Given the complete lack of transparency regarding the administration behind this event, and the decisions they've made, I'm making this thread to encourage a frank discussion and to ensure that the relevant information is available to the supporters who paid for the tournament, the participants, and those of us who have watched the preparation of this tournament with increasing disbelief. My information has been collected and verified by talking to various people who have been involved. I hope that the admins will at least have to decency to not punish these individuals simply for talking to me.
So far there have been four rather large and public controversies. I will give a brief summary of them, but link to threads containing the full discussion of each item. I apologize for the length of this post, but it is impossible to accurately describe the situation without going into detail.
1. Qualifier timings
The dismal timings for the quarter finals -- the matches deciding which teams would be sendt to the live event in Cologne -- was the first thing players noticed when the rules were released. Having the deciding matches of the qualifier in the middle of Christmas, when a significant amount of players and spectators will be on vacation, is just about the worst planning possible. My post on the matter quickly earned 20 agrees, and multiple other players and spectators voiced their concerns in the same thread. I think puzl (legendary ns1 developer) put it best by saying "I think it is crazy to run this tournament over Christmas. When you guys are sitting down wondering why attendance was less than expected don't forget that people warned you".
Thus far, the admins' only reply in the thread they themselves created for feedback on the rules, has been Hugh's solo post, saying that "timing most probably cannot be changed". WasabiOne later made a separate post on the ENSL website, saying that they are "looking at the possibility of pushing the quarterfinals back a week", which would significantly reduce the problem, but no more news has been forthcoming.
2. The Eissfeldt ban
The community was shocked by the news that Eissfeldt, a highly respected Godar player and ex-duplex player, would not be allowed to participate in the tournament. I will not go over the details of why he was banned in this post, but I will refer you to my earlier posts explaining what happened: link to first post, and link to second post clarifying the circumstances. These posts earned a total of 39 agrees, 18 awesomes and 12 disagrees -- most of these disagrees occuring before I posted my second post further explaining the matter. Over five pages of that thread, the community, players and spectators, showed an overwhelming support for allowing Eissfeldt to play.
Despite all this, it took developers complaining on the internal UWE campfire chat to get the NS2WC admins to even reconsider the issue. As the discussions from admin meetings are not made public, we have no way of knowing what exactly went on during those meetings. All we know is that the majority voted to uphold the Eissfeldt ban, in spite of the massive public outcry. In this situation, Godar did the only thing they could, and in desperation they suggested that the admins could at least let Eissfeldt play if Godar qualified for Cologne without him. In the end, the admins used that as the basis for their public decision, and decided that Eissfeldt would still be banned from playing in the qualifier. Godar were told that they had to agree to this decision and that no more public comments on the subject would be allowed. WasabiOne then proceeded to pretend that this result was reached "in full cooperation with all parties involved", even though it is abundandly clear that was not the case. Shortly thereafter the discussion thread was closed, because apparently this meant that there was nothing more to discuss? I wonder if the same will happen to this thread.
The end result is that Godar has to play the entire qualifier without their sole Lerk player. Playing without a Lerk is pretty much impossible, so Godar have resorted to re-training Railo as a Lerk, but he is obviously at a heavy practice disadvantage against other teams, and he has some enormous shoes to fill given that Eissfeldt is one of the best Lerk players in the world. From watching their performance in practice matches, it is clear that Godar are suffering heavily from this loss, and as a result they will have a very difficult time qualifying for the tournament.
Throughout this entire ordeal, Godar have been threatened with further sanctions, including losing their seedings from the last season of ENSL. They have also been told that all of their other players are under suspicion. Zefram (NSL League admin and NS2WC admin) also banned Eissfeldt from playing in the NSL Season 3 bronze final, forcing Godar to play with a merc, and therefore unsurprisingly losing 1-3 to Saunamen. The NS2WC admins have also repeatedly told Godar to keep silent about the entire affair, apparently having no interest in any kind of transparency.
