+1
good idea, good way to realize it. good job

Sephy says

- the actual system with deadlines/milestones is better for recruiting because all teams/players are free at the same time. In a ladder system this is random because there is no big milestones like "season's start, season's end".

Didnt you change nearly the whole rooster 3 weeks after season start with 5 Div1 players?

So i dont know whats the problem here.

In a regular season, you cannot recruit other players, regardless where they're coming from once the playoffs start.
I guess that Sephy is talking about this issue seeing many teams changing their roster during this "different" season.

I'm not sure to figure out why is this a problem though.

Loulebe says

we do not have enough team to make this system viable.... Actually the life of a team is like 2-3 month... after they change the name,fusion with other team.

Well, HBZ as a clan is up over 3,5 years now.
Sure we lost players to RL and had to recruit new players but most of the current rooster are active over 1 year now.

What you descibing is the result of the current Season-format.
Players losing interest to practise after the season is done and they coming back if a new season has startet and form a new "Team".

HBZ for example try to improve as a team. We are bit slow in this maybe compared to other teams but Warforce did an amazing job during the last 2 seasons.
A ladder system would give new Teams formed by pub players with no competitive backround the time to improve also.

Sure, you can go the easy way by recruiting some higher div players and let them carry for you.
But in the end of the day, these kind of teams are the ones who quit after maximal 2 Seasons.

"Sure, you can go the easy way by recruiting some higher div players and let them carry for you.
But in the end of the day, these kind of teams are the ones who quit after maximal 2 Seasons."

"Didnt you change nearly the whole rooster 3 weeks after season start with 5 Div1 players?"


dePARA, tha's why you kept your forfeit against us ? mad ?



imo ns2 needs players, or competiive teams. Do you think we will see new teams because we have a new competitive system ? not sure

Ben says

dePARA, tha's why you kept your forfeit against us ? mad ?

No
Cause:
Sephy says

- the actual system with deadlines

You wasnt aware of that, end of story. We had our drama already.

dePARA says

Sure, you can go the easy way by recruiting some higher div players and let them carry for you. But in the end of the day, these kind of teams are the ones who quit after maximal 2 Seasons

Instead of having another disband in early season, we managed to get motivated players in our newly formed team. We were part of a clan that disbanded in the end of season 4. I can't help but take it as intended for DWG (especially coming from some of the HBZ people), and I still cannot understand why this is a bad thing.
Having more experienced players that help you get better at the game and as a team. I don't see any of our members as carries, and you would be a fool to say so. It's in fact these players that helped us (newcomers in the competitive scene) to stick to it and play.

Two teams disbanded and they merged together to play and learn to play as a team and go up one division. what's wrong here ?
It's way less weird than ex-div2 or 1 going in div4 imo.
I think the time for being salty and holding grudge is over. You advocate Vindaloo's ladder system but you still think changing our rooster wasn't fair, something that is bound to happen in this kind of system that is been presented here.

Cutos to HBZ for staying alive this long with a single team, although it changed a lot. Maybe you kept the same name, but this isn't the same team as it was 3.5 years ago. Teams evolve, and new players come in each season, and other players leave, so you need to form new teams. As of myself, I joined the TKM clan in June as part of their second line up, TKM disbanded, so I had no other team (second line up was aiming at initiating new players to competitive, but left alone, people had no motivation or courage to go on). So we kept players that were willing to invest some time into a team. Even at the start of s5 our rooster was weak (about 4 regular players in there). The team was about to disband when new players came in from div1 to help us get through this. Now, the newcomers have partly been initiated and want to keep playing. Isn't that wonderful ?
No, according to you dePARA. Besides, you should know that NS2 isn't about the individual, and goes well beyond having a carry. So quit being a baby and deal with it, hopefully we might be able to see you in the div2 finals. Since you wanted to be in div1 this season, facing a team composed of half div1 half no div shouldn't be an issue. After all, you finished first of div2.

About the ladder vs division system, I'm not that convinced of either of them being fit for NS2. We saw that the division format has worked to a certain extent, but I'm willing to try a ladder system. But maybe not in the way you think about it Vindaloo. I would see it as an inter-seasons thing that works as seeding matches. Maybe it would help create more balanced divisions for the next season. It is true that in the end, teams should have been in div3 instead of div4 this season and that caused a lot of frustration, and people leaving.

About the inter-season cups. I like the idea a lot. More NS2, more matches, more fun

I keep laughing when someone types "rooster".



