Writing an article related to eSports - can you help?

[Vanguard]

Hey. I've also posted this to r/Shootmania but unless I'm very much mistaken that subreddit seems sadly fairly dead, so this seems like a more appropriate place.

I'm going to be writing a guest article on eSports soon for a small UK-based community blog, specifically on the "forgotten eSports"; competitive scenes with a lot of potential that have died for one reason or another or, like Shootmania, are surviving but being left in the shadow, relatively speaking, of the insane popularity rises of games like Dota 2, League of Legends and CS:GO and perhaps overlooked because of that.

Remembering my interest in Shootmania a few years back when it was first being announced, as the idea of a game that seemed built from the ground up to be an eSport intrigued me, I'd like to write at least a small section on Shootmania's competitive scene but this is difficult as someone who honestly has never even played the game.

So, to those much more experienced with the game than myself, a few questions that would help a lot:
- What can I look to in terms of major events to reference, both past and upcoming?
- What kinds of figures has the game seen in terms of tournament prize pools before?
- Do you feel like the game's developers support the competitive scene adequately?
- How can new players get into Shootmania and then into the game's competitive scene? For those who may be
playing competitively already; any tips or advice for people looking to get into the game?

Any other interesting points you feel I should include about Shootmania as an eSport please throw my way also.

The site I'm writing for isn't the biggest out there, but it's a great little site which certainly has a small dedicated regular fanbase and if I'm going to write about Shootmania, I want to get it right.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[novationx]

So, to those much more experienced with the game than myself, a few questions that would help a lot:
1. What can I look to in terms of major events to reference, both past and upcoming?
2. What kinds of figures has the game seen in terms of tournament prize pools before?
3.Do you feel like the game's developers support the competitive scene adequately?
4. How can new players get into Shootmania and then into the game's competitive scene? For those who may be
playing competitively already; any tips or advice for people looking to get into the game?

I gave the questions numbers so its ez to reply.

1/2 OFFLINE
- Since the beta we had yearly big events such as IPL and now ESWC ( 15 000€ ). This is every year somewhere in november.
-Then there is Gamers Assembly which can also be considered to be pretty big. This years prizes for ManiaPlanet games are 12 000€ ( if im not mistaken )
- And smaller lans ( mostly in France & Germany ). I guess 1 per month.


1/2 ONLINE
- Paragon Cups: ShootMania has plenty of gamemodes so besides the weekly Elite ( the mainmode) cups there are also cups for other modes. All these cups have €100+ prize money. I think Elite even has €200 now every week.

- ESL GO4ShootMania: €450 every month

- CPLAY Series : New league starting in February with +- €2000 every season and a couple of thousands of euros hardware. Currently there are 3 seasons planned and every season lasts 1 month.

- Krazy League ( will be announced soon with plenty of prizemoney, but I dont have the permission to say how much )

- And some other cups which dont really offer any cashprizes : SmurfCups for ShootMania:Royal and others I cant remember.


3. Sometimes.
Like we didnt have an update in aaaaaaaages, but they are active on the forums. If you ask a question you usualy get a reply.
Honestly, it's not enough mostly because of the lack of information and updates. Absolutely nothing is announced at the moment and people are becoming impatient.
They do support leagues & cups financially which is always nice.


4. It's easy to understand, hard to master. Although understanding all blocks can be confusing. Some blocks make you jump higher, other blocks make you run faster, ...
The game has absolutely no ingame tutorials, but there are some beginner servers to welcome new players. A nice community is always ready to help if you have questions.

To start playing competitvely you should, imo, play at least a bit, because you'll be bashed. But there are plenty of teams ( low & high skilled ) looking for players and its always nice to start a new journey. Just like any other game you wont be pro in 1 day. It will take time to really master the game.

People compare the game to quake, but with different movement mechanics , a bit slower, less weapons, better visuals and a bunch of tools that come included ( weapon creator, map editor, replay editor, manialink creator ) and everything is pretty much customizable.


Advice for players:
- Rushing is considered bad manners xD
- Shoot your rockets slowely but effectively
- You only have 1 laser so take your time


PS : The game is actually free to play until April. Well, its not the FULL game, but you can perfectly play everything and as much as you want. ( You simply can not change your name or use custom horns..., but who cares about that? ) I recommend downloading the game at http://www.shootMania.com
I wanna repeat that this demo isn't limiting you in any way. Its 99% the full game.

