i'm sure most of the people here thoroughly enjoy having a season essentially complete and then have playoffs 2 months later. i understand the goal was to decrease the chance of teams disbanding. a sore of the league since prob 2013. However given that this percentage has not decreased given all other ideas to rectify it. Perhaps next season we have firm dates and move on. i commend the staff on giving their free time to make each season happen. But time and time again, we are catering to these teams that disband and penalize the active teams. This over time has creared more inactivity and a negative experience for these said teams.

Do you think we need firm dates?
What are the thoughts of players who have played through these last 3-4 seasons?

This was my first season, and our team right now has only 6 active members. Atleast one of our players have irregular work days due to his job.
So I don't think set match dates would work really well, atleast in our case.
I think matches worked pretty well in Div3, and in Div2 if I'm not mistaken.
Maybe just set date for group stages end etc.
Also this season there was problem with update breaking comp mod for some time, so it delayd it little bit.

Also in yesterdays stream someone suggested getting together a little prize pool from donations, maybe UWE could also help us get donations for small prize pool. It might motivate people atleast a little bit more.

Also small prize for each division might encourage more new players to join the comp scene.

The ensl is making no money at all its actually the opposite we have a lot of small costs that some Awesome individuals pay all the Time

At this point a big thanks to everyone for hosting the Server and the Website
Ref ing
Cast ing
and of course the Modders and other people that infest so much time for the ensl.

So the donation pool has to come from somewhere either we take a sponsorship (under 100 viewers on twitch is there somebody that sponsors that ?)
or huge advertisement banners
or we create a pool to donate to, that will get divided to all divisions
(But since its about actual money it should probably be divided between all teams but the more points you make the more percentage of money you get)

How much money can we expect is it worth the effort ?





So back to the when next season starts i checked the ensl history and looked up when all the spring seasons where starting:
s11 24 march
s9 20 march
s6 15 march
s3 22 march
S1 10 march

So i guess something like 25 March or 1 April sounds good to me about fixed time i agree it has been proven enough that more time does not lead to much more games played.

Gung-Ho says

Also this season there was problem with update breaking comp mod for some time, so it delayd it little bit.

luckily a one-time occurrence that hasn't happened before and never will again

I suggest to open the Sign-ups as soon as possible. The sooner you know, what teams will perform, the sooner you can plan the size and amount of divisions.

the problem is if the signups are open for too long teams that have signed up will have disbanded by then and won't play the season... The godar reboot did this last season

The season should be played within a not too strict time frame, no need to stress in a little community.
The price pool idea ... I think it's ridiculous, since this community is small and simply doesn't have enough people watching / playing to generate any money, and why would anyone donate money..?

Solution could be to organize more small cups like Easter cup for example, have every team that joins contribute a small amount of money and the winner gets all. But then again might as well donate to Heracles right?

Money is always an extrinsic motivator, and sure people play cs go or overwatch for it but those games are way more popular. And even then they will only play if there is a shit ton to win. That will never be possible in ns2, so the only motivation that brings people here is intrinsic, obviously, either it's competence-based or community based (people enjoy casting, having responsibility as admin ect).

So people want to win what a surprise. In d1 that has basically been impossible for at least the last couple seasons, since hera always has the best team that no one else can beat. Why even play d1 when you can't win? That's basically the reason so many teams disband in the higher div.

Now you could say "to get better you need to get shit on first blabla" worked rly well this far with teams eh.
Most players hit a skill cap at a certain point they see that they don't get better, that there is a inherent skill difference that can not be overcome no matter what you do.

Ok so idk where I am going with this I'm just putting down my thoughts. So teams that can challenge heras team never last long for some reason or don't get together at all because players seem to he afraid to challenge heras team and lose they are super easily demotivated and emo. So what you end up with every season is teams with like 4 players who could be in a team that potentially as good games vs hera and about 2 players who make sure that's not going to happen since their skill is on a way lower level and everyone knows it. And these teams seem to work out as in they continue existing at least to the end of a season.. my theory is that these players work as a psyche shield for the rest of the team, when you lose you can just blame them and not be like "ok we tried everything we have 6 players of high skill tried our best and still lost gg"

So am I saying heras team should disband and their players should join different teams? No. This is a league after all you wanna get your best friends together and compete. Can't just tell people what to do.

