Native Completed Scramble League America(SLA) Congrats to Slayer of Men Elite!

[Ebdanian Admiral]

Listen eb you dork callum clearly stated they dont give a fooey about esports so its our decision

Very constructive comment as usual. Of course its our ****ing decision. The way tournaments are run has always been our decision, and unless we get more sponsored events similar to BoB, it will always be our decision. You're stating the obvious here.

Now think for just a moment, if Bannerlord has a matchmaking system (which is confirmed) wouldn't it make logical sense for tournaments to copy the format this system uses? By doing this, the competitive scene alienates as few players as possible, which in turn grows the scene larger and brings more competition into the leagues.

Judging by both BoB and the glimpses of multiplayer which we have already seen in the form of commander battles (ew), it appears taleworlds favors smaller team sizes over our traditional 8v8. Therefore it would make perfect sense for the competitive community to start transitioning to smaller team sizes in preparation for this. If in 3 months Taleworlds takes an about-face and confirms that matchmaking is going to be 8v8 then perfect, we just go back to what we've been doing. In the meantime though for the sake of meta and team development it helps to be prepared for what seems to be the most likely outcome.

 

[sigi1]

i don't really see how 7s are all that cool anyways

you don't really get smaller comps, just 1 less guy and pretty much everyone will run 1 less inf on closed maps or 1 less cav in open maps. of course you can take away an archer/cav but i feel that it doesn't make a significant impact in 7s compared to 8. especially in a league like this where talent is spread out

in 8s if you take 1 less inf on closed or less cav on open, the output of the supporting classes are significantly increased without creating a huge weakness. however if you do this in 7s, you weaken one of the classes by a good bit and you don't gain as significant of an advantage usually. having someone solo any of the classes usually won't work unless the conditions are truly perfect

in 2017 warband, drops are required and 7s will **** up some comps due to lack of drops. you can go 3 vaegir archers, but one of those archers won't be able to defend themselves unless you run 1 inf. if you run 1 inf then you're ****ed because only 2 people in this tourny are able to play solo inf. you'll have no inf then your archers and cav won't have anyone to play off of.

your strats are limited on 7s compared to 8s or 5s. if you don't run a 3-2-2, you're kinda forced to play a certain way. in 8s, you can still conduct a variety of play styles for your team while having a comp different from 4-2-2. in fact, on some maps it's harder to push certain flags on 7s compared to 8s. river village windmill flag is almost impossible to push. you can get the 2 inf, but you're probably playing 3 cav which honestly isn't enough pressure to kill the defenders before they kill you. if you run 1 archer on open map, you need to quit being a captain. i just feel that strategies on attacking a flag are limited in 7s.

8s allow more players to play which is usually the reason for this league.

7s would be dumb because the "meta" would become worst and this is a tournament where you should play people. you'd gain absolutely nothing for the scene for doing 7s, it's just too little and it's too much for 5v5 playstyles.

Spoiler

what the **** am i talking about

 

[grimsight]

Let teams bring 7 and force the enemy to balance, but if both teams have 8 let them do 8v8

Also 7s is superior to 8s except its not because we still play awful open maps

remove open maps

 

[Gorlock]

Let teams bring 7 and force the enemy to balance, but if both teams have 8 let them do 8v8

Also 7s is superior to 8s except its not because we still play awful open maps

remove open maps

Agreed, open maps are outdated and extremely boring to play and boring to watch, just cav autism and inf stand there refusing to fight anything. How exciting

 

[Lagstro]

I'm not digging this tournament so far. Some teams seem to have enough active players to scrim often, some teams don't even have enough active players to attend official matches. The overall teams are far from balanced. Some captains' dedication to the tournament and their team is questionable. These points combined with a tentative 10 week long tournament is going to turn out to be a very poor and excruciatingly long tournament experience for some teams that are already destined to fail due to factors out of their control.

Normal tournaments allow teams to be formed with everything in mind; skill, availability, team members that don't hate each other/team cohesion, a general playing strategy in mind with all the previous things accounted for, etc.

A draft league allows for captains to keep these things in mind and select players accordingly, although not with the same freedom they would have in a normal tournament of course, since they have to outbid other captains to acquire desired players rather than freely convince them to join their team.

A scramble league **** all of this up due to its random nature. Captains have absolutely no control of who is on their team, they can't select their team based on either skill or availability, the team's strategy depends on which random players decide to show up for officials, some players may very well dislike each other, etc.