Anyways, i agree with someone's post on here about how the new NSL system won't do jack shit to our competitive community. People still won't play, teams will still fold, and matches just won't be played. Casters is what keep the competitive community active. The game is fun to watch and to listen to the commentary. If people get challenged during a pcw/scrim and no caster is around....well then, no match will be casted. You will have to go out of your way to find a caster and get him in the server in time for the match to start.

Matches still need to be scheduled and some sort of weight needs to be carried onto it. What I mean is, I want to go to this website and see a valid ranking system for each team. I wanna know exactly how strong the team is by reviewing their ranking against other teams.

Just having a new system in place won't bring in new players. Sure...its a lot easier. But it doesn't guarantee new teams will be formed from this. I'm sure new teams will form, but for how long?

I know I'm going off topic, but since this thread is receiving alot of attention right now and people are reading this thread, the topic of changing NSL is just as important as the topic of helping new teams or lower ranked teams STAY as a team.

I'm pretty sure everyone who plays this game competitively wants to keep playing competitively. This game is dying pretty fast, but there are more than enough active players on this game to get 5-10 more teams per Europe and America. If you really care about this game in a competitive setting and are more than capable of helping out new teams and teams in div 3/4. Then you have an obligation to do so. Teams fold mainly because of getting stomped. They have no idea what to do. They get trampled over easily.

If you want to keep playing this game, you need players, you need teams. Start at the problem then find a solution.

Rant over

hahahahha mv xDDDD lololol
now quit talking about stuff that's completely off-topic, this thread is important and what you are doing might make some people angry unintentionally

Thanks to keep the original subject of this thread.

About casters and referees, I'm pretty confident that teams will be willing to schedule their matches in a reasonable time frame before playing it to allow our staff to sign up for each official match.
As previously said, getting matches without any commentary and shoot casting is kind of uninteresting both for players and other teams/spectators/viewers that'd love watching those matches, staying tuned for a more competitive gameplay or simply keeping informed of the current ranking thanks to the replays. Most of the teams used to look at their own matches once those over, noticing their mistakes and what has happened.

schu says

Teams fold mainly because of getting stomped. They have no idea what to do. They get trampled over easily.

This is because they have to play 5/6/7 other teams who are better than them / worse than them. It doesn't matter how much better or worse the other teams are because the seasons are banded by an arbitrary number. In a ladder you can choose to play the teams you want to and only have to play people marginally better or marginally worse than yourself. No match (Or very few) would be a stomp / cheese.

schu says

If you want to keep playing this game, you need players, you need teams. Start at the problem then find a solution.

There are plenty of reasons that have been stated over many years for too long now that is the root cause for the low population. I much rather think that having a conservative approach to this by making sure that the people who are currently playing the game, stay to play the game, and that is by introducing a much more equal team orientated system. Not to mention new teams would have a better reception by playing each other / the current worst team instead of only playing them once and being forced to play 4/5/6 other teams in their league.

By introducing seasonal tournaments much like the seasons we currently have, parallel to the ladder, it gives the ladder a lot more purpose. People get the additional satisfaction of being a "champion" for that bracket of number of teams.

IMO some teams are placed in the wrong divisions sometimes and don't get the opportunity to play against better teams more equal to their skill, or worse teams so they don't get stomped. (onfire a couple of seasons ago, virtual dejection this season). These teams are forced for the next 3-4 months to sit by and either stomp or get stomped which is very little fun, or worse, disband.

I only see maybe two reasons why running the ladder as a pre-requisite for the knock-out stages would be a bad idea and that is:

1) Top tier (3-4) teams have a bigger skill gap to the rest that they would only play the challenged game from 5th place.
2) Not enough time for teams to establish their position.

I don't think that the argument for teams "establishing" their position in the ladder and staying in the same place is logical because everyone can have good games and bad games. We see it all the time in the seasons atm where 1 team wins the 1st fixture then loses the 2nd fixture to the same opponent. I also don't think it's a bad thing if those teams stay in the same position. The teams that they can play would be much closer to each other than 6th place div 4 and 1st place div 4.


TL;DR All we would be doing here is essentially removing the barriers between teams so that the very top team of each division doesn't just stomp, and the very bottom team of each division doesn't just stomp.

Not running a divison parallel to a ladder is a great way to kill the competitive community in this game for good. Ladders look great in theory, but they rarely ever work past a 3-4 week period, in which time a little bit of shuffling happens between the teams until they settle and then no one wants to play anymore. Ladders have been tried time and time again and they have been proved to not work unless there is somewhere else to go to play. I am of the firm belief that a ladder does not work with a dwindling player base but rather only works with a larger player base that is increasing. 10 days is a ridiculous amount to lock teams to inactivity.