[Vanguard]

snip

Huge thanks for the comprehensive response. If it's okay by you I'd like to quote and paraphrase some of your post in the article because it's a pretty perfect response; I notice that your forum name doesn't seem to match any of the names on the Shootmania roster listed on CPLAY's website so what should I call you when quoting? (P.S. - as a competitive Team Fortress 2 player and fan, even though the organization tends to dip in and out of TF2 as it sees fit it's nice to see some representation of CPLAY and, by proxy, Tt.eSports - CPLAY did have a team until fairly recently and if it wasn't for Tt our main European league would be shit out of luck as far as sponsors go )

Also, perhaps a tough question to answer on the spot, but as you are a competitive player - what is it about Shootmania for you that sets it apart from other competitive games and indeed games in general? What keeps you coming back to it?
Would be nice to throw a few words like that into the article and, who knows, perhaps draw a player or two in here and there.

Huge thanks again, man, already this has been massively helpful.

EDIT - nevermind on the name, noticed your Facebook page and put two and two together. I assume it's fine to refer to you as Dreammy from team CPLAY Tt.eSports

[novationx]

Yeah we had a pretty kewl TF2 team but life happened and they gave up professional gaming ( not all )
Feel free to quote or mention me as long as it doesnt make me look bad ofc :p

And I started playing ShootMania because after 10years of CS 1.6 and a bad beta of CSGO It was time for something new. The main mode was unlike anything I had seen before so I instantly liked it : 3vs1 & rockets vs laser.

The reason I stay is because I like the game and altho I'm not the best player, I do manage to finish TOP3 in almost all cups and win something with it.

The main reason why I'm staying is probably the game's huge potential. It could be sooooo much better, but unfortunately updates arent bringing what I want ( if we get an update at all. )

Cheers

[Sanctjews]

So, to those much more experienced with the game than myself, a few questions that would help a lot:
- What can I look to in terms of major events to reference, both past and upcoming?
- What kinds of figures has the game seen in terms of tournament prize pools before?

You can always mention the 100.000$ launch tournament that had a peak of 1600 viewers. The tournament had lots of known names from other FPS games. Overall the tournament proved one thing, Shootmania was a failure from the beginning.

Then you even have names like DJWheat and Slasher both saying publicly they watched the tournament and said the following:

"The game is still really really boring to watch" (They were comparing to some alpha-tournament they had seen earlier).

Nothing was done or said by Nadeo, because after all, the general theme from Nadeo since this game started has been that criticism = negativity, and negativity is what's stopping the game from suceeding, so they'll have none of that in here.

- Do you feel like the game's developers support the competitive scene adequately?

No, no and no. Sure, lately they've atleast done something but that was because there was a lot of pressure building up, especially on these forums. And that's what they always do, when the pressure and tiredness from players reach a boiling point Hylis makes this magic announcement which is only enough to shut people up, but not enough to really improve what people are dissatisfied with, and then it's left there. Just go read about the POWER UP! announcement. It was the same, lots of negativity on forums and Hylis comes with this announcement and they do the 0.1 V update to it.

Since then? NOTHING! Go see when it was announced! viewtopic.php?f=10&t=28250&start=0

July last year. Nothing since then. A struggling game cannot have 6-12 months between updates, especially with unfixed bugs in it.

Any other interesting points you feel I should include about Shootmania as an eSport please throw my way also.

You can include how Shootmania as an esport was one of the big advertisement and talking points of Hylis during alpha/beta. After launch that got seriously toned down and in fact judging from the unwillingness to fix bugs that are related to gameplay, I'd say the esport part of the game has taken a backseat for now.

In fact, Hylis has several times stated that you needed to nurture the casual scene to have a competitive scene (which is correct), but when he said "nurture casual scene" he was referring to simplifying parts of the gameplay.

I mean, this game was more fun in B2 than what it is now. Yes, it was MORE FUN! Hylis will probably come and nitpick about "B2 walljumps so buggy" as he always does when someone criticize the changes done since the beta days, but when asked why they didn't just keep the old system and remove the buggy part of it, he never replies.

Fact of the matter is a big portion of the SM community will say that Nadeo had a golden opportunity with the IDEA of Shootmania, but the execution has been awful at best.

