BEAST - Bannerlord Early Access Skirmish Tournament

[Aeronwen]

This is where teams have to make strategic choices, pay attention to their squad, make sure their players are happy, recruit replacements in case of departures, strengthen their squad... Do real management.
Team leaders will have greater responsibility and will have to keep their team afloat and make sure that it is strengthened. Well, maybe I played a bit too much football manager.

I think players should take the responsibility for their choices. Putting the responsibility onto team leaders, who are already putting in a lot of extra effort for the team or onto the tourney admins who (some of them anyway) are putting in a lot of hours each week is not OK.

Sometimes in a team things just dont work out though nobodys fault. having to wait a few weeks before playing in an official for another team is not the end of the world. And is certainly not worth increasing disruption to the tournament or the increasing tehburden on admins.

 

[Dark ?]

I think players should take the responsibility for their choices. Putting the responsibility onto team leaders, who are already putting in a lot of extra effort for the team or onto the tourney admins who (some of them anyway) are putting in a lot of hours each week is not OK.

Sometimes in a team things just dont work out though nobodys fault. having to wait a few weeks before playing in an official for another team is not the end of the world. And is certainly not worth increasing disruption to the tournament or the increasing tehburden on admins.

I think everything I've written the teams are already doing it internally about management, I'm just announcing it,I give it greater importance. I don't agree with you, it's frustrating to go several weeks without playing a competitive game. how about a vote?

 

[Aeronwen]

I think everything I've written the teams are already doing it internally about management, I'm just announcing it,I give it greater importance. I don't agree with you, it's frustrating to go several weeks without playing a competitive game. how about a vote?

As I said this would impact the tournament as whole and the admins in particular. We encourage team captains to vote on elements for the tournament that impact the teams but that do not disrupt the tournament or increase the burden on admins. A vote is not appropriate in this case, what you propose is simply a shifting of responsibility from players to captains and admins.

 

[Dark ?]

I also had an idea to give a virtual budget to the teams to make transfers. The budget is allocated according to the ranking of the team and the division you are in. You will have a bigger budget in A than in B. The 1st in div B will have a bigger budget reward than the 5th.

It's true that the idea may sound a bit crazy but it's feasible, If you are too busy to do this I have time to invest, give me your extra work I'll do it, I'll spend part of my night there.

in short I want to give a bigger dimension but if it seems too much to you there is no problem, it's just a suggestion.

 

[TheBard]

I also had an idea to give a virtual budget to the teams to make transfers. The budget is allocated according to the ranking of the team and the division you are in. You will have a bigger budget in A than in B. The 1st in div B will have a bigger budget reward than the 5th.

It's true that the idea may sound a bit crazy but it's feasible, If you are too busy to do this I have time to invest, give me your extra work I'll do it, I'll spend part of my night there.

in short I want to give a bigger dimension but if it seems too much to you there is no problem, it's just a suggestion.

Just no.

 

[IceNoVa]

A virtual budget and mid tournament team switching for players? That is just asking for trouble and drama and I'll put my vote against that shenanigans any time.
To explain:
The only fantasy budget kind of tournament where it makes sense is by players selection all together, like the Draft Cup. In works there, because the goal is to balance teams and have people play together outside of their clans and have a little extra fun on the side. Which is 100% contradictory to the goal of long-term team based events like BEAST.

Most teams have been stable for 3 tournaments now, you can count withdrawals on one hand and the run-time of these events are just several weeks. If you cannot be bothered to play with your team for the whole endeavour you really shouldn't have signed up in the first place.

---

A suggestion my end, way different than the content discussed above:

Sibling divisions

While keeping a singular top division, you change from a linear division structure to one with parallel divisions in order to accompany more teams in a more streamlined contest.

You'd get:
Div A
Div B1, B2
Div C1, C2

Teams could stay in their division when a season ends, but drawing them anew instead would mix things up and is an appealing option..

IF there was way more, you could eventually go to D1-4.

Why?
Signing up as a new team will usually result in you going into the lowest league, which is perfectly sensible. In order to not have a potentially strong squad have to play 3 seasons to get to the highest league, I'd propose to keep the division tier itself fairly small. A,B,C and D are all well and good divisions, but with an increase in teams we'd go to E,F,G etc. You get the picture.

Division size could be easily adjusted, the current size of 8 teams fits neatly into a two month cycle per season and is a managable commitment for teams and their players.

 

[tom54p]

As I said this would impact the tournament as whole and the admins in particular. We encourage team captains to vote on elements for the tournament that impact the teams but that do not disrupt the tournament or increase the burden on admins. A vote is not appropriate in this case, what you propose is simply a shifting of responsibility from players to captains and admins.

