There's a Steam group for pick up games.

[Lessen]

It's over here.

It's not visibly active, but there's active players in there, and no reason why it shouldn't be active, especially with the semester ending.

As far as PUG servers and Teamspeak/Mumble servers, all I know is that the official Teamspeak server's in the UK. Ideally, in my mind, PUGs would be either all-EU or all-American, on appropriate servers so that everyone has good pings. I don't know if the resources or players are there, though. Hence the poll.

You don't have to be good at the game, you just have to inexplicably want to try to be good at this obscure game, and be open to talking or at least listening. Not that we couldn't have PUGs without comms, but I don't see the point.

Anyone interested?

 

[M@crobyte]

Back when there were lots of clans this made sense. But, nowadays with the population as low as it is, it makes more sense to join a random server with people in it. Or, if I want to be like "@Preston 1vs1 me bro," I'd find him in a random place and shank him. Also, I'm not sure who owns it, but MB2 has an official TS (server name: ts.moviebattles.org). I'm sure you all could use it if you wanted to organize something.

 

[Preston]

Back when there were lots of clans this made sense. But, nowadays with the population as low as it is, it makes more sense to join a random server with people in it. Or, if I want to be like "@Preston 1vs1 me bro," I'd find him in a random place and shank him. Also, I'm not sure who owns it, but MB2 has an official TS (server name: ts.moviebattles.org). I'm sure you all could use it if you wanted to organize something.

Nonononnononononnono

 

[M@crobyte]

Adding to my earlier note, it would be nice to meet with some MB2 people on Teamspeak.

 

[Lessen]

Worth noting that my specific interest is not in dueling at all. At all. Not even remotely. I'm entirely interested in teamplay and communication, so pubs don't really work either except for the kinds of teamplay that can be performed without communication. But even those are still improved by communication, probably.

And I mentioned the MB2 teamspeak. It's in the UK, though, so it's not ideal for low-latency high-tactics communication. In America. :v

I mean the latency can't be THAT high so it wouldn't be unusable, and maybe it could be a good way to just get familiar and stuff but. Not 100% ideal.

 

[qwerty]

dv8 is usually up for games, friendly matches and pugs alike :- ) we also have a bunch of discord channels that can be used

 

[Lessen]

How many people are in dv8, and what region?

 

[BigBossBigTeef]

Host a event, and ill pray I am available.
Is there a competitive template?
Similar to like TF2 5's, or Highlander?

I know the EU competitive server has one class of each, but it only goes to 12.
Is there something similar to that but more accommodating of a bigger group?

Because I was thinking 4 soldiers, 2 ET's, and one of each class.
And do a 10 on 10.

I am sure we can fill a 20 man game.
There is enough people to populate 3 to 4 servers at any given time.

What my last source mod did for these kind of things was pick team captains and the captains draw names from a hat.
And we had 3 maps, broken up into squads and did 16 vs 16's.

What I am thinking is we break the event up into 3 categories.
Duels, Competitive, and Open.
A basic two out of three for duels and competitive.

Competitive should last around 12 rounds, duels I have no idea let the saber experts decide.
Switch the map after round limit expires.

Example

• Team A wins Deathstar
• Team B wins Enclave
• Team A wins Hoth

Something like that, and have open mode 16 vs 16 on dotf.
For like 15 rounds.

People sign up for the game mode they wish to compete in.
Each team has a squad that participates in each game mode, and they represent the team.
I would assume everyone participates in the open match.

 

[Lessen]

This all sounds like not-unreasonable logistics for an actual competitive scene kind of thing, but we've got to start at the start here, with the pick up games. There are hardly any "teams" right now, by which I mean groups which exist for the purpose of competing rather than for the purpose of being a clan. And we're not asking anyone to commit to being in a team. We're just trying to get people to show up for a test of competition.

And I'm less sure we can fill a 20 man game. Are there even twenty honest tryhards who would be available at some convenient time? We need to do some advertising. I feel like we'll end up starting with a figure closer to 12, but even that seems... high. A 6v6 should probably be highlander style, one of each class.

I think there's some solid tryhards in game who also just don't use the forums much at all, so we've gotta outreach. Gotta gauge some interest, if you know what I mean. The literal sense. Is what I mean.

 

[qwerty]

mb2 matches have always been 5v5 =) anything more than that is too much for the way the game and the maps are.

 

[HARDCASE]

im in not very good but i try my best lol

 

[Lessen]

mb2 matches have always been 5v5 =) anything more than that is too much for the way the game and the maps are.

Huh. I'll respect that if it's based on some previous real and sustained efforts at competition, but I'm struggling to picture why 5v5 would be the upper limit, aside from the community size lol.

 

[Pepsi]

Huh. I'll respect that if it's based on some previous real and sustained efforts at competition, but I'm struggling to picture why 5v5 would be the upper limit, aside from the community size lol.

