community rather than specifically cater to them.
We're patiently awaiting the arrival of ESG as we have already laid plenty of groundwork for communication and competition with them.
As mentioned, please keep posting and lets try to keep it slightly civil? -
Very good read from Saidin,
I just don't want to see this game die completely(the competitive side). So I'm trying to gather ideas/issues that could possibly be fixed to help us out.
I'm not sure if you've seen Saidin, but a recent poll made by AKZ1 shows people are actually willing to pay to play in a tournament/league.
I do have a question though, does it cost money to actually advertise a player hosted tournament on your home page? The way you put it, it came to "Cost", and that i understand. Is it that hard to make a page on the site to buy a pass to play in a league/tournament? -
I do have a question though, does it cost money to actually advertise a player hosted tournament on your home page? The way you put it, it came to "Cost", and that i understand. Is it that hard to make a page on the site to buy a pass to play in a league/tournament?
There is little cost associated with this kind of thing. Putting news up and banners is something we can easily offer other people trying to organize (look at the FG video contest, wherever possible it was made pretty clear that we were working with them!).
I will fully admit that the tournament/competitive section of the site is lacking, my original goal for its creation was to have a news feed that could be more dedicated to the news of leagues/drafts and tournaments. What we found over time is that everything we announced would either take too long to start or fall apart in the end. I'm not laying blame on others however, it is our fault that the page is not updated more often.
Perhaps there is an opportunity to involve the community in this aspect. IE Have a news thread here on the forums where users can post "news" which we can follow along with and continue to push out through our channels. -
[GM]Saidin wrote: »Perhaps there is an opportunity to involve the community in this aspect. IE Have a news thread here on the forums where users can post "news" which we can follow along with and continue to push out through our channels.
Well, for the person/peoples who maintain the competitive section of the website. A start could be updating news on the FrostGamingCup. Jon/Doop is releasing news on playoff information. Once that is out (it will be posted in the competitive section) we can start by adding this to the news thread which you originally intended on having. Or at the very least post news regarding the semi-finals and finals (it will happen eventually) with a link to a live broadcast (I'm confident they will have a caster). -
"E-Sports in general is way bigger over there than in North America." Which is why you are supporting it so well, while the tiny miny eu e-sports is being supported 100x better. Lol.
Still no excuse for not fixing a 2 year+ old bug ^^ Nice read but that's only Saidin's side of the story.
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