[WNL2] Congratulations, Acknowledgements and Closing Thoughts

Hey Warbanders! So we're at the end of Season 2 of the Warband Native League. Had lots of ups and downs this year with plenty of excitement. I'll be going over a lot in this thread but first up is the congratulations for the top 3 teams. So first up Apis Europae. As a member of the team it's probably not appropriate so here's a quote from Goliath:

"Apis Europae have one Season 2 of the WNL and few could argue that they do not deserve it. Once again they showed skill and dedication, proving themselves worthy champions."

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So next up congratulations to Guard of Istiniar. Once again they've show unbelievably tenacity and staying power to finish second. Once again they've finished a season in a great position, with a utterly dominant run in the final part of the season.

Finally congratulations to Defenders of Wonwokie. You recovered from a difficult start to the season and recorded an unbelievably succesful second part of the season. It's great to see new teams make it this high in the table, you guys can be proud.















As with the previous season, next i'd like to say thank you to a few groups and individuals.

First up thanks to the admin team. Maynd was a great help getting the servers ready and he will be missed greatly. Scar came into the admin team part way through the tournament and immediately proved himself an invaluable asset to the team, working extremely hard to keep the league going. ReneKB may have joined the admin team late in the day but once again I have to say he proved a fantastic addition. So thanks to the active admins but also to those who have moved on such as Goliath,Flecha, Prince Eugen, Maynd, Mawi, Harman, Greed and Stuboi. As both a member of the community and as part of a participating clan i'd like to thank you guys for all the hard work you put in to make this competition possible, a sentiment i'm sure everyone else will wish to echo.

Sticking to the same structure as last season, I would like to thank the server hosts next. Really for a free league set up for a game this age, these guys are even more important than the admins. The extremely generous donations of Stuboi, Court of Reveran, Wolfpack, Tallie and ReneKB allowed this competition to happen and we all owe them thanks for facilitating the league. We had more servers than ever before (mainly thanks to the super generous ReneKB and his 8 Germany servers) Like last year i'd like to also thank Barny who hosts the Hungarian server but also the Battlegrounds TS which is used by countless Warband clans.

Would like to additionally thank Captain Lust, Eman and everyone else who streamed WNL matches this season. Particularly MB_TV and it's casters who put an amazing amount of content out. You guys really made this tournament brilliant and more professional than ever before.

Next I would like to thank everyone who submitted maps for this season. Many of them were wonderful and they went a long way to freshening the league. In a similar vein I would like to thank AZAN for sorting out the modified flag rules. This was another factor that went a long way to making this WNL special.

My final thanks is to all teams which took part in this season of the WNL. We had many dropouts this season (actually the number is fairly similar to the previous season) so double congratulations to those who made it to the end.

Well I think that's it for saying thanks, might get a little soppy if it continues.

Observations
So here's the biggest issues as I saw it:

• Default wins leading to unfair team placement.
• Dropouts.
• Ladder issues.
• Map classification issues.

I'll go through the problems individually below.

Default wins leading to unfair team placement.
Well I think the final placement of FIN was perhaps unfair on the other teams but furthermore it was also unfair on them as they were not able to play many matches (which is after all the reason for joining the league). I don't have some magic bullet idea to fix this problem and I welcome input from anybody on the subject. Nonetheless this is certainly one of the key issues and one that we will certainly be looking to rectify in the future.

Dropouts
I believe there's two sides to this. First up poor tournament timing meaning the end clashes with summer holidays. The flip-side is a problem with the ladder. There's very little to encourage teams to stay in the tournamnent once they've lost a few matches and believe they will not win. There is a problem with incentives when using a ladder instead of leagues. Whilst leagues give something for lower teams to fight for (promotion), ladders do not. Perhaps introducing tiers within the ladder would encourage teams to stay and fight it out but it's certainly an issue we'll need to consider in the future.

Another idea that's been raised is having a knockout stage at the end of the tournament. Whilst I was initially sceptical I do believe it may be a good option. It can encourage teams to fight for the knockout positions and provides an exciting end for the tournament. Perhaps a 10 Week ladder followed by a top 8 single elimination bracket might be the way forward.

Another issue that has been brought up by several people is the length of the tournament. This is something I would once again consider. This touanment was shorter than previous ones but if a streamlined tournament (10 weeks perhaps) would be an improvement then i'm open to it.

Finally I think i'll be more demanding with teams entering next season. Certainly we'll have to more thoroughly consider the applications of some teams.


Ladder Issues
I've used this vague term because I think the ladder raised a few issues (though in general I thought it was a success). First up I believe only having 3 levels was a mistake. The levels barely came into the tournament and too many teams were able to challenge each other throughout. Once AE reached Level 3 over 80% of the teams were already level 2 and were therefore able to pick them. I believe adding 1 or 2 extra levels will make the league more competitive.

Another issue is the fixture picking method. Whilst I did very much enjoy the pick nights they are arguably not the best sorting method. I was considering something like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-system_tournament

The advantage of this would be a shorter tournament and effective sorting. That said, i'm a big fan of the theatre of events like pick night so perhaps there's a way to improve the fixture picking method without losing the vibrancy.

Map Classification Issues
So this essentially boils down to our failure to correctly classify certain maps. Having two all encompassing map classifications mean using "mixed" maps is kinda unbalancing. We found that we ended up with a less "open" map pool because so many of the open maps were in fact "mixed". This shouldn't be too hard to fix for future tournaments.

