On the revival of DoD 1.3

With the phrase "DoD is dead" floating around for the past half a year, it's difficult to not believe it or even see DoD otherwise. In this article, however, I will give my perspective on the DoD 1.3 situation, explain and describe why it's dead, and tell what we can do to change it.

It's no question that the most recent CAL/TPG season has been the most inactive competitive season in Day of Defeat's competitive career. Team numbers are relatively fine, honestly, but that's not the problem(s); the numbers have still dropped, especially concerning the amount of the higher-level competitive individuals and teams. Scrimming is at an all-time low, and most teams do not own a server.

The odd point about this all, is that a nice amount of people/teams still love to play this game. The problem to me, it seems: everyone is just going with the flow and letting DoD fade, even though they don't want it to fade. A very few people, if any at all, have stepped up to the plate and voiced their opinions, given suggestions, or things of that nature. And those who have opened their mouth to speak, and maybe had good ideas, either didn't put their ideas into action for long or didn't even lift a finger to execute at all.

So here I am writing a GotFrag? article about how to fix this. I know the ambition of DoD players and teams is high, it simply lurks in the dark waiting for a torch to follow.  If you make some simple time and effort to do your part in the community, I guarantee that this game's competitive scene could turn back around in an instant. How do I know this? Well it's simple; because the game and its competitive aspect is what the player-base makes of it.

1) Fix the mentality.
This is the first step, because to accomplish the rest of the steps you will need this for support. As we all know, in recent DoD history it has become sort of a shameful thing to care about the game. It is "looked down upon" to scrim or practice for matches, or care about much of anything related to the game. Well I ask you one thing: who exactly is making these rules? Is it that a horde of some well-known former players are setting the mood for this game, and the remaining/newer community is taking the heat because they feel powerless? Hmmm. I want to tell you that the community who plays the game makes the rules. Try hard if you want to, make the game competitive again. Don't be ashamed to spam for scrims, voice your opinion on gotfrag, or anything else. If you like the game and want to see it back up again (and I'm talking the real deal), don't worry about what the nay-sayers are saying. Don't give them power to tell you how to play the game that they don't play (that you play). Stop giving into the "DoD is dead" attitude, and lift a finger.

2) All these points tie in together, so, fresh out of that last paragraph, I want to put the emphasis on practicing/scrimming, and having your own server. Have your team pitch in to buy a server if you don't have one. Depending on the amount of people on your team, this could be anywhere from a few dollars a month per player, to maybe ten dollars per player per month. That is not a lot. You could even weigh the distribution of funds according to who is more willing based on their lifestyle and whatnot. It's not hard to buy a server for your team, everyone had a server in the past for matches, scrims, and practice, and people do it today in every other game out there (including DoD somewhat). Once you have a server, you can look for scrims more. Here is a funny yet true thing I will emphasis that will help the scrim scene pick back up; IRC scripts. Break out the fancy scripts, make your own or whatever; make the channel come alive. Plain text does not have the effect of colorful IRC scripts, I promise you that this would actually help. Two teams spamming for scrims with nice scripts can make it look like the whole channel is scrimming, and I give a comical example here, the dod:source channel. It's not difficult to scrim the game at least a few hours per week, especially if you really enjoy the game; and another great point of having a server is actual practice. If you weren't around a bit in the past or don't know about this kind of stuff for whatever reason, you should know that it's often to quite the advantage to practice routes, nades, and other things in your own server. Then in scrims, you can implement what you did in practice, and in matches implement your scrimtime. Ta-da, a better team, a higher level of competition, a funner, more "alive" game.

3) Volunteer your skills to further the scene. If you are good at video editing and things like that, you could help out with the Frags of the Week videos. If you are good in photoshop, you could help the video makers. If you are a good writer, you could submit articles to GotFrag? DoD or become a regular writer for DoD predictions. If you have good organizational and social skills, you could look into organizing a LAN in your local town. The list goes on and on, but I'm sure people can figure out how to lend a helping hand.

4) Some other things that would help the scene are as follows:
  a) Know your rates and try to get decent servers. it's frustrating to play when nothing hits people. In the past it was looked down upon to use rates around 60 or lower for cmd/updaterate, and lower than 20000 for rate. This is the generally accepted truth in all half-life games. 95% of people should be running 80+ cmd/updaterate and 20000+ rate, your only excuse is a truly poor computer and internet. Then, try to not buy the cheapest servers around.
  b) Be nice to new players. Help them out. Believe it or not, people still discover this game to this day, and will continue to do so. A lot of these people end up in the pubs, so don't be a jerk there. Also, you could promote league-play on your local pub's community forum. I have done this for well over a year and I guarantee I've gotten more than a few people involved.

5) Don't cheat. As of now, there is no regulation software such as client-side or server-side anticheat; but I am going to look into this because it will help the game immensely. Though you can do your job, and simply don't cheat. You are playing against real players who want to have fun, not be cheated. How do you feel when you kill someone in a completely un-legit way? Cheating includes anything from cheat programs, to scripts, to extreme gamma whoring and other gamma commands, to any other config cvars that allow an obvious advantage over those who are playing the game in a legitimate fashion. There are certainly some config commands which can be altered for better fps and gameplay, but there is a clear line between those settings and settings that render you as a "cheater." If you aren't sure, ask someone who would know. Cheating will get you nowhere in real-life (or if it does, it won't last long and you will end up worse-off than before) and it will get you nowhere but hated in online gaming. Think sensibly, don't ruin it for everyone else.

I am looking into CAL re-accepting the game back into their league. Even if this does not happen, or if it's only for the future, or perhaps never...that does not stop other DoD leagues from flourishing. TPG has some potential to become a good league, though I will say that the aspect of help really applies here too. Admins need to really get their jobs done or find people who can get those jobs done, and players need to support the league in whatever ways they can.

I am looking into bringing back regular DoD prediction articles, good ones that were great fun. I am looking into some power refreshers, and I would obviously need some generous help in this department; people who are still in the game, working for it, and show to be fair and active people should be examined for jobs like op in #scrimdod, GotFrag? moderator, GotFrag? writer, etcetera. The forums could be cleaned up a bit to improve the outlook of the game, and the IRC channel could benefit from some freshness to it as well.

This article was a long one, but it talks about some very realistic and simple things we could do to bring the game back to its rightfully-deserved awesome status. These things do not take much of your time, just a shift in attitude and a simple execution of some generally simple ideas. I'm all for it; and if you are too, then you will decide to see this through. Just remember; whatever happens to this game, is up to you and your peers. DoD has been a community effort from the beginning; and once the community clocks in again, so will the game rise again.