3. The six player rule change
Around the same time the final Eissfeldt decision was issued, the admins changed the tournament rules to include:
The rule change is especially harsh on Godar. They were planning to bring all eight of their players to the event, which would give Eissfeldt a chance to play and clear his name on LAN. But now, even if they manage to qualify without Eissfeldt playing, they will be forced to deny one of the players who played in the quarter final a trip to Cologne to send Eissfeldt there instead. An almost impossible proposition, and I can only describe it as cruel. I have to wonder if the admins have planned this out from the beginning when they made their final decision on the Eissfeldt ban.
It is important to note that this rule was not included in the ruleset that was originally published. Those rules instead stated specifically that "14. (...) (i) Teams may bring in excess of six qualifying players to the Finals Series, however those teams will be responsible for the travel and accommodation of those excess players", and the participating teams made their plans according to this. To suddenly change the rules in such a major way is in itself irresponsible by the admins. It is even more damning that they changed the rules without consulting any of the players or teams, and without informing anyone that the rules had been altered. It was only discovered "by accident" by b1 when he was reading the rules a couple of days ago.
As with the two previous issues I have talked about, public opinion has been massively opposed to this change to the rules. Despite repeated pleas from players and spectators in the thread the admins specifically set up for feedback on the rules, they have not even acknowledged the problem. It seems that they are only interested in transparency when it suits their interests.
It is rather absurd that the only rule change the admins are willing to make, is one that the players themselves are universally opposed to.
4. The locked rosters rule
Section 4 (b) of the NS2WC rules state that "A team must be registered wholly and fully in the first instance". While this rule was not immediately noticed as problematic, it has since become an enormous headache. This rule is personally responsible for multiple players not being able to participate in the tournament at all, including myself. This is a rule that has absolutely no reason for existing, and causes no benefit for anyone involved in the tournament. I tried personally appealing to WasabiOne that this rule needed to be changed, but he made it abundandly clear that he was not interested in hearing arguments and that no rule would be changed regardless of the disastrous effect it is having on the players who want to participate in the tournament. The rule has also been criticized multiple times in the rules thread, but no comments from the admins have been forthcoming.
When this rule is combined with the extremely short time between announcement and signups, and the even shorter signup deadline, it is very difficult to understand how anyone could think this would work out well. It is made even worse by Section 4 (iii) in the rules that says teams have to sign up by thursday 28th (6 days after the tournament was announced and rules released) to keep their priority eligibility from NSL seedings. This has essentially forced teams to sign up quickly, for fear that they would lose their spots in the tournament, and they are now trapped without any chance to add new players to their rosters, and players are prevented from signing up for the teams they want to play for.
In practice, this proved disastrous for a new team called Team BVB. Bitey, who was dissatisfied with the conditions in Titus Gaming, wanted to create a new team to compete against Titus in the american scene, and with everyone else for a spot in Cologne. Together with rline, he left Titus and gathered some of his friends from Damage Networks, priori, and the old Nexzil, to play for Team BVB. When they signed their team up, however, they discovered that Locklear, their commander and thus critical player, had already been signed up to play for Titus, who had brought him in as a replacement for Bitey and rline. Even though Locklear is unlikely to actually play for Titus, and wanted to play for Team BVB instead, the admins refused to let him switch teams, and he eventually gave up. As a result, Team BVB was left without a comm, and since they had already registered their team, they were unable to add any players to their roster to replace him. The end result is that instead of another top team competing for a spot in Cologne, potentially making the competition far more interesting, we're left with a broken group of players who are unable to participate at all.
I think Gliss' comments from a conversation sum up how the players involved feel about what happened: "i was going to return and start playing again on bitey's team specifically for this event for happy fun times in ns2 (...) and now this is just restricting legitimate reasons for players to enjoy the game just so they can get their free, unearned trip imo".
