Pyramid concentration of players in the competitive scene
statikg
Join Date: 2012-09-19 Member: 159978Members
Join Date: 2012-09-19 Member: 159978Members
NS2 has a particularly high incidence of having all the best players on the same teams. This is particularly obvious with ARC in EU and Nxzl in NA but also applies to many of the next best teams on both sides of the ocean. However, this post is particularly aimed at the NA scene.
I am making this post as somewhat of a plea for players to try to reduce this behavior. Sometimes it results from teams disbanding and all the players split up among the next best teams, and sometimes its just straight up poaching the best players from lower divs. Nearly everyone who has played in division 1 knows this is the case and has probably either recruited or been recruited in this manner and I am no exception. I am going to suggest that this is hurting, and will eventually kill the competitive scene.
I am not suggesting that current teams should disband as that is just unrealistic and everyone playing at a high level really wants to win and in many cases are friends. However I would say that high level players who find themselves without a team or who are benched consider joining lower level teams, or trying to form new teams rather then just joining the best team available and causing them to have to bench one of their old players.
Although its really fun to be on a super team with a bunch of competent players who work well together, it is not fun either as a player or a spectator, when the outcome of games can be predicted with reasonably high accuracy. This is the case in many matches today.
What I would suggest is for bench/disbanded players from top teams, please considering moving to other teams and share your experience and skill, and the scene will be better for it. You can always still merc with your old teams.
Even after writing this post I don't know if it will have any impact at all because of how strong the incentive is to join the best team you possibly can, but I am truly convinced that the scene will do better if we can work to diffuse the talent a little bit.
I am making this post as somewhat of a plea for players to try to reduce this behavior. Sometimes it results from teams disbanding and all the players split up among the next best teams, and sometimes its just straight up poaching the best players from lower divs. Nearly everyone who has played in division 1 knows this is the case and has probably either recruited or been recruited in this manner and I am no exception. I am going to suggest that this is hurting, and will eventually kill the competitive scene.
I am not suggesting that current teams should disband as that is just unrealistic and everyone playing at a high level really wants to win and in many cases are friends. However I would say that high level players who find themselves without a team or who are benched consider joining lower level teams, or trying to form new teams rather then just joining the best team available and causing them to have to bench one of their old players.
Although its really fun to be on a super team with a bunch of competent players who work well together, it is not fun either as a player or a spectator, when the outcome of games can be predicted with reasonably high accuracy. This is the case in many matches today.
What I would suggest is for bench/disbanded players from top teams, please considering moving to other teams and share your experience and skill, and the scene will be better for it. You can always still merc with your old teams.
Even after writing this post I don't know if it will have any impact at all because of how strong the incentive is to join the best team you possibly can, but I am truly convinced that the scene will do better if we can work to diffuse the talent a little bit.
Comments
To get better in NS2 (or any game, really), you have have to want to get better. You have to actively dedicate your time to playing people better than you. Nexzil didn't get good by recruiting good players, they just worked harder than every other NA team out there. A good player joining a div2 or div3 team isn't going to encourage these div2 or div3 players to practice. The only thing that can motivate people to get better is themselves.
Similarly, if we distributed all the players from Nexzil over 3-4 div2 teams then you'd still just have 3-4 div2 teams. There's no reason to believe this would fix their attendance problems or increase their desire to lose-to-improve. And there's only so much "experience" a player can share. All the other players will still have to gain that experience by playing -- it's not something that can just be taught.
I do agree that watching and playing is decidedly less fun when you know the outcome of the games, but this is a symptom of a small community and not the player-skill distribution. I don't think individuals, nor the community, can fix this -- it simply requires more players picking up the game.
Of course players quit and new ones enter the scene but its really just a big circle of cycling as teams fold and disperse.
If you have multiple medium strength teams, more players will have fun playing against each other and then hopefully will want to continue playing and improving and the scene will benefit. Meanwhile if you have a few really strong teams, once you get benched from those teams, or can't make it on to them, you are stuck with few options in terms of teams to move to.
I think that rather then brushing it off as a small scene problem the fact that the scene is small is exactly why this is a problem, in a larger scene there is a much more uniform skill gradient of players so everyone can find matchups which are fun, but in NS there are clearly big steps between teams. Players who get benched from the top teams, don't want to take the big step down, so they just quit or sit on the bench forever. The lower level teams get crushed so hard by the higher level teams that most of them don't have have fun/have no motivation to play against the better teams and mixed with player poaching, they can never really get alot better. You want to play better teams to improve, but not MUCH better teams.
