We are all here for fun (except fana :P) so I think there is no need to hurry organizing so close tournements, cups, seeding matches, signups, etc. This makes people uncomfortable, unhappy, mad... I think some teams came apart because of this jammed contests.
Also I didn't understand the hurry in adding 3 new maps to season2 (I like jambi by the way). I think most of the participating teams are not ready for the new maps. Before the season starts, all participating teams should vote for each map. I think getting individual oppinions with a thread is not enough for adding a map, let team votes decide.
Another thing that is not right is team changing between divisions. French Connection can be example for this. They got 2 good players (later 3) from upper division. They won the last 2 group matches and some other seeding matches. This effected the seeding in both div2 and div1. When travelling mercs left, team came apart. Do not offence FC guys, but it wasn't fair for other teams.
Last season 3 div1 team withdrawed. These teams are ignored in up-down matches. Eventually there is no up-downs happenned, only seeding list is changed. When 3 teams are withdrawed, it was not fair to make saunamen play up-down match. This is also same for lower divisions. In my oppinion if a team didn't play any match, you can ignore it. If a team played at least 1-2 matches, you must consider. After all any team can do seeding match and go up in list.
Suggestions:
1. Space out the tournements, cups, signups, sedding matches, etc. (as jiriki mentioned a bit before)
2. Most of the community are students so consider holidays, winter break, etc. when setting up deadlines
3. Seeding match rules should be written more clear for new teams (done but late)
4. You should declare seeding list long before next seasons signup deadline
5. New map additions should be voted by participating teams, not individually (1 team - 1 vote)
6. Lower division teams should not got players from upper divisions while the season continues (maybe 1-2 fair merc if other teams approved)
7. Team changing in a division should be limited while the season continues (for example: 1-2 allowed, 2nd-3rd upon the approval of other teams)
8. Every single team signed up for the season must have at least 7-8 players (not 6) registered on their teams. So withdrawal rate can be decreased.
9. In up-down matches withdrawed teams should be considered. (Div2 2nd team go up, withdrawed team go down and erase the withdrawed team from seeding list.)
I think that the "stressful" signup and competition stuff will be slowing down now.
They had to do things fast cause there is a fix dater where they have the ESL Studios! And UWE needs time to book flights and stuff so this needed to be done quicklyy.
While i agree that it is not ebst to rush these things in this case it was necessary!
I do like the points you put forth especially the one with voting on maps! 1 Team 1 Vote .. i think that should be considerd!
1.)I do believe that Admins will space out signups and their deadline and especially the start of that contest afterwards ... you know so they dont have to be too stressed with setting up the groups .. they will learn to cut themselves some slack there and give themselves more time !
2.)YOU CANNOT consider holidasy winter breaks and stuff like that .. they vary from country to country! And also religion to religion!
So yeah .. good point but NOT DOABLE !
"9.)" I think if teams disappear or withdraw or whatever it should be the first Priority to make sure the Upper Divisions are full and as highskilled as possible. So if a Div1 Team Drops out get the best Div2 Team to replace it asap(without up down game). Noone goes down ofc. And for that Team that went up one Div3 Team goes Div2 and so forth.
I know lower divs might not like it but to increase the skill and the popularity you need the TOP to be brimming and the rest gets dragged along by them :) !
I agree to the hurry in Invitational Cup, but this is not an excuse for the rush in other contests. Do a priority list and postpone the insignificant ones. Custom cup and season2 can be postponed after the Invitational Cup. At least there can be a space between Inv. cup and season2.
If there is a space, holidays and breaks won't be matter I think.
I agree with you about up-down thing. There is no need in playing for the withdrawed teams. Just change the seeding list.
ENSL isn't consist of good teams. You must consider the lower divisions opinion before changing things. They are the base of the community.
All in all ... I checked every word that I'm not sure in google translate... So this is the best I can do :) If u understand it, its ok :)))
We didn't expect to have the invitational cup at all when we were planning our contests. The short timeframes were caused because UWE needed teams decided for the ESL Studio as Eistee said. But I don't agree that this should have caused the other contests to be moved or not played. I think it worked out alright in the end.
We know the problems the seeding matches have caused for new teams, it was hard to know who to play to get into a specific division and so on. But I believe we have already adressed that, I know it's too late but we do learn from our mistakes. I think you are right that we should only remove the dropped teams after the up/downs and not before. So higher placed teams don't risk getting into up/downs, like the saunamen vs french connexion case. We will do this in the future.
You're not alone with your suggestion with 1 team having 1 vote for new maps. And I think this is a great idea, we will do this in the future. Possibly with having division 1 teams votes count double as you suggest. For now, we have 5 maps in the map pool for season 2.
summit, tram, veil, jambi and icarus.
I don't agree that we should require more than 6 players on a team. If a team have 6 very active players, they should have the possibility to play the season imo.
Thanks for your feedback, this is exactly what we need to improve the contests on ENSL.
Things I agree with are:
- Early posting (or just making the updated version public) of team rankings
- Making big changes to the rules (maps, mods, etc) require a vote of the participating teams with one team, one vote. I'd also make it so it requires a 50% quorum (e.g. at least 50% of the participating teams have to vote before it becomes valid) and keep it a simple majority wins.
The other issues aren't as much of a big of a deal imo. Going to 16-team divisions makes the inevitable couple of team withdrawals not as big a deal (e.g. 1-2 withdrawals is a much bigger deal in a 6-team division rather than 16-team division). Team composition changes are inevitable and their isn't anything we can do that wouldn't be a huge burden on teams trying to improve themselves.
Forcing teams to play too many games in short period of time is probably the worst you can ask for. NS2 will be there next week. Playing on player's stamina is a real gamble, like skipping sleep en mass; by the time any serious symptoms appear, things are way beyond control. You can end up with a forfeits in finals or whatnot, and some crappy team just winning by default which will cause drama plus permanent damage to ENSL rep. Especially if there is money involved.
According to the news posts, teams had to play 7 games within one day, 7 hours straight. That's crazy. Is there any other competition in any other game that does that? You can get same results with half the games and half the time. You're basically trying to play as many games within one weekend as you do within a season.
I also don't see the point of running 3 contests at the same time. If UWE needs NSL right now, then fine but S2 can wait. Besides, the news posts erratically appearing from these contests is quite confusing.
I'm not putting this here as a stab at you, and apparently the NSL ran really well. I'm really glad to hear that. You also did a lot of great work. I'm just saying this as a pre-warning. There have been much worse shitstorms in ENSL for much sillier reasons.
@scardybob Season 1 had 12-team divisions, not 6 ;) But yeah, you are right that the increase of teams per division will make dropped teams matter less for the overall competetion. Which is one of the reasons why we did it.
@jiriki I enjoy the feedback and definitely take it into consideration. However, there was never played 7 games in a day. It was 5 games on saturday. I agree that due to this timeframe we were forced into(we already set the dates for custom map cup and season 2 before the invitational was known about) resulted in spamming of newsposts, which is something I do not like at all either.
I feel the lower divs (especially NA) should be larger instead of smaller. maybe reduce it to one group instead of 2. lower div teams are more prone to dying or not having 6, and having bye weeks along with more chances of forfeits makes it really tedious. Like last season I had a forfeit, then a bye, then christmas. So we didn't even have a match for a month.
better to have too many teams and have to play tiebreakers than have too few and not play any games at all.
Woops, you're right. I was thinking about groups rather than divisions (e.g. 12-team division with two 6-team groups). Still a 16 team (two groups of 8) is still more robust against forfeits/withdrawals.