There are nothing said, no relevant updates, nor is the game ever polished in terms of blocks and other minor issues with movement and bugs related to the GAMEPLAY.

If you want a competitive game with a big casual scene to foster a competitive scene?

1) It has to be fun and easy to play.

Shootmania isn't fun, it's repetetive without any rewards. Nor is it easy to learn. It's one of the hardest games on the planet to learn if you don't have someone experience to teach you over skype/mumble/ts because there are no explanations ingame, no tutorial no nothing.

Once learned it's dead easy to play, but still boring as .... too fast.

2) A game has to be polished for it to be taken seriously as a competitive game

This means that the game has to be polished. Let me say that again. THE GAME HAS TO BE POLISHED. Meaning that everything wrong with blocks (and there is a lot) and basic stuff related to the gameplay in terms of bugs must be A TOP PRIORITY to fix.

Instead the priority was to add the multilaser which is not cool to watch nor is it skillbased. in 95% of the cases it's pure luck if you get a +2/+3 and luck-based things should not ever be added to a COMPETETIVE ESPORT TITLE!

3) The game needs a good reputation, and if it doesn't have a good reputation it needs to be fixed.

Shootmania does NOT have a good reputation, and this is mainly because Nadeo gave all the competitive players from the early alpha/beta days a big middle finger and told them to sod off with their negativity (they were only fed up with bad design-choices being added to the game and voiced this in a way Nadeo and Hylis didn't like).

Ok, they didn't make an announcement saying those words, but from reading their dismissive replies on these forums, it was obvious that's what they did in the end.

Shootmania is known as a buggy, unfinished not very fun FPS for the most part. Nadeo does nothing to change that except tell their players to "Help us advertise our game" or "We need the community to step up and do something too, it can't be just us".

It should be just Nadeo, because you can't keep selling this game.

Do you remember when Elite and Royal was gonne be free at launch? YEah that never happened, and then they even did this silly Demo-thing which still wasn't FREE at launch. Heck, it wasn't even ready at launch.

Fact of the matter is that the game was seen as very promising during beta and it went the right way. Ever since launch in april 2013, it has gone downhill. I mean, we are almost 2 years after release and does the game has more interest and players now than it did during beta?

NO! I mean, maybe some Nadeo employee will come and quote me some silly numbers now, but look at youtube, look at twitter and in general... there are less people streaming, less people making videos and in general, there is MUCH LESS BUZZ around the game.

And that is why the game will forever fail because Nadeo DO NOT understand these points. They have been raised on these forums so many times, both by polite people and not so polite people and every single time Hylis has some dismissive reply or it's the same things as always:

"We plan for this game to be successfull in 15 years"

Yeah, the first 2 years have shown such a steady growth, im sure it will happen!

I'm out!

PS! All of this is all true btw. An article about why SM failed needs to address the failures of the developer and with the game itself. Fact is that they sold it as a competitive game, then game competitive players the finger and wanted to make the game more casual-friendly and instead you have a thing inbetween which doesn't really satisfy either camp very good.

And that's the saddest thing about the whole ordeal!

[Vanguard]

snip

An interesting and unexpected response after the one from Dreammy. Thank you, I'll definitely be incorporating many of your points here in the article as well as Dreammy's, I want to give as fair and balanced of a look at Shootmania as possible. Would you mind if I quote you in the article and if so what name would you like me to use when quoting?

And a few small follow-up questions - as a player, do you feel that the Shootmania concept in the hands of another developer would have the potential be a contender to the big eSport names, e.g. DOTA 2 and CS:GO? If Nadeo were, however unlikely it is, to step up their game significantly as developers do you feel that it still could be?

[HaagseSmurf]

I'm out!

@Sadzealot or/and this not so nice nickname imo
Thats what you said allready so many times in so many previous topics.
I really wonder why you then keep coming back if you hate everything that happened here ??
My only conclusion is that its just trolling because nobody else would take so much effort in complaining about something they say they hate so much. If you dont like it, just leave it behind you.
Let others who really love the game and put so much effort and time in it (if you like it or not) do what they wish and want and go find another game where you can have your fun. Perhaps it will cheer you up because its sad to see that someone can be so bittered about something which is not even real life.

Back to topic please and Vanguard and Novationx keep both up the good work because you help each other out with this nice article. It just shows what this community is really all about

Greetz.

