Firstly I wish to congratulate those that took part in the cup, and those that organised it. From someone that has previously ran leagues and clans for games I know that this can be a real burden on your personal time etc.
But I would like to bring some (i hope constructive) criticism to the table.
Firstly to me it feels the competition was too rushed in its preparation. I appreciate the need for swift movement between seasons, but I feel that it was too swift, with teams ending up signing up to a cup that they ended up not knowing how it would play out.
I possibly didn't read up enough on entry, but I don't think it was detailed anywhere that we would be playing 5 games on a Saturday evening at fixed times. Whilst I'm not asking for a tournament to be scheduled to my needs, myself or most of our members are not usually available at the times these were scheduled for. I myself and others in our team have family's - and the 1st game fell at 5pm our time. We we're informed it was a case of "Play of you lose on forfeit" which to me should not really be how the community treats such a "fun" competition.
Secondly I feel that whole point of finding out which maps are good was lost on the whole speed of the event. Personally me and a few of our team rushed through a few maps a couple of days before getting a rough idea of what kind of basic strategy to use. But to learn 6 or 7 maps in such short notice doesn't really work. I thought that we would be told in advance a couple of maps that we would be playing.
At this point 90% of you will assume that I am some kind of sour grapes moaning idiot. This may be the case, but I still hope I'm trying to be constructive rather than just picking holes.
This is why I would put forward the following suggestion:
* Get a voting system done on the maps played (personally it was all to brief and we had 2 teams drop out in our section so we haven't seen them all)
* Drop the bottom 2 maps
* Make another custom map league/cup to run alongside the season II of the ENSL. (This would be basically 1 game every 2 weeks - on a fixed map for each fortnight. This give's teams the chance to properly learn and explore each map, and organise a game at their leisure)
* Implement a voting system on each map (for example each player in each team has to rate the map between 1-10 - giving each map a maximum of 120 point)
I don't want this to be seen as a criticism of anyone that's running and taking part in this fine league, more an open line of communication. Indeed I would be more than willing to invest my own time into assisting this, and indeed even putting a cash prize up to the winners of anything that was done in such a manor. I hope this feedback is taken the way it was intended.
You've got it mixed up. "Fun competitions" are just about getting a bunch of matches played, while serious tournaments give teams time to plan and prepare. I can agree that ideally the brackets and information should've been posted earlier, though.
I second Fana that earlier posting of the brackets would have been nice. At the very least, give us the starting times a week in advance so we know what to tell our team members.
Also, a bit more organization would have been nice. There was some scramble finding ENSL admins, properly setup servers, and how to contact the other team leaders.
Yeah, my bad on the late time for the contests being up, but there is alot to plan about these events. 7 days between signups closing and competetion start is not alot of time to figure everything out.
And ???, you've been linked the maps in the xmas post. You've had 1,5 months to check out the maps: http://www.ensl.org/articles/725
There will not be a custom map season running alongside the normal season, seems you've misunderstood what the cup was for in the first place. The cup is a try to get more maps to play in the regular season(not add another one alongside it).
We will however hold another custom map cup between season 2 and 3, given that enough new custom maps have come out, or previously unselected maps for the season have improved enough to try again.
It is right: Getting things done early enough for everyone is REALLY stressful so cut swalk some slack here.
ScaardyBob: I agree finding Admins was definitly tough, but also finding the Teammemmbers for the Refs was hard too.
So here is what every TEAM LEADER and DEPUTY should do:
Check the Staff list Admins and Refs
ADD ALL the refs for your Region to your Steamfriendslist!
U can always add me EisTee.at in Steam .. i am usually around when a event is going and i can help out with all the ref stuff and i also always know how to get hold of a admin.
Greetings !
P.S. I thought the cup went pretty well ... if you ignore the fact that there was exaclty ONE ref for the NA games. If blind would not have had helped this would have been bad i d say !
I appreciate you're time in replying Swalk, and in fairness the maps were posted in advance agreed - this is perhaps partly lazyness from myself and my team but I didn't think we would be playing at such a frantic pace.
I don't wish for anyone to see this as an attack on Swalk or any of the admins that were involved. I would desperately like to be involved in the helping and planning of these things should I be able to be of any assistance - so it really is not at all seemed to be any kind of dig at anyone.
Personally I hope for the next custom cup that nancy, tanith and eclipse are done in time!!
Can I make one further request however, whichever custom map is added to the league is as late as possible in the ENSL league rotation so we can get some proper time in.
The thing is... You create a number of groups. These groups never meet each other. You put all high seeded teams on a single group. This makes the other groups a snore-fest and no reason to actually play. That's not how you make groups... it's very simple. Like, if I go through and win my group, there's nothing else. Yay, I won my group and I won't face bigger rivals, awesome.
