Game Modes: Why not now?

Frozen

I understand that a goal of the dev teams has always been to maintain parity between all levels of play. We all wanted that stance to work out for the best, but it simply hasn't.

Why not just make an official, competitive community developed game-mode that will allow competitive play to continue in the fall?

I don't want it to have different weapons or anything, the whole scope of the game should be the same, but values can be adjusted to accomodate the differences.

Community servers could run the higher skill mode if fhey please too, it's not something that has to feel exclusive, but unfortunately it's agreed that it is required.

NS2 is a game that changes completely as skill goes up. In comp it's always been such that aliens beat marines in general, but when you get to the absolute top level of players, marine aim effects the game in an unavoidable way.

I'm really curious how the best teams the game has seen would function in the current game state, the alien changes mighr actually be a godsend. But we can never know right now since we don't have the players to test.

@Deck_ I know you're considering things for the game still, wouldn't game modes be a great way to allow skill diversity between community servers and a competitive scene?

For instance, adjusting MG weight value to allow JP MG marine efficacy, along with reduction in spraycone and damage as needed. It can be done so it doesn't require relearning the game, just knowing small important, most importantly official, balance changes

Nordic

Tf2 just did this

The_Welsh_Wizard

I already suggested some Kind of official comp Mode, devs made clear they won't make it.

The only Way is to make a comp mod from the comp community itself and that is exactly what people are working on right now thankfully. No big changes so far, but fix balance.

Deck_

It's a good idea, but I don't think they want to look into helping a comp community at this time. I don't think the number of players makes them consider this as a possibility to invest time into. They are open to people making mods to help a comp community, but they won't do it themselves. It would be nice, but doesn't look like it's going to happen at this time. I do think there has to be a different game for a comp style of ns2 than the vanilla game. This is because this game is played at different player levels depending on the server and there is so much going on you can't expect the vanilla game to work for a comp community. Right now, people are looking into making a mod that will help make for a more comp style of the game. Hopefully this can also be used on public servers if people want a version for the game that may work better for smaller player numbers.

IeptBarakat

The normal game's skill barrier is high enough to keep most people out, I don't think adding an even higher level game mode will do anything but segregate the remaining community as it wouldn't do anything to draw new people in.

TF2 is a different story since it already has a large playerbase while being pub friendly and they're adding something skillfull to draw in competitive players as well.

Frozen

It's not about supporting a competitive scene, but supporting player growth.. You can't just keep stomping kids. Game modes would let server operators just play the higher skill mode if they want, and it wouldn't necessarily mess anything up. Everyone still knows how to play, they'd just be a little surprised by certain differences before being accustomed.