Seb says

Ladders look great in theory, but they rarely ever work past a 3-4 week period, in which time a little bit of shuffling happens between the teams until they settle and then no one wants to play anymore.

That might be the case with stable teams. But teams in our community seem to change/improve/worsen that quickly, that we can't even roughly sort them into divisions for 1 month. So I'd be not so sure that the fine rankings are settled after 4 weeks.

Ladders have been tried time and time again and they have been proved to not work unless there is somewhere else to go to play.

I think almost everybody now sees that the ladder can't be the only thing happening. Cups based on the ladder-seedings had been mentioned in every third post or so...

10 days is a ridiculous amount to lock teams to inactivity.

That's the maximum amount of time, you can be locked. In their own interest teams should schedule their matches in a timerange of 3-6 days. Not too short to get a caster/ref and not to long to cure your gaming-itch. But essentially it's the teams decissions.

We (TAWsome) and basically each team in Div4 had more than once a period of inactivity even longer than 10 days, in this season. That's due to tough scheduling (EU vs. NA) or to teams disbanded and being stuck to a fixed schedule.

So the given argument shoots more against divisional play than ladder.

I really don't see the problem if you remove the divisional barrier but keep the seedings for knock out stages.

It gives the chance for what would be a div 4 winning team to try and break into the div 3 knockout seedings, without having to wait 3-4 months of potentially stomping every other div 4 team.

You'd still have divisional champions and a goal to work for each 3-4 months.

My personal opinion is that ladder don't work very well. People are too lazy to challenge others. You can force people to challenge but then you have already kind of a league but with random opponents. I think it's much better idea to run a league but with limited time.

jiriki says

My personal opinion is that ladder don't work very well. People are too lazy to challenge others. You can force people to challenge but then you have already kind of a league but with random opponents. I think it's much better idea to run a league but with limited time.

Well as I understand it, it is supposed to be a supplement to the already existing seasons. Not a replacement. People stop pcw'ing when there are no official matches coming up, the ladder could be these upcoming official matches to keep teams engaged in the off-season.

swalk says

Well as I understand it, it is supposed to be a supplement to the already existing seasons. Not a replacement. People stop pcw'ing when there are no official matches coming up, the ladder could be these upcoming official matches to keep teams engaged in the off-season.

I don't have time now to answer to everyone, gonna do that over the weekend.
We meant it as a replacement, not as a sideshow. If people think it's doomed to fail in few weeks on it's own, then be it, make new classic season after it. But if it keeps going for couple months and then we can have the "meaningful" tourney we are talking about in every other post here. Why not just try it, another season wouldn't be here probably until February/March, if we could get the coding done, we could try it out February maybe and go on from there. Do you actually like the classic season format?

I rather like the idea of having something like this determine the divisions for smaller tournaments.

What if there were different ladders for NA, EU, and AUS (If the aussies got on board with the idea)?

The tournaments could be cross-continent, but the ladder would be local and determine your division for the tournaments.

Sure this could stagnate but it could also make it more fun for teams that actually want to play the game. (Why are there teams that don't?) As long as it's simple enough to challenge and accept stuff with the website, it'll catch on sometime.

Vindaloo says

swalk says

Well as I understand it, it is supposed to be a supplement to the already existing seasons. Not a replacement. People stop pcw'ing when there are no official matches coming up, the ladder could be these upcoming official matches to keep teams engaged in the off-season.

I don't have time now to answer to everyone, gonna do that over the weekend.
We meant it as a replacement, not as a sideshow. If people think it's doomed to fail in few weeks on it's own, then be it, make new classic season after it. But if it keeps going for couple months and then we can have the "meaningful" tourney we are talking about in every other post here. Why not just try it, another season wouldn't be here probably until February/March, if we could get the coding done, we could try it out February maybe and go on from there. Do you actually like the classic season format?

Okay with those intentions, this will surely fail.

I don't believe that a ladder would do very great on it's own, for all the reasons stated above, they tend to die rather quickly. BUT it MIGHT just work if it is specificly put in the off-season (ie. once the group play of the regular season ends), COMBINED with independent(as in; not ladder playoffs) cups. It gives teams another opportunity to play official matches, which seem to be the one basic thing keeping teams active. It's okay if the ladder dies during the off-season, where most teams would otherwise just be inactive anyway. That's where cups should pick up the speed again before the next season.

