Last week I shared news about Fragsurf's UI overhaul and a demo recording system coming to our next big update. This week, we're diving into the competitive update. Combat surf by nature is a very competitive experience. It's niche, hardcore, very difficult, but it's also very exciting and rewarding.
Let's kick this off strong: in version 4.0, Fragsurf is getting a completely new competitive experience. We're adding clans, scrims, in-depth match reporting, leaderboards, and more.
Players can assemble their own clan and make it either public (open to anybody), invite on request (anybody can request to join, with a note), or invite-only.
Clan tags are unique and will display in-game beside your name in chat, your profile, etc. Every clan has its own private chat lobby, which can be accessed either on the official Fragsurf website or through a slide-out menu in-game.
To prevent spam creation of clans and name-squatting, they will cost an in-game virtual currency called Kreds. More on Kreds below.
Clans are tied directly into leaderboards and even have their own rankings to show off Combat Surf's top clans. The owner of a clan may assign ranks and roles to its members, such as Owner, Officer, and Member. "Roster" is an additional role that can be applied to anybody to designate that player as part of the clan's active competitive roster.
Playing on official servers tracks match data for everybody, and calculates the best players in Combat Surf by wins, losses, kills, deaths, assists, etc.
Both in-game and on the official website, there is a Leaderboards tab showing the top-scoring players around the world. Every match records in-depth statistics about kills, deaths, assists, weapons used, damage dealt per round, and more.
This is an example of the data collected on a local debugging/test session. You can select each player to view their individual statistics, as well as select each round to get a snapshot of what happened that round.
Clicking the "Watch Replay" button will launch your Fragsurf client straight into a replay in-game to watch exactly how the match went down.
Because server configurations may change the flow of combat surf, that data is also included with each match.
Scrims are a significant new feature coming to Fragsurf, and part of the core competitive experience. Anybody in a clan can initiate a scrim, and scrims may be 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, or 5v5.
This will create a new scrim lobby. The flow of it goes like this: 1. Opponent joins the lobby
2. Team captains select a server region and ready up for veto
3. All non-captain players ready up to initiate map veto
4. Team captains veto maps until only one is remaining
5. A dedicated server spins up, everybody connects, and the match begins
6. When the match is complete it gets logged and recorded into the competitive database, clan & player ranks are updated accordingly
Kreds are a new in-game virtual currency which can be used to purchase in-game items, wager against matches, create clans, and more. Kreds are earned by playing on official servers, claiming a daily reward, and completing bounties.
Part of the thinking behind Kreds was to add depth & reward to combat surf - something beyond simply surfing & shooting. Bounties will give players something to achieve each day, and Kreds will have many uses going forward.
In one of Fragsurf's very first releases I built a matchmaking system similar to how CS:GO behaves. Queue up for a match, it finds another player, you're both tossed into a server, and the outcome of the match gets recorded.
This didn't work very well due to the fact that combat surf is niche, and it's often better to organize competitive matches ahead of time or simply jump into a community server and dive right in with players who are already battling it out.
These changes give the competitive combat surf scene the tools it needs to compete without friction, and they give the casual combat surfer a more in-depth and exciting experience.
There are more big features in the works, so stay tuned for next week's blog to see what else is coming in version 4.0!
Discuss these changes at https://discord.gg/fragsurf