Name: Torsten
Location: Hannover
Posts: 10054
Post DHW 2011 we gotta ask ourselves, is there a future for QL TDM LAN events? Let me start with a recap of how I saw the development of things TDM related this year as an intro for the discussion.
edit: i definitely rambled too much and went a big offtopic, if you followed the scene you might aswell skip it and go to the second part of this column.
Things started exciting this year. 52% of the community
voted for TDM as their favorite competition in the upcoming DreamHack Summer. The reason for this interest were diverse. We had a strong EuroCup and a lot the competing teams willing to prove their worth at LAN (4K, xt, srs, metsu, TA, aCt). We had the comeback of toxjq in the allstar team of colwn (toxjq, winz, l1nkje, stermy). The return of Jibo and mikes in the russian team. We had Reason Gaming (fazz, zyv, deus, noctis) tearing up everyone else online in their practice games. We had lot of "storylines" bulding up: Will the new online hero juven1le be able to deliver at lan? Will the US team have any chance against the Europeans? Will 4K be able to keep up to their legacy or will the loss of zik and verb to srs be a neck breaker? etc etc.
As expected the tournament produced a lot of good matches. While many people had long expected the teams in the final we had a lot of unpredictable games in the playoffs and teams like dignitas surprising people. While the viewer count was not near that of other games it was ok for Quake and overall the TDM experiment was a success.
What was next? The online season was over and QuakeCon had yet to announce their competitions. While the online community was far from dead, pcws pickups were played every day, the top players and teams took a break.
When QuakeCon eventually announced it was holding a TDM touenament, it was already obvious that not a lot of teams would be able to participate. Expensive flights, a top heavy price distribution made it basically impossible for community based teams to participate. And while we had three gaming organizations sending a team to DHS (reason, dignitas, serious), The lack of any representation online and nothing more on the horizon, there was no justification for supporting a trip of 4 guys to the US.
With the lack of anything going on online and the predictable domination of iCE cLIMBERS and Salivating Monstahz there was basically no anticipation for the tournament anymore. The tournament delivered a great final and third place match but not much else.
What followed was the online winter season. HoQ managed to get 40+ teams to play and the community seemed healthy, but as the EuroCup XXIV invited were announced one thing became obvious, the top players and teams that took a break after DHS were mostly not coming back. While the EC is running just fine it is never the less true that the level of competition and outside interest has declined.
In September we had hints of a TDM tournament at DreamHack Winter but no official confirmation about prices or anything specific. Still people
seemed interested. While there was a lot of talk and planning for DHS inside the community, the resulting signup list showed how much of mess we are currently in. Just one active team that we saw competing online was participating, onfire. The rest were mixed teams. Not only was the level of competition nowhere near that of DHS, there was no build up of anticipation, no storylines, no interest in how teams would do.
The tournament that we saw then last weekend was the logical consequence of what happened. Uneven games, decided by the individual skill of the players. A few good matches, that TDM fans like myself enjoyed watching but but nothing that will be remembered and the general interest was with the duel competition this time.
This turned out longer than I expected, lets finally get to the point of my column:
where do we go from here? Is TDM at LAN dead again?
I think we have to admit that the DHW TDM tournament was a failure. The community is not dead, but DreamHack has not managed to bring them to play, to participate in the tournament. Why is that?
Lets look at what motivates players to go to tournaments. I can see three big factors: competing for prices, the entertainment of playing, meeting the other players/having a good time.
Now I would say that it is a fact, that we currently dont have enough money to make the competition for prices work as a primary goal. But still this is what the DreamHack Tournament was designed for in the end, it was modeled as an "esports" event. Now being part of the DreamHack tournaments has a lot of benefits, no doubt, but there are a lot of downsides aswell. The late announcement is a result of being organized as a part of the whole Dreamhack Summer event that depends on sponsor money and a lot of planning of none Quake related things. Then we have the limitation of 16 PCs bound to the scheduled matches. It is a system that has "worked" for duel competitions in the past, but maybe we have to admit that it does not work for TDM tournamens. This is no reason to give up on Lan events though. If we dont have the money available for making it the primary focus, we should simply keep an open mind and focus on the other aspects.
As I stated in the beginning, the entertainment of playing and meeting the other players/having a good time is a strong motivation. Wouldnt it then make sense to hold an event designed with that in mind?
The Quakeworld community recently gathered for the
QHLAN 15. I did not know much about it but I talked to Zalon on irc.
15:12 Zalon • it's held in stockholm at something called Fredrika Bremergymnasierna
15:13 Zalon • the number of players varies between 40 to 100
15:14 Zalon • depends on the amount of hype :D
15:14 Nukm • is it strictly byoc or can you lend pcs?
15:14 Zalon • it is byoc, but we usually rent out pc's and monitors
15:14 Zalon • and the cost to attend is 150sek-250sek
15:15 Nukm • who is organizing everything?
15:16 Zalon • me :D
15:17 Zalon • the last 2 years, we have had a deal with this lan association in stockholm
15:17 Zalon • called hazard
15:17 Zalon •
www.hazard.nu
15:17 Zalon • they have 2 lan events a year
15:17 Zalon • with 300 people
15:17 Nukm • oh cool, props for that!
15:17 Zalon • we then get our own location there
15:18 Zalon • so they handle everything... setting up, network, a kiosk etc
15:18 Zalon • then i organize the qw part and the qw tournaments
I think something like this (maybe even organized together) is a viable option for the QL TDM (and overall) community. Maybe we can for once get a fruitful discussion going on esr, I would be very interested to hear everyones thoughts about what kind of TDM events we should be focusing on in the future.
![shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann](/files/avatars/2007/51852-shaftwhore.gif "shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann"){kind=small}
+gtv
+multiview
+bird view
+team overlay on hud (while speccing)
+weapon timers
+5 new map for competitions every year
-weapon dropping
until these not implemented its pointless to feature tdm in any kind of tournament. tdm is barely played online even, for first more players have to be engaged but for that they need to get a grasp on the gametype, the current climate is just as unfavoring as it could be for new players.
also i dont understand why it cant be like it was in q3 where every evening/night there was 2-3 filled servers in my country, everyone was welcomed to play and noone really ruined the games, we just made the teams as close as it possible and played fun matches all night. now its just public is a joke and pickup the same 100 people circlejerking. i got literally called out for ruining the game by a pro for not knowing the map (purgatory). where else i supposed to learn it? not like there is any chance to play on that map outside of pugs. personally i just gave up on the whole thing years ago and moved to duel.