BASH 170.

Ted Ottey and I were talked to on BASH 170 about our thoughts for the competitive future of blackops. Check it out here : http://bashandslash.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1171&Itemid=69 Thanks to jock for interviewing us =)

My day 5 rant

Holy hell. Did the community go crazy on esl or what? I think they got your message guys. Judging by the post on esl's website, i'd say they did at least.

Everyone bashed them pretty hard over a lot of things the past few days. Whats funny is that the person posting the ruleset stuff wasn't even an esl admin. (although i do agree some of his ideas were borderline stupid)

I don't really have a lot to rant about , just a quick few things to point out.

The patch I think actually made my gameplay worse. Thankfully Jock of Bashandslash.com came up with a config which is helping some gamers. You can check it out here.

There's been a few ideas out in the community now in regards to rulesets. After talking to Matt "PhearLP" Rogers this morning I'm sort of starting to question our judgement of thinking bo3 format will work. We're looking at at least 3-4 leagues all doing bo3? Giant Headache. Besides a lot of great ruleset ideas Phear proposed we do a 9 week season. 3 weeks demo, 3 weeks dom, 3 weeks ctf. You'd still be playing all gametypes. I'm still not sold on taking SD completely out as I've heard some people saying its fun to scrim (note i said scrim, not pub! If you're talking about pubbing gtfo my blog.) I almost want to propose 2 weeks sd, 2 weeks ctf, 2 weeks demo, 2 weeks dom.

I value input from people, what can I say. Phear isn't the only person that's spoken up to me. Jock Yitch has suggested barebones ctf/sd as the way to go. I got to admit, I played barebones ctf with him in his server and really enjoyed it. While I'm for keeping most of the perks in(except the stupid ones) I don't think stripping the perks out is whats going to kill the community. I think us changing shit so damn much and a lack of a free league for the pubbers to start in and play is whats hurting us. I'm open to the idea of barebones. As jock put it, just you and your gun vs the world.

Hill published his team's ctf config. I'd encourage people to check it out. Kanguh is preaching the virtues of dom and his settings. Check em out, give input. Thats what we need more than anything else right now. Well, anything else except treyarch actually fixing the game. But thats another story.

Anywho, I appreciate any input that anyone gives. Keep up with the ideas guys. Except for those of you saying tdm. Just stop now. Focus on something else.

a quick side note

Stop being dicks to newfags too, encourage them to stay around. Encourage our community to grow, in any way we can, damn it.

my day 2 rant on black ops and the community

Sigh...

where to begin. I'm not even sure. I sit here more confused than a baby in a topless bar. Its mind boggling some of the things I've heard lately. I guess before I call the front desk to see if reality has checked in to the hotel yet, I should go over what I do like about the game.

• Demolition - Its fast paced modified version of SD to me. And I haven't been a fan of sd so far in what I consider a fast paced game.
• Domination - Possibly the most fun I've had in this game so far. This gametype is a blast.
• CTF is ok, but in a pub environment turns into TDM.
• Killing people with a tomahawk is possibly the best thing ever.
• I really like the options of letting you choose your unlocks. I'm sporting a galil with a nade launcher, with the clan tag representing on the side, the revolver for the side arm, tomahawk, the sprint perk, the hip fire accuracy perk, and who knows what the other one is.
• I am a fan of a bo3 gametype....for now.

Please note. As I've said previously good things come to those who wait. Just because I say that I like those gametypes so far does not necessarily mean they're the best for competition. I'm still a firm advocate of waiting until treyarch at least fixes the lag/fps issues before we make any brash judgement. Sure, people want to go ahead and host the first league ASAP for street credit? Take a deep breath, stop, step back and look what anyone out there with a brain is doing. We have time, community, no need to rush it. Theorize, idealize, hypothesize, but set nothing in stone.

I think the game is fun and has potential if the lag is fixed.

I'm upset because there's no ftp access or access to the fs_game path. Upset because not only does this screw our mod maker from making a promod, but upset for my good friends like joker, who modding is a passion for, and now he can't get into it. However I find myself thinking how will they put up mod tools if we don't have access to these things.

