An Open Note to GMs
Hello.
Last year, it was confirmed that CFCL would in fact have a season two; in December, the community was told it would be announced "sometime in January".
January. No public mention of CFCL is ever given during this month. People begin to complain, and they are responded to with "It's coming soon".
February. The GMs say, "We don't want to announce it, because if we're wrong on the date, people will be even angrier." They post a feedback thread for CFCL season 1 on 03-02-17, but intentionally avoid mentioning anything about future events.
March. No word.
April. Nothing.
It's now May 1st. Europe just had its 9th qualifying event for CFS this year (yesterday, I'm not kidding), and we haven't even had confirmation that our region will be attending.
The goal of CFCL -- and the value that Z8Games get from the competitive scene -- is to get more players more invested in the game. That's why it's valuable for Z8 to offer prizes, to pay people to run events, and to bother with this section of the forums at all. Players who follow the competitive scene are more likely to continue playing the game, and a larger viewing audience means more people are likely to start playing the game in general.
You are failing at this goal.
You cannot expect to give no word on the competitive scene for 5 months on end, and then expect the event to spark interest in the community at large the first time you do. You cannot host an event out of the blue with no forewarning and expect to have a large turnout of players and teams. You can't expect a large viewership audience when your events have the consistency of Michael J. Fox drawing a straight line.
I get that you are still hashing over details. But it is better to hype people up surrounding a date and occasionally disappoint them than it is to give them no information whatsoever and never allow excitement to foster.
My suggestions:
Start weekly updates. This is an incredibly easy tool, and takes less than ten minutes out of your work week. Weekly updates allow the competitive scene to get a good handle on where the leagues are, what ruleset changes you are hashing over, what large events you have planned. If they fall through, they fall through. The point is, the community can FEEL things about them. They can feel disappointment when it doesn't work out, they can feel elated when it does. They can feel excitement build as the dates get closer, and relief when they finally arrive. As it stands, the community can only feel anger and derision toward the competitive staff, given your obvious lack of organization and forethought. And, before you think I'm attacking you, I'm not. Simply look at the start of this thread for the schedule, and ask yourselves: what other business would allow 5 months with zero communication to its clients?
Pick a date. Who cares if you're wrong occasionally? Picking a date gives you something to strive for. If you don't think you're going to make the deadline, then work harder to get it done. If all else fails, apologize to the community and push the dates back. That's a pretty simple concept in the business world. As it stands, you have no incentive to actually take care of anything, because all you've done is cover your own butts with vague "oh coming soon" and avoiding sticking to any one schedule. Again, I'm not trying to attack you, this is just literally management 101 and you guys seem unaware.
Invest in the public community. You need to find some way to better integrate pub clans (including Turkish, Egyptian, the United Kingdom) into the competitive scene. I'm not saying you open up CFS to them if that's not in your power (I'm pretty sure it isn't). But, that's a facet of the community that in spite of being largely ignored, still is going fairly strong. It would take very little work to send an olive branch and fire up their entire community in support of the competitive scene; they tend to be incredibly passionate about the game. I could list a few ideas for this (events giving permanent weapons as alternatives to cash prizes, having more "open" rulesets for the "open" league, etc. etc.), but the point is you need to ACTIVELY search for clans and active players throughout the community, not simply passively say "well, the information is here if they want it". I can't tell you the number of Asian or Turkish clans I've told about the competitive scene and they've gone "WHAT THAT EXISTS HOW" and I have to sadly shrug and say I have no idea when it starts.
These are just general suggestions, I could go on forever. However, you guys haven't responded in any depth for months and months, so I'm not optimistic. In fact, I half expect this thread to be deleted because "oh you insulted the GMs work ethic" or some ridiculousness.
I really enjoy competing at this game. Hopefully you guys get your act together so other people can, too.
Last year, it was confirmed that CFCL would in fact have a season two; in December, the community was told it would be announced "sometime in January".
January. No public mention of CFCL is ever given during this month. People begin to complain, and they are responded to with "It's coming soon".
