Now that NS2 is coming, I think we should have discussion about some mistakes that were done by ENSL and competitive players for the detriment of the scene. We shouldn't repeat these in NS2. In my opinion atleast following were done:

 

Learning curve

Getting into competitive in NS1 takes too much effort in my opinion. Now you need Steam, Half-Life, IRC, Vent and know the "protocol" to organize games. In the best case scenario, I could make a custom installer which could include all the extra tools needed to play. Some of the issues could be solved within the game, for example a match making system.

 

Attitude and rule enforcement

'Nuff said. We should be more strict about what kind of behaviour to allow, for not alienating lots of mature players. Also with more teams, there should no reason for recissions.

 

Clusterization of communities

There is not that much overlap between the public and competitive communities, and people tend to get stuck into their own community. Now we got the banner sharing program, maybe we could implement even more.

 

Basically for public players rule out competitive NS out of options for the following reasons:

 

1. Manners or of ENSL gamers
2. Can't be arsed or not enough time

 

Consistent league (and website) since the beginning

We had too many different leagues, cups and tournaments in the beginning.

The problem was never the amount of leagues, it was the lack of quality. To my mind, the more the merrier! Hopefully the ENSL will serve as a stable focal point for the euro community though.

I don't know if the vent+irc+steam is NS' failure in particular. It definitely turns away some people, but then again most games have very much similar procedures and they've done better than NS. Still, the accessibility definitely needs improvement for NS2.

Later on ENSL should probably have enforced stricter match times. At least for me it's annoying to wait 30+ minutes on server, then overrun/get overrun for a few 5-10 minute rounds and then start all over again. The game itself still feels awesome when it works, but the amount of time wasted on useless waiting is enormous and makes me think of quitting here and there. Paying some extra attention to smooth and flexible scheduling and good sportsmanship shouldn't hurt one bit.

As Fana mentioned, more leagues/competetions isn't a bad thing. A monopoly rarely improves the quality.

need to take more efforts to solve the problems that appears on officials (trained referees, chain of command, etc..)

need strict rules, without exceptions, to avoid such problems

Yes i think we need some strict rules to make ensl attractive for non competitive player

 

Ps : seems like i cant edit my message because it says that i'm not log in

the only thing that went wrong with the ensl was allowing people like Jamesbond007 play.

I'm not talking only about ENSL, im talking about the competitive scene in general.

In my opinion the biggest problem during 1.04-2.01 times was lack of organized league. About 40% of clans actually played "officials" back then. Majority of clans did not play because all tournaments were badly organized. HLTV's were rarely seen, there were neither predictions nor shoutcasts. ENSL itself gives major advantage to EU competitive scene in NS2.

A lot of the old leagues never seemed to dedicate their time to the league in things like UKNSL.. I dunno about the first two, but when Jas0 was in charge, he would just blame other people when it went wrong.

 

Also.. clanbase was just an ass of a system to use, that deterred lots of people from getting involved.

 

The NSFR system was good, stood for a long time and seemed to finish its leagues, probably why ENSL has done so well at first.

 

Also, I think the game was less balanced so it was just allround harder to get the games fair.  It'd make the admins life a lot harder as you'd have more problems to deal with.

 

IMO the comp scene did the best it could to deal with the problems of the game such as taking forever to organise tactics and a marade of bugs.

yeah I love the new ensl system, it's just a shame it never rolled out 3-5 years ago, browser based gather matching, ladder system, league system, cups... it would have been pretty sick xD

but even now the slickness of it all kinda makes you keen to play again... but no one does so it's futile :P

"HLTV's were rarely seen"

In 1.04 this was actually because HLTVs didn't work with NS. Most of the big 2.0 matches had HLTVs, but few people bothered to save demos.

 

Unfortunately this is going to be a problem with NS2 as well, as Flayra has comfirmed that mass spectating (ie. HLTV) will not be included in the first release. Jiriki is working on a system that might help alleviate the problem though.

The new gather system is certainly working I would say Ziggy. People do want to play and it definitely makes it easier compared with using IRC. It may be that there were this many gathers going on without the data we have now to quantify it but I think I've seen greater activity.

it's early days for the new system. I think it would be wise to consider running multiple gathers simultaneously as things are going to pick up when old timers have a look at the freshness.