Where there's a will there's a way: Thanks to the efforts of some people like hill , ted, swiftshot, davep and others, we've been casually developing some sort of rulesets and sharing them with each other via fileshare. We've yet to find if they save to the computer anywhere but we have our ideas of what we can do and where we can go from there.

After hearing some of the things proposed over the past few days, I have to ask, did I fall asleep in a spaceship and suddenly wind up in a world where apes rule, and humans are but slaves for entertainment?

Leave kill streaks in? Yeah, great idea. (not) hey, lets leave the rc car in too. Stuns, ehh I could argue for or against that. While I'm all for the idea of a little car going airborne crazy and blowing people to kingdom come this isn't a brilliant idea too. Or, OR, wait even better. Lets leave claymores in and put TDM as a gametype. Raise your hand if you ever played bhd. A tactic invented by this team called DFR comes to mind. Lets claymore every corner, camp and lean, then suicide if someone gets close enough to kill us. that'll show those socialist pigs! I'm not sure who got the memo that ctf should be no halves either but clearly they did not play cod2. TDM should in no shape form or fashion ever be used as a competition game type. I'm not necessarily for or against SD being left out yet. I'd like to see what people think after the lag issues are taken out.

There's this great tool out called Call of Duty Black Ops - remote console available on steam, which I have hopes for to be able to edit our appropriate settings we want for our gametypes. Hopefully we can get it working. Since you know, we won't have shit for mod access or ready up mods. I'm disgruntled about no timeouts either but i guess you do what you can right?

And then I stopped for a second, as a ray of light shined through the darkness and hit me like a cold bucket of water. Its only the second day. Why are we making stupid nonsensical ideas? Again, I'm of the good things come to those who wait way of thinking. I don't like running bad events and as such, I think waiting is the opportune thing to do.

So there you have it. Here's the tl;dr of it: wait until we fix the lag to decide shit. test as much as possible, set nothing in stone. Screw tdm. Screw no half ctf. Gun balanced. Me likey demo/dom. so easy a caveman can do it.

Thats all for now folks.

quick update

I was interviewed in BASH 167 by jockyitch and its up on his site now. He also had relixx and alien from ESL on. My part hits about 40 minutes in. And yes, that is me shoutcasting jock clutching at the beginning. Check it out here! Thanks jock for having me on.

It's fresh, its clean, its about to be seen!

T minus 5 days and counting folks.

Thats right, that many days until call of duty : blackops releases with the hopes of the competitive community riding high on its shoulders. Are we excited yet?

As a gamer, I couldn't be more thrilled that we have a new cod game out. Lets face it, I'm plain tired of cod4. I haven't liked it since roughly season 2. I play because I still enjoy the people I play with. A new zombie mod will be fun for the pubbers. and of course, ctf is back. And I love ctf.

From an admin standpoint, its a headache in the making. I've got a relatively new staff, although they are great and hardworking. They weren't admins at the start of cod4 to see how much of a pain in the ass it was with rulesets, people whining, the works. Hopefully it won't turn them into bitter hermits like it has me in regards to cod4. We have a lot to decide on though. Gametypes, settings, weapon modifications, perks to leave in/take out, basically we're going to be busy. I know I've preordered the game and will be spending the first couple of weeks it is out without having a life and doing nothing but playing.

With that being said, I have high hopes for ctf. I'm bored with SD! my only problem is I'm concerned that ctf cannot make it as the main gametype, in fact i'm worried that SD would be the only gametype able to survive by itself. But i'm bored of SD, its time for something nouveau, as the french say. Juvey brought up the point that it should be a mixed league bo3 matches. (i.e. one ctf, one sd, one dom) and while I'm open to the possibility, we really need to see how the damn game plays first before we commit to something. As I've stated time and time again, on shows like the round table at e-rev and on bash and slash, I like to give the game that golden month at the start in which we decide the rulesets before popping out some worthy competition wise.

At least it has dedicated servers and record function, right?