The tournament was very boring, and I assume it was only fun for Group A, because the other groups looked absolutely horrible. And the best part is we only played 3 times. 4 forfeit wins. Also bo9 final, like... seriously?
See Mendasp that post was alrdy better you actually said something here.
but still you will get better results in pointing oput bad things AND GIVING SUGGESTIONS .. like i am doing here for you 8) !
And yeah i knew what you were trying to say .. but the tone makes the music !
So for the future dont just say bad things and maybe see the work that goes into it and also maybe the thoughts behind it.
Yeah groups may have not been the best but then again how much fun is it for Archea to play a bunch of well not so good players that cant even put up a fight?
So pls trys to be constructive and see more than one side.
On the b09 i actually agree .. when i read that i was like .. LOLOLOL XD!
I think when the tournament is all "bo2"(2 rounds per game) it is only really usefull to dbl that meaning 2 maps or bo4 .. but hey maybe they thought .. bo9 .. means best teams will play a lot of the maps so we get the opinion of the best teams on them .. cause you know they played em twice so they will definitly have a useful opinion.
I already have quite a few ENSL admins on my friends list, so I didn't really have problems with it. However, I spent quite a bit of time connecting other teams with admins/servers. I'm fond of having a Steam Group in which all the relevant admins, refs, and team leaders have to join and coordinate.
Are we making tournaments around Archaea now? How is that a valid explanation?[/quote]
That was just an example .. no tournament ever will be built around any team .. the point in that was swalk trys to make these events worthwile for as many ppl as possible by putting sort of equal teams in the same groups. The result is usually a good game for most of the ppl.
If you happen to be part of the small group that was unlucky .. well tough luck if you try to cater to everyone you will fail .. so i guess the easiest way is to say: Sorry but life is hard sometimes !
And dont try twisting my words .. i really dont take kindly to that sort of things!
AND ONCE AGAIN .. YOU WERE NOT CONSTRUCTIVE .. i feel u refuse to develope as a human being even though someone gives you pointers .. so this is my last response to you .. cause i feel like you waste my time.
There is a group which contains all the Admins and refs.
Also the Teamleadears are encouraged to join that group if i am not mistaken.
The only problem with that group is there are so many ppl in it that it will not display the members in your friendslist. And at least for me it is not possible to send someone a msg from the community screen thingy .. or their Steamprofilepage.
So basically you have to add everyone in that group and hope they accept in time!
There's well proven tournament formats out there to use, and that's why big events use those formats. This tournament didn't use any of those. I shouldn't have to "deal with it" if it was done correctly in a way to make it interesting for everyone.
If you cannot accept the feedback, not sure why this thread exists in the first place. I'm not taking away merit from organizing it, which is what people think instantly when reading these kinds of opinions. It's something to improve in the future. The tournament wasn't perfect and you need to realize that.
I'm not sure I follow you. Using groups separated by level is as valid as using groups with evenly-spaced skill levels. It just differs on how you want your competition to run.
In this case, I guess the logic was to have similar-level group plays so as to have the fairest matches possible in order to try out the maps in the best conditions possible.
I think running the tournament on a single week-end may have been a bit hurtful (but practical) and the main objective, in my eyes, was reached : to have a good overview of potential new maps for Season 2.
I have been trying to tell him that we welcome every input and trying to make him realize that he should try and give his input in form of suggestions instead of .. well what he is doing.
I think as you said huhuh the goal of this event definitly was accomplished and he also does not realize that time is definitly an issue!
For these reasons:
1.) Invitanioal CUP needs to be done in time so UWE can organize that the 2 teams can be brought in to cologne and all that stuff .. the date of the final is fixed and cannot be changed!
2.) Very close after that a second season will eb going .. and ENSL WANTS MORE MAPS FOR THAT .. so very hard with the time management.
So my suggestion try and use the suggestions and ignore the uninformed whine :) !
The timeframe within the tournament was played was not the problem.
The problem was the groups separated by (apparently) seedings, and also there was no final playoff or anything like that, so you're perfectly isolated in your own group, which made for a very VERY boring tournament outside of Group A. Although, again, with the groups set up as they were, obviously, there was no point in doing it like that, as the winner of the highest seeded group would have had a cakewalk. But, if you had done it the other way with evenly distributed groups, you could have had a more interesting final phase where you have a single victor for the cup, and those matches would be the fair ones you mention, and the best ones to cast, too. Makes the tournament more interesting overall.
I think one of the difficulties was that we wanted to have a lot of people play on all the maps. Thus the round robin among 4 rather "large" groups of teams. If we had done skill-balanced groups with bracket afterwards, we would have had less "balanced in team skills" matches on various maps than we've had.