February. The GMs say, "We don't want to announce it, because if we're wrong on the date, people will be even angrier." They post a feedback thread for CFCL season 1 on 03-02-17, but intentionally avoid mentioning anything about future events.
March. No word.
April. Nothing.
It's now May 1st. Europe just had its 9th qualifying event for CFS this year (yesterday, I'm not kidding), and we haven't even had confirmation that our region will be attending.
The goal of CFCL -- and the value that Z8Games get from the competitive scene -- is to get more players more invested in the game. That's why it's valuable for Z8 to offer prizes, to pay people to run events, and to bother with this section of the forums at all. Players who follow the competitive scene are more likely to continue playing the game, and a larger viewing audience means more people are likely to start playing the game in general.
You are failing at this goal.
You cannot expect to give no word on the competitive scene for 5 months on end, and then expect the event to spark interest in the community at large the first time you do. You cannot host an event out of the blue with no forewarning and expect to have a large turnout of players and teams. You can't expect a large viewership audience when your events have the consistency of Michael J. Fox drawing a straight line.
I get that you are still hashing over details. But it is better to hype people up surrounding a date and occasionally disappoint them than it is to give them no information whatsoever and never allow excitement to foster.
My suggestions:
Start weekly updates. This is an incredibly easy tool, and takes less than ten minutes out of your work week. Weekly updates allow the competitive scene to get a good handle on where the leagues are, what ruleset changes you are hashing over, what large events you have planned. If they fall through, they fall through. The point is, the community can FEEL things about them. They can feel disappointment when it doesn't work out, they can feel elated when it does. They can feel excitement build as the dates get closer, and relief when they finally arrive. As it stands, the community can only feel anger and derision toward the competitive staff, given your obvious lack of organization and forethought. And, before you think I'm attacking you, I'm not. Simply look at the start of this thread for the schedule, and ask yourselves: what other business would allow 5 months with zero communication to its clients?
Pick a date. Who cares if you're wrong occasionally? Picking a date gives you something to strive for. If you don't think you're going to make the deadline, then work harder to get it done. If all else fails, apologize to the community and push the dates back. That's a pretty simple concept in the business world. As it stands, you have no incentive to actually take care of anything, because all you've done is cover your own butts with vague "oh coming soon" and avoiding sticking to any one schedule. Again, I'm not trying to attack you, this is just literally management 101 and you guys seem unaware.
Invest in the public community. You need to find some way to better integrate pub clans (including Turkish, Egyptian, the United Kingdom) into the competitive scene. I'm not saying you open up CFS to them if that's not in your power (I'm pretty sure it isn't). But, that's a facet of the community that in spite of being largely ignored, still is going fairly strong. It would take very little work to send an olive branch and fire up their entire community in support of the competitive scene; they tend to be incredibly passionate about the game. I could list a few ideas for this (events giving permanent weapons as alternatives to cash prizes, having more "open" rulesets for the "open" league, etc. etc.), but the point is you need to ACTIVELY search for clans and active players throughout the community, not simply passively say "well, the information is here if they want it". I can't tell you the number of Asian or Turkish clans I've told about the competitive scene and they've gone "WHAT THAT EXISTS HOW" and I have to sadly shrug and say I have no idea when it starts.
These are just general suggestions, I could go on forever. However, you guys haven't responded in any depth for months and months, so I'm not optimistic. In fact, I half expect this thread to be deleted because "oh you insulted the GMs work ethic" or some ridiculousness.
I really enjoy competing at this game. Hopefully you guys get your act together so other people can, too.
Comments
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Even though I'm not a comp player, I understand everyone's frustration on the matter.
But consider this:
How are they going to host a tournament when the servers are dcing players constantly, the ping is (to say the least) unstable and the GMs either haven't managed or haven't cared to fix that?