So how will this be solved? I don't know honestly ... I'd like to play in d1 with 5 other equal skilled players but I know how it will end. People will play a lot of pcws vs lower skilled teams, drill a bunch be super motivated just yo disband when the season get a serious ... It's like they burn out waste all their energy before anything even happened and then just leave and be like "no interest in ns2 anymore" bullshit. They are just scared to play and find out who is the better team.

So as I said idk where i am going with this just sharing my experience here. It's a mental thing for sure that fucks up div 1 every season, the other divs aRe always fine for SOME WEIRD UNEXPLICABLE REASON THAT NO ONE COULD EVER FIGURE OUT [this sentence is sarcasm i have to point this out apparently].

So basically stop playing so much pcws stop all this time investment crap just make a team and play the one or two games. With 6 higher skilled players that could MAYBE CHALLENGE HERAS STACKED BOIS.

Could go on rambling but lemme hear your thoughts on the matter first.

Related:
I'd like to play d1. I really would. Msg me on steam if you wanna get together for a potential s13 team.

100% with Nights.

the player base is so small, why donating money to keep it alive. Small cups sounds like a good idea to me.

Somehow it seems, there is always one dominating Team in this game which maybe no one really can't compete. I can't speak for the last years, but I remember (European) Teams like Torment/KTDM/Knife/9L which were literally unbeatable :) maybe some US teams like Cri,Terroror or Exigent could do the job.

"It's a mental thing for sure that fucks up div 1 every season, the other divs aRe always fine for SOME WEIRD UNEXPLICABLE REASON THAT NO ONE COULD EVER FIGURE OUT."

Probably largely due to the fact that most teams who actually play in the div2 and div3 have a goal to reach div1 and know there is still room to improve. There's also no super dominating team in either divs and a lot less t o x i c i t y.

People just don't wanna give hera's team an excuse to shittalk - because you know they will

Honestly if people are trying to win money from playing this game, they are in the wrong game.

In terms the season, what i want are set end dates, we went from having to finish the season in December to prolonging it for another 3 months. I mean i understand we had issues with comp mod, but we started the season in October and now ended up in March, I don't know about you guys but I see a issue with that. I don't know about other people, but I won't be back for another season if we don't get some hard caps on when a season is suppose to end.

My team went from playing all our matches basically before Christmas since we knew we wouldn't have any time to play during the break and assuming that the playoffs would start after the Christmas break was over, but instead the season was drawn out another 2 months. There is no incentive to play games or even practice when we don't even know when a season is suppose to end. This ended up basically killing my team as we started to have prior commitments. We went into our final matches with basically no play time as a team, i'm not complaining, but if I knew beforehand that the season wasn't going to end until march, I wouldn't have wasted my time playing.

I don't know about others the reason i still play this game is comp matches. if you like pubbing in this game you should go get checked out for autism, i don't say things like this often, but its the truth.

Nightsy says

[this sentence is sarcasm i have to point this out apparently]

rofl

Nooblar says

if you like pubbing in this game you should go get checked out for autism, i don't say things like this often, but its the truth.

love of my life <3

There would be a better chance of playing a decent season if you used donation money to straight up pay commanders to play the game. There's no competition in this game without comms that actually want to comm. and there's no where near 1 comm for every 5 field players.

Also, unless there's something like a 'salary' cap, with what's left of the game there's always going to be one team in div 1 that wins without needing to practice. The next best team is basically just going to practice to take a round off them here and there. And then the best players wouldn't even play anyway if they had to mix in with anyone but the next 4 best players.

Is a hard roster cap at 6 with actual merc restrictions feasible? I mean, probably not to actually get games played, but it would atleast force some more distribution and create a little competition. Maybe even just for div 1.

There is at least 10 players who are really close to hera's boyz skill. Just stack them too and div 1 will be interesting again.

Use a trashcan, gather all the left players inside it, add some flammable liquid, some matches and you'll have yourself some good sweet barbeque!

Edit: Dont forget to bring the marshmallows, they're not on the house

IIRC Lucky chams was the only team who did it correctly against heras team. Since then I haven't seen a single team that played against them continuously for months just to improve.