First of all, tournament was great, the stream was great, the commentating was good - for the most part, some matches could deserve a lot more commentating and some had better commentating, but the commentators voice and personalities were very likeable - we would like to hear more of them. And you also put this faster and more fluently than official SCon tournament team ever did, so kudos to that - you did a great job. And topping it with the rewards was even better, that was just great initiative and I applaud you for that, You did an amazing job and you deserve praise for it.
Now my suggestions regarding the rules:
- I would not force teams to stick to their squad setups. This involves too much work to check on the facts and it’s not really worth it. It’s what makes the game interesting. Switching tactics and adapting , it’s essential part of the game, actually. Even if you change your strategy in the last minute after you see what the enemy team is bringing, it doesn’t change much. Let everyone bring whatever they want, it is also working against them if they had to switch their predtermined plan in the last minute, they probably practiced for something else.
Now regarding this, it would certainly make things very interesting by not being able to see the enemy composition at all before entering the game, but why bother? You can just watch the stream and observe their gameplay beforehand, they will very likely bring the same. It’s too much hassle, so I would acknowledge it as part of the game and that everyone has to deal with it, and adapt.
- Disconnects. Make clear rules on these. We had a disconnect on our team right at the beginning of the match, which was hard to explain to both the enemy team and the organisation (but we managed to, with some effort). Disconnect happened in the first minute, and before even the commentators noticed what is going on, the enemy team rushed the remaining 3 pilots on our side, knewing and seeing one of us DCed, because obviously they never do that and each game they were waiting at the spawn for us to come to them, but this time they come to us - of course, it was perfect situation with one pilot being either out of position or out of the game. So I called BS on this and demanded rematch, leaving organisators confused why are we demanding rematch after we lost 4 ships at the start. Well, the DC happened long before the enemy team attacked us, and it’s likely they noticed something is not right on our side and used the opportunity.
So, if this happens in the future, I suggest clear rules on it:
Allow rematches on DC only, if the DC happened before the team started losing.
Do not allow rematch if the team was obviously losing “and happend to have a DC”.
Remember, we had a DC *before* any kind of fighting started. The enemy team started the fight *after* we had a DC. And since this was right at the begining of the game and we got tanked with 1 player inactive, it is legitemately void and deservers a rematch.
Also, I must point out that the commentators on stream were confused after that game, thinking that our oponents “agreed to a winner takes all rematch - in our favor”, because they tought we lost the first game, they kept talking about it that they “think” and are “pretty sure” that the other side won and this is a winner takes all game. Wtf? No, it was clearly 1:0 for us, and this was 2nd game take two. It’s not like we desperately needed that rematch, but it is a matter of principle - get your facts straight.
For this, I advise that both teams are in direct contact with the streamer/commentator and are able to directly PM them right at the moment the DC starts, give it a 10 second grace period and not more. Anything that happens before those 10 seconds does not count; i.e. the battle started with one side losing a ship too early or falling to a surprise attack, now they suddenly call they have a DC; the window for reporting must be very small and immediate, or else it counts as too late.
This is in favor for the winning team, if they are leading in points and happen to have a DC and still want a rematch in case their player cannot get back in time (i.e. power outage), it is recommended to restart, since you cannot call the game void anymore once it’s ended.
I hope these rules are clear enough and you consider them.
- Game modes. There are lots of possibilities to do this, and I have a few ideas, but we can talk about this next time, I woud like to polish out technical details first,
- Casual and pro league. It might not be a bad idea, several competitions have a standard of dividing competitors into different categories depending on their investment. For example, I personally compete in EMMA car audio competition where we have Entry, Experienced, Pro and Master leagues, which are based on the complexity of your setup and market value of the components installed since not everyone can afford top level components and setup, the rules make the competition fair, and everyone can compete in his own tier, it is quite similiar if you would compare T1-T5 in SC.
Now the only problem is how would you divide our community into “casual” and “pro”. At first I was thinking this might not work, but now I thought of a simpe solution: give rewards to winners of the pro league, and no rewards to casual, because it’s just casual and for fun and training ground for the real deal without too much pressure, but you can stream both. Also an entry ticked per team would not be a bad idea too, if real money is involved and you are sponsoring this tournament with a reward. A price of a few $ per team for entry for creating the winning pool is nothing compared to the work you guys are doing and how much important this is and makes the community more active, involved, and possible even a brighter future for the game as a sport and it’s active population. We would possibly increse interest in pro tournaments, and bring even more participant teams into it, opening possibilities for even bigger price pools, which rules bigger and bigger crowds every time. Most of us personalyl don’t really need that GS reward, but this is what keeps people and competition interesting, and how you succesfully promote such an event, increasing it’s popularity.
- Stream recordings. If certain teams want their matches specifically covered and have an absolute guarantee to see recordings of them, they either sign up, or, a better idea - pay a small bit extra for a “premium” coverage of recordings, with proper naming conventions and editing, for easy access and observation. I am asking this because I had big trouble finding our games on the twitch channel, and not all of the are there. Having this re-uploaded to youtube as a premium feature (which can also go to the reward pool), I would be very happy to support that. Also on the side note, I would request to streamer to use a little better camera angles on what’s happening if possible, sometimes it seemed they were looking at the wrong players and not everything was always in focus where it should be. Could use some more practice with that or find someone that might do a better job “recording”, while you do the commentating (and again, all comenators, including JP and Seph were a pleasure to lsiten to).
