Important news regarding the Divisions splits

NS2 is still new, as are many teams and so of course the NSL Seasons. We finished the first season, have had Up&Down matches played and seeding matches. But even with the results we got from that, it wasn't easy at all to put the teams into divisions for the upcoming season.

The ENSL has a wide history of using groups and sometimes not using groups as have many sports. It is impossible to just arrange fair and exciting matches for everyone with one single system, there always has to be compromises. But these also allow for some upsets and having teams increase just by playing higher level teams.

In most sports, any team would be happy to be in the highest league regardless whether they get stomped or not. But we are talking about e-sports here, mostly without any (significant) prizes involved - the ENSL is and stays a non-profit organisation that makes it possible for teams in Natural Selection to play in a competitive setup and have fun by that. And this fun part can of course vary regarding to the division your team is put into.

Right now, many discussions, personal ones and forum posts here and in UWE forums and even a petition have shown up to get our attention. As a community platform, our main goal is to do this work for the community and not against it. Hence we will take all of that into consideration for a better seeding system and maybe a restructured division setup (groups, playoffs etc) for Season 3.

Our biggest problem right now is time. The official matches start tomorrow and most of this discussion started yesterday, basically 2 days before the season start, although most of the information was already out there. Also, it is common opinion throughout the community that the European League (EU divisions) is far better off then the American League (NA divisions). Considering all that, we can't change the EU Divisions anymore and go by the seedings and system we have. Short:

EU and AU Divisions will not change and be played as it is.

The NA Divisions are a different story. After some lengthy internal discussions we decided the following:

We postpone the start of the NA matches by 1 week. This means, if you play in a NA Division, Week 1 starts at the 17th March - ignore the match times on your contest for the moment!

Some final words with the teams will be changed and then we will decide after this weekend whether we restructure the division setup for the NA Divisions. After that we will hit a news again and correct the matches (at least the times).

Please note that this change on the American League then would be a trial to see if the restructured setup fits the mission of ENSL and the NSL Leagues better. The feedback from you, as a community, and results we see would then be used for the whole NSL Leagues in Season 3.

We acknowledge that maybe some teams, especially on EU side who wished the same, will be disappointed by this decision. But please keep in mind that we can't allow changes to the EU League due to organisatorial circumstances. The NA League has a shorter playtime in general (since it's only 24 teams) which is the main reason why we decided to do this: They can start their matches later and still be finished before the EU League ends. Also the matchups on EU side seem way more acceptable for the teams than the NA ones. We want to improve the quality of ENSL and are happy about all sorts of (constructive!) feedback we can get.

We couldn't do this League without you, the teams, and hope you can follow our decisionmaking and reasoning.

Thanks,

The ENSL Administration