This rule has also affected me personally. I was initially very excited by this tournament, and I was considering making a comeback for it, after six months in retirement. I was unable to find a team to join in such a short space of time, however, and I am now barred from joining any of the teams I was interested in playing with because they have already signed up. I want to play, but I am not allowed to.
The worst part isn't even how cruelly this rule is being enforced, the worst part is that it makes no sense. The only reason to have such a rule, is to prevent players from playing for multiple teams during the tournament. This purpose can easilly be accomplished by having a simple rule that says that players cannot play for a different team once they have played a match for a team, or even a rule that says that the teams are locked after a certain date. I think that, given the nature of this small community, such an event should do everything in its power to include as many participants as possible. Instead, we have rules that almost seem designed to prevent players from participating, and admins who refuse to listen to reason.
My current tally of casualties as a direct consequence of this rule is [ 5 ], but there are likely many more that I do not know about. Boom has retired from competitive NS2, rline has uninstalled NS2, and Bitey, Gliss and myself are unable to join a team because all the teams are already signed up at this point. These are all veterans of the game that have played their hearts out at the top level during previous events, but are now prevented from participating because of the admins' inability to accept criticism.
5. Final remarks
I have created this thread to expose what is happening to this so-called community event, in the vain hopes that public outcry may force the admins to see reason. The reputation of this tournament can still be salvaged if the admins listen to the community and rectify the issues I have commented on above. I must admit that I have very little hope that this will actually happen, though.
The NS2WC was supposed to be the greatest thing that ever happened to competitive NS2. Instead, it has caused more harm to the competitive community than any single event that I can remember in the history of NS1 and 2. I cannot even begin to describe how disappointed I am. This by far marks the lowest point of my ten years in this community.
So far there have been four rather large and public controversies. I will give a brief summary of them, but link to threads containing the full discussion of each item. I apologize for the length of this post, but it is impossible to accurately describe the situation without going into detail.
1. Qualifier timings
The dismal timings for the quarter finals -- the matches deciding which teams would be sendt to the live event in Cologne -- was the first thing players noticed when the rules were released. Having the deciding matches of the qualifier in the middle of Christmas, when a significant amount of players and spectators will be on vacation, is just about the worst planning possible. My post on the matter quickly earned 20 agrees, and multiple other players and spectators voiced their concerns in the same thread. I think puzl (legendary ns1 developer) put it best by saying "I think it is crazy to run this tournament over Christmas. When you guys are sitting down wondering why attendance was less than expected don't forget that people warned you".
Thus far, the admins' only reply in the thread they themselves created for feedback on the rules, has been Hugh's solo post, saying that "timing most probably cannot be changed". WasabiOne later made a separate post on the ENSL website, saying that they are "looking at the possibility of pushing the quarterfinals back a week", which would significantly reduce the problem, but no more news has been forthcoming.
2. The Eissfeldt ban
The community was shocked by the news that Eissfeldt, a highly respected Godar player and ex-duplex player, would not be allowed to participate in the tournament. I will not go over the details of why he was banned in this post, but I will refer you to my earlier posts explaining what happened: link to first post, and link to second post clarifying the circumstances. These posts earned a total of 39 agrees, 18 awesomes and 12 disagrees -- most of these disagrees occuring before I posted my second post further explaining the matter. Over five pages of that thread, the community, players and spectators, showed an overwhelming support for allowing Eissfeldt to play.
Despite all this, it took developers complaining on the internal UWE campfire chat to get the NS2WC admins to even reconsider the issue. As the discussions from admin meetings are not made public, we have no way of knowing what exactly went on during those meetings. All we know is that the majority voted to uphold the Eissfeldt ban, in spite of the massive public outcry. In this situation, Godar did the only thing they could, and in desperation they suggested that the admins could at least let Eissfeldt play if Godar qualified for Cologne without him. In the end, the admins used that as the basis for their public decision, and decided that Eissfeldt would still be banned from playing in the qualifier. Godar were told that they had to agree to this decision and that no more public comments on the subject would be allowed. WasabiOne then proceeded to pretend that this result was reached "in full cooperation with all parties involved", even though it is abundandly clear that was not the case. Shortly thereafter the discussion thread was closed, because apparently this meant that there was nothing more to discuss? I wonder if the same will happen to this thread.
