Gathers : Invitational Gather
Well hello there,
I guess a simple picture would suffice to announce what you all were waiting for. We added a new feature to the Gather section named the “Invitational Gather “.
The principle is really easy to understand. If you are part of this team : http://www.ensl.org/teams/949/ , you can join the “Invitational Gather.“
To apply to join the team click this button:
(then click Request to Join button).
Once you've applied, you will need to wait for a Leader, Gather Moderator or Admin to evaluate and either accept or reject your application to the team. As it says in it's name, this is an invitational gather group and not everyone will be let in.
Membership Guidelines:
- You need to have participated in one regular ENSL season. (ex: If you have played the Season 1 or 5, it's fine!)
- Invitation to the group will be determined by individual skill. Members will be ultimately evaluated by their previous experience and current skill level by the Leaders, Admins, and Moderators. As a rule of thumb, the cutoff point for skill will be marked at the upper bracket of Division 2. Keep in mind, we are rating skill individually and not directly based on what team they are currently on.
- Follow the same rules as normal Gathers.
- Membership can and will be revoked when rules are broke and stretched.
This is a premium gather section, we consider everyone in this group to know the guidelines. If abuses are spotted you will lose your access to this group.
Keep in mind this new section is a temporary fix for a greater project to improve the gather area. We are still thinking and working to improve the system to let you have the best possible experience. You can also thank Chris for his continued hard work in improving our ability to enjoy this game at a highly competitive level.
I also want to remind you one thing:
Make sure you set your actual team as your primary team in "My Agenda" after requesting to join. Even if you're not accepted, you still need to change your primary team back to your actual team.
That's all !
Enjoy,
Comments
18 April 2016, 16:24
18 April 2016, 16:50
18 April 2016, 17:44
18 April 2016, 22:06
-you need a div2/div 3 gather
-you need an invite only gather run by top div1 players
-you need a public gather that isn't called casual
^^^minimum requirements for a gather system that isn't awful
19 April 2016, 01:30
19 April 2016, 02:50
Rome wasn't built in a day.
When you post stuff like this it comes off as a list of demands.
19 April 2016, 07:26
19 April 2016, 09:04
Finally we can see which folks are not able to read fontsize 1 billion RED paragraphs in newspost.
8)
19 April 2016, 09:52
19 April 2016, 10:46
True that! B)
19 April 2016, 10:52
19 April 2016, 11:04
xD
Maybe found team "Stigmatized" then. As apology I'll join you as well :)
19 April 2016, 11:37
Something something inquisition joke.
19 April 2016, 12:43
pls no
19 April 2016, 13:46
Meh whatever kek
19 April 2016, 14:20
19 April 2016, 15:14
19 April 2016, 15:18
I've already seen a Classic gather start and then cancel when half of the players switched to Invitational, but there weren't enough players to fill both so each gather emptied over the course of the next hour.
19 April 2016, 15:21
19 April 2016, 15:49
19 April 2016, 17:01
But on the end of ns2, normal gather system will go back to life, as it will be the only way to recall 6vs6 game style.
19 April 2016, 17:43
It is a list of demands. Deliver the gathers and nobody gets hurt.
Never said you had to do it in a day.
And while I'm making demands, I'm pretty sure most people would agree that what we really need is more of a lobby system like tf2lobby/tf2center, which I know you mentioned was in the works in the distant future, but why isn't that being prioritized? Why are we making our 1-man development team work on half cooked ideas instead? The main excuse I've heard about this is "that's a lot of work", so HIRE MORE HELP. How much $$ do we need to hire enough help to get shit done?
19 April 2016, 18:32
19 April 2016, 18:43
19 April 2016, 19:14
Weren't you the one that yelled loudest about the need for a more casual expanded lobby? That panned out greatly.
Look, your main problem with gathers is that we don't have enough different lobbys it seems. We already have a vision for setting up different kinds of lobbys, and it will take time. There are some conflicts though we have to think about - for example: we allow too many players in a higher skill lobby, and all the "classic"/normal gathers could be ruined. If the game was as large as TF2 then I'm sure your idea would work perfectly well, but that game has an average of 52,900 more players online than NS2 does.
