Cancel your vacation, there is NS2 to be played!

The playoffs are right upon us and will end Season 6 in the next few weeks. This means the summer-break is about to start, but the staff has other plans. In fact we want to offer you guys as much NS2-activity as possible.

So, we decided to give you a peek into our schedules:

The Off-Season Ladder (June 15th - September 15th)

As announced in one of the previous posts, we are experimenting with an Off-Season Ladder this summer. This is to test the concept and get some experience in. We admins delve deep, by even fielding our own team. This allows us to see the ladder from each angle. Don't worry, though. The only "Abuse" will be, that some of the members play in two teams. You will not see the adminteam partaking in any "serious" competition in that fashion.

The ladder is going to start in less than 2 weeks on 15th of June and runs a full 3 months. So go, form up a team (even if it's temporary) and sign in. The more the merrier. I shamelessly cite Zefram's explanations on how to register your team here:

  1. To create a team, register an account and go to Agenda -> Create a new team
  2. Get your players to register and tell them to Join your team in their Agenda.
  3. To accept your players on the team, go to Agenda -> Click your team name -> Edit (scroll down) -> Members -> Change their status from Joining to Member, Leader, or Deputee.
  4. To join the tournament, go to Agenda -> Click your team name -> Edit (scroll down) -> Contests -> Join Off-Season-Ladder.
  5. Check the Contest page for your team name to see if you've done it correctly.

Do not forget to create a team-page for your team, after you signed in, so other teams can appropriately throw their glove in front of you.

Draft Tournament (June 27th - 19 CEST)

Especially suited for all those players who got left by their less active teammates: we bring a Draft to you on June 27th EU time. Players need no team to register for this event. From the pool of registered players captains will assemble their team in a draft fashion.

Depending on participant numbers this event might overboard into the evening time of June 28th or July 4th. We will know more about this, as players start registering.

Speaking of which, follow the below link to register yourself to the Draft Tournament:

Register for Draft Tournament here!

If response is well, we will probably squeeze in more Draft Tournaments over the summertime (especially on NA times).

Skulks with Shotguns - Capture the Gorge (July 4th + July 11th - 19 CEST)

In the beginning of July we are trying something completely new. A tournament for the Skulks with Shotguns mod, specifically the "Capture the Gorge"-mode. If you haven't played Skulks with Shotguns, yet, you should definitely give it a go.

We hope to get everything in place for this completely new event. There is a thread open for discussions on this event. I look forward to see this new format of competition in our community and hope you share my excitement.

A registration for the SWS-Tournament will come up shortly. Note that teamsizes are reduced to 5, so even if some of your team-buddies spent their time outside or in vacation you can partake in this frantic event.

Custom Map Cup (July 18th + July 25th)

Test how flexible your team is on lesser known and new maps in the Custom Map Cup. This helps the mappers to improve and balance their creations and make them suitable for competitive play. By helping them, we help ourselves in playing NS2 with more variation.

Tell us in the comments which maps you would like to see in the Custom Map Cup!

Newcomer Tournament (August 8th, 9th + 16th)

In February we saw 12 new teams struggling for the title of the best Newcomer Team. Most of those teams continued to play and joined us through entire Season 6. Half a year later we will promote the ENSL again and bring in as many players and teams as possible.

The Newcomer Tournament in February had been a very large and very exciting project and it will be again. If you want to help out in any fashion (Casting, Reffing, Organising, Forming a Team, Training a Team, Promoting the event on your servers, producing intro-clips...): contact the staff! Your help will be very appreciated.

Bringing new members in, is the lifeblood of each community.

Summer Cup (September 5th + 6th)

As the Off-Season lends to its end, we will slowly come back to the "usual" business. The Summer Cup is a simple tourney, where you can shake off the rust or test the potential of your new team.

Start of Season 7 (Mid of September)

We can't say or know how Season 7 is going to look like, but the kickoff time will be in September. We might think of some opening-shenanigans, like an All-Star-Game or Off-Season-Ladder finals to get you people into the mood.

 

This concludes our plan for the summer. Dates, times and even events might still change, while we try to fit everything to the community's needs.

As you see, we have a lot to offer for this Off-Season. Now it's up to you to prove, that a summer-break doesn't need to be an NS2-diet. Each tournament lives by its participants and the more show up, the better it will be.

You can start now, by registering your team for the ladder or signing into the Draft Tournament.

Stay tuned for more updates on the upcoming competitions!

tudy on 02 June 15 19:05

Comments

5803

Blank Mephilles | ELOgain

probably no surprise here but I would like to have docking2 in the custom map cup

4 June 2015, 13:58

6308

Blank MV | Doctors

For the custom maps cup : I'd say put in known maps like Nexus, Mineral and Caged.
Then I would recommend Docking2, Prison

5 June 2015, 11:41

4952

Blank Robby

Nice! SWS!

6 June 2015, 22:24

2129

Blank swalk | Xeon

Really nice guys, this is exactly what we need!