The end result is that Godar has to play the entire qualifier without their sole Lerk player. Playing without a Lerk is pretty much impossible, so Godar have resorted to re-training Railo as a Lerk, but he is obviously at a heavy practice disadvantage against other teams, and he has some enormous shoes to fill given that Eissfeldt is one of the best Lerk players in the world. From watching their performance in practice matches, it is clear that Godar are suffering heavily from this loss, and as a result they will have a very difficult time qualifying for the tournament.
Throughout this entire ordeal, Godar have been threatened with further sanctions, including losing their seedings from the last season of ENSL. They have also been told that all of their other players are under suspicion. Zefram (NSL League admin and NS2WC admin) also banned Eissfeldt from playing in the NSL Season 3 bronze final, forcing Godar to play with a merc, and therefore unsurprisingly losing 1-3 to Saunamen. The NS2WC admins have also repeatedly told Godar to keep silent about the entire affair, apparently having no interest in any kind of transparency.
3. The six player rule change
Around the same time the final Eissfeldt decision was issued, the admins changed the tournament rules to include:
If NS2 was a big game with professional teams and players, this rule would make sense. This is not the case, however. NS2 is a tiny game with amateur teams and players who play for the fun of competition. Many of us have jobs and families, and we don't have time to play 24/7. Because of that, most teams need more than 6 players to be able to practice regularly. All the way since NS1, the "normal" roster size has been between 8-10 players. Archaea faced this problem during our two previous visits to Cologne, and we decided to pay with our own money to bring all our players to Cologne, so that everyone could share the experience. That worked out perfectly on both occasions, and caused no problems for the players or organizers. Several teams were planning to copy that arrangement this time around, but are now denied from doing so. This has caused internal conflicts in teams and some players have lost motivation for playing the game. As Tane put it; "It's really rough to start competition inside your clan when you have seven or eight active players who all wants to play. These kind of rules makes people literally cry"."14. (...) The four winning teams from the Winners Bracket Quarterfinals will each select 6 players from their roster. Those selected will receive airfare and accommodations to the live event. Only those selected players will be permitted to play at the live event. All other players on the roster may attend but may not be allowed to be used as a substitute."
The rule change is especially harsh on Godar. They were planning to bring all eight of their players to the event, which would give Eissfeldt a chance to play and clear his name on LAN. But now, even if they manage to qualify without Eissfeldt playing, they will be forced to deny one of the players who played in the quarter final a trip to Cologne to send Eissfeldt there instead. An almost impossible proposition, and I can only describe it as cruel. I have to wonder if the admins have planned this out from the beginning when they made their final decision on the Eissfeldt ban.
It is important to note that this rule was not included in the ruleset that was originally published. Those rules instead stated specifically that "14. (...) (i) Teams may bring in excess of six qualifying players to the Finals Series, however those teams will be responsible for the travel and accommodation of those excess players", and the participating teams made their plans according to this. To suddenly change the rules in such a major way is in itself irresponsible by the admins. It is even more damning that they changed the rules without consulting any of the players or teams, and without informing anyone that the rules had been altered. It was only discovered "by accident" by b1 when he was reading the rules a couple of days ago.
As with the two previous issues I have talked about, public opinion has been massively opposed to this change to the rules. Despite repeated pleas from players and spectators in the thread the admins specifically set up for feedback on the rules, they have not even acknowledged the problem. It seems that they are only interested in transparency when it suits their interests.
It is rather absurd that the only rule change the admins are willing to make, is one that the players themselves are universally opposed to.
