[UNAC] Season 1 Feedback, Season 2 Suggestions.

[Kherven]

While the specifics of who will lead Season 2 are TBD, its pretty certain that there will be a UNAC season 2. When it starts, no one knows, but it will not start until we have sufficient maps/category (I'm hoping for 7/c or 21 total)

That said, the first thing I know people will go to in this thread is criticism, so along with your constructive criticism It'd be nice to hear what this tournament also did right so we know not to change that. New features, rule changes, suggested new maps, etc are all acceptable in this thread.  There is one major rule of this thread, however

While you may reply to other people's feedback, do not wander into meta discussion.

If at any point you feel, "hey, this is more about meta" feel free to grab the quote, and reply to it in the meta thread

(THIS IS NOT MY OPINION)
Example of acceptable feedback: Random Plains should be removed because its randominess does not suit UNAC's competitive nature
Example of meta feedback: Random Plains should be removed because you just go all cav and all cav beats everything on open.

 

[Shemaforash]

Random plains should be removed because of re-rolls, there shouldn't be much more reason.

 

[Cleric_Johnson]

I'v actually grown to enjoy Open plains. But random plains still seems awful to me. I just dont think it fits in well because you cant play the same map twice on it. If someone invented a server side mod to fix this id probably reconsider.

 

[Kherven]

One thing I figured i'd outline as a possible suggestion is allowing 6 to play.

Throughout the tournament there were a few times where for whatever reason, teams were having trouble getting 7 guys and they just wanted to play with 6. While I sympathized, it was against the rules so I had to tell them no. The first thing that comes to mind is  to allow 6v7's but I feel if we allowed that some of the nicer teams out there would match and although they probably feel compelled to do it, its not really fair to them.

With that said, I had an idea of a somewhat complex rule that could solve both. If its just too complicated let me know.

In the event that a team cannot field 7, they are allowed to play one man down (6) against the other team. However, the team with sufficient players is not allowed to drop below 7, they must play the minimum. At no point may a match be played if one team has less than 6, or if both teams have less than 7.

So what this rule would do is

• Allow teams to get a match out of the way if they're really having trouble getting 7
• Stops this from becoming a 6v6 tourny
• Punishes the team who can only bring 6
• Removes the compulsion to match numbers below 7

This rule would NOT force teams to play only 6, they could still reschedule. But if they wanted to, or had to (if it was already rescheduled) they could use this rule.

I would hope teams would not use this rule frequently, but I feel like it offers an alternative solution for those rare times when teams are just having a bad week. (I can recall it happening 3 or so times this season)

 

[Cleric_Johnson]

the issue is because the NA scene is less gamey than EU, the other side will 99% of the time drop to 6. Meaning all your doing in reality is lowering minimum team size to 6. Personally i feel people should be able to get that many players together, so i see no need to change it.

 

[Kherven]

Was in a rush to get out the door

The two other suggestions:

Remove River Valley or at the very least reclassify it as Mixed.
Reclassify Dry Valley has Open.

@Cleric, thats why you have the specific rule that you can't match. I really don't like the rule that much either, but I thnk i'd rather see a 6v7 then a forfeit.

 

[WilySly]

(THIS IS NOT MY OPINION)
Plains should be removed

You sly devil 

Pros:
*Lots of teams
*Clear expectations, regarding rosters, server settings, matching players, etc.
*The collaboration between team captains and admins was refreshing
*Tons of quality streams and coverage (which we've sorely lacked in previous tournies)
*All the pundit predictions and team discussion (though it's died down a bit now, the discussions/perspectives were very interesting to read)
*1200G seems to have hit the balance most of us were looking for

Cons:
*As you're aware, the map pool (both quantity and quality) needs some work. It's not just that we need new maps, but also that some of the maps we've used historically (I.e. Nord Town) need some attention.
*Tournament has been too long.  3 months is a long time to hold a team together and expect them to perform at a high level. As we're seeing now, the duration has caused a pretty significant hardship on some of these teams (evidenced by dramatic roster adjustments, players going inactive, teams not taking matches seriously, etc.).  IMO, I'd rather see a group stage similar to that utilized in Nom's latest dueling tourney. While, personally, I would be really bummed if we didn't get a chance to play all of the top tier teams in the tourney, I think it's a reasonable trade-off if we want to maintain enthusiasm for these types of events.