We don't pay chris or have an account set up where we can divvy out money to people that help support the NSL. Even if we did, how would we decide who gets $$ and how much of the pie they get? I would love if we could reward people for their contributions but it could complicate things and its not like we make any money from this league and can pay people for their work like UWE can.
The reason I reacted to your post like that is because chris has done all his work pro bono and you essentially are saying its awful.
19 April 2016, 19:20
19 April 2016, 19:25
Same for me in the sense that I had opportunity to kill better players than me and have done so really enjoy this perhaps you should keep the invite gathers as scrims as we have been doing and gathers as gathers maybe set a minimum amount of hours or something but this method seems a bit rushed , segregating a community that is already shrinking isn't the best idea
19 April 2016, 20:16
Not really, no. I posted this: http://i.imgur.com/6F4dH6p.png 3 months ago and asked to be put in charge of the 8v8 gathers. That didn't happen, and instead we got a "7v7 casual" hidden inside the existing gather. (not to mention no one has done anything to try to balance 7v7)
You either let people create their own gathers with their own requirements or you set up the right gathers that the community needs (div1 only gather, div1/div2 mix gather, div2/div3 mix gather, public/open gather). The word "casual" was never my idea, and is terrible marketing.
This "invitational gather" is a step in the right direction, but without the other gathers in place a lot of people are getting excluded right now. Right now there's an "invitational gather" and a "classic gather" playing simultaneously. It's not like you NEED more players to support a more extensive gather system. The gather system only has to support the players, and right now it barely does. Even if some gathers sit empty for most of the day, you will end up with better games being played. If this system was in place I wouldn't be surprised to see the invite gather, div1/div2 gather and open gather full and playing at the same time at peak hours.
19 April 2016, 21:01
Yes, but outside of peak hours it seems very detrimental. A while ago there were 25 players between the three gathers, but a few left while a gather was starting up, and an hour later none of them are filled and they have 6 5 and 6. People get tired of waiting or they have other things to do within the next hour and they leave. I've seen them empty in this way, rather than merging. Maybe there needs to be a cutoff time for the invitational gathers if players are going to be sitting in separate lobbies for an hour rather than playing a gather together.
19 April 2016, 22:53
20 April 2016, 02:49
20 April 2016, 04:20
ES UN DESARROLLO que no hay gathers españoles!
Pls bauer l2W B)
20 April 2016, 06:58
Says the one who forgot to put a "i" in the beginning of the sentence.
20 April 2016, 08:45
You're all equally cancer in my eyes.
20 April 2016, 09:09
Mendasp spanish is not the same as your filthy mexican, it's a much more beautiful than this drug dealer language. Thank you for correcting me evisu
20 April 2016, 09:26
@SaveMe - Shut your whore mouth, you dirty Somali immigrant! B)
20 April 2016, 09:54
Careful of calling Supafred that, you will end up with a Permanent ban on his Servers haha xD
20 April 2016, 10:25
They empty instead of merging because the players in the separate gathers don't want to play in the other gathers. It's as simple as that. You think that if you took away the additional gathers, that would force these players to join the one gather? You really want to try to FORCE people to play? You think one gather is the best system?
21 April 2016, 18:47
I've signed up a few days ago and did not get accepted nor declined yet.
Today i was told on TS that the group is already full of people that they did not want to be in the group in first place, so they have to get rid of some.
But if that was for true, this would have been done already. So i must conclude, that this just happens out of some peoples personal preference.
Also, the websites statement is totally different from what i was just told on TS.
As of now, the current state is killing my chance to have a decent NS2 experience besides PCWs.
(since normal gathers won't fill up anymore)
22 April 2016, 17:53
But yeah, there is some people who may or should not be in the group.. Some cleansing is needed to be done. I thought the whole purpose was to only start with div1? And later on slowly begin to invite the div.2 individual skilled players?