4. The locked rosters rule
Section 4 (b) of the NS2WC rules state that "A team must be registered wholly and fully in the first instance". While this rule was not immediately noticed as problematic, it has since become an enormous headache. This rule is personally responsible for multiple players not being able to participate in the tournament at all, including myself. This is a rule that has absolutely no reason for existing, and causes no benefit for anyone involved in the tournament. I tried personally appealing to WasabiOne that this rule needed to be changed, but he made it abundandly clear that he was not interested in hearing arguments and that no rule would be changed regardless of the disastrous effect it is having on the players who want to participate in the tournament. The rule has also been criticized multiple times in the rules thread, but no comments from the admins have been forthcoming.
When this rule is combined with the extremely short time between announcement and signups, and the even shorter signup deadline, it is very difficult to understand how anyone could think this would work out well. It is made even worse by Section 4 (iii) in the rules that says teams have to sign up by thursday 28th (6 days after the tournament was announced and rules released) to keep their priority eligibility from NSL seedings. This has essentially forced teams to sign up quickly, for fear that they would lose their spots in the tournament, and they are now trapped without any chance to add new players to their rosters, and players are prevented from signing up for the teams they want to play for.
In practice, this proved disastrous for a new team called Team BVB. Bitey, who was dissatisfied with the conditions in Titus Gaming, wanted to create a new team to compete against Titus in the american scene, and with everyone else for a spot in Cologne. Together with rline, he left Titus and gathered some of his friends from Damage Networks, priori, and the old Nexzil, to play for Team BVB. When they signed their team up, however, they discovered that Locklear, their commander and thus critical player, had already been signed up to play for Titus, who had brought him in as a replacement for Bitey and rline. Even though Locklear is unlikely to actually play for Titus, and wanted to play for Team BVB instead, the admins refused to let him switch teams, and he eventually gave up. As a result, Team BVB was left without a comm, and since they had already registered their team, they were unable to add any players to their roster to replace him. The end result is that instead of another top team competing for a spot in Cologne, potentially making the competition far more interesting, we're left with a broken group of players who are unable to participate at all.
I think Gliss' comments from a conversation sum up how the players involved feel about what happened: "i was going to return and start playing again on bitey's team specifically for this event for happy fun times in ns2 (...) and now this is just restricting legitimate reasons for players to enjoy the game just so they can get their free, unearned trip imo".
This rule has also affected me personally. I was initially very excited by this tournament, and I was considering making a comeback for it, after six months in retirement. I was unable to find a team to join in such a short space of time, however, and I am now barred from joining any of the teams I was interested in playing with because they have already signed up. I want to play, but I am not allowed to.
The worst part isn't even how cruelly this rule is being enforced, the worst part is that it makes no sense. The only reason to have such a rule, is to prevent players from playing for multiple teams during the tournament. This purpose can easilly be accomplished by having a simple rule that says that players cannot play for a different team once they have played a match for a team, or even a rule that says that the teams are locked after a certain date. I think that, given the nature of this small community, such an event should do everything in its power to include as many participants as possible. Instead, we have rules that almost seem designed to prevent players from participating, and admins who refuse to listen to reason.
My current tally of casualties as a direct consequence of this rule is [ 5 ], but there are likely many more that I do not know about. Boom has retired from competitive NS2, rline has uninstalled NS2, and Bitey, Gliss and myself are unable to join a team because all the teams are already signed up at this point. These are all veterans of the game that have played their hearts out at the top level during previous events, but are now prevented from participating because of the admins' inability to accept criticism.
5. Final remarks
I have created this thread to expose what is happening to this so-called community event, in the vain hopes that public outcry may force the admins to see reason. The reputation of this tournament can still be salvaged if the admins listen to the community and rectify the issues I have commented on above. I must admit that I have very little hope that this will actually happen, though.
The NS2WC was supposed to be the greatest thing that ever happened to competitive NS2. Instead, it has caused more harm to the competitive community than any single event that I can remember in the history of NS1 and 2. I cannot even begin to describe how disappointed I am. This by far marks the lowest point of my ten years in this community.