• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Top-level COD competitions look like what we expect

Quake is on a whole other level than cs as well, but cs has several layers of depth (just not as fast paced or difficult a game as quake).

Cod has no layers which is why it's unfit as a competitive game.

Played Quake competatively about 12-13(!) years ago and I am shocked at what i am seeing. Just pathetic. Everyone was always very polite back then... I guess CoD-players are worse than others though?
 
Never seen anything like this from top Halo teams back at MLG.

Different game though.

Maybe it'd be different if they were on a stage with an audience... ?

Are these teams sponsored, or are they just teams that went through a large public elimination pool? Maybe we're expecting too much from them...
 
You make some good points, but this on in particular is something I think Valve screwed up the most with CS:S. Lack of flinching animations, much harder to spot bullet impact locations and ragdoll deaths that don't provide any feedback etc.

Yeah they did :(

CS:S still has a lot going for it compared to other shooters (recoil, map design, enemies contrast vs environment) but the feedback has for the most part gone missing.

As you said those ragdoll deaths ... I have no words for that. A death animation that doesn't tell the player immediately that the player has died is worthless, I'm kind of surprised that valve of all devs felt the need to shoehorn havoc physics into their games in places where it detracts from the gameplay.
Even more than that, the animation blending caused the player models to weave and accelerate akwardly which made reading player movement and tracking the heads really akward and impractical, again no idea how this made it past QA, you'd think they'd have cs players as testers to pick up on this.

This is why I say valve doesn't understand cs, it wasn't their game from the start and they just don't understand what made it into what it is. I don't believe they'd choose form over function on purpose, that is not their way of doing things normally.

Taking out the footsteps element (way to remove one of the main layers of teamplay and gameplay) is another collossal fumble.

The hitboxes were way too large at the start (now fixed I believe, I don't really play css anymore, only 1.6) and the spread was reduced heavily as was the penalty for moving, jumping and being on ladders.
This introduced an element of randomness into the game which as I said before does not mesh with how cs is designed and how it rewards and teaches the player.

It's easier to play (random headshots and not being punished nearly as hard for messing up) but it's much worse for it.
 
Never seen anything like this from top Halo teams back at MLG.

Different game though.

You didn't see back in the Halo 2 days when trash talk was insane. Pro Player Gandhi essentially caused rule changes to be instituted when he handed an opponent a roll of Toilet Paper after a match.

Gears players also did some crazy shit talking back in the day. This is awful, but not unexpected.
 
Yeah they did :(

CS:S still has a lot going for it compared to other shooters (recoil, map design, enemies contrast vs environment) but the feedback has for the most part gone missing.

As you said those ragdoll deaths ... I have no words for that. A death animation that doesn't tell the player immediately that the player has died is worthless, I'm kind of surprised that valve of all devs felt the need to shoehorn havoc physics into their games in places where it detracts from the gameplay.
Even more than that, the animation blending caused the player models to weave and accelerate akwardly which made reading player movement and tracking the heads really akward and impractical, again no idea how this made it past QA, you'd think they'd have cs players as testers to pick up on this.

This is why I say valve doesn't understand cs, it wasn't their game from the start and they just don't understand what made it into what it is. I don't believe they'd choose form over function on purpose, that is not their way of doing things normally.

Taking out the footsteps element (way to remove one of the main layers of teamplay and gameplay) is another collossal fumble.

The hitboxes were way too large at the start (now fixed I believe, I don't really play css anymore, only 1.6) and the spread was reduced heavily as was the penalty for moving, jumping and being on ladders.
This introduced an element of randomness into the game which as I said before does not mesh with how cs is designed and how it rewards and teaches the player.

It's easier to play (random headshots and not being punished nearly as hard for messing up) but it's much worse for it.

I haven't played CS:S much, but I was an avid CS player from Beta 7 all the way to 1.6. Stopped nearly 8 or so years ago, but it was probably the best competitive FPS ever created.

Did Gooseman have any say in CS:S?
 
Many have tried but they all failed:p

The thing about cs is that the combination of:
-netcode
-hit detection
-feedback (the exaggerated headshot animation that tells you within 1-2 frames if you headshot or not)
-the extremely punishing recoil that eliminated most randomness (cs 1.6 patch already kind of messed this one up, a lot of people were angry about that)

meant that every death felt like your opponent deserved it, every kill felt like you earned it, every missed shot was your own fault.
It's crazy how consistent it was, that is what made this self control aspect work.
You only feel rewarded with this mechanic if it is consistent, once it isn't it leads to frustration.
Consistency combined with recoil was unheard of and it still hasn't been replicated.
This is why cs 1.6 still has 40.000 + consecutive players online 24 hours a day 365 days a year (the other cs games also have high player numbers but they aren't as good feedback wise nor consistency wise so they are less popular)

It's not something you can just replicate unless you already have an engine (and a community with servers) that sports highly consistent netcode and hit detection.

Most clones didn't have this and they all failed miserably because people weren't fooled, they were used to the bar set by cs.

CS was the game where every experienced player rarely fired more shots than needed.
You knew if you were successful (once you mastered the self control aspect and knew the timing for the recoil reset on each gun) the moment you pressed that mouse button.
And every time you had confirmation of your success or failure within 1 or 2 frames.

