So, What’s Next? [Opinion]
So, What’s Next? [Opinion]
With Plantronics and Alienware coming to a rather anti-climactic close with very few surprises (and a poor turnout), it’s hard to tell what the future holds for BF3 competitive play, if any. Rules are slowly becoming more restrictive, negative rivalry between established teams is getting heated, and the scene seems to be stagnating, if not outright dying. There’s very little room for new teams to get a foot in the door, particularly in the NA scene where established teams dominate IRC and GamersPortal. It’s not a sign of good health when good teams need to create smurf accounts and names just to sneak in a scrim with an unsuspecting clan. While it’s great there’s such a strong hardcore base for the Battlefield franchise, not much is being done for the young teams out there. With each passing tournament, incentive to continue on has weakened. Not only do the prizes suck but it gets stale seeing the same old teams fight it out repeatedly with little varying results.
The lack of support from DICE hasn’t been encouraging either. I’m sure their next DLC will be good fun for a few days, but it’s unlikely any tournaments will utilize any new maps or weapons. Not many even support the widely distributed BTK DLC, which I’m sure the vast majority of BF3 owners received. There’s still no word on Battlerecorder or tougher crackdown on cheaters and hackers. They’ve talked a big game up until now with very little to show for it. Unless DICE have something big planned (and SOON), I don’t foresee a healthy future for BF3. Registration for Alienware’s Spring Season has begun, but with how poorly the Winter Invitational turned out to be I’m not holding my breath.
All that being said, I do find some comfort in knowing there are teams (and hopefully leagues) out there willing to experiment and have some fun changing up the standard BF competitive formula. I personally have a lot of interest in seeing infantry-only 8v8 Conquest, but 6v6 (Conquest or Squad Rush) is just as appealing as well. The trick will be getting teams involved, especially new ones. With how stale the scene is with the top 10 teams dominating every possible league out there and destroying anybody who hopelessly crosses their path, prospects don’t look good. But what is there left to cling to? I really do wish BF3 competitive the best and that DICE and the competitive community pull a miracle out of their collective rears. But I remain skeptical at best.
What are your thoughts? Do you have a more positive outlook or do you share in my skepticism? Feel free to comment!
-Thronewolf
*The picture was shamelessly ripped and edited from funny-pictures-blog.com
What i think needs to be done to get BF3 back on track is make a site like gamebattles which can start the competative scene back and let new teams into the scene. with a ranking system like starcraft two.
No. There’s plenty of sites and small-time ladders like Gamers Portal and TWL to easily organize matches. And while a Starcraft-esque league system would be nice, the numbers aren’t there to support such a system. Even at BF3′s peak there was maybe 100 teams, 60-70 of which actually played games.
That’s a nice feature, but that still wouldn’t fix the biggest fundamental issue with BF3 competitive: no official spectating or game recording feature.
Back to APB:R
Screw off Snipey, lol.
I think what bums me out the most is that it just seems like it’s not going to break the mold of the last 4-5 years. The FPS competitive scene just hops on to the “latest and greatest” and very few games have any staying power at all. I was hoping BF3 might end that, but it hasn’t. The only FPS that will continue to have staying power is CS, as usual.
BF3 is the first modern FPS (I’ll ignore Homefront) that I have gotten into since the later days of Wolfenstein: ET. So naturally I hope for the best in BF3. This is that assuming that the number of competitive groups coincide with the overall player base activity of BF3.
Maybe you should just play MW3, then all these problems will be solved(more or less).
Kappa Kappa