I'm sure I'll add more later. Overall, with a few caveats, this has been the most engaging warband  tournament I've participated in.

 

[Killfacer]

Definitely agree that the tournament is too long and the format is poor. Having a round robin that lasts months and months rarely ends well. I'd recommend shortening the tournament and changing the round robin.

 

[Kherven]

You say its too long and has "bad format" and then we should shorten it in then "Change it"

What is this second thing you mention?

I get we could shorten the RR by having less teams or breaking it into divisions, but how do you change the format of a RR without violating what a RR is?

 

[findecanno]

Should have two brackets for the finals, one for the top teams, and one for the other teams. This way, it will give mid and lower tier teams something to fight for, while maintaining a high level of competition for the higher tier teams.

 

[Mr.X]

There are different types of Round Robins. tbh I have never really seriously looked into the different styles of tournament formatting, but I think I'll do some research tonight and see what I can come up with.

Thoughts on stuff already brought up:

The 6v7 thing:
I don't really love your rule Kherven. Tbh I think I'd just prefer sticking with the current rule but with harsher penalties. 7 is an achievable standard for NA. I think people get away too easily with only having 6 and then just rescheduling so its nbd.

Streams:
I agree with Wily about streams. Streams were good, starting to average about 15 live viewers per match, which is pretty good for our community tbh. The more it becomes standard the better.

Pundits/Community Stuff
Pundits was good except I haven't seen anything new since week 6 and I think it's already week 10. Same with Power Rankings. unacast was never a thing afaik . Of course I stopped streaming as well (fcking **** upload speed), but it would be nice to see more things like that. I wasn't the largest fan of the way the admins handled the forum though. The layout of this childboard was not friendly. The rules were spread out over multiple threads, rulechanges were implemented without updating the OPs that contained the old rule, and rules were difficult to locate because of that. There's too many ****ing stickies. There are 3 weeks worth of "predictions, results, and discussions" threads stickied. Having so many stickies defeats the purpose of a sticky, because they're no longer easy to find.

I'm still not totally sure how I feel about the 1200 gold, but I'm much less inclined to fight for 1k over 1.2k than I was for 1.5k.

Tournament Length:
Yea its too long, and it will always be too long. Again, I haven't totally looked up the tournament styles thing, but one way  to shorten it would be to have an upper and lower RR that go on simultaneously, or 3 groups. Could theoretically cut the tournament time in half. Use the seedings from this tournament to split the teams and have it running more like a ladder. Have it last roughly a month or a month and a half, maybe have a "finals" between the top two to determine, a season winner, than move on to the next season and reorganize the groups. Teams at the top of their group can advance, teams at the bottom move down, something like that. I haven't really fleshed it out, but I do think it's possible and I think moving closer to ladder style with a more constant competition as opposed to the start/stop tournament mentality would be better.

Maps:
There needs to be some actual criteria for competitive maps, and there need to be more maps. I'm not a fan of the "tournament creator" picking the maps allowed, because who is the tournament creator other than the first person to post? Also there needs to be an even number of maps in each category. Not sure how much I love the 2-map pool thing, but I think a lot of the lack of maps and pool vs fixture thing could be fixed if the tournament were simply shorter. That way if people don't love a map, they don't have to play with it for 3 months, they just wait for the change of season and then complain. I also don't like how maps were moved solely because a couple people complained about them.

In general, a lot of things were done right. There should not be super major rule changes anymore, because then we're back to the same stop/start thing. So while I don't love everything, I don't necessarily think it should be drastically changed.  I really have mixed feelings about pretty much everything. On one hand, this was easily the best tournament in terms of excitement, competition, and administration. Part of thats a function of the community becoming more competitively-minded and part of that's a function of the fact that this is simply the most recent tournament in my memory. It's also a function of a pretty decent administrative team.

I know it might not be kosher, but I'm gonna comment on the administrative team too, because I think having a consistent admin team that requires real criteria and thought when it comes to adding members and things is important for stability.

UNAC Administration

Lead Administrators
Calamity - Might not be my favorite person, but he's been around and active the whole time and he makes concrete decisions which is good for the tournament. Not as transparent as I would like (reasoning for decisisons and things like that could be clearer. I'm specifically thinking of team punishments and things like that)
William -  To be honest, haven't seen him posting much. Perhaps his admin work is behind the scenes, but it would be nice to know if he's active.