A ladder should NEVER try to replace the regular season, that would be EPIC FAIL, PLEASE DON'T DO THIS, STANDARD SEASON 6 IN JANUARY PLEASE. I would rather play the regular season, even if there were only 6 teams in total. As a supplement to the regular season and regular cups, yes, I believe it would do a fine job of keeping teams active in the off-season to some extent. And yes, I like the classic season format and I think it works very well for all intents and purposes, nothing is flawless of course. It simply needs other competetions to supplement it, so the off-season isn't a pemanent inactivity period.


As to a more detailed version of how my idea of the ladder would work:
- The ladder is initially started, now (or asap), or once the Season 6 group play have ended.
- The ladder should have a 10 day challenge timer, in which you will need to challenge at least one other team, or get dropped in rank.
- The ladder will have playoffs for the top 2 or 4 teams, held the last week or two before the season begins.
- Teams can join/leave the ladder at any time as long as the ladder is running and is not in the playoff stages.

The ladder is in it's nature flexible in terms of timeframe, this should be taken advantage of. It could give the teams an alternative to playing "everything else but NS2" in the off-season, besides eventual cups. The ladder can easily run alongside cups, but I think it would be too intense for most teams to have the season and the ladder running at the same time, which is why I suggest it for the off-season, which is where most teams go inactive because there are no official matches coming up. No goal ahead.

Advantages of this format:
- Having the ladder start once the group play ends, mean we will hopefully sustain interest during the off-season. The nature of the ladder format is very flexible, so it fits well to both winter and summer breaks.
- The ladder can easily run alongside cups, which are the usual suspects in the off-season.
- When knocked out from the season(or when going on to the playoffs), you can challenge the teams you desire in a seperate tournament(the ladder), which could be an interesting transition from the locked matches of season play.

Disadvantages of this format:
- You tell me? As a supplement to the season, it only adds something to the community, it doesn't take anything away.

Trying to replace the season with a ladder will be community suicide, now it's said. No ladder will ever run as efficient as the current season, due to the very nature of a ladder, they are simply not sustainable. I really hope this will not become reality, it's really mindboggingly stupid considering the state of the community.

I would agree with the ladder but I would reduce the time a game has to be sheudled to 10 days so even less active teams are encouraged to play more.

I can imagine that a team sheudles a game and then forfeits it at the day of event. So the other team has wasted 14 days. I could have played like 2 games already.

Another thing: Can more than one game be sheudled at once? For example rank 10 plays against rank 7 and at the same time challenges a team on rank 13. Now they could lose against rank 13 and therefore fall in the ranking or they could win against rank 7 and then lose unluckily to rank 13. Can this happen or is one challenge caped? (I hate waiting for other teams so this concerns me the most)

Futhermore I can imagine it will become boring for the rank one. (Not that it is different with the current system.) I would love to see some kind of system which ranks teams 1-10 as gold, 11-20 silver or sth like that. Just for flavour for now but I can imagine you could do challenger rounds or sth. Like allstar game in silver, gold and so on. Fun events. [I dont want to divide into divisions but a mix between these two)

My 2 cents.

I'm concerned at the capability to keep teams active during the ladder. Since the ladder doesn't have a set start and end time, it's essentially an infinity contest. If we can address this concern, it should work fine.

I understand that a team is allowed to go inactive if they want. It just means they'll drop in the ladder and when they return, they can rise back up, but with low populations, you don't want to be active when other teams your skill are inactive, and vice versa. The advantage of season play is that it's a defined time period, and teams and players can know they are only invested for that restricted time period.

If tournaments and such can address this, awesome.

+1 for the ladder
I like it. More games against equally skilled teams and no "restriction" of Divs.

I'm totally against the ladder system as replacement for the normal division system. It will be boring after few weeks. But the idea to use the ladder system as something that will define divisions is not bad.

Were you thinking about giving teams badges for playing and winning each division? For example when you are playing in div 3 you automatically gaining div 3 badge but if you get 1-3 places your badges get the bronze, silver and gold colour. Every player in the team that was playing in at least one match would get this badge. I think if there were better prizes for winning or playing in better division, teams would have more motivation to play in better division. I think that won't be a problem for CDT to add this badges to the game, maybe it is possible to add this in this season?

lotnik190 says

I'm totally against the ladder system as replacement for the normal division system. It will be boring after few weeks. But the idea to use the ladder system as something that will define divisions is not bad.