Honestly, given how long you plan on running this tournament and the fact that it's realistically going to be the only NA tournament until its conclusion, you'd really be doing the entire scene a service by turning it into a draft league that has a much higher chance of being competitive and enjoyable.

 

[Roberta]

Hello, Hurricane Looter Boberta here. I think 7's is a good change. I think it's too late for a draft league and while people may like it, on paper you will have the same issues. Just for example at the rat parties I think every captain I allow to pick teams minus two picks a meme crowd and that's with players that are actually there. Imagine them picking from a pool of over a hundred.

On the other hand you have the issue of you assigning tier one and two players to teams that have no intention of showing up. This ruins the tournament and these players shouldn't be allowed in. No offense to players that have been in the scene for a while but signing up with the intention of maybe going to a match or to ruins the tournament for your entire team. I myself have players that signed up with this in mind and while no where near as bad as some teams it is rather annoying.

People are overreacting though. Realisticly in these types of tournaments the matches are usually one sided and the best teams will quickly rise to the top, draft or no draft, and the bad teams will very quickly deteriorate into even ****tier teams because after one loss people tend to give up.

 

[KaneMaB]

I'm not digging this tournament so far. Some teams seem to have enough active players to scrim often, some teams don't even have enough active players to attend official matches. The overall teams are far from balanced. Some captains' dedication to the tournament and their team is questionable. These points combined with a tentative 10 week long tournament is going to turn out to be a very poor and excruciatingly long tournament experience for some teams that are already destined to fail due to factors out of their control.

Normal tournaments allow teams to be formed with everything in mind; skill, availability, team members that don't hate each other/team cohesion, a general playing strategy in mind with all the previous things accounted for, etc.

A draft league allows for captains to keep these things in mind and select players accordingly, although not with the same freedom they would have in a normal tournament of course, since they have to outbid other captains to acquire desired players rather than freely convince them to join their team.

A scramble league **** all of this up due to its random nature. Captains have absolutely no control of who is on their team, they can't select their team based on either skill or availability, the team's strategy depends on which random players decide to show up for officials, some players may very well dislike each other, etc.

Honestly, given how long you plan on running this tournament and the fact that it's realistically going to be the only NA tournament until its conclusion, you'd really be doing the entire scene a service by turning it into a draft league that has a much higher chance of being competitive and enjoyable.

A very well stated opinion, could not agree more.

 

[Hero_of_Ferelden]

Think you guys are looking too much into this matchmaking thing. Chances are it's just gonna be for traditional modes like TDM, captain mode, and siege. They've not said anything about competitive matchmaking.

 

[PepperKP]

Siege matchmaking ( ͡⚆ ͜ʖ ͡⚆)( ͡⚆ ͜ʖ ͡⚆)( ͡⚆ ͜ʖ ͡⚆)

 

[Lagstro]

I think it's too late for a draft league and while people may like it, on paper you will have the same issues.

This is a 10 week tournament... taking a few days up to a week to turn it into a preferable draft league and shortening the tournament by one or two weeks will have nothing but a positive effect on the tournament.

Realisticly in these types of tournaments the matches are usually one sided and the best teams will quickly rise to the top, draft or no draft, and the bad teams will very quickly deteriorate into even ****tier teams because after one loss people tend to give up.

That's simply not true. It was the case for the NASL you ran because that was also a scramble league. The actual draft league you didn't stick around for ran very well and was full of great matches.

Spoiler: Final Standings

Look at the round ratios, even the 2nd worst team only has 2 less round wins than losses. Teams weren't really getting stomped regularly.

Spoiler: First 3 Week Results

Most matches were very close, nothing close to what literally just happened in the first week of this tournament in 3 out of the 4 matches... and if recent scrims are any indicator, it looks like this tournament is looking to be mostly stomps.

It's very difficult for a team to be extremely dis-proportionally stacked in a draft league because each captain has a hand in where the good and bad players go, something that can't happen even in normal tournaments because players are free to choose which team they play in, meaning all the good players can choose to be on the same team and all the leftovers can form a really bad one. This can't happen in a draft league unless a captain is intentionally trying to pick nothing but bad players, which doesn't realistically happen. In this sense, Draft Leagues potentially create the fairest tournaments, as far as overall team balance is concerned.

Just for example at the rat parties I think every captain I allow to pick teams minus two picks a meme crowd and that's with players that are actually there. Imagine them picking from a pool of over a hundred.

You can't seriously use rat parties as a reference. People intentionally troll in those since there are absolutely no repercussions and teams change every time anyway, they're there for quick gags. People can't intentionally troll a 10 week tournament because they wouldn't even be allowed to continue playing for that team if they did. It would really suck if they had to wait several months before they would get to participate in the next tournament.

