The ACTUAL Problem with Casual players and Competitive players in Versus Mode

[Witch]

This will hopefully be my last thread about versus's community for a while. This forum is full of topics on the same gamemode and so I wish to discuss more interesting things after this.

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this thread is to give my thoughts on why versus mode is the way it is, and to provide a possible solution to atleast reduce heat between casuals and competitives. This thread will be a bit long so if you happen to have a tik tok account you may aswell leave.

CASUALS AND COMPETITIVES

Throughout my time playing this game, i've noticed patterns, and similarities between both of these groups.

Someone joins a server, sees that one or multiple people are from the opposite group, and end up having a frustrating time with the game.

Why is this? Casuals and Competitives have mindsets and ideas of fun that are different to each other. It's often difficult for someone of a group to understand someone from the opposite group, so when they are playing with each other, heated arguments and votekicks happen.

Casuals want to mess around and have a few laughs
Competitives want to try their best to win in a more serious environment

Both types can't reasonably exist in the same server most of the time, they are guaranteed to have issues with each other.

PUBLIC MATCHMAKING

Moving on to the main point, I think public matchmaking on vs is the most unreliable way for people of both types to play the gamemode as it stands.

You can be put in a match with completely random people, including players with very different ideals for playing the game.

Casuals are affected hard negatively because competitives often can't stand their laid back playstyle. Competitives are hit just as hard since the casuals can frequently weigh down their team when they're trying to win.

It's a mess, which is why I think both groups should attempt to separate themselves from one another. How can this be done? Let's take a look at a non-pvp gamemode that has a similar but much less impacting issue: Survival.

HOW SURVIVAL MODE SEPARATES BOTH GROUPS EFFECTIVELY

Survival mode requires a lot teamwork like versus does, so you'd think that both types of players would be here on the forums complaining about survival having terrible players or sweatlords, right? well, while sometimes a thread or 2 about it pops up once in a while, it's a rare instance. How come people don't complain as much about survival?

The answer is simple: survival doesn't have as much widespread popularity or appeal as versus, and while it still holds a large volume of casuals, the community for survival separates the serious players from them, be it by playing with friends, or hosting servers designed for serious play. these are the 2 key factors that make survival mode much more bareable for both groups: unpopular gamemode (meaning less people you need servers to house in), alternative ways to play.

Versus is an extremely popular mode, maybe too much for its own good, and many serious servers for it host different rulesets for the game likely intended for tournaments and such. Not every competitive player wants to play on different game rules or tournaments every time they want to play versus, they might want to play seriously on a vanilla setting, with no true stakes involved. Which is what I believe leads to a large volume of them in public lobbies alongside the massive volume of casuals, which is a recipe for disaster for both groups.

A POSSIBLE SOLUTION

I believe that in order to mitigate this issue, versus would need to become less popular, and both groups should have more vanilla community servers to play on if they get fed up with public matchmaking.

I've seen a guy literally get the gnome alone achievement in vs yesterday, the achievement you get on your FIRST EVER match of l4d2, he hadn't even played campaign mode. that's basically how popular versus is nowadays.

So in conclusion, I believe people should host more vanilla vs servers designed for casual or competitive play, and versus should get less public attention so that the demand for those types of servers doesn't become too rampant due to possible overpopulation of the mode.

[EnoughPlenty]

What do you think about websites such as L4DCenter and CEDAPug? I've never played but I do know that they are websites that have matchmaking for competitive players and have a custom config in their servers

[Witch]

Originally posted by Chrome Shotgun Enthusiast:

What do you think about websites such as L4DCenter and CEDAPug? I've never played but I do know that they are websites that have matchmaking for competitive players and have a custom config in their servers

i never played them but them having a custom config could possibly be why it's not played more often by the competitive type who just wants to play vanilla.

[Bathtub Shitter]

It's tribalism plain and simple.

Also the game would have been better off with an additional ranked competitive mode to meet the expectations of players looking for those who share a similar set of skills (but this would also make stomping harder so they lowkey don't want this. It's mostly only bad when the noobs are on their team).

I would say cedapug fixes this but it comes with it's own issues. And yeah. They like to stomp. So this cycle will not end.

[Tsumugi]

Seeing someone on my team in Versus get the "Gnome Alone" achievement makes me feel like I'm getting kicked in the throat, because I just know I'm not gonna enjoy that match.

[sʜᴀ]

Originally posted by Chrome Shotgun Enthusiast:

What do you think about websites such as L4DCenter and CEDAPug? I've never played but I do know that they are websites that have matchmaking for competitive players and have a custom config in their servers

We need more of them

Also there are pick up groups for more closed communities

[Ｊａｋｉｙ]

Same. Imagine having huge expectations for having lot of fun and then someone joined just got the Gnome Alone achievement lamo.

[Mina]

remove chat and vote kick from versus and survival

[Geebanger0]

one thing to consider:

If we have casual and competitive versus servers, it will start out fine. All the casual players will be grouped together, and all the competitive players wont have to deal with them. But what happens when a competitive player gets sick of losing and decides to join the casual server so they can stomp some noobs? Now you've got two groups of servers where casuals either get kicked immediately or have to put up with being stomped every game.

I think vanilla versus just isn't suitable for more serious or competitive play. The fact that it's extremely survivor sided suggests this, as does other mechanics like defibs having almost no penalty for their use, infected scoring no points regardless of damage, or bugs like clipping through saferoom doors that give a team a huge advantage if they're willing to do whatever it takes to win.

A better solution IMO would be to make vanilla versus 'campaign with player controlled specials'. Remove the scoring system, and extend the end of game credits to show which players got the most damage and kills as the infected, most damage in one life, etc.

If you remove the scoring system, then people who want to play competitively won't want to play it (since they get nothing from it). They can use third party servers which rebalance the mode to make it more suitable for competitive play. The casuals can stay in the vanilla servers and just treat it like campaign mode, but now there's 4 extra players to mess around with.

This would also fix the first consideration; competitive players would have no reason to join vanilla just to stomp noobs. They could still do so, but without the big number on screen telling them they won, they have no incentive to do so. It's only the credits, which hardly anyone even cares about anyway.

[Tsumugi]

Originally posted by Mina:

remove chat and vote kick from versus and survival

We already had the "removing vote kicks from Versus" discussion. It ends with griefers running rampant, which is based, but not a solution.

[SmokenToke]

Originally posted by Bathtub ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

It's tribalism plain and simple.

Also the game would have been better off with an additional ranked competitive mode to meet the expectations of players looking for those who share a similar set of skills (but this would also make stomping harder so they lowkey don't want this. It's mostly only bad when the noobs are on their team).

I would say cedapug fixes this but it comes with it's own issues. And yeah. They like to stomp. So this cycle will not end.

Yes sweats tend to have a big ego.

[sʜᴀ]

Okay guys here me out.

VERSUS STANDALONE

I'd easily fork 14bucks for that