Were you thinking about giving teams badges for playing and winning each division? For example when you are playing in div 3 you automatically gaining div 3 badge but if you get 1-3 places your badges get the bronze, silver and gold colour. Every player in the team that was playing in at least one match would get this badge. I think if there were better prizes for winning or playing in better division, teams would have more motivation to play in better division. I think that won't be a problem for CDT to add this badges to the game, maybe it is possible to add this in this season?

I agree with all of this. As I already suggested, although I'm not that much in favor of a ladder system put in place instead of a division system, I'm not against a ladder used to define divisions between each season.
About the badges that could be a really good idea, but you'd have to have an artist doing that stuff. Unless you can do simple badges like gold and silver with a single number 1 to 4 for each div and one "P" for prem

I would hide or remove inactive teams from the ladder until they confirm they are active again or something along those lines. How do you know a team is inactive? 3 forfeits in a row or 3-5 declines in a row or something like that.

Don't even worry about 'div badges' because thats not the point of a ladder right? Ladders are meant to blur the lines between divisions.

I also agree with swalk, as has been expressed already in this thread, the ladder as a replacement is a terrible terrible idea.

I see a lot of people who either want:
* Ladder, with breaks in which Play-Off/Seasonal-Style tourney happen.
* Seasonal play, with breaks in which Ladder happen.

But so far I havn't seen a single one (not even Swalk and Seb), who categorically rejects the ladder overall (feel free to correct me, this is written by memory... not going through the whole thread again).

So, I suggest we put the ladder into place, before Season 6 starts. Then, we run Season 6, as usual, but try to keep it rather short (no 10 weeks + playoffs mayhem... reducing it to 6 weeks + playoffs maybe...). Afterwards we have the experience at hand how both systems (can) work and what we prefer.

One problem with the current discussion is, that we have no experience in how the ladder in NS2 runs. It could be great, it could be hell. Nobody knows in advance. We can spend some thoughts and make a guess. But, hell, let's just try it and compare it back-to-back to the seasonal play. So we finally know, what we are talking about.

We don't have to make a decission today for all future.

tudy says

I see a lot of people who either want:
* Ladder, with breaks in which Play-Off/Seasonal-Style tourney happen.
* Seasonal play, with breaks in which Ladder happen.

But so far I havn't seen a single one (not even Swalk and Seb), who categorically rejects the ladder overall (feel free to correct me, this is written by memory... not going through the whole thread again).

So, I suggest we put the ladder into place, before Season 6 starts. Then, we run Season 6, as usual, but try to keep it rather short (no 10 weeks + playoffs mayhem... reducing it to 6 weeks + playoffs maybe...). Afterwards we have the experience at hand how both systems (can) work and what we prefer.

One problem with the current discussion is, that we have no experience in how the ladder in NS2 runs. It could be great, it could be hell. Nobody knows in advance. We can spend some thoughts and make a guess. But, hell, let's just try it and compare it back-to-back to the seasonal play. So we finally know, what we are talking about.

We don't have to make a decission today for all future.

No, ladders *can* work, they do in CSGO etc for 100s of teams, but I just don't think its a good idea for the state NS2 is in right now. In my opinion, a ladder is something that you implement when the community is really large, or is growing a lot. Neither of these things apply to NS2, so I think its a really bad idea.

Tudy has summarized it nicely, it's exactly that. I already suggested that, let it run before s6, if it dies nothing is lost, if it's amazing, we can do the playoffs/seeded cup instead of s6.

However there is not that many people actively participating in this thread. There are few loud opponents and few loud proponents of this and rest is mostly agreeing with the proponents and not much more. I would never push this system on the NSL on my own, I can't even do it, I have no role in the leadership of NSL. That's why we are in the process of asking all team leaders on the official stance of their teams on this. We will do that by PM here on ensl. We want to know what they prefer, ladder or season, with link to this discussion to see all the stances. When we gather enough data, we will present it to you all and to Zefram. It's ultimately up to him and the teams to decide what's best way about this. Be it one or the other or the combination of sorts.

Keep the current divisional play.

Add a ladder system that runs along side the normal divisional play.

Find a way to keep teams playing for both ladder and divisional play.

Give an incentive to play in ladder. ie. rewards, badges, fame, etc. Whatever it takes to keep it going. Bribe the community if you have to.

Get Charlie Cleveland to cast every ladder match.

Profit.

schu says

Get Charlie Cleveland to cast every ladder match.

This is the solution.