[Alexey85]

Vanguard, please, take post of Sanctjews with a grain of salt, because he used account sadzealot before and has made hundreds of posts in the same and worse manner, where he does little or no contribution to discussions, but mostly he massively exaggerates things, makes vague negative statements and highly subjective overall, in my opinion.

[Vanguard]

Vanguard, please, take post of Sanctjews with a grain of salt, because he used account sadzealot before and has made hundreds of posts in the same and worse manner, where he does little or no contribution to discussions, but mostly he massively exaggerates things, makes vague negative statements and highly subjective overall, in my opinion.

I take his post with a grain of salt in the same sense that I'm going to take the post of a consistent top 3 competitive player with a grain of salt. I will not take the opinions of Sanctjews/Sadzealot as gospel, just as I do not take anybody's as gospel; my aim with the article is to highlight the game's surviving community and its potential as an eSport but also its reasons for not living up to that potential at present, both its strengths and its shortcomings.

Even if exaggerated, Sanctjews/Sadzealot raises some valid points, which in places coincide with Dreammy's. I will present both opinions and I will remind people that despite a handful of significant developer shortcomings the game retains a small but dedicated community and a small but consistent eSports scene which is worth their time to look at and form their own opinion on.

tl;dr don't worry. Trust me, as someone coming from the competitive TF2 scene I know fully well that people who are passionate about a game that doesn't meet their expectations can become very frustrated and vocal about their views and can become exaggerative. We get "TF2 is dead" threads at least 3-4 times a year that showcase a community divided by those who are frustrated, disappointed, pessimistic and those who are hopeful, optimistic; even still they are still united by the fact that, whether they are giving criticism or praise, they're taking time out of their day to care about and discuss the game.

My article will be as balanced and fair as I can possibly make it, but equally there's little point in writing about Shootmania if I don't showcase the game's weaknesses as well as its strengths. After all, if it had no weaknesses, it would be in the list of big eSports names and wouldn't have its own section of the article in the first place

[Sanctjews]

You should also take their posts with huge grain of salts, because on these forums Nadeo have managed to create and atmosphere of people defending them at any costs. Sure I might have exaggerated a few points, but the points still stand on their own.

I'm probably one of the people who spent the most time on these forums during the beta days, so it's also natural that I'm the one who can piece together the most statements of what Hylis/Nadeo have said in the past. Unfortunately some of the worst statements by Hylis have been removed because of some active censorship of threads because they didn't like where they were going (They claimed "Bad language" was the reason to remove them, but that just became a bad excuse to shut down topics they didn't like or agree with multiple times).

Also, if I'm exaggerating so much people, where are dignitas? Where is the NA teams? Where is the NA community? Where is the constant buzz around this game? Why is the biggest successfull stream of this game from ESWC which probably had like 98% french viewers, and many of them just viewing the stream because it's a french tournament and they don't care/follow/know about the game?

Tell me again how Nadeo have done such a wonderful job and that I'm just being negative/Exaggerating yet the buzz and amount of teams from beta/launch days isn't here.

How come a game is doing less in terms of interest 2 years after release when it was released with so many bugs? You'd think 2 years of polishing a game would make it MORE POPULAR!?!

The game isn't more popular than after release, even with the game being free up untill april. Half the new accounts you see on elite matchmaking are 2nd accounts of established players, the other half is still a joke in terms of movement and knowledge about the game after 1-3k wins in Elite.

Imagine if they had been introduced to the game with proper tutorials (Which I even suggested you could have someone in the community make with ingame map editor and heh use of triggers, you add it in an update and credit whoever took the time to make it. This is something you haven't even responded to, despite there having been cries about you guys adding tutorials for over 2 years now)

So yeah, tell me how I'm just being negative when everything points to there being MUCH MORE negativity around the game now and almost no excitement/buzz anymore.

It's because Nadeo has shown their hand with Shootmania. They've said this is where it's at and they don't communicate that they have anything else planned except the standard update that will add more bugs (some of which will never be fixed) and some more new blocks, most of which will just clutter up maps with useless objects like supportbars on stairwells with lights and other stuff just getting in your way.

And the worst part is that it doesn't even look pretty.

But I guess all the new players and the constnat talk in social media proves how much better SM is doing these days than 2 years ago.