23 April 2016, 03:14
23 April 2016, 06:34
This post was just a personal attack and contributed nothing to the conversation
-Simba
23 April 2016, 11:02
Now if we all could read and understand the English language, we'd know that the skill will be evaluated individually by a few people. Keep in mind that this whole system is (from what i know) just a temporary solution, and it's there to provide DIV 1 PLAYERS with an opportunity to get games going outside PCW times. Also, it's not even a week old so give it some time. When people are not accepted into the invite gathers there is a solid reason for that - GET GUD. Also I agree there are quite a few people in the group who clearly do not deserve to be in it, but that again is just because it's a very new system, so again, give it some time and I'm sure the people responsible will get things done.
The "website statement" says - pay attention - "As a rule of thumb, the cutoff point for skill will be marked at THE UPPER BRACKET OF DIVISION 2". So if people do not think you should be invited, there is clearly only one possible reason. They don't like your face. Yes, it must be that nobody likes your face. Damn these players who want high quality games, why do they have to be so picky when it comes to peoples faces. @@@@@@@
How about you see all this as an opportunity to be THE BEST in the normal gathers? You can see what it's like being the only one making calls and trying to teach people, hf! (Don't forget about all the nice ELO that's going to be yours, hmmmm..)
...........
LOL
23 April 2016, 11:29
yeah, ryssk, silly insults without any arguments by you characterize you as a very smart and intelligent person.
23 April 2016, 13:07
Hodor
23 April 2016, 13:09
Yesterday i was waiting for about 3-4 hours for a gather to start. Sometime one actually started, but then was cancelled because people left. Some joined the inv gather.
For quiete some time, no normal gather started anymore, but the inv gathers started one by one.
Sorry, that i was not in the mood to wait another 3-4 hours, because the first gather i can see in the list now started at about 2:21 in the morning. The normal gathers, that started after that where between 06:32 and 09:45. Which for some people is "in the middle of the night".
So, during "normal gather times", i see much less classic gathers to happen.
And thanks bauer for the clarification, i guess i was not reading it right the first time.
Before the new system went live i had the chance to play with these guys almost every day, that i had time for ns.
But as of yesterday, it was killing my chance of having a decent chance for a good ns2 experience and i am afraid, that this will continue.
I don't know for real, if any of those people (including you bauer), really does not like my face or just thinks, that i am a reason for them, to not have a high quality gather, but i seriously doubt that.
23 April 2016, 13:29
I guess a simple picture would suffice to announce what you all were waiting for. We added a new feature to the Gather section named the “Invitational Gather “."
Yay EXACTLY what the whole community was waiting for!
Gay boy 1337 club. Let me in, Let me in!
23 April 2016, 13:31
However the way I see it is that the frustration I had was essentially out of my hands because I couldn't control other players' skill. At least this frustration which has been transferred to you is in your hands to get better.
In either system some people are going to be upset, but at least this way I think it's easier for you to control your own fortunes and be able to do what you want to do. The people who lose out in this system at least have the ability to work hard and get in on the action at the expense of no one else.
23 April 2016, 14:19
23 April 2016, 14:55
People that want to improve in gathers but are currently the "best" of classic gathers can no longer play against the high skilled players like they once could... so they are now either forced to not gather (which is exactly what the high skilled players were forced to do prior to this) or gather with low skill players that offer them little to no challenge... making improving incredibly difficult.
There NEEDS to be a middle ground... somewhere that the mid skill players can challenge themselves and PROVE themselves, its all well and good saying "get better and you'll get into high skill gathers" but when some people are not even remotely challenged by the current "classic" gathers, how exactly are they supposed to improve, and how exactly are they going to prove themselves?
There needs to be a "proving gather" where only the lowest skill players are not allowed. A place where high skilled players play regularly to see the potential people have and help them achieve that potential... a place where people can challenge themselves and improve.
With the current system there is a big gap where people of little to no skill can have fun, and high skill players can have fun, but everyone in between is being rejected and told to "get gud"
23 April 2016, 22:37
23 April 2016, 22:45
No, there's just too many players in the invite gathers.