Administrators
Gelden - Haven't really seen him make decisions or post much, again could be behind the scenes or just not in my field of vision.
Kherven - To me, Kherven is the most connected to the community. I'm sure part of that is because he's in my clan, but from an attempt at an objective standpoint, he seems to be the one talking to everyone on the forum the most.
Juve - Same as Gelden. Also I'm pretty sure he like went afk for several weeks :p

Now not seeing a lot of administration isn't a bad thing. It could very well be that not many situations requiring the whole "put your foot down admin" thing arose, which is good. So there's really noone who I thought was a bad administrator. I just thought it might be helpful for them to see how they appear to me, and perhaps other members of the community.



So I don't really have any grand statement or conclusion, this is more of a musing of thoughts. I don't know what I would change or not, but I thought it might be worth typing.

 

[Rhade]

As a whole, UNAC so far was excellent, probably one of the best run tournaments NA has seen so far and I think that stems from the initiative and willingness of the community to work together to compromise. The ruleset that we established as a group has been shown to work, even if it isn't flawless, and I think that we can continue to improve it.

Things UNAC did well:

• 
  -Great ancillary efforts by people like Ehombre, NAWarband, Gelden, the Power Rankings thread, so on and so forth to really make good use of the childboard and provide a place that UNAC can go on 24/7 without matches actually needing to be played. These kind of "fluff" things are really helpful in making a good tournament great.
  
  -Great compromise between community leadership on rules. In a good compromise, no one is overly happy, but I feel that everyone has come to embrace the ruleset, which is a good thing. Like I said, I think we may be able to tweak a few things here and there but the amount of cooperation in UNAC is unparalleled.
  
  -Good moderation and administration. If a server was needed or a problem arised, Calamity or another admin usually was never too far away or hard to contact, and rulings came relatively quick.

Things that UNAC needs to improve on:

• 
  -Map pool. I really like the map pool system, but I feel that we are low on good maps to really make it work the way it should work. I think that season 1 has seen a lot of maps that really aren't good competitive maps just being thrown in because we're low on maps, especially open maps, and we just need quantity to finish the season out. I'd rather have quality *and* quantity, and it would be nice to see some more varied map types from open to mixed to closed.
  
  -Consider group stages, a ladder system using this tournament's rankings to start (ala Marnid's NASTe system), or double round robins. I personally enjoyed the length of the season but I think it was too long for some.
  
  -Give lower / mid tier teams something to play for. Towards the end of the season, when they see that they don't have anything left to play for, a lot of teams start to let their foot off the gas and maybe even stop showing up. I think it's important to give them something to play for even if the only reason is because no one likes playing a team that doesn't care if they win or lose -- it's a waste of time. Perhaps we could take all of the teams who don't make single elim, and put them in a single elim for 5th and 6th place? Best of the mid tiers?

I'm rather ambivalent towards gold amounts at this point. I wouldn't be opposed to 1000, or keeping it at 1200 -- anything to keep those ****ing warhorses away.

 

[Killfacer]

Two concurrent round robins with the top 2 teams qualifying from each would probably work, as would a ladder. NA has a pretty stable set of clans so RR is more viable here so I think the two RR would be a nice idea. Could potentially seed it from this season's standings aswell. Seeding gives something for the lower teams to fight for aswell, specially if as Rhade says they get their own Single elimination stage too.

 

[RoBo_CoP]

Maps:

As of the current, a map pool I would use would look like this:

隐藏

Open Maps:
Open Plain
Random Plains Would agree with the opinion that a mod is needed to fix spawn changes.
Field by the River
River Valley

Mixed Maps:
Reveran Village
Frosty Battle
Solace
Ruins
Dry Valley I think with some changes it can be a keeper, and re-classified as an open map. Same reason FBTR is a open map even with the obvious locations, it's still massive.

Closed Maps:
Nord Town
Sandi'boush
Desert Town
Verloren UPDATE PLZ
Vendetta
Port Assault
Fort of Honour

Really there's not much to say about maps other than to further encourage people to create them. I'm well capable of helping people get started if they're looking to try their hand at it, and I'll even try throwing together some open maps myself in the coming weeks if time permits. Like I said before, to people that want to start creating any kind of map, no high water, no cliffs, and no ruins that control 3 flags.