Completely agree with aero on this.
Players need to carefully choose which team to join, you can't ask captains and admins to babysit players in order to make them stay.
Besides, that rule winks at the creation of lasting clans rather than mercenary squads which change every tournament.

 

[Dark ?]

Completely agree with aero on this.
Players need to carefully choose which team to join, you can't ask captains and admins to babysit players in order to make them stay.
Besides, that rule winks at the creation of lasting clans rather than mercenary squads which change every tournament.

The clan remains only players can change, if there are transfers there are contracts for the players and switch team all the time is not always well received.

But forget I said what I basically wanted is just a mid-season break to exchange players. Then if we reduce the time of the tournament it will solve the problem.

 

[IceNoVa]

But forget I said what I basically wanted is just a mid-season break to exchange players. Then if we reduce the time of the tournament it will solve the problem.

A mid-term break is only necessary for seasons that span over a long period of time, if you think football there's only a winter break, also partly because of weather conditions, but also because a season spans over an entire year.

 

[hoonii]

Remove khuzait=half the problems solved lol
Apart from joking, Khuzait is seriously just too weak and as can be seen in screenshots Khuzait nearly loses every time. Let's just remove Khuzait from the tournament for this time and see how the playerbase likes it. Like, Khuzait received no serious buff other than nomad and lancer changes and as long as class restriction is in Khuzait's still going to underperform imo.
Also I agree we should do 2 matches in a week or something it just takes too long.

 

[Aprikosenmann]

Remove khuzait=half the problems solved lol
Apart from joking, Khuzait is seriously just too weak and as can be seen in screenshots Khuzait nearly loses every time. Let's just remove Khuzait from the tournament for this time and see how the playerbase likes it. Like, Khuzait received no serious buff other than nomad and lancer changes and as long as class restriction is in Khuzait's still going to underperform imo.
Also I agree we should do 2 matches in a week or something it just takes too long.

On the old patch I would agree but did we even see khuzait clanmatches on 1.5.5 so far? I personally feel like sturgia might be even worse but just a guess.

 

[Pacemaker]

Remove khuzait=half the problems solved lol
Apart from joking, Khuzait is seriously just too weak and as can be seen in screenshots Khuzait nearly loses every time. Let's just remove Khuzait from the tournament for this time and see how the playerbase likes it. Like, Khuzait received no serious buff other than nomad and lancer changes and as long as class restriction is in Khuzait's still going to underperform imo.
Also I agree we should do 2 matches in a week or something it just takes too long.

Sturgia is weaker than Khuzait.

 

[hoonii]

On the old patch I would agree but did we even see khuzait clanmatches on 1.5.5 so far? I personally feel like sturgia might be even worse but just a guess.

Sturgia is weaker than Khuzait.

We'll see but I believe Khuzait will fail to win again.
About Sturgia though, idk but I think Sturgian cav is good and the archer got a pretty neat buff as well, only thing is that they are infantry based nation and they suck at infantry but wouldn't varyags beat khuzait spearmen? Only advantage Khuzait has over Sturgia is their archery.
Just remove them both lmao.

 

[Ikea Knight]

In regards to Khuzait:
Khuzait obviously has bad infantry.
Removing the class limits may lead to more players picking archers. Ignoring that it would probably be rather frustrating to play against, I think Khuzait would benefit from not having a class limit.
Keep in mind that we have a running vote on class limits again.
Additionally, since the game is still in early access. Any patch by the devs can strongly change the meta.
Maybe they manage to change Khuzait in such a way that they are stronger - even with class limits.

So I wouldn't like to remove them from the competition.
Just doesn't seem right for me in an early acces tournament.

 

[TheBard]

Regarding the Khuzait v Sturgia matchup, I'd say Sturgia is still able to win since the Raider with Long Spear Share is on par with the Nomad, Axes cut apart everything Khuzait has to offer and the Druzhinnik in my opinion is clearly stronger than the Lancer. We will have to see how a match like this will develop though.

 

[hoonii]

Regarding the Khuzait v Sturgia matchup, I'd say Sturgia is still able to win since the Raider with Long Spear Share is on par with the Nomad, Axes cut apart everything Khuzait has to offer and the Druzhinnik in my opinion is clearly stronger than the Lancer. We will have to see how a match like this will develop though.

I would agree to cav part before 1.5.5, BUT Khuzait cav received a significant buff, especially the nomad having the long spear+shield as default and still having the 30 charge damage-dealing horse.
In a matchup raider v nomad imo they're pretty equal IF raider trades a spear with his team mate, but regarding anti-infantry nomad is definitely the go-to.

