I want to discuss with you guys the possibility of a players league, running in Off-Season or even completely parallel to any NSL-activity.

The original idea was presented in the "Comp NS2 in 2015"-thread. By now I have thought a bit more about it and want to talk about its feasibility and clarify about the interest in such a thing.

Here is the basic idea of a Players League:

It basically combines the gather system with a scoreboard, which revolves around single players, instead of - like the season - around teams.

During fixed times per week - for example 20-22 CET, 20-22 EST and 20-22 ACST on each Tuesday and Friday - all started gathers count into the players league. Meaning that each round in a gather you participate in give you 1 point. If you win a round in a gather you receive another point. If you earn points as a commander those are marked for later evaluations.

Originally I had in mind that players could somehow vote on the most helpful or most valueable player in their team as well, who would receive another extra point. However, I don't see how this could be set into practice without an in-game mod or some larger changes on ensl.org-website.

Some Player-League-Helpers (Admins for example, or just people, who are active in gathers anyways and we can trust upon) would collect and save those points in a publicly visible Spreadsheet. The data shows:
* Who gathered the most points overall (pun intended)
* Who is the most active overall (total points - points for wins)
* Who has earned the most points as commander
* Who had been in the chair/sack for the most time
* The above two for smaller timeframes (3 months, 1 month)

The Player League could run from the start of a regular Season until the start of the next Season and finish with a Gather-Allstar game, bringing in the 10 most succesfull players and 2 most succesfull commanders (teams of course determined in the Gather-Draft-Style).

Establishing a Players-League as above comes not without some work, though. We would need Volunteers/Helpers, who are willing to show up for most of the special Gather-Times. In best case, these are players who like to play Gathers themselves, but that is not a requirement per se. The times, at which the Gathers count would be determined by the schedule of those helpers, of course. Due to timezones and the possibility of several gathers running in parallel during those peak-times something like 3 EU and 3 NA helpers would be good numbers to start with. If there are AUS-Helpers as well to serve their community that would be awesome.

I want to hear your ideas and feedback on this. Some players strive for more activity then there teammates, so this might give them just the outlet they need.

Great idea making some of the gathers official games, whoever came up with that. This could run in parallel with a team based ladder in the off-seasons and it could also even run during the regular season.

I think that one admin from each continent should be more than sufficient enough for this kind of contest. The days can be fixed and the admins doesn't even need to be there when the games are played, they can gather results from the players in the gathers, just make sure to ask more than one player(and from opposite sides of the gather-teams) to verify results :P

I think it would be nice to have it reset/finished every month. That way it's stays fresh and open for competetion all the time.

LOL @ in the "sack" - good one :D

swalk says

I think that one admin from each continent should be more than sufficient enough for this kind of contest. The days can be fixed and the admins doesn't even need to be there when the games are played, they can gather results from the players in the gathers, just make sure to ask more than one player(and from opposite sides of the gather-teams) to verify results :P

I think it would be nice to have it reset/finished every month. That way it's stays fresh and open for competetion all the time.

LOL @ in the "sack" - good one :D

Yeah, catching the results in hindsight is possible, but also cumbersome. As this would be once or twice a week, that can accumulate in a lot of work quite quickly, which is why I think of some people sharing this job. If there is one REALLY motivated guy, who is willing to put all this work on himself I won't deny him/her the opportunity :P

@Resetting finishing every month: This is why the above info is also available in 3 months and 1 months (for example) to see the smaller trends. For a possible All-Star-Gather I would reset, right after that said All-Star-Game and start counting from there again. There is no need to delete any overall info however.

tudy says

Yeah, catching the results in hindsight is possible, but also cumbersome. As this would be once or twice a week, that can accumulate in a lot of work quite quickly, which is why I think of some people sharing this job. If there is one REALLY motivated guy, who is willing to put all this work on himself I won't deny him/her the opportunity :P

@Resetting finishing every month: This is why the above info is also available in 3 months and 1 months (for example) to see the smaller trends. For a possible All-Star-Gather I would reset, right after that said All-Star-Game and start counting from there again. There is no need to delete any overall info however.

That's true, but if one guy just collects the results once a week, I don't think it that that is much work to be honest :P If he misses a week or two, then sure it would most likely stack up :P But I really don't think 6+ admins are nessesary.

Yeah, I didn't mean to delete the rankings of these tourneys, they should be Hall of Fame worthy like any other contest imo. I meant just ending it every month and starting a fresh one every 1st of the month.

I think the gather system should also allow for teams to sign up. Going with what you've said, update the gather system to allow people to select their team and have individuals or another team sign up to go up versus that team or mix.

For example, I go onto the gather page, click on Join as team. Selecting Titus Gaming, then for Team 1 it shows a list of the titus members, and in team 2, it fills up with either another team, or a mix or people who can just 'join gather'. I think this type of thing would also work with the "player-league". I think it'd also be good to be able to set parameters for those who you want to go versus. If you only want to go versus Div 3-4 teams, then you can select that. But that also if a person is in div 4, they can't go more than Div 3 to play against.

The NSLs own personal online matchmaking.

Syknik says

I think the gather system should also allow for teams to sign up. Going with what you've said, update the gather system to allow people to select their team and have individuals or another team sign up to go up versus that team or mix.

For example, I go onto the gather page, click on Join as team. Selecting Titus Gaming, then for Team 1 it shows a list of the titus members, and in team 2, it fills up with either another team, or a mix or people who can just 'join gather'. I think this type of thing would also work with the "player-league". I think it'd also be good to be able to set parameters for those who you want to go versus. If you only want to go versus Div 3-4 teams, then you can select that. But that also if a person is in div 4, they can't go more than Div 3 to play against.

The NSLs own personal online matchmaking.

Those and the things you wrote in the thread about the Gather-Spreadsheet are some fine ideas. And I would love to see them realised.

However everything which requires some deeper changes on the ensl.org homepage is to some extent out of reach, as we are missing the people, who can work on it :(

Would this only include NSL gather or could the AusNS2 pugs/reddit NA pugs be worked into this as well?

Seb says

Would this only include NSL gather or could the AusNS2 pugs/reddit NA pugs be worked into this as well?

As long as there is a guy, who can track all the games, which are played in a given timeslot, they can be included.