There are few things in gaming more satisfying than seeing an enemy pop out from behind a corner at a very long distance, firing two shots (or however many times your specific weapon requires you to at that range, glock had a large damage drop off at range for example and could take 14 bodyshots at range and took 4 headshots) and no more and landing a well deserved kill.
All while knowing that if you mess it up even slightly then 20 shots wouldn't get the job done. (why hardcore mode is fucking stupid in other games unless you are playing it as a sim and treating it as a positioning game)

Feedback and consistency is a BIG deal in games but very very few developers know how to provide either.

Preach it, brother. I played up till 1.6 as well and it remains the king imo.
 
Watched the video

YO MARVEL!

I can't believe it's been 2 years...

9DEIu.jpg
 
Caught a bit of the live stream and saw that black guy being interviewed about the trash talking. He said he's gonna be worse vs Americans at the hollywood championship in a few weeks. Cant wait
 
Top lads.

Not too different from the FGC. It's all fun.
What? No.

You never see the players just flinging obscenities at each other or being general scumbags to each other while playing. Worst I can think of is FChamp hopping on the commentator mic after losing to DiosX and passive aggressively calling his playing bad and saying he looked like a Pelican (SMH). The crowd? Maybe. Some light shit talking maybe.

I guess there's also the thing between Noel and Smoothviper, but I dont know the details behind that so I won't comment on it.
 
What a bunch of fucking reprobates!
It's like watching the evolution of man in reverse.
Thank goodness I dumped cod of duty after MW2.
 
Suddenly I don't feel bad for playing COD with a carefree sense of reckless abandon. I run in a room, shoot a bad man, get killed by a bad man. It's more fun that way.
 
Coming from a Pro PC gamer this is what happens when you support home consoles in the competitive scene. And its totally what they deserve.

This comment is way out of line, despicably so.

As pathetic, crass, foul mouthed, ill tempered out of control those individuals are, it can be controlled by setting guidelines in order to impose a level of civility. Countless people around the world play games of PvP and PvE on consoles without throwing curse stained hissy-fit every time they lose a fight. "Shit", "Fuck" and other words of similar magnitude are to be expected in an anxiety filled adrenaline rush.

There could have been a variety of measures that could have been taken to prevent what we saw on the video (esp. the hostility). However, to me it looked as if it was designed to let these things occur and keep perpetuating as if the entire thing was some sort of hate filled reality tv show.
 
I still remember when CS was looked down apon for being too casual by Quake/Unreal players. Going from that to what CoD represents now feels like Idiocracy. It's such a shame, the first CoD was an amazing competitive team shooter, took more skill than CS imo(more complex maps especially vertically, less luck based shooting mechanics).
 
I've always been way into e-sports. For more than a decade I've followed the pro-scenes and watched a shitton of tournaments of stuff like quake (and the likes), counter-strike, dota, starcraft, fighting games, etc, and in all honesty, I have not ever seen anything even resembling this. It's just on such an absurdly different level. Then again, its cod...

(meanwhile in Chinese starcraft, a guy gets disqualified for accidently typing 'pp' instead of 'ppp' to request a pause)
 
I think I've seen better behavior at literally every LAN I've been to or hosted, and those typically have alcohol involved.

You can be rowdy and have fun and still be sportsmanlike, but most of this video just showcases a bunch of babies. I guess it's better than the disgusting behavior of the recent League of Legends players who were axed recently, but only just.
 
I still remember when CS was looked down apon for being too casual by Quake/Unreal players. Going from that to what CoD represents now feels like Idiocracy. It's such a shame, the first CoD was an amazing competitive team shooter, took more skill than CS imo(more complex maps especially vertically, less luck based shooting mechanics).

Yep, I remember this as well (the first part, cs was not luck based and cod was hilariously casual from the start, though it has gone downhill much more once it switched to modern guns and peer2peer servers and smaller maps)

I played cs mainly because I wasn't really good enough to compete at quake. (2 hours of quake 3 in a row and I was spent, it took so much effort)
Every mouthbreather and fratboy (popped collar, literally) in school played two games:
Fifa and CS 1.3

It was accessible, much much slower paced, you had to think of less things at the same time, firefights lasted a long time because neither side could aim for shit.


It was THE casual shooter.
As you said , cs now being considered super hardcore makes it feel like idiocracy became a reality.

I despair when I think that in 5 years people might look back at cod4 and consider it super hardcore.
 
Been going to FGC tournaments for the past 15 years, it's never been half as bad as that lol COD video.

That's because they do their racism/sexism/homophobia behind closed doors or in smaller venues. But that's neither here nor there~
 
A controller, enormous hit boxes, auto-aim, weapon unlocks and slow player movement, competitive? It's like I'm in the land of Oz.
 
Gamers can be pathetic morons; news at eleven.

Funny thing this past weekend I was playing with randoms in BF3, when the other two guys using headsets invited me to go with them to another game. The one guy was really full of himself, and trash talked about other players like crazy.
So we enter a game of team deathmatch, and he wound up running into another player who kept killing him, and the whining and bawling was comical.
We lost our lead and he bitched about that. I decided to point out that I was the ONLY person reviving players on our team. The ONLY Medic!! NO reaction. No switch of classes. No wonder we lost!

But this isn't going to kill my enjoyment of CoD, Battlefield, or any other FPS I might play online.
 
Top Bottom