Druhzinnik v lancer on the other hand, you would think druhzinnik has the upper hand because better weapons but lancer's lance has been buffed that it is around 195 reach or something with the SAME thrust speed as before so it's a pretty reliable lance now. Considering they have nearly the same armor, lancer would put up a serious fight with the new lance so I really don't think druhzinnik is stronger than lancer now.

I don't believe sturgia has cav superiority over khuzait since 1.5.5 but I agree on infantry matchups.

 

[Ikea Knight]

I felt like I should mention it here as well.


Hey everybody!
I have some rather big news for you. The discussion is still ongoing but the most important thing is already clear and I felt like we need to tell you before the progression matches start next week. The adminstration has decided to reduce the size of each division to 6 teams. That means next week's promotion matches will in fact be rather placement matches.
Next season's division will be formed by division from top to bottom by groups of 6.
I know that some of you may be frustrated since some of you won't get a chance to join a higher division this season but we honestly believe that it's better for the competetive scene to have more shorter tournaments than a few longer ones.
So BEAST #4 will be a 5 week tourney with +1 week for finals and other optional matches.

We are still discussing on how exactly we manage progression for the next season and we are thinking of ways to potentially add fast progression so that signifcant stronger teams can move through lower divisions faster.

Rest assured that it wasn't an easy decision for us and that we wouldn't make this change if we wouldn't believe it's better for our competetive scene.

I hope you all will come back for the next season and I wish you the best of luck for the coming matches.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

 

[Horatius]

I felt like I should mention it here as well.


Hey everybody!
I have some rather big news for you. The discussion is still ongoing but the most important thing is already clear and I felt like we need to tell you before the progression matches start next week. The adminstration has decided to reduce the size of each division to 6 teams. That means next week's promotion matches will in fact be rather placement matches.
Next season's division will be formed by division from top to bottom by groups of 6.
I know that some of you may be frustrated since some of you won't get a chance to join a higher division this season but we honestly believe that it's better for the competetive scene to have more shorter tournaments than a few longer ones.
So BEAST #4 will be a 5 week tourney with +1 week for finals and other optional matches.

We are still discussing on how exactly we manage progression for the next season and we are thinking of ways to potentially add fast progression so that signifcant stronger teams can move through lower divisions faster.

Rest assured that it wasn't an easy decision for us and that we wouldn't make this change if we wouldn't believe it's better for our competetive scene.

I hope you all will come back for the next season and I wish you the best of luck for the coming matches.

Good Luck and Have Fun!

So to be clear the divisions would look something like:
A:
DM
RM
KW L
HINQ
DR

B:
aD
KW D
MoB
Div
HF
DM

C:
DoF
Hawk
TCV
Res
WTF
KoA


I'm missing ex KW L players team and that RdC and VW disband.

This would mean that TCV gets yet another fairly easy season am I correct?

 

[Varian♛]

So the current relegation games are useless anyway because everyone is packed into a division on a whim?

 

[IceNoVa]

I'd like to point to my earlier suggestion of sibling division: here

Sibling divisions
Div A
Div B1 and B2
Div C1 and C2
etc.

Since the goal is to enhance the competitive aspect of BEAST and allow teams to go through the ranks faster than in the restrictive 1 division style, this would help keep the Divisions flat and easy.
To spice things up there could be drafts for the B and C etc division tiers, so teams face a broader variety of teams in the long term.
Promotions could work largely in the same way, with top and bottom competing against each other respectively.
For Div A there could be the option to hav the Div B champions duel and then face the last place from Div A, or (preferably imo) the 3 teams face each other and the top scorer gets the Div A slot.
Alternatively you might as well have spot 5 and 6 be up for grabs, but that's my least favourite option.[/b]

It'd counter the trend of going for a whole bunch of divisions which would counter the whole idea of going through the ranks easier, while also not rendering the promotion matches of BEAST#3 utterly useless and forcing teams to stay within Div B,C or D, because of a significant rule change.

Edit:
tl;dr having decently organisable divisions is easier this way.

Quick math
8+8+8+13=37 (original team amount for BEAST#3)
6+12+12=30+x (prospected amount of teams for the sibling division style)
Since a few teams have withdrawn or disbanded, that evens out the schedule a little, and current lower ranked Div D teams would stay Div D as expected.
Before forming Div D2 (which would need more teams) there could still be a single Div D with the top two teams going for the bottom of C1 and C2 for relegation matches.