24 April 2016, 00:40
And another side effect of this is that you are getting no new EU players for gathers since it's only pro gathers early in the night, saw a few of them joined but they left after 2-3 hours. Atleast all the newcomers of the last 6 months didn't faced this problem, it's just ironic that some of them supported this idea.
24 April 2016, 05:02
the middle ground is a scrimmage-- wait i mean PRIVATE CLAN WARZ. go get 5 of your friends and CHALLENGE a higher skill team!!!!
24 April 2016, 10:51
all the whining was anticipated, it's just that the rollout of these gathers was so shit ([READ: sephy FUCKED UP like usual}] that it turned into a shit show
24 April 2016, 10:54
it's so fucking hard to get scrims dude. That's the whole reason this gather was created, isn't it? Div 1 teams having trouble finding PCWs? Guess what, every team in every division has trouble getting PCWs.
Kash is absolutely right.
@Golden
No, there's not enough people in the "invite" gather. Let the rest of div2 in and then re-make your "invite" gather and do it right this time.
something like this would be fine, but should be run by people who know players' skills so they can allow non-league players into the right division gather:
http://i.imgur.com/F0sTIDC.png
something like this would probably be easier to run, but should have some rare exceptions to the hive skill rule:
http://i.imgur.com/hLLkUum.png
24 April 2016, 11:18
24 April 2016, 11:34
8:55 AM - Deck: that i can just go for that
24 April 2016, 11:55
24 April 2016, 12:26
Right now, players who are in the Invite Gather group at the very bottom end, refuse to play Classic Gathers still because they're 'in the group' (funnily enough, a few of these players were very vocally against having invite gathers at all). This results in the Classic Gather sitting at 8/12 or 10/12 while there are 4+ players queued in the Invite Gather just waiting. Now over time, this will all level out and people will realize it's better to just play a Classic Gather instead of waiting for an Invite, but I don't know how long that will take seeing as half this community seems to be retarded.
24 April 2016, 16:36
24 April 2016, 17:13
this is like watching dipshit legislating happen in real time
all due respect to you and yours
24 April 2016, 20:44
jesus christ just ban gaben and others you pussies
this is like watching dipshit legislating happen in real time
all due respect to you and yours
+1
24 April 2016, 20:58
Thinning the herd in the invite gathers should be the task at the moment, figure out who actually BELONGS in that "elite" group of people... then those that cannot take part in invite gathers will return to casual gathers and an equilibrium will be found... then its just a case of maintaining the system.
24 April 2016, 21:25
24 April 2016, 22:03
25 April 2016, 00:55
There are few teams that PCW us in our own division at the moment, and higher skill teams are even fewer. I'm just grateful for the times when we actually manage to play at all.
25 April 2016, 01:50
+1
I'm just gonna post a bit here because turts and I are constantly getting PM'd and I've been basically reiterating the same thing. There's a couple different things to look at with how the Invitational Gathers are currently set up. Right now about 65-70% of all the players in there are current or past Div 1/Premier players. That leaves the other 30-ish% as "top bracket" Division 2 players. Many people in the group (we can call them 'Elitist' I suppose) are even mad that there are any Division 2 players at all and don't even want to sign up with them. Ideally we would like it to be primarily Division 1+ (90%) with temporary passes that could be handed out to those Div 2 players. This would be the best way to sustain both levels of Classic and Invite Gathers, as Golden pointed out. We are aware that right now there are certain people that would have normally played Classic but refuse now that they're part of the Invite group. This is why we've basically halted letting in any more Division 2 players as we believe it would hurt Classic even further.
There's not a lot we can do at the moment as Chris is unavailable to work on any Gather stuff right now. To those saying - just let someone else take it over - it's tough to just hand over the keys to ENSL.org to some stranger + really it's been Chris's work and they'd need his permission. It was great having simple to help carry the load, which really made his departure a big loss to this community.