Administration:

While this should be obvious, going to post it anyway; anyone who is an admin should treat that postition with the utmost respect and professionalism. Be active, intellegent, and be the Marnid style stickler for the rules. Rules dah rules, and while everyone has their own personal opinions on how things should be ran, they should abide by the rules 100% without fail. So as far as I'm concerned, the admin team seems to have done their jobs, but keeping more active admins, where needed, can be required. Having people that are admins that are unavailable to do the job shouldn't be admins, or replaced in the event they are incapable of doing so.

Would like to add that I think Kherven should be a board admin aswell, he seems active and aware enough to make changes to threads, update scores, and keep everything nice and tidy.



Tournament/League Format:

This is the trickiest part of the whole thing, creating a format that works fairly for everyone, is smooth and quick enough to appease everyone aswell. I think that there is just a couple key things to consider. The size of the scene limits the amount of complexity you can introduce without making it unnecessary or have it function properly. The league format that the WNL used / NASTe used are great for larger tournaments with a larger pool of top teir teams being able to duke it out for a top spot. The picking system also allows for better match-ups and higher quality streams for much more intense and interesting play, however is the NA scene large enough for it? The alternative is the round-robin, however it has its own problems. A RR is great for smaller amounts of teams, however with the amount currently in the UNAC, it drags the tournament into months of matches with a lot of poor match-ups. I also dis-agree with two concurrent RRs, since there will still be a problem with poor match-ups, as well as making it a bit harder for the lower teir teams to improve over time and be paired with equals, while if we were to keep the finals bracket afterwards, it would just end the same with the same top-teir teams making it through, essentially just shortening the tournament, rather than improving it. (Though I suppose that is a small improvement itself )

Looking at the number of teams currently playing with the number of teams that can possibly be lost, and added, I would think trying at the NASTe or WNL style formats could work. NA kinda straddles the line between having enough numbers to keep it interesting, and having a Round Robin work effectively. Looking at the current season of UNAC, I think that it can be well worth the effort in attempting to change.

There are two issues that need to be adressed with this method, firstly being that of teams playing each-other too often, and teams leaving and entering. I think with the stability of the NA scene, with the size of the core clans playing, It wouldn't be an issue with either, as long as the rule-set is effect at keeping teams choosing different opponents each week, and having there be a good way to measure the standing, and honestly the current method of doing so works, and translates directly over to other formats.

I think if anything, there should be two season ending brackets, with the top 1-6 in a final, and 7-12/ 7-10 in a final, with the top two of each (6 teams) being seeded.

 

[WilySly]

The NASTe ladder format was, IMO, a dismal failure. NASTe S1 was entertaining, but S2 was absolutely horrible.  Marnid's the man and I know that he did everything he possibly could to encourage/force people to play matches, but when we leave match scheduling open-ended like that, teams seem to go into hibernation mode.

I can't even recall how many challenges we issued (like 6?) that had to be cancelled because the other team couldn't be bothered to set a match time.

I think that, when it comes to the regularity/scheduling of matches, keep expectations clear and activity structured (I.e. one match/week, etc.). Take all of the guesswork and choice of opponents out of it.

 

[RoBo_CoP]

You can have one match a week with that format, IE WNL does this just fine.

Side-note: Delete anything Sota posts here.

 

[sotamursu123]

divide the tournament to two groups, "str0nk" and "weak" teams. Then near the end give the best "weak" team a chance to beat any str0nk team to take his place in str0nks in then next season. Invite the top teams of this season to join "str0nks" next season.

 

[WilySly]

Didn't WNL have a ton of teams drop? Was it related to scheduling issues or the state of the competition or...?

Perhaps one of our European friends could elaborate on how WNL went, as it relates to this discussion.

I'm not saying that a ladder system couldn't work, but it would require some stiff rules and even stiffer adminship.

 

[sotamursu123]

Didn't WNL have a ton of teams drop? Was it related to scheduling issues or the state of the competition or...?

Perhaps one of our European friends could elaborate on how WNL went, as it relates to this discussion.

I'm not saying that a ladder system couldn't work, but it would require some stiff rules and even stiffer adminship.

Dickon just said your format is too long. WNL was too long and teams dropped out...

 

[ClockWise]

divide the tournament to two groups, "str0nk" and "weak" teams. Then near the end give the best "weak" team a chance to beat any str0nk team to take his place in str0nks in then next season. Invite the top teams of this season to join "str0nks" next season.

liek dis?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promotion_and_relegation