I agree with you that, maps objective aside, this format is not the optimal best for competition. However the input it gives us relating to map feedback is, as you imagine, very profitable. It also generates less matches to play which, for the timeframe chosen, is practical for everyone (teams and staffs).
For any upcoming cups (custom maps or not) we organize, I will make sure to remind everyone about this point when we decide on the format.
You don't send a message, but have all the relevant people idle in the group chat (kind of like idling in IRC). You can even invite people not in the group to the group chat, making it much easier to coordinate things such as which server to use, distributing the refs, or asking questions. We used this method to organize the earlier WasabiCup and NS2 Launch Tournament and it worked very well.
I think this reflects the intent of the tournament, which was less determining the best teams in NS2 than trying to arrange as many evenly balanced matchups on the custom maps. The team distribution wasn't perfect, but it did a fairly good job of grouping teams of similar skill together. I also found it more interesting and fun than the typical stomps that result from matching up high and low seeds.
Also, it sounds like the big problem in your group was poor organization (multiple team forfeits) rather than the grouping style. Forfeits are almost inevitable in any gaming tournament, but having four forfeits in a round robin group is simply a disaster.
Just a couple of comments based on what I have read here.
If people are struggling to get refs - why would you have a group that has casters and team leaders in it?
There should be a steam group that just has ref's in it. Anyone else just clouds the issue. Is there a way of having members in a group, but have it set that anyone outside of the group can message them?
Also, whilst I understand it feels like a need to rush things through, this only really leads to a worse competition IMO. Things like the custom cup should be run alongside the season, it doesn't have to be 70% crammed into one evening where players may not be available and in-turn not making it a fair reflection of a teams ability.
What happens for example if the new patch is released a couple of days before the season starts? Or during the invitational qualifying? There needs to be more time scheduled for such things. Trying to shoehorn everything in over 1 or 2 days doesn't suit everyone - and the league and cup should try and encompass as many teams as possible - not just those that play on Saturday evenings.
From what I understood the main reason for the cup was to see if any custom maps should be in the season 2 map pool. Obviously that means it couldn't be run in tandem with the season. Also, seeing as the feedback on most maps has been that they are not suited to competitive play, it seems like a good thing that the cup wasnt drawn out over a longer period, as people wouldn't want to keep playing on these maps.
I think his point about the admins/refs/casters groups is that if team leaders are in that group they can find refs or admins or casters quickly. AFAIK there is no way to message someone in a group unless you are also in that group.
But yes - for future, more serious tournaments you would obviously want the schedule further in advance and more thought put into the format and seedings, which I'm sure will be the case. People may be taking this cup a bit too seriously, I don't think it was ever meant to be more than a quick weekend to have a look at some potential maps, apologies if I have misread the situation.
I don't think mendasp's comments really have anything to do with how the tournament was organized. Their problems weren't caused by poor organization, it was just a case of "shit happens". Part of it because their opponents were no-shows (blame the teams, not the admins) and part of it was because Godar recently recruited several players which bumped their team quality from div 2 to div 1 after the seedings were completed. Neither of which is really anybody's fault, while I can understand that it's frustrating.
There is already the "NSL Clan Group" on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/nslclangroup
Remember to sign into steam, if you are not logged in it will tell you invite-only(steam bug).
This group is for teams, referees, admins and casters. Created for ease of contact at the beginning of season 1.
I am able to message people through steam community, my friends list is full. Seems to work fine.
Personally I don't think asking teams to play 5 matches a day is reasonable. 2 is fine, 3 is pushing it. Organize the cup so people dont have to do forfeits. In your defense its a fun cup but I don't think having too many forfeits is a good idea in any case. And group stages in weekend sounds weird. I know its a custom map cup, but with SE you can get a whole lot of teams playing for the win.
The way we did was to make sure referees were assigned to every game and either ref or admin would make sure every team knew what server to join etc. Referees would have to have prior contact with teams either via Steam or IRC. Expecting teams to just "organize it themselves" almost never works. You will always have forfeits no doubt, but make sure you minimize the amount of them.
I don't want to take a stab at you in any case, I know its a lot of pain in the ass to run anything. Still bad decisions can be made, and have been made, and its good to learn from them.
I think its better to have alot of games on as few days as possible.
If we have games from 20:00-23:00 I cant do anything else that day anyway.
The point is I rather play saturday-sunday instead of friday-sunday.
Yeah I don't think taking all three days out of weekened is a good idea, instead organize the cups so the total number of matches does not require the cup to last more than 2 days and each team to play maximum of 2-3 games per day.