In the meantime, Turts is working on a Steam Bot that will help members of the Invite group give feedback/vote on which players should be added/removed from the group. Until we can implement temporary passes or the completely revamped lobby system we will have to let this play out a little longer. I've considered removing some players from the group that are at the borderline threshold, but it's only been a week and I think that people's worries will level out once people realize its better to join up a Classic that's 9/12 than waiting for the 3/12 Invite to fill. A lot of people are saying that Classic Gathers are not happening, but from what I've observed they've been occurring at the same frequency as Invite Gathers - but I have no data to back that up since Chris is busy and I haven't wanted to bother him about that stuff after only a week of data.
What I would recommend is patience. Give it a little more time. If you're not already accepted into the group, you probably wont be any time soon. But don't give up you're hopes either, we want to be able to allow people in on a temporary basis, which we can only do right now by Me/Turts/Hera adding/removing you from the team which is just a bit more work that necessary.
25 April 2016, 10:21
25 April 2016, 11:52
25 April 2016, 12:46
http://recordit.co/GysHmaIzGt is a short demo of what I have now. I think it's pretty much finished, I just need to
1. add people to its friends list so it can message them whenever we have a new potential member or removal.
2. convince people to take the 10 seconds it requires to respond.
25 April 2016, 12:53
In the news post it was stated, that some requirements MAY be introduced.
I think, that should be just realized.
Having a choice between "playing with rookies" and "playing with vets" should reduce the pain, people experience during some gathers (for Div 1 and Div 2 players alike).
Well, this is, at least, what i expected to happen, before inv gathers vent live and all my gather-friends where taken away from me :(
I pefectly understand, what WOB was saying. I feel the same about even lower players sometimes.
But when i think about it, this attitude is pretty egoistic (which is fine by nature, but it won't bring gathers forward). Nothing is FORCING anybody to not play gathers. It's just their own decision.
If more prem players would have just joined the casual gather in the past, this would already boost the quality of gathers as well, and would make it more fun for other prems/div1 to play gathers.
To expect this from div1+ players is not to much in my eyes, since "we others" did the same in the past months. If we didn't, there would be not many gathers to be archived at all until today and the obviously needed playerbase for inv gathers might basicly not exsist.
PS: Just LET ME IN! And i'll stop posting the truth! xD
25 April 2016, 14:31
Now when the invite gather came, from my personal experience it was good for 1-2 days, then it got flooded by bunch of people who may or not may belong there. Sure i sound like an total douche(which in fact i am, and proud of it), but from listening in the TS, thats how the most people feel that way. Not everybody but the majority does
25 April 2016, 15:49
25 April 2016, 16:57
Second: Invitational Gathers have too many players. Golden's gather club would have been a pretty good sample of users to take and start off with (There was a reason it was exclusive). The "invitational pass" to other users is a pretty fantastic idea.
Third: This expectation that top players should teach bad players is counter-intuitive for a lot of people at this stage I believe. A lot of people with 1k+ hours who hold this belief are not learning anymore. They're free riding off the back of other people thinking that they're improving but they aren't because everyone else is improving either at the same rate or quicker. If you take the initiative to find shit out for yourself, to learn how to play yourself, and figure out your own unique playstyle, a lot of you could become very good div 1 players.
Basically; you shouldn't be looking to imitate div 1 players, but find ways to be better than div 1 players. And you don't have to do that by playing with or against div 1 players, you just need to prove that you can do the same job better than a div 1 player (i.e. stomp your div 2 opponents to the ground, prove you're more OP than the division you are in)
26 April 2016, 03:46
27 April 2016, 23:07
The old rule "You need to play against better players/teams to improve personal- and teamskill" is replaced by "You dont learn it anyway, so dont waste our time".
While players and teams want to improve by playing against better opponents, these refused to play with and against lower skill.
Higher div teams didnt play PCW against lower skill, higher skill players didnt play gathers against lower skill.
And i dont hink that lower div teams need "teachers", they just learning stuff by playing with and against better players.
Its also hillarious this gather-group is full of people who complained about the ensl "dictatorship" in the past but they have no problems that 2 people decide who is is in this group.
Well, anyway.
Im sure some will tell me im not allowed to post here, cause i dont play gathers.
So, have fun in your "Elite-Club" but dont whine that you dont get any new blood in the future.
