I've come to realize that I just don't like the underlying concept of a nations cup. It really only works for Europe because Europe consists of 50 different countries rather than 50 states in one country. Its akin to having a Continent Cup with one team per continent; good only for bragging rights rather than amazing NS2 games.
Also, this primarily affects US players, but its not a US-only issue. I'm sure that Germany, France, the U.K., and Australia could easily field two or more teams if given the opportunity. I think these types of cups should be approached with first setting the max number of teams (e.g. 16/24/30) then letting each nation field as many teams as they want, giving priority to the first team from a nation over the second/third/etc from others. If there are more teams from a nation than are possible according to the above rule, then some form of intra-nation cup or playing choosing system would be fine.
I appreciate your ideas Scardy and you have some points there. Still, this would cater to a cup with a different name, like a 'World Regions Cup' -actually not a bad idea to pull off as well and I'd be glad to run that under NSL flag too. But this cup will run - as announced - as a Nations Cup, which means 1 team per nation, sorry. At least Team US has the biggest fanbase and most viewers to root for :P
Yeah, the whole one team per country thing works great for europe... but it leaves the vast majority of the americans who want to participate out in the cold. I mean there are ~40 million people that live in my state alone xD
i do understand that isn't the point of the tournament, it just kind of sucks that most americans won't get to compete all summer. If we were willing to organize our own "america's cup" tournament or something like that, would we be able to use the NSL website to set the matches up? Because if we could run it through the website it would be totally feasible for 2 or 3 of us to organize it all. I'd be willing to put some time in on it, but I don't have the experience or resources to do it on my own.
I really was sure that this NAtions Cup is more for the viewers than the actual participants!
How are americans not getting that?
It is like the GOdar ARchea game .. 12 ppl played 260 watched and after that game there were like 10 pcw s going on .. so this is just to keep the taste of NS2 in ppls mouths so to speak .. or am i completly wrong here?
NSL pretty much lets anyone compete in their tournaments.
In this 'Nations Cup' anyone can still make a team and try to beat the other teams from your own Nation.
Since there is only 1 team / Nation competing in the actual tournament.
This isn't the only thing happening during the summer, like blind said. I encourage you to go outside and get some sun :D
but there's still some cups and other stuff before s3, for those who stay inside.
So scardybob, my tip to you or anyone that wants to participate:
make a team and try and beat the other Nations team. If not, enjoy the show!
Oh sweet, I'd been hearing rumors that there wasn't anything going on this summer and I was kind of worried about it xD the scene is small enough that a couple months of inactivity could kill it. And trust me, I can get sun and play video games lol.
I think people just misunderstand the "summer break", we know not every are going at holidays and people will be on/off during the summer. That's why we don't find it convinient to have a season during the summer so there are cups instead, which are great for mix teams and for those teams that have enough players around to participate.
The summer break isn't actually a planned event as much as people having the annoying tendency of enjoying this glowing ball of light in the sky we call the sun.
I was under the impression that the nations cup was going to be a side-event. Lots of new teams wont be able to participate now because of this, especially in USA/Canada.
I've always said that cups should be run alongside the league. Let teams organize things at times that suit them, this way it will also spread the whole thing out.
IMO it's easier to admin teams playing 2 games a week than it is teams playing 1 game a week and then approx 100 games over 2 days.
Take for example yesterdays game with Radical and Quoth - because its played on a Monday there are about 8 people ready to ref the game and about 8 people wanting to cast the game. If that game was played Sunday evening you would have struggled to even have it casted.
Plenty of teams don't want to play on fixed times, by forcing a teams hand you're only minimizing the amount of teams that will enter.
@Rich_ The nations cup is similar to both the custom map cup and invitational cup. It is not a contest aimed at the regular teams, but the next contest will be aimed at the regular teams. That will be sooner than you think, for now try to relax and enjoy the show!
@Bonkers I see your point, but I don't think your idea is as great as you might think yourself. If we had cups with same amount of reschedules as the season, during the season, it will be a nightmare to admin both things at the same time. "Which contest is this match?".
Having rather set times and fairly tight schedules for the cup is a good thing, a cup kind of loses it's tense if it drags out too long(see ESL Opening Cup) and I know many teams actually enjoy these kind of marathon games during the weekend. Sure, it might put off a few teams because they are not available at those times, but then it's good we have the seasons for the lesser committed teams that aren't able to play in the cups.
It's impossible to please everyone, but I feel the current way of having the seasons as the main thing here and then some cups during the season-breaks is pretty good and offers different types of play. Cups offers "short-time endurance games"(lots of games in a short time), while the seasons offers "long-time endurance games"(one game per week for 7-10 weeks). Best of both worlds. I personally really like both formats even though cups can be exhausting, they are still fun as hell and also I like this type of marathon gaming myself :P
I'm a bit curious about the reasoning for putting Turkey in the same group as the US, Canada, and Brazil. There is a 4 to 9 hour difference between Turkey and the NA/SA teams in that group. It makes more sense to put them in one of the EU-groups (i.e. A or B) and either keep the NA/SA group at 3 teams or bump one of the Western EU teams (e.g. Spain, France, or the UK) to the Group C bracket.
I had previously put Netherlands in that bracket, but Turkey came to me asking to be switched as they are not sure they are able to play. They wanted to let Netherlands be in a european group because of their uncertainty.