In order to avoid confusion, I've decided to make a plan/explanation of what's going to happen at the end of this league cycle and how that's going to fit in with the next. Many of you will have seen some of the discussions taking place here and might have an idea of the situation but hopefully, for those who haven't, this will clear a few things up.
Playoffs
Firstly, the playoffs. These are explained at the bottom of each division in the League Tables and Fixtures thread (probably not the best place for them) but just so everyone knows exactly how they'll work, I'll go over them here.
At the end of the cycle, the first thing to happen is to check the difference in points between 1st and 2nd place in Division C. If that difference is 3 or less, those teams will face each other in a playoff match. This will take place in Week 13, directly after the end of the cycle. This match will determine the winner of Division C. If the difference in points is greater than 3, the team in 1st place will automatically be declared the winners. The loser of this match will take 2nd place and join Division B next cycle.
Either way, the winners of Division C will then go on to face the 3rd place team in Division B. This will take place in Week 13 if there was no Division C playoff match, or Week 14 if there was. The loser of this match (re)joins Division B next cycle.
The winner of that match will then playoff against the 6th place Team in Division A, in either Week 14 or Week 15. The winners from this final playoff will (re)join Division A and the losers, Division B.
This will leave a spare week or two before the next cycle, which I intend to start promptly at the beginning of March. There was far too much downtime between this cycle and the last, for a number of reasons - the most prominent of which being that I'm not entirely robot (yet).
Separately, there may be a playoff between the almost promoted team(s) in Division C and the teams that almost stayed up in Division B, in order to fill empty spots made by Division A drops. This hasn't been confirmed yet and didn't come into play last cycle, due to the higher number of drops. Either way, hopefully it can be resolved quickly and clarified.
Rule-Testing Tournament
This is the result of discussions that have been taking place in the "Tell me" thread. In short, I think it will benefit the community and the tournament to shorten the length of matches and decrease them in size to 8vs8. To see the reasoning and arguments surrounding that discussion, you'll have to read up in that thread. I also request that you keep specific discussions relating to potential rulechanges in that thread.
Due to limited time in between the cycles, this tournament will be 16 team single knockout only and there will be 5 days for each round. Remember this is a testing tournament, so there won't be any hooplah about the winner and teams are just expected to show out with enough players and take things reasonably seriously. I'll verify rosters, since I want teams to stay in the habit of checking them
. The process for deciding who plays in this tournament will be announced shortly.These are the revised match rules for the tournament (changed rules in bold):
- Combat Speed: Medium, Friendly Fire: 100% (melee and ranged), Round Duration: 5 minutes, Game type: Battle, Gold: All set to 100%, Respawn Time : 8 sec , Spectator Settings: Locked to team members view. No bots and no polls.
- Matches will be 12 rounds long, played over two maps. Each map will be 6 rounds, with teams swapping sides and factions after 3 rounds.
- Rounds resulting in a draw will count as normal, with no points awarded to either team.
- Matches will be 8 a side. If both teams agree, matches may be fought with more players but as far as the league is concerned, no support will be offered for this.
- In matches, teams may not use more than 4 of any class. This will be limited by the ENL Admin mod, which must be kept in "ENL Mode" for the duration of the match. There will be no equipment restrictions beyond the class limits and players are free to exchange equipment at will.
- All matches should be played on the official tournament servers named: "ENL_France" (servers 1&2) and "ENL_Germany" (servers 1-4). Book timeslots on these servers, in the Server Booking thread, in this sub-forum. If wish to play your match on any other server, you must request permission from me (captain lust) via PM. The password, for these servers is "enl20" and should always be reset to "enl20" after use, so people can register players and test pings.
- The winner will be the team with the most rounds won, at the end of the match.
- Teams may make 2 substitutions during each 3 round leg. When making a switch, the outgoing player should leave the server. At no point should teams spawn more than 8 players.
- If "no spectators" has been agreed by the teams, the joining player should respect that and make sure to join late in the round. If spectators have been agreed and allowed by both teams then neither team should take up more than half of the spectator spots.
- Teams are permitted to make as many changes as they like in between each 3 round leg (i.e. at spawn and map switches).
- If the match ends in an overall draw, then it will be considered a tie and both teams will get 1 point.
- Each map must be reset, after 3 rounds, when the teams switch.
- Typically, matches will be played without a referee. There are simply too many matches to expect a referee to be present most of the time, so take frequent screenshots and even video recordings, if you can.
- Unless team captains decide otherwise, team 1 will always start at spawn 1 on the first map and and spawn 2 on the second map and vice versa for team 2.
- Special versions of the Warband maps will be made for the tournament. They will fix map bugs and remove ways to glitch, removing the problem of glitches entirely. A log of the changes made to the maps will be kept and the maps will be made publicly available.
- If a team cannot show out with 8 players, for a match, the other team should continue with 8 anyway. If however, a team cannot make 7 players or more, the other team will be offered a default win, provided they have shown up with at least 8 players. If neither team has shown up with 8 players, the match should be rescheduled. Teams should allow 15 minutes, after the scheduled match time, for players to arrive on the server, before any of these rulings are put into practice.
- The above notions of shown players are defined by attendance on the agreed server alone. Players must be eligible, ready and willing to start the match.
- It is only by explicit agreement by team reps from both teams or by ruling from an event admin that a match can be rescheduled.
- An event admin may only make such a ruling if there is a reason that the match cannot be legitimately played, through no fault or misdoing of the teams and express consent to reschedule cannot be obtained from both teams. Basically unforseeable, unavoidable circumstances. Situations that do not warrant the usage of this power include (but are not limited to): one team can't get enough players, there is a national holiday in the country where one the teams is based, there is another event taking place at the time.