 

[Tardet]

If I ever go to jail, I want Lagstro to defend my case.

 

[Watly]

Hi Lag, can you please not denounce the scramble league as a tournament format based on Nevino and Robs' inability to balance teams? The EU Scramble League had an acceptable level of balance, as can be seen by scrolling through the match results.

Also recall that the purpose of a fantasy league and a scramble league are completely different: the original idea of the scramble league was to create a fun tournament where good players play together with not so good players, while the fantasy league is more aimed at competition.

 

[Dan the Chef]

Hi Lag, can you please not denounce the scramble league as a tournament format based on Nevino and Robs' inability to balance teams? The EU Scramble League had an acceptable level of balance, as can be seen by scrolling through the match results.

Also recall that the purpose of a fantasy league and a scramble league are completely different: the original idea of the scramble league was to create a fun tournament where good players play together with not so good players, while the fantasy league is more aimed at competition.

Unless I'm mistaken, you're not calling for a scramble league then. You want pre-made teams with set rosters which is the exact opposite of a scramble league.

 

[Watly]

Yes, you're mistaken.

 

[Oliveran]

Hi Lag, can you please not denounce the scramble league as a tournament format based on Nevino and Robs' inability to balance teams? The EU Scramble League had an acceptable level of balance, as can be seen by scrolling through the match results.

Also recall that the purpose of a fantasy league and a scramble league are completely different: the original idea of the scramble league was to create a fun tournament where good players play together with not so good players, while the fantasy league is more aimed at competition.

Unless I'm mistaken, you're not calling for a scramble league then. You want pre-made teams with set rosters which is the exact opposite of a scramble league.

I think he's saying that those two players way of rating isn't the best. He's saying that scramble league is fine, but want the "rating of players" to be different so the teams becomes more balanced.

 

[Nevino]

WFL we literally redrafted because of how unbalanced the first draft was and ppl *****ed about unbalanced everything was, we almost had to rig the 2nd draft to make balanced teams. Also my balancing of players was fine, but I didn't truly take into account the activity of each player as evident by the fact that 2 of the matches had teams with only 7 people, a draft will not fix these problems anyway, if anything it will further alienate the new people in this tourney.

As far as Captains go, I want everyone to just take a second and stop *****ing, because without them there wouldn't be a tourney at all. I had to go and beg multiple ppl to captain teams and if they hadn't we might not have had a tourney.

I want everyone to bear with me and to see how everything else turns out, hopefully there will be a greater level of activity this week and we will see it reflected in the match results.

 

[Gorlock]

Ahmerrad Ascended literally tied like 4 times, thats how balanced it was

 

[Lagstro]

Hi Lag, can you please not denounce the scramble league as a tournament format based on Nevino and Robs' inability to balance teams? The EU Scramble League had an acceptable level of balance, as can be seen by scrolling through the match results.

Also recall that the purpose of a fantasy league and a scramble league are completely different: the original idea of the scramble league was to create a fun tournament where good players play together with not so good players, while the fantasy league is more aimed at competition.

The team building and tier rating in the EU side was likely more meticulous. But that wasn't the only difference either. EU used a swiss system while both NASL and Warband Fantasy League did not. That alone would make the matches beyond the first week look more balanced in general. This tournament isn't using the swiss system either, it's simply a long tournament where every team faces each other once before single elim. The best teams will be facing the worst teams, likely resulting in stomps, something the swiss system does a good job at avoiding.

You're not wrong about the main purposes of the leagues, but that doesn't mean that the fantasy league couldn't equally allow not so good players to play with good players. Just add the SL rule that forces captains to put in any player that shows up to the match allowing them to play at least one set, in addition to captains having to inform every member of the team of upcoming official matches.

This tournament doesn't even have those old SL rules in it right now.

WFL we literally redrafted because of how unbalanced the first draft was and ppl *****ed about unbalanced everything was, we almost had to rig the 2nd draft to make balanced teams.

IIRC, there was a redraft because you kept on letting people into the tournament after teams had already been drafted (including top tier players) and the teams became unbalanced after the draft. The second draft was balanced because you stopped letting people in after the draft was completed, only allowing trades during the first week. The captains also had a better idea of how drafting worked the second time around.

 

[Hero_of_Ferelden]

Savage Watly

 

[Nevino]

I will redo this to a draft if each captain agrees to still captain or if they don't I will need someone to step up. If that can happen, I will create another draft and redo this tourney.