What Next?
So we'll obviously be taking a fairly lengthy hiatus during the summer. I expect Season 3 to come about late this year or the start of next year. Also fully expect some exciting knockout tournaments to take place in the meantime. So have fun, enjoy your summer and i'll see you soon!

lol, congrats mens and boys. thnx for organizing this stuffs. it was fun to play videogames in WNL.

thanks to everybody who kept the tournament running on

Thanks for organizing a such a great tournement admin team.GG'S to all teams which are participate to WNL and played at least one match.

Yeah, so first of all congratulations to all the teams and especially Defenders of Wonwokie, Guard of Istiniar and Apis Europae from me as an admin. It was the first time I had the opportunity to administer such a huge event like the WNL with 48 (!) teams participating. So thank you all again for making this all possible and for making Warband such a great game.

Second I'd like to thank all my fellow admins, especially Deacon who had the pleasure to post the Thank Yous and thus didn't recieve his own "Thank You". Your dedication to the community keep this little game of ours alive, even though it took you hours and hours to keep everything updated. It was a pleasure to "work" with you, even late at night.

Finally thank you everyone else involved, especially those who donated servers as without them this would not have been possible.

Until next time, have a great summer!

thanks for doing this!

Maybe we see each other again in next season

Well, what can I say.

Good tournament, lots of clans, one winner.

That's all I guess.

P.S. Scar with the effort he put should be an admin in every tournament. He's such a hardworking rat <3.

Thanks for hosting, was a blast!

Really great job guys and thank's all for not letting this game dieing :p
Congrtz AE u guys deserve the 1º place!

Thanks to everyone involved really. Good job everyone,hoping for a third season as soon as possible.

Wonwokie third lol.
BTW Congrats to all

Nici said:

Wonwokie third lol.

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Really?


Thanks for WNL2, hope to see a WNL3 in September/October! (Make it happen Scar)
Also thank you to the entire admin team, but I'd definitely want to give my special thanks to Rene for the servers for WNL!

This tournament is very good, nice moderators who's making everything right, ReneKB.... thx for your time for the servers, I hope it will be a WNL 3 in September/Ocotber as Le Roux said. And congratz AE to the first place. Maybe there were much issues, but still, WNL is WNL, awesome

In regards to having a single elimination at the end, doesn't this make placement in the ladder a lot more relaxed? You would only have to get to one of the top 8 positions to get through and there would be no reason to strive for the top spot. I don't have a better system to propose at the moment, but I don't see a simple single elimination being tacked on the end as solving it.

On map design, I think the real problem is that people have gotten much better at designing closed maps but not of open. The only good map which I would properly classify as open that was community created is frosty battle (even then there are bits like the steep terrain I would prefer to make inaccessible). I doubt anyone would classify reveran village as open, most would put it as mixed. I haven't played castle ruins so I won't comment on that but khudan outskirts and mountain fortress are both mixed maps, not open. Dry Valley I would class as open but the composition is bad in that the scale is large and the separation between strong points is also large. The strong points are also pretty defensible and not that accessible to cav. I don't think it makes a good mix really.

Of the original native maps the only open map I would classify as really good is ruins, all the others have significant problems with them. Snowy village is very large, has too much dodgy terrain and tends towards camping. Field by the river has pretty much no options for teams and often resolves to a 'stare at each other from the trees' standoff.

So the only two maps I would genuinely classify as open which are I also consider to be good are frosty battle and ruins, I guess we should have a look at what makes those maps good for open and try to replicate it, then also ask specifically for proper open maps in the next tournament since it seems we have a dearth of maps that are closed.

Thanks for all the work Was good fun!

First of all, I have to say, that admins done really great work! If I`ll be admin, I won`t do that much, cuz I`m to lazy ; )  Thanks for that league, I really hope for WNL#3.
Pick nights and ladder system was really cool idea, it give you opporunity to plan your tournament tactic. Shame that I played only two matches, but I was busy in work and school, and just when I back my lovely Sarracens go inactive. I`ll try to catch up it in next season.

Gratz Bees, you deserved win by playing all matches in good, your tipical style.


What I would like to say about maps - I love Nord Town, Village, Vendetta, Moutanian Fortress, Port Assalut, Shariz Village, Dry Valley and Verloren (didn`t play match on it ), and I will be sooo happy to see them all in next season .

Great works admins, great win Apis, also gratz to IG`a and Wonwokie`s for playing league to the over ; )

And sorry for bad english ; (

thanks all very nice tournament with lot of rebound for all.
pleasure to play see you late

Huge thanks for admins and all of people involved in this season, it was a good fun to play some good matches again 

Firstly I want to congratulate AE, IG and Wonwookie.

It was a very funny tournament and made me a lot of fun. It was a pleasure to host the servers for this pretty nice tournament. I hope you hadn't so many lags or problems if yes, I'm sry. But many thanks for the other and former server hosters. I appreciate your work.

I joined the admin-team in the end of the tournament on request of Deacon. It was an honor to take part in the admin-team. So many thanks for Deacon for asking me to join the admin-team. You welcomed me warmly in the team. So I must repeat what Scar said. Deacon did great work and you can proud of yourself. Scar my german bro as well.

Then many thanks for who took part on this tournament. It was sad to see that so many teams left the WNL. But I understand your decision.

Firstly I want to congratulate AE, IG and Wonwookie.

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This !

Also , thank's for this tournament and good job admins .

It was sad to see that so many teams left the WNL

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No worries , some teams will be back in September , i hope for the next WNL ! .