Hey admins.
Remember when everyone was asking for a ladder or more tournaments over the summer, apart from the 'elite friendly' summer cup and euro opens, and your general reply was basically "no, summer is always quite. Everyone will come back in September"
So we had nothing in place for new teams to join in on, or anything to appeal to the low-mid/lowhighmid teams (oh and the whole of Americano land)
Well, look at the player base then, and look now. We had 4x as many players and teams playing back then...
Great call guys! NS is properly on life support- An inactive competitive scene, player base dropping by the day and now even Fana is gone, who is going to call me out on my inconsistency's and lack of knowledge of competitive ns now?
And the sad thing is, no one even tried. You didn't even let anyone try. You are as bad as UWE. Screw you guys...
Yes, there is no ladder up yet. But I can promise you that this is in the work for a longer time now. Unfortunetaly, not all the missing pieces come that quick together as wanted, so we adapted. The ladder was always heavily debated and our main consensus was "we will try it for NS2 again, but we want to do it right instead of rushing things".
So, to keep you updated, the new website is finally making progress after a new coder took over the job. THis, and the NSL plugin integration to this, is requirement to do the ladder system as we imagine it.
So yeah, in the end it seems we failed since it is october and still no ladder, but we certainly do try.
I think lack of clear communication is an issue here. The playerbase feels quite distant from the ensl, what they're working on, what they're discussing, what tournaments are coming up, etc.
The lack of a ladder was not the reason for the low activity level during the summer, a ladder won't make people stay in front of their PCs during the summer holidays anymore than PCWs would. Many are on vacation or just going out in the sun during that period. Just look at the signups for the cups, they require alot less commitment than a ladder or a season and still we never had too many teams signing up in that period. Hell, even in counter-strike (with it's massive playerbase) it was really slow during summer, no cups or ladders ever changed that.
I think the true reason there are less teams in season 3 compared to season 1 and 2 is because UWE did not advertise the signups for season 3 like they did for the first seasons. That was the gateway to bringing in new teams. I was quite surpriced how many (new teams) actually signed up with no advertisement from UWE, I expected much less given the situation.
To say that the summer cup was "elite friendly" is quite the joke. That cup was made specificly to cater to all skill levels by splitting teams into skill based groups, just like the season.
Strongly agree with this. There have been a number of times where I have discovered important things about upcoming leagues from reading indirectly related comments. I would be curious to know how many people are actually even aware that a ladder is being built.
The community is quite close knit which is of course nice and tends to mean these things filter around, but you can not just assume that people are going to know someone who is close to the admin team. This is especially true of any new teams/new players who might find this kind of community unwelcoming.
If you try to cite our conversation, then we probably talked away from each other, since I did understand that you wanted to help out watching games and didn't offer any specific ideas or contributional skills like others did (e.g. "Hey I am good in LUA, can I help with plugins?" or "Hey I am a web developer, you need a hand?"). So yeah, the easiest response to generic help offers is first to offer Referee position. Since it is also easier to judge a person when you see some commitment before handing out access to the ENSL database if you understand what I mean.
So, for other jobs besides being referee we lack people, a random list:
1) Prediction/Article writers
Soz is doing a great job on his current website, that's why swalk constantly linked it. But on NS1 we have had many people writing articles like guides, predictions and others. It's easy to do. Click on Agenda -> Articles -> New article. Save and ask an admin to publish it.
2) PR
Big topic so I split it.
2.1) Vindaloo helped out alot on feeding the @NSLNews twitter. But for him it is also no 24/7 job and he does it from time to time as I have done it. I can hand access to twitter to people who want to regularly keep people on touch with what is going on. Active twitter feed is nice PR.
2.2) Video material
If you remember the cool intros Lalo did, or the map intros Soleanthia did, you get the idea what I am asking for. Cool videos by NSL for free giveaway to casters/streamers is really nice 2 have. So if you have a hand for video editing, try it out!
2.3) Sponsorship contacts/opportunities
We've had some people with contacts to potential sponsors. But this is of course not a pledge to anyone to just go out and ask for sponsorship in name of NSL. Only I can do that. But if you have a specific contact/idea/information about a possible work-together, let's talk. It was always a dream to get a bit price pool for NSL events without constantly asking the community for a dollar.
2.4) Advertising the NSL in general
Crossposts, tweets, facebook entries with links, whatever to help advertise for new contests are helping alot. As swalk mentioned, UWE's PR help is sometimes good, sometimes wanting, if you compare the headline news to State of the game episodes and lack of mentioning signups for Season 3, you might get what he is talking about. But here every community member can help as well. Mouth propaganda is strong and a nice change from drama posts as well ;>
3) Specific help
Web designers, graphics artists (rantology did help us great in this, the new NSL logo is from her as well many design arts for the upcoming website etc), video editors, plugin coders, etc. is always welcome to help out and I try my best to coordinate stuff along the people helping out the NSL, but I need of course info from a person who is willing to help in what regard they think can contribute.
Ryssk, whats a reddit? a gay porn site or some shit?
Id imagine there are loads of people willing to help out by doing the jobs on your list.
It shouldn't take a humorous, witty and well written forum post to find out there are open positions...
Simba hit the nail in the head- Tell the community wtf is going on if you actually have stuff going on!
I think its like google, but still not.. and more like a hannah montana/miley cyrus based engine, aaaaaand... well, i dont know what else there is to say about it, just WRECKING awesome!
Sublime- world record holder for most forum posts, you seem better qualified than me?
And b1 please elaborate how posting to the ensl forums a legitimate point makes me a little bitch? Great comment from an official ns league admin adviser*.
The ladder needs the technical background in the new website (Tag Wolf), the finished ruleset (Zefram) and plugin integration (Dragon) to come together. During the last Season we've had several staff meetings discussing first whether a ladder should be done followed by detailled discussions on how it needs to be run so it is as easy as possible to use for everyone which we see a requirement to make a NS2 ladder work while NS1 ladders failed.
I can imagine to integrate more people from the community into ruleset (includes ranking system etc.) discussions and workgroups. For that I think shared google docs followed by a wider range of people in TS meetings could be a starter to work together on it to integrate feedback directly.
For that we'd need to put up a sheet with all relevant information and hand access to people who want to help out. I am not sure when I can find the time to do this (maybe Zef can? :P), but if you want to hurry things up you could also put up a GDoc with a summary of all things you think are important to consider.