Because of the balance. With more than 5 vs 5 it's become almost impossible to win rounds as an attack side, of course if teams are skillwise equal.

 

[qwerty]

Huh. I'll respect that if it's based on some previous real and sustained efforts at competition, but I'm struggling to picture why 5v5 would be the upper limit, aside from the community size lol.

you're free to organize your events however you like (and i have seen american pugs/matches being played with pretty ridiculous amounts of players), but i have a hard time seeing any old school players on the eu side wishing to play anything over a 6v6 =)

 

[GogettO]

As Qwerty and Pepsi said - 5v5 is perfect in terms of balance / gameplay / competetive maps architecture.
Personally I'd love to play some good pugs, especially on the newest version of MB.

 

[Lessen]

Is that 5v5 Open, no class constraints? Or what. I imagine if it's Open with absolutely no constraints then people would gravitate towards trying to make their team composition hard-counter the enemy's, so there'd have to be some kind of something to keep that from happening. Unless I'm overestimating the degree to which classes can be counter-picked.

A large part of my interest was getting people together to play what everyone's already playing (larger teams, Open, no class constraints) but in a really communicative, earnest way. Because I want to see how the balance actually pans out in that context. But it sounds like an existing competitive scene already decided that defenders always have the advantage with sufficiently large teams.

I imagine that's because defending a position is just easier than attacking a position (especially with force push to counter nades). Presumably it's supposed to balance out with the idea that attackers can win by pushing the Win Button (objective), but with sufficiently large teams it's too easy to choke all the choke points? Does that vary at all with different maps? It would be interesting if certain maps were more balanced at certain team sizes.

Did attacking teams play extremely obj-focused in the previous comp scene? Jedi seem like they have a ways to sneak/rush obj, cause diversions, stall enemy forces from moving to defend against a flank, deflect fire directed at a guy who's completing the obj, etc. The defending team could just camp obj, but, like, in the case of dotf, it would seem like that would just get them flanked harder.

Then again, with enough players, you probably really can lock down all the choke points well. :y

 

[Preston]

@Vive ut vivas. It's generally 1 player per class

 

[GogettO]

@Vive ut vivas. You ain't playing this game long, aye? nor you haven't participated at any clan matches. Am I right?

 

[Lessen]

Right. I mean, technically I've been playing very occasionally since at least 2012, but never for very long and never competitively. How long has it been since there was much competitive activity? The competitive section of the forum isn't very active.

Seeing as it doesn't look like there's been a tremendous or hyper try-hard level of effort put into the competitive side, I'm reluctant to suppose that the strategic meta has already capped out. There's probably still things that just haven't been tried. Things requiring close coordination, for instance. I do hear you saying that people ended up doing 5v5 because they found it to be the most balanced, and I'm just kinda remaining open to experimenting

 

[GogettO]

How long has it been since there was much competitive activity?

Hmm, last tournament was like 2 - 2.5 years ago IIRC, something like that.

Seeing as it doesn't look like there's been a tremendous or hyper try-hard level of effort put into the competitive side, I'm reluctant to suppose that the strategic meta has already capped out.

Well you know, everything that has a beginning, has an end. The most popular time of MB can be settled somewhere between 2005 and 2008. Back then there were so many teams and the whole scene have been pretty competetive. After that, year after year, the player base have been declining constantly, till it reached a point where there's no brand new blood to play with. It has nothing to do with "strategic meta being capped out". Game is just old and archaic to get / install, especially for (majority) of newcommers. Just look what is popular nowadays? easy-to-get games like LoL or HearthStone, where you dont need to install some 3rd party mods etc to easily hop into the game. And sadly, It's a normal order of things. The exactly same thing happened to EVERY old school game, no matter how big it used to be in it's glory days. Just look at Quake series. From 1996 to 2012 there were so many BIG LAN tournaments, EWSC, CPL, ESL, WCG, DreamHacks... you name it. And now? There's only a QuakeCon one time per year in Dallas. Nowadays you can't even find enough players to run a proper 4v4 online tournament (without a money prizes).
So imagine, that the first MB build was released in 2003 for JK2... So personally I'm really surprised that this mod is even being still under the development, especially after all of those several drama situations (hi Sxx). Thanks to LoU, Ben, Lervish and some other truly dedicated people, this mod is still (more or less) alive. The best era of MB was 10 years ago, and you missed it. Sadly.

There's probably still things that just haven't been tried. Things requiring close coordination, for instance. I do hear you saying that people ended up doing 5v5 because they found it to be the most balanced, and I'm just kinda remaining open to experimenting

Belive me, everything have been already tried long time ago. Each single variation. 5v5, 6v6, 7v7, with and without class limits, on every possibly map have been already tested. With less and more skilled players. In total, 5v5 with 1 player / class limit turned out to be the most balanced setting exactly 11 years ago. Of course you can say that "But the game has changed a lot within all of these eleven years you know". Well yeah, some classes have their primed changes , but not large enough to change the whole meta of the game.