ESL yet again shoots itself in the foot.

[promasterpl]

Hello ironpickaxe,

Your request to join ShootMania Storm Combo 2on2 Cup #8, was rejected.

Reason:

"Bonjour,

Veuillez nous excusez mais vous ne pouvez pas participez à cette Cup ESL France Shootmania car vous n\'êtes pas de nationalités francophone.

Cordialement, STAFF ESL France"


If this reason gets outdated, we encourage you to sign up again.

tl;dr
ESL now won't allow players from outside France to compete in their Combo cups. And I was there complaining about unfair servers they provided...

So, is combo competitive dead?

For those who don't understand french yet would like to know what the reason was, here goes google translate:

Hello,

We apologize, but you can not participate in this Cup ESL France Shootmania because you \ 're not speaking nationalities.

Sincerely, STAFF ESL France

[novationx]

ESL.FR should understand that this game is TOO small to limit their cups to just 1 country. Thats all.
Im sorry u couldnt play man :/

[TMarc]

Probably this is only the French ESL cup for French players?
Sometimes you are really searching for issues where there are none
It is not their fault if there are not enough players in your countries to make local ESL tournaments happen there as well.
I know it is a bit of a henn/hegg problem, but you won't make it better by always talking them bad.
There could / should also be more international contests, but the base for this would be national competitions.

[novationx]

No Tmarc you dont understand and as a moderator you shouldnt speak like that to someone who makes a post expressing his opinion.

He is frustrated that he cant play Combo with its pretty small playerbase. Now, when he actually has the oppertunity to play he cant because he is not from France. Ofc thats super frustrating.

I know games on ESL have cups/comps for each country ( like ESL LOL FR , ESL LOL BENELUX , ESL LOL GER )
but for a mode like Combo this shouldnt be the case. The ESL admins should know better.

Im happy he made this and I hope the ESL admins will see this.
So , he isnt looking for issues, but he is trying to express his opinion and to find a solution for it. I can only encourage that.

[TMarc]

I do understand the frustration very well, but it is certainly not ESLs fault,
and also not a reason to unnecessarily blame people or institutions.

But if the TO is looking for a solution, why was the topic not named
"No ESL tournaments in <country>, searching for players! Let's gather!" !?

No, instead people chose very negative topic titles.
I'm really wondering of the honest intentions of some people...

ESL will not organize tournaments by itself if there is no one.
There should be enough players, enough willing and qualified players, before national tournaments can happen (with and without ESL support).

[promasterpl]

Probably this is only the French ESL cup for French players?
Sometimes you are really searching for issues where there are none
It is not their fault if there are not enough players in your countries to make local ESL tournaments happen there as well.
I know it is a bit of a henn/hegg problem, but you won't make it better by always talking them bad.
There could / should also be more international contests, but the base for this would be national competitions.

Where do I even begin?...

1. If that's a French-only cup, why would we be allowed to play 3 cups before this one? I doubt they just forgot to ban us last time. We're also not the only team that plays those that is not French. There's Jura, Nutella Kitty and others. We're not standing alone.

2. You're right - it's not their fault there are not many players from outside France. But there's not many French players either. If you count out non-fr teams in the last cup there was 9 squads. That makes 18 players. That's such a big community - it was an obvious decision to let them play alone and not be bothered by those pesky lower class 'imigrants'

3. I'm not trying to talk them bad, but some things have limits and ESL has definitely crossed the line now. It's a competitive gaming platform, that should provide equal gaming conditions to any team participating. They failed to do so with those f-ed up servers once and now they decided that the best solution would be to just disallow non-fr players to play. I do agree that this fixes the problem - well played, ESL, wp - but at what cost?


ESL combo tournaments were the biggest competitions in this gamemode out there, so cutting off so many players just doesn't seem to make any sense. We're left without any way to really compete against others as long as ESL won't allow us to participate.

I've tried to reach ESL staff already, but none of them wanted to talk to me, they all turned me down immediately without any special reason. I've also tried to re-enter the competition to find out if it wasn't just a mistake, but my request was rejected again.

edit:

No, instead people chose very negative topic titles.
I'm really wondering of the honest intentions of some people...

There are no good intentions coming from me, since the game is dying and some people are just throwing wood into the fire. What could be a good competitive gamemode has only a few active players and people in charge seem not to care.

[TMarc]

Actually we don't know their reasons, either to make a French only cup, or to disallow especially you or your team.
It can be a ranking thing as well.

Did something happen before, e.g during the last cups, that made them have this decision?

The truth is always in the eye of the beholder, but your are only presenting us the facts and observations from your side...