Fana wrote:

Unfortunately this is going to be a problem with NS2 as well, as Flayra has comfirmed that mass spectating (ie. HLTV) will not be included in the first release. Jiriki is working on a system that might help alleviate the problem though.

Your response

Actually Max confirmed it and from what i know system is almost ready.

Can I get a quote on that? Last I heard they were leaving mass spectating for a later update.

The devteam killed competitive gaming in ns1. They did an amazing job all the way, but also showed a shocking lack of Public Relation skill. Some of us did their best to keep competitive gaming alive but you cant make miracles when devteam dont give a shit and wont even listen to your tiniest requests. They never get that dreaming is what make people come to play, and there's no better way to make players dream than showing high-level intensity games.

Ns Academy as we had it in france would've help if it had been an european effort at first too. Good players tend to behave like ass towards new players indeed, but it has been shown most of them wouldnt bother taking and hour or two "teaching" them in the Ns Academy system.

An yeah, thanks to Naxo we now have ENSL which is gonna make a huge difference on ns². Maybe achieve more than we all tried to do on ns1.

What kind of problems did you have with the devteam back in the day? Atleast Flayra has been really helpful with us, giving us publicity many times (be it ensl, movie contest or inter-continental games), I think its also because of puzl though.

I think the lack of UWE website was a major blow, but there's no point of crying about it anymore, as we cannot really change that. Although if I had known Ruby on Rails back then, I would have coded a new website in no time. 8)

Flayra woke up wayyy too late, and yeah it wasnt probably on his own. Lets say you make dozens of announces about upgrades that never comes. Lets say you dont make publicity for your own game's competitions (nationscups, EU vs USA exhib match, leagues). Lets say you cant keep your word and delay the first fixed version ever (cant remember which 3.x it was) and release it 6 months later in the early summer, right when everybody fly away on holidays.

There's never been a major issue truely, just tons of false or too-early-annouced promises.

 

And well, Clanbase <3<3 good job.

 

ps: For the record, when ns-fr was still alive the admins tried an interesting system called "vip-only public server", on which only competitive players were allowed (about 100 of them). We went down to play the bests ffa games ever, leaving in the same time the others publics servers empty of good players. Cant say the experiment was a success, but it kept good players around for a while (even without league) and forced the less-good to progress quickly.

The system was cancelled 2 months later due to whining-issue of the non-allowed players.

no server has been as strong as the warservers server in 1.04, mainly ran by FSA and LoG from what I remember, maybe some [eH] players too?  When that server died, NS took a massive blow.

 

No devs put any publicity out for Clanbase, UKSNL, national leagues, Gamingorb or early ENSL at all..

Also: can anyne remember the tourny the dev team promised everyone with the chance to win a latest gfx card at the time.. it failed miserably, they got the teams but just never, did it.. lol?

Fana wrote:

Can I get a quote on that? Last I heard they were leaving mass spectating for a later update.

I mean OUR spectating system (thought the ENSL page) is almost ready

"the only thing that went wrong with the ensl was allowing people like Jamesbond007 play."

 

I love how everything is my fault, no really!!!. ns died cuz of me, ensl died cuz of me. the league killed it self i had nothing to do with fuck all, and ya i was a complete dick with this league, but i cba to cause chaoz anymore, and i want NS2 to do well, HELL!!! TF2 IS FUCKING SHIT ITS DRIVING ME INSANE.

so... i dont think you have to worry about me causing problems with ns2..

 

I didn't realise he could use sentences.. omg

I think we should have a referendum on whether he gets banned from NS2.

Nobody thinks you killed ensl or ns, get over yourself.

 

Nobody wants you here because youve acted like a complete cunt for about 4 years.

lol james i was just taking the piss, RELAX.

Is he talking to me?! xD

urge to yawn rising

"Nobody thinks you killed ensl or ns, get over yourself. Nobody wants you here because youve acted like a complete cunt for about 4 years."

"I think we should have a referendum on whether he gets banned from NS2."

 

Your opinions do not matter.

 

Jimmis wrote:

"Nobody thinks you killed ensl or ns, get over yourself. Nobody wants you here because youve acted like a complete cunt for about 4 years."

"I think we should have a referendum on whether he gets banned from NS2."

 

Your opinions do not matter.

 

theres a quote feature genius :)