BR and its Competitive Future

kasica

BR and its Competitive Future 

by vpns

Blackshot Revolution has the possibility to become one of the hottest f2p competitive games on the market right now, but so far the community as well as the developers have not done their part supporting the game to get to a state that would support a competitive playerbase and scene. This means that the mechanics have not been fine tuned to reward skilled and coordinated gameplay, and the players have not tried to craft their game to efficiently and skillfully win games. 

The first major change that needs to come is the actual competitive system and its two gamemodes, TFM and SD. In the eyes of a competitive gaming purist, the only true competitive game mode is SD. This is because it has quite a high information threshold and is infinitely complex, more so than any other game mode this shooter offers. Each life needs to be cared for and treasured, and each player has the ability to swing a round in any direction at any time with their small actions potentially having a massive impact on how the round is played out, but team play and coordination can and sometimes will counter any individual excellence. By only having one life/round, the gameplay is forced to be slowed down and played methodically, using utility (smokes+HE grenades). Team Flag Match has a spawn-die-spawn-die meta, each life is not as important and the opportunity for last minute upsets/low coordination individual excellence plays take away from the competitive integrity of the game.

The second major change that needs to be implemented by the developers is refining the game mechanics to allow for a smooth and skilled competitive experience. This means rewarding true mechanical skill, not just point-click first bullet aim. The skill realm of this game is huge, and its not a very one-dimensional game. There is crosshair positioning (always knowing where to have the crosshair before the action happens), there's the movement aspect (how to advance your position as Red or know how to position yourself for a retake as Blue, playing off your team to lock down a bomb site effectively) allowing you to overcome a mechanical skill imbalance between you and your enemy. Unfortunately, current mechanics are not very tailored to skill-based gameplay. The mechanics in this game currently allow for full-movement spraying, full accuracy tapping while moving, very low recoil for high damage weapons, as well as a buggy and glitchy movement system (blocking, laggy corner peeking, and crouch spam). To encourage the most pure form of skill, these essentially dumbed down and "easy" mechanics need to be refined. These broken movement mechanics mean the reward for making yourself a harder target has a higher net gain than the reward of peeking fast, stopping to ensure first-bullet accuracy (in a fantasy world where this is the shooting mechanic), meaning the skill gap has been lowered.

The third and final change needs to come from the community. The community has not put any effort into building a competitive scene for this game. Players are not interested in using the games mechanics and minutiae to develop their personal game, and they are also not interested in how fast or slow they play, what tactic they used based on how their opponents play, what bomb site to attack or what part of the map to try and contest and control based on what information they have gathered in the round, and how to maximize their chances of winning each round based on the meta of the game and the context of the strategical approach. Within the tactics, did you execute the strategy correctly? Has the other team prepared for this tactic and have they forced you to make minor adjustments or completely scrap that strategy? Did you have the right strategy but just the wrong execution and timing? Once players get past the focus on kills and start to realize the game goes so much further than that and can finally understand the depth and potential of the gamemode SD, true competitive Blackshot can finally come to fruition. 

Hopefully this sheds some light into the current issues with Blackshot as well as allows people to see its true potential. This game has so much going well for it, and with a few major and minor adjustments to the physical game as well as how the competitive playerbase chooses to treat it we can soon have a true competitive f2p shooter on our hands. If anyone has any questions or wishes for me to go more in depth about any topic previously mentioned or a competitive aspect of this game you wish to hear my opinion on, leave a message below and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks to the GMs, Devs, and players for taking your time to read through this, and hopefully some changes are coming in the near future!

vpns,

 In-Game Leader of Team Astral

Tragin

So in reality what you're looking for is the game to be returned to it's state of about 2010/2011. Where we actually had a competitive environment with various clans competing in tournaments and ESL cups/ladders. We have left the game for a good reason. There are better shooters out there and I don't see any point in switching back and putting effort into this game when so many times the developers have confirmed that "competitive" means absolutely nothing to them.

The community that "needs to change" is something I strongly disagree with. Most of the community that enjoyed playing competitively simply went on to play different shooters as BlackShot had made its move towards a pay-to-win environment. With revolution a good group of these players returned but saw that in reality nothing much had changed in the game. The players that cash the most still have the biggest advantage. Even on the Revolution release day. 

"The first major change that needs to come is the actual competitive system and its two gamemodes, TFM and SD. In the eyes of a competitive gaming purist, the only true competitive game mode is SD." 

This is an assumption without anything to back it up. There is plenty of depth in playing TFM with two teams that are equally matched. Perhaps take some time to look about some of the footage of the 2011 TFM tournament. There should be some matches from teams like Sense and Blaster.

I'd love to go into further detail on your post. But quite frankly I have one tip for you; Play BlackShot for fun and find a different shooter to play competitively. There is no competition anymore. We have all left.

elcolega135

recargue gemas y todavia no me an llego me puee ayudar con eso