I'm not saying that it's not important to host such tournaments in order to draw in more people, but those new players are going to quit immediatetly if this situation isn't fixed. -
I doubt there will be a response. You hit EVERYTHING dead on... You truly have to ask yourself WHAT are they doing.. in all seriousness. How can people manage a region without having the basic management skill of communication that is far more important than anything. I mean they probably don't have the passion to see it grow I mean that's what it boils down to. To simply care... I mean we have a region with a lot of potential if the time is invested. I understand that upper management doesn't probably care because our numbers are down we get an average 50-60 for casted events but guess what.. Not to point fingers but those numbers are under your influence.
Again 5 months without an offical post of SIMPLE communication is ridiculous for any business. You don't have to be a professional to know that this simple negligence is what causes businesses and organizations to die off...
#WHATAREYOUDOING -
This is 100% true, especially the part where players, clans, pubstars, etc. don't even know of the events coming up because they never check forums, they don't even know what forums are.
And everything else he said about how the competitive scene can grow and why its so dead right now, this game really has the potential to be one of the biggest competitive game.
North America is known for famous tournaments and eSports stuff, but this game just leans more to a pay2win, making new players have a hard time really investing their time into it.
If only there was a way to make a new version of cf, like the old cf, with just skins and no OP stuff and for it to be on steam for like $25 with better anticheat, this game would be blowing. -
BlaCkeNeD7 wrote: »Even though I'm not a comp player, I understand everyone's frustration on the matter.
But consider this:
How are they going to host a tournament when the servers are dcing players constantly, the ping is (to say the least) unstable and the GMs either haven't managed or haven't cared to fix that?
I'm not saying that it's not important to host such tournaments in order to draw in more people, but those new players are going to quit immediatetly if this situation isn't fixed.
Servers have been acting up wayyyy before January. lol -
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BlaCkeNeD7 wrote: »I'm playing in the UK servers, trust me, I know.
And I play NA and also get errors and Dcs since the end of last year but saying that might be the reason is beyond me if it was it should be their top priority to have gotten it fixed monthsssss before if CFCL was that important to them. But that's not what they're asking they just want GM to communicate more since its been months so using the "server issue" in my opinion is incorrect since you only gotta log on to forums to communicate to the comp players. -
I actually agree with this quite a bit. Something I have been in long recommendation of is having an off and on season of events. Maybe just having weekly cups for ZP with no cash prize during that time, but still something to retain competition and interest.
I also think weekly updates would be a good idea during the season, but is too much really in the off season, but at least a monthly progress report of some sort would be appreciated for sure.
To be fair though, there is always the option of 3rd party hosting events in the off season as well. The issue with 3rd party leagues for CF is they expect SG to foot the bill which is simply silly. Most every other game has 3rd party league that run without support from the company running the game, and sustainability is possible if the league is tailored the right way, and ultimately something that can be done if the community was eager to make it happen.
The bottom line though I agree, should be to tailor events for a more year round feel, bring in growth for existing and new non comp players, and be about elevating top teams to celebrity type status in the community and creating hype around being the best competitive team in NA. -
My son quit this heap of junk to compete in CS-GO. I might join him in the very near future.Just compete in CS:GO. It's clear that these guys don't give a duck about us. FalleN did and his team is the best in CS
It just confirm's my/our thought's .... POXY MANAGEMENT, they canne fix the servers so what hope do we have.
We all moan about egy and the lagging trolls here , but really it just comes down to the delinquents at the office than seem to be doing nothing but bugger all. And they are the worse diabolical shower of poo i've ever seen.
GJ Z8 you really make us want to stay here with all the glitche's laggers hackers server's unstable since nov last year. you dont naff all to help your customers. -
The ghostmode community is getting another tournament being currently set up thanks to [GM]Triton taking an interest in the mode and actually trying to help keep it alive. I hope maybe they can find a [GM] for the competitive scene as well. Really saddens me to see that (probably) the most important scene in crossfire is also the most neglected. Interested to see if you guys get a response eventually.
EDIT: Putting in proof of said GM so its not second hand... That and it shows that all it takes is a single dedicated GM to solve this problem.
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