As I was talking to jockyitch yesterday he brought up a few interesting subjects, such as what this game needs to be competitive and last, cevo's plans for the game, a few other things. I love going on his show and interviewing with him, and he should have a piece up with me at http://bashandslash.com/ in the near future. But he really did get me thinking about it. His initial question was something along the lines of "What is the biggest problem of bringing competitive cod into e-sports?" and that of course got my gears turning in my brain.

After thinking about it for a little while my response to him was the dividing line between casual and competitive gamers, geographic/economic problems and lack of serious backing from sponsors, dwindling lan support, and game developer not backing the game.

I mean lets think about it. We have the same core group of competitive gamers every game that happens. We get a few from cs, the bf community and other games but sometimes its a challenge keeping them around. The pub community is the life essence of the cod game, not the competitive community, regardless of what people think. So how do we go about getting those pub gamers into learning about competition? I remember how I started back in 2001 in delta force 2. I would find a favorite server to pub, I saw some guys in there with tags on that would constantly whoop my ass, and I strived to get better. I eventually joined their team. From there I learned more about the game, and continued to get better and better until I finally joined one of the best teams in the game. I stayed with that core group on into CoD2, where we initially started in the likes of twl and ogl. We then went on into CAL, the premier FREE league for competition. From there ,we learned about CEVO. There's a balance to these things you know. We face a challenge of getting these pubbers to start playing competitively and keep breathing life into the game. How can we get them to compete and stay around? The first thing in my mind is strip the bare minimum out that we have to. And I think blackops presents us with the unique opportunity in that regards.

Geographic and economic problems are self explanatory to me. America's economy hasn't exactly been booming the past few years. It cost roughly 400/500 dollars for a round trip ticket from California to jersey. (Hello to eurogamers, you have the ease of taking a train trip cross country to all of your major lans. I hate you for that.) When even winning first place in these lans isn't enough to cover your ticket to the event you have a problem. Top teams certainly aren't willing to invest in that. Hopefully with the new game coming out companies such as nvidia, ati, and what not are going to be wanting to push their products onto gamers having to upgrade and will invest in these lans and make it worth time. I'm not holding my breath though. My solution would be stop having podunk lans in the middle of no where new jersey. I am not a gamer that is ever going to be able to place top 3 in these lan events and win prize money. So I look at several other things when I lan. A lan is basically a vacation for me. Not only am I going to go to the lan, I'm going to go to the nearest big city, sight-see, and experience the culture. (Seeing king tut in philly, philly cheese steaks on south street, and visiting new york were some of the highlights of my gaming career.) Maybe that's just me though, as I know at nerv the big thing was always partying with people in their hotel rooms. Of course at nerv, it was a pretty "close knit" group of gamers who all knew each other anyways. You need ways to attract these gamers that aren't going to win and place big. Give them more than a couple of matches to play. Relatively inexpensive hotels. Stuff to do in that city while there if its more than a one day event. Prize giveaways such as video cards, processors, what not, and of course the lans need to be worthwhile for the competitive teams to cover the cost of their trips. Anyone have any ideas on HOW we do that?

I'm no rocket scientist but I'm open to any explanations that people can find for me.

Anywho, its update time.

• Congratulations to Loaded for winning season 5 of cevo P, and dX for winning season 5 of cevo-a.
• the pam 4 tourny went decent. Lots of teams for a free tourny considering the stage in the game. We're currently in the bracket finals, which is sabotage on overgrown. Sure to be exciting!
• My rangers got to the world series but fell short. Still pretty pleased. If only now we keep cliff lee from becoming a yankee.
• I was recently interviewed on the cod4 roundtable at e-rev. You can check it out here. You'll have to register though. Myself and ted ottey were on talking about the future of cod. I apologize for my inattention though.
• Had an interview with JockYitch from Bashandslash.com last night as well, I'm sure that will be up soon. Make sure to check it out!

Thats it for now. Can't wait for the new game to come out! I'm excited! Looking forward to my social life being non-existent for the near future. If anyone has any ideas for what we should be doing with black ops let me know! I'd be excited to hear about everyone's ideas on how to make this game succeed. Email me(itannehill@cevo.com) with your suggestions!