(by steven)

First off, for those of you that do not know me, I am a player from the competitive lobby. I am posting this here because I already know what the competitive players will say, and I think the only way lucid or the mods will do anything is if they see the approval of training lobby because as it is you guys are indeed the ground that EpicMafia stands on.

Even though I say I am from Competitive, I really do think that by saying that it is like poison, because the current train of thought in training lobby is that all or most players there are rude jerks that are mean to everyone in and out of game, and I'm sure that you all have tested that theory already and seen it be true with your own eyes. I won't be arguing whether or not you're right; however, while I do think we have our share of nice and mean people it doesn't feel that much more than other lobbies. Rather, it's more like training lobby players feel it's more because they're looking out for it. Or maybe I'm just used to it. Regardless, that's not what this is about.

This will be a /really big thread/. You have been warned.

You might have noticed that the admins want to return training lobby to what it was meant to be: a "transition" lobby that trained players for competitive play. Back in EM 2.0, when there was only one lobby, competitive play dominated the site. There were barely any ranked games at all, it was competitive and unranked. Ranked games were only used to test setups, as far as I remember. When multiple lobbies were introduced, there were 3 "competitive" lobbies and sandbox, and people just moved up in points trying to get up to the "better" lobbies. After a while we realized the site didn't have enough people for this so we simplified it to two lobbies: competitive and training.

Now we are here and it is very clear that training has evolved into something completely different. It is. Quite simply, a place to play ranked games, and rather than be full of new players, it has it's own vets and all. It has become very independent from the other lobbies. This isn't a bad thing in itself, as if that's what the site wants and it gets more traffic to the site in the future, then there's nothing wrong with that. Training, or rather, red hearts, have gained popularity now and are something lots of players enjoy in simple setups where there is not that much need to concentrate on scumhunting. Simply put: there's a lot of players that have opted out for a middle ground between unranked games and competitive play, playing "relaxed" games that don't have the chaos from unranked but that don't need to be invested in with time/effort. And sure, that's great! I enjoy playing red heart games ever so often too, and in comp lobby we even made "gallis hunter" legal in weekends, which is actually a rather fun setup.

The problem however is that the only way for people to get to competitive lobby is through points and therefore training. There is no shortage of players in competitive yet, but the lobby is not growing as it should and maybe in 5 years it will die out by itself, who knows. Lots of competitive players are upset because training's attitude towards competitive lobby will inherently deter the newer players from joining. After all, if the people they play with hate competitive so much, it is only natural to be scared of competitive play. I'm not saying everyone should like to play competitively: there are many of you, I'm sure, who decided not to join the training competition, or at least not play a lot of gold heart games. At the same time, there are a few who must have tried it out and maybe some who enjoyed it, and yet you remained in training lobby because that is the community you like and associate with.

I just think that this us vs them between comp and training lobbies really needs to be put a stop to, and there seems to be no way to do so. Because training is the lobby you start in, this will definitely mean that competitive will always be "dying out" (in quotes because I really doubt it will actually die any time soon, but the feeling that new players aren't coming will remain), which is why competitive is so concerned.

And the solution to this is to completely kill competitive lobby. I really mean it: outright delete it. To compensate, the training competition would be brought back (I don't think any of you would have a problem with that since it was fine before) and, if possible, a point requirement would be placed for joining the competition instead.

You might be thinking: isn't that the same as having two lobbies, just that, well, in the same one, since competitive players will migrate to the training competition most likely? Well, yes and no. It is true that most competitive players will move to training afterwards (which would likely be renamed into main lobby or something) but they are indeed a small number compared to training players, so training would vastly outnumber competitive. Furthermore, the competition would have players from both lobbies, basically meaning that it would eliminate the us vs them attitude because it would no longer be two communities but just one. People would play gold hearts if they want to, or they could just stick to playing red hearts. But the focus wouldn't be in either one, it would be more or less balanced.

There's some of you that outright just do not want players from competitive playing in your games because of many reasons, whether it be gold or red, but trust me, you don't have to pass a mean test to get to comp, most of us do not care at all, just like you, in red hearts and unranked games. The only reason we care is for our so very precious trophies (lol, quite silly right) but it's because man, it's literally 10 straight days of playing epicmafia for hours to play all your 5 hearts. If something happens after investing so much time it's natural to get frustrated. But you guys didn't have a problem with your own competition, and it would be under the same circumstances. I think a few moderators have reported there's actually more harassment reports in training, it's just that since those people are from your community you've learned to deal with them while you naturally prefer to stay out of trouble with us, which I guess is understandable.

Anyway, basically what the proposed change would do is:

Red hearts are exactly the same, with the rare comp player (who can already play with you guys if he wanted) maybe playing more often in those red hearts with you, but not having the pressure of the competition and therefore be like a completely different person at all (trust me, we /really/ don't care about red hearts nearly as much, probably we take them even less seriously than you). Basically, at worst, nothing happens differently . At best, you get to meet some new friends you otherwise might have not.

The competition is back. Woo. Now with a point requirement, however. You guys don't have to join it and can ignore the gold hearts. Maybe it's a worse competition than before because of us (really wouldn't be so IMO) but this isn't a valid complain because there's no competition in training now so nothing would be ruined. I guess the gold heart games could clutter the lobby, but this could be fixed with a filter for gold/red as an option. So at best you get a fun new competition, at worst you have to ignore a few games in the lobby

Those are for the current players: however, for the new players it would be like this: They are automatically exposed to players from "both lobbies" via the red hearts, so there will be people who like gold hearts and who don't playing with them, and they might learn some nice strategies from them even before they move to gold heart setups. In fact, it could be quite common for people that play in competitions to help new players out. At best, it would completely eliminate the community split and fix the influx of players back to normal and help in teaching the newbies the ropes. At worst, all players would still dislike gold heart games even in training lobby and the competition will eventually die off (which isn't really a problem for you guys anyway).

All this talk about point caps to force players into comp won't change anything at all but make them quit. Why would the 10k players from training be forced to play in a lobby they don't want with a lot of people they don't know? Comp lobby should be deleted instead so it is comp that has to migrate to training, because most comp lobby players not only are already familiar with training so the transition is easier, but the lobby is smaller so it is the way it should happen. Bringing back the competition is the smoothest way for this to happen nicely, with minimal possible damage. I don't think I missed anything that could go wrong but if any of you think I did feel free to post it in this thread. Really though, at worst this would be the same for you bad for us, at best good for everyone, so I don't see why training would be that much opposed to it. I sincerely believe that if we all work together you'll see that some of us (sadly not all, but surely a lot) aren't that bad. Hey, unless they really are super old, they were training before too!

I don't think anyone will read all of that sadly but it's a good way to organize my thoughts at least