Only because ESL is perhaps behaving strange, this does not mean that a game that is just starting is dead.
When do you stop with such complaints and give the game a chance,
instead of always asking for perfect conditions right from the beginning?
You know yourself that it is just a step ahead of the next evolution, perhaps you should be more patient?

[promasterpl]

Only because ESL is perhaps behaving strange, this does not mean that a game that is just starting is dead.
When do you stop with such complaints and give the game a chance,
instead of always asking for perfect conditions right from the beginning?
You know yourself that it is just a step ahead of the next evolution, perhaps you should be more patient?

Ehh... this argument again...

The game is not 'starting', the game is ending it's life cycle right now and I can prove it - numbers don't lie. Go4SM is gone. No signs that SM will be played on ESWC this year as well. Lack of any ladder-based league for newcomers to train and lack of other competitions speak for themselves. Don't even get me started on the stats based off public servers.

If the 'next evolution' is coming within the next patch (which from what I heard is coming in a few months ROTFL) it has to be rather a miracle because the playerbase is getting smaller and smaller as the time passes. Shootmania can't go on with it's current state. Investing some time and effort into Combo would be a great idea to start off - but as you can see, some people would rather see French only cups there. I see.

And yeah, I don't know the reasons behind ESLs actions either. But it's not the will that matters right now. It's actions. And stuff like that - even if that's a mistake, which it seems is not - make me wanna switch the game already. I don't want to sit aimlessly playing pubs because there is literally nothing else to do. I want to play something. Others, as you can see for yourself, don't think so.

[TMarc]

It would be really interesting to see why ESL has rejected some players requests.
If the terms of registration and participation are unclear, they should be revised of course.

Go4SM? Who cares. It's not the only one. There are always organisations appearing and disappearing.
Even ESL had some issues in the past, and we can be happy that they are there again.

You know, with your sad words, not any game would have a chance to "survive" if it is not perfect right from the beginning, right?
Tell me which new game (that also has a new concept) is it really?
None.
But nowadays people seem to lose patience very easily.

As far as I have understood Hylis in his interviews for the TM 10th anniversary, ManiaPlanet games are a long term project.
TrackMania and ShootMania are games that depend a lot on the community support.
Those games are not simply "install-and-play-games". Well, TrackMania is partially, because it has solo missions, which ShootMania has not directly.
But the major content of the game - the tracks and maps - have to be created by the players, like they want to have them.
Servers have to be installed by the players - with the features they need.
And Nadeo is always working on improving the possibilities.
Some are restricted willingly, some are just missing because of lack of time.

Now the game might be less active because perhaps right now, people who know it are really waiting for the updates, or because they're all playing with their new consoles they got as Christmas gifts, who knows.
But this does definitely not mean the game is bad or even dead.
From a short term snapshot of player development you cannot really tell.
The game will only be dead when the master servers are switched off.
Until then there will be enough players who don't think that negative, and who enjoy playing just for fun, instead of doggedly fighting for some rare competitions where only a few chosen can participate.

Note to Combo:
Combo has always been a demo title only, made for the only purpose to demonstrate features of ShootMania.
But some people take it wrongly as official and finished game mode, which is simply wrong.
The community has to investigate it, and if no one is doing it, no one can help it.

I know that the communication and the support from Nadeo is not perfect, but with their manpower it is all they can do actually.
We really have to be patient and see what they will change soon.

[promasterpl]

But nowadays people seem to lose patience very easily.

As far as I have understood Hylis in his interviews for the TM 10th anniversary, ManiaPlanet games are a long term project.

There lies your problem.

I have no problem with waiting. Well, I have. The problem is that I have no one to play with or against. It's cool that Nadeo tries to improve the game. But what for, if I have no one to play already?

Until then there will be enough players who don't think that negative, and who enjoy playing just for fun, instead of doggedly fighting for some rare competitions where only a few chosen can participate.

Shootmania is supposed to be a competitive game, and me myself, being an ex-competitive gamer myself is looking for competitive games only. I'm not interested in casual, 4fun only type of game. But if it is what Nadeo wants to make out of Shootmania - it's alright. There are other games out there.

Note to Combo:
Combo has always been a demo title only, made for the only purpose to demonstrate features of ShootMania.
But some people take it wrongly as official and finished game mode, which is simply wrong.
The community has to investigate it, and if no one is doing it, no one can help it.

Combo is a well made, fun to play mode that could easily beat Elite to popularity IF Nadeo actually decided to promote it. Active Combo players are wiling to start playing competitive as-is right now, there is not much to be done about that mode. It's good already.

The only problem is that Nadeo doesn't seem to care. The only way to start playing is to download the mode from a hidden manialink. Just like you'd have to be a chosen one to actually get to find it hidden out there.