CSGO Casual League
I started playing Counters Strike a long time ago, from 1.6, and played until about 2008, than stopped for a while, and started with COD4 for a couple of years or so, and then CSGO came out, and the magic happened all over again.
One thing I really like with FPS above every other game type (and I only really play CSGO nowadays) is that it’s easy to get in, you can play for 5 minutes or 5 hours, and it’s easy to be a noob sometimes and it’s also fun if you’re a semi-pro in casual games.
With COD4 I seriously began enjoying ‘deathmatch’ type of games, but when moving to CSGO I fell in love with the Demolition mode. It so happens that I regularly play demolition mode months for 20-30 hours a week on end without actually playing any competitive or casual games.
But because it’s considered ‘casual’ mode, there is a big problem of finding ‘fun people’ to play with — I don’t have a problem with noobs, but I do have a problem with people who don’t play the game for the objective, and people who ignore the team. Not to mention the obvious trolls and hackers.
I enjoy playing Demolition — it’s fun, quick turnover, the maps are small enough to make the game fast paced, but large enough to have dozens of strategies for every map (and since Valve haven’t updated the maps for Demolition since release, I now know by heart every map there is, and have a number of strategies based on the teammates and the opponents that I have), and you can easily lose a couple of hours on the game, especially when there are good players around you.
Okay, let’s cut to the chase; I want to start having Demolition Tournaments and semi-competitive games. But I also enjoy poker, and I think that putting a little money into a semi-competitive setting actually makes the whole thing much more interesting and worth while.
I propose the following structure:
Casual-Pro (Semi-competitive — name up for grabs)
In this ‘mode’ a game will either match up 10 different players randomly, or two teams will compete against each other, not unlike the regular ‘competitive’ mode built in CSGO.
Before the game begins, the players (or teams) will all deposit an agreed upon sum of money, and at the end of the game the winning team will get part of the money, and the rest of the money will be split between the winning players. Something along these lines:
That will ensure that you both incentive individuals to perform well, and still have a considerable prize left for the team-players that didn't necessarily performed well at a specific game with regards to aiming and getting the highest score.
Let’s face it, sometimes it’s just not your day when it comes to killing people, planting bombs, or defusing them. Sometimes all you can do is not being a burden on your team, and we all know that even that requires some skill.
One of my main concerns is that I know that getting Valve to implement something like that will be practically impossible, so instead of trying to build a game and then hoping that it will be implemented, I think it’s good as it is, and even can be fun sometimes with all of its quirks.
What I mean specifically is that I often find myself alone on a team with 4 bots, playing against a full or almost-full team, and yet manage to outmaneuver them and win.
This opens up the game and broadens the options — imagine having a game where it’s a situation of 2 vs 5, this opens up a whole new level of strategy — am I keeping the bots at base, or telling them to rush with me? On one hand we’re outnumbered, but on the other hand I have the advantage of taking control of still-living bots (on the rare occasion that they will actually listen to you when you need it the most) even though I died and I also have the information of where the enemy is.
What I’m proposing doesn't require any alteration to the game as it is played now. Technically it’s a little challenging at the moment, but if this picks up the technicalities will resolve themselves, as they usually do.
The only real issue that I can come up with is hackers that will exploit this system to win some cold hard cash, but I believe even that can be resolved for the time being by only ‘inviting’ known players to play, we usually know the people we play with regularly, and we know when they’re cheating or not.
The actual technique of bootstrapping this idea requires only your participation and access to some bitcoins.
Before each game the player will decide who is the trustee that will hold the funds during the game — it can be someone from the players, or an outsider. The outsider can also act as a judge to deter hackers.
The game will begin either on the public games, or a private server, that way even if you’re a true sit-and-go kind of player, you can sign up to one of the PUGs that can be opened up on a dedicated subreddit, and once the PUG is filled, the game may begin on a public server.
Spoofing game results or arguments as to who won and who should get what cut is non-existing since all players have the full data at the end of the game, so once the game is done, the trustee will release the funds according to the game results.
Simple, yet I feel like it can be a very interesting twist to the casual semi-pro players who don’t wish to invest heavily into tournaments and teams, but still want to enjoy the competitive setting from time to time, and even turn a profit? It’s not unlikely.
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