29 April 2016, 03:11
We sure are missing out!!!!!
29 April 2016, 07:49
29 April 2016, 10:42
Gathers are full of 6 months old players, especially ones from the newcomer tournament...
29 April 2016, 11:26
I agree that you can't determine skill by the amount of hours played, but you can certainly get a feel for the potential of a player by the number of hours they have played and their attitude; the simple fact is most 1k+ hours players limit themselves by this attitude of "hand me down training". It's a game, you are all free to make the same decisions and mistakes as any of us, you don't need references or training or teaching from div 1 players.
@depara - You've kind of missed the point again, have another go
30 April 2016, 03:20
The fact that you need to play against stronger opponents to improve your skill?
You can reach a the level of a "pubstar" and every1 on a pub servers says: "wow, hes soo good"
But compared to real good players he will be average for sure cause he cant learn some important points against low skill players.
The fact that there is no endless skill gain?
By your logic there is no limit:
"y're free riding off the back of other people thinking that they're improving but they aren't because everyone else is improving either at the same rate or quicker. "
Wich is wrong.
By your logic you can improve to an level of an wallhack/aimbot, wich is nonsense.
So while a Div2 players can make huge steps, a top div1 player is basicly stucked at his skill level with maybe very little improvements.
With the current "elite gather" and the "i dont play with/against weaker players" mentality you cut of a chance for lower div teams/players to gain new experiments and new ideas howto play.
And im sure there people out there that want to improve.
But you say "hey, you can. And if you dont improve, its your fault" but you ignore the fact that you cut of a great pool of knowledge completly for them.
So the only chance for these players is to watch livestreams of high div matches, wich is not the same like playing.
30 April 2016, 14:24
The point is for it to be an exclusive thing where there are still really good players playing classic gathers. Also, high skill gathers don't seem to fill all the time which also helps the classic gathers. Also, your point only really applies if there is no one better than someone in a classic gather. If you hit the ceiling of classic gather, and there was nothing else to learn, but that might only be for a handful of people. Most people would fall below that and could still learn a lot from div 2 players or the high skill players that still play classic gathers.
I think your point makes sense, but isn't really true based on what is happening. I don't think the classic gathers have changed that much (a lot of good players weren't playing classic/normal gathers before the change). You can still play with your team or mixes with good players. You can still watch streams as you said or watch other people's scrims and learn things. Plenty of areas to learn from, and some of the best players still play classic gathers. Would I learn more if I was playing with high skill players every game? Yes, but those players aren't being playing all the time anyways, and was the case before this change.
30 April 2016, 17:04
Lock, seeing you play in pubs when I had under 200 hours is what made me want to get better. You are the one that invited me into pugs and even brought me in to nexil for a few mixed gathers. getting my ass kicked at that level opened my eyes to things I needed to improve on. I remember how friendly and helpful the competitive community was back then and im sad it is changing so much now. While I feel that I have peaked and may be getting worse now. (im over 30 years old and my eyes and reflexes are getting bad) there are still a lot of newer players with a lot of potential out there that would love an opportunity to be challenged. What has been described by others as an "elitest" attitude is not how I thought the ns2 community is. I really wish some of you could just step back and analyze how this appears from another perspective.
30 April 2016, 22:56
1 May 2016, 11:02
1 May 2016, 12:49
Public - Gathers - Mixes - PCWs - Officials - Invite gathers
Mix in some streams, some casts, maybe some analysis videos and you got yourself a wealth of opportunities to improve.
On the topic of "endless skill"; you strawman. I didn't say there wasn't a plateau of skill and I didn't say that the rate of improvement could not be 0.
The amount of pcws that I've looked for and been turned away because we're "too good" far outnumbers the amount of pcws I've been asked for by lower teams. The fact is, it's always somebody else's fault.
"You won't play with us so we won't improve"
"We won't play you because stomping us doesn't help us improve"
1 May 2016, 15:16
2 May 2016, 04:08
2 May 2016, 04:11
2 May 2016, 10:40
You're 100% right, I'm just being a general ass lately.
2 May 2016, 12:34
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