One thing, for the custom map cup.
Make sure that ONLY the participating players get to vote whether or not potential maps go into the season pool. That way you encourage people to play it, so they can get a say in terms of the map pool of the next season. It worked really well like that in the first custom map cup, teams that really didn't want to play abnormal maps participated and that's what I'd like to see again with the CMC.
Also, exclude any custom maps that are already a part of the season map pool. Make it a pool of "fresh" maps, if possible.

Other than that, I really enjoy the initiatives and I hope I can participate in most of them, I will miss out on SWS though, damn festival season! ;P

7 June 2015, 22:53

6308

Blank MV | Doctors

Depends on how many maps you want in the pool. 'Fresh maps" might be hard to find, especially if we want to have playable maps

8 June 2015, 00:14

2129

Blank swalk | Xeon

"I shamelessly cite Zefram's explanations on how to register your team here:"

I'm pretty sure that's my handwriting and not Zefram's :P

Anyway, I think there should be enough maps out there to be able to make a pool of non-current season pool maps.

9 June 2015, 20:47

5803

Blank Mephilles | ELOgain

ok but how many of them are actively being developed atm?

10 June 2015, 00:49

5291

Blank Pelargir | We're grumpy

Mephilles says
ok but how many of them are actively being developed atm?


69

10 June 2015, 10:13

5870

Blank simple

classy

10 June 2015, 13:02

6308

Blank MV | Doctors

I can confirm that we can find enough maps to play. But between abandonned custom maps and not really playable (fun) then you don't have much left. Prison, even though oddly balanced, is still fun to play, Docking2 is getting more and more there.

I think Nothing could be decent to play, but I think it's on hold.
Uplift as well, fairly decent to play on (on hold as well I think)
Relic Olmy's map (on hold but maybe a bit fun to play still, a lot of greybox though)


If you remove Caged, Nexus and Mineral.
Hydra is finished but complete trash imo.
Forge is aweful and was barely playable last time I played it
Stratos is finished.
Haven't taken a look at Kleoss yet
Gorge is playable but not fun
Outer rim ark has over connectivity issues but is fairly fun to play, and it looks good
Temple is not really playable right now in my opinion. Eon either.
Plant is forsake, and not viable to play on
Supply is not fit for comp play or even vanilla ns2 gameplay
Kleoss seems to be fit for NS1 gameplay, but not ns2, it's too much of a mess

Abandonned :
Fusion (no more activity from Mouse because of lack of feedback)
Light (have to ask Lotnik, but he hasn't pushed an update in a long while)
Frost (forsaken)
Fracture (doesn't intend to finish it)
Orbital (on hold as well i think)
Penta (uncomplete and abandonned)



So if you take active mappers with playable maps and remove already played maps in the ensl season, then you have pretty much 2 or three maps.

In these three maps which one of the three would like to be a new competitive map for the ensl ?
Playing custom maps is cool, playing them to try and achieve something is better.

So I think you should add the maps already played in the ensl (Caged, Nexus, Mineral) as well as completely new active custom maps like Prison, Docking2, Relic (to force Olmy back) and Nothing.
You would have to roll a dice at the beginning of every round to decide what map would be played and not let the teams decide.

10 June 2015, 15:52

6452

Blank Nightsy | Alski Syndrome

Is ns2_spaceship still being worked on?
(http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=287429241&searchtext=spaceship)

@OuterrimArc: I have no idea how marines are supposed to hold any res on that map lol. They would have to split 1 1 1 1 1 1 or something and then just rotate like crazy

10 June 2015, 17:08

5291

Blank Pelargir | We're grumpy

Nightsy says
Is ns2_spaceship still being worked on?
(http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=287429241&searchtext=spaceship)

@OuterrimArc: I have no idea how marines are supposed to hold any res on that map lol. They would have to split 1 1 1 1 1 1 or something and then just rotate like crazy



Wow, even the commander?

10 June 2015, 17:17

5844

Blank lotnik190

As I unfortunately no longer play NS2 and because of lack of interest about light I haven't worked on the map for about half year. Current version is in my opinion pretty well balanced for comp, very old version was tested on NSL map tests in 6v6 and it looked pretty well, so current version should be good.

About month ago DMD WiseChoices asked me if he can take over light, idk what he is doing currently with the map, but you can ask him (http://steamcommunity.com/id/wisechoices/), Custom Map Cup might give him a lot of feedback if he is still working on the map. And it would be nice to see light played in comp at least once, as it was developed mainly for this ;)

10 June 2015, 17:50

6452

Blank Nightsy | Alski Syndrome

Pelargir says
Nightsy says
Is ns2_spaceship still being worked on?
(http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=287429241&searchtext=spaceship)

@OuterrimArc: I have no idea how marines are supposed to hold any res on that map lol. They would have to split 1 1 1 1 1 1 or something and then just rotate like crazy



Wow, even the commander?


#NoMedsFastUpgrades
I just mean it seems aliens can get around to resbite quite easily and its hard to block lanes with few marines, at least it looks that way.

10 June 2015, 23:27

6619

Blank Dean0 | Heidis Bergziegen

#sentriesdonemywork

11 June 2015, 10:31

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