Is there a practical short term solution, no, but its just something I hope top teams/players might think about in the future.
I agree that the concentration of higher skilled players on div 1 teams makes matchups easily predictable, thus boring, but as said before, this is mostly a consequence of having a small player pool. I find it very unlikely for better players to join lower teams; this would feel like a demotion for that player, unless they actually want to do that. Psychology is weird and complex, you know. Besides, the team would most likely start relying on that player instead of learning from them. So, unless that player is joining the team with an intention to coach them, this would hurt more than help.
And I agree with Gorgeous on his point about motivation. If people did eventually form a team, a lot of them may see it as not worth it to practice 40+ hours a week (if they can even find that many scrims/pcw's) when they know they won't be Nexzil/bklub-level any time soon. With the exception of Nexzil, these D1 teams have enough trouble fielding 6 for a scrim (and even matches) themselves, and I can only imagine how much more difficult it is for lower-division teams. I personally try to contact as many teams as I can and let them know that I'm 100% willing to cast their scrims if I'm ever online, just as extra incentive for them to practice so they can actually watch something back.
But it's simply intimidating to get into this game competitively when you're just starting out, perhaps because of perceived 'elitism' by pro players, but also because of just how much quicker comp games progress compared to pubs. Unfortunately, it's not like CS where you can just hop in #findringer and 80% of the time get offered to join a team if you played reasonably well (and you clearly recognize this in your second post).
It sucks, and I don't see this pattern changing any time soon--but hopefully the formation of HeLix and Waka Waka (the two newest NA teams) is a good sign for the future.
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EDIT: Grammar and stuff.
both Onslaught and Dysgorge can compete in lower div1, both have taken enough rounds off div 1 teams that its not just luck.
manup and next level could compete in div2, as well as that korean team, but the korean team is korean and the times are crap. Helix could easily be div2 if they found/trained a good strat caller.
Once divisions are fixed the competition will be better. The artificial 6 teams per division thing and the lack of information before the season started screwed it up, but if people have been following the scrims, you'll know there's a lot more talent/teams out there.
That's my take on it at least. I could be way off base since I haven't done it, but from what I can tell the best players are the best not because they're just naturally better but because they devote more time to practice.
the only transparently fair thing you could theoretically do is make divisions based on some numerical skill instead of based on rank
then, if a team is so good that they have no competition, then they will be alone in their division... but it creates a direct incentive to balance things up
i say theoretically because measuring skill is hard...
Try to avoid ranking teams in 'div' this or that because teams rise and fall quickly and the real time rankings are much more fluid then the ensl brackets.
Ns2 has and always will be a game where teams who are playing the most every day, scrimming the most, and having the most consistent group of players always on will have the biggest improvement.
How else can you rank teams currently? The best thing that I see us having to compare teams is what division they're in. Obviously given it's the end of the season, most of us know that dys is not the skill of a div 4 team and will likely be moving up. It's still the easiest word reference to say how decent a team is.
"Oh they're div 2 good" or "They are in/belong in div1"
Which is exactly the problem and its getting WORSE not better when teams fall apart/any free agent talent moves straight to the best team they can reach and strengthen them even more.
Good players like to play with other good players. I don't even know why there's a topic about this. It's happening in every game and sport where there is competition.
the trend is actually where league admins actively try to stop this. they make random rules like salary cap or random artificial things like drafting processes favoring weaker teams
Think of it this way.. What if you had close friends who were like family to you and you had an offer to go to your dream job or dream school, but they didn't want you to leave. Would you sacrifice your future/what you could accomplish just to please others?
I see competitive play the same way.
Damnit Syknik!
Archaea less so nowadays, apparently Tane is leaving to play for Saunamen.
I can only speak for the german and to a lesser extend the french and spanish community, but in these communities, the teams comprised of one nation, like HBZ, Cocorico and hard.day for example receive a lot of advice and scrim support by the better players of their country. Jaivol often asks me for PCW against spanish mix, when we play cocorico ray or herakles sometimes merc for them, and we (HBZ) sometimes play scrims with Aioros as Commander or german speaking mercs from top teams. We're also often given advice by them after our games.
I think that Nexzil does probably even more to strengthen the community (which the US probably needs more than Europe). They do a lot of tutorial stuff and have this cup going atm.
sounds like communism for gamers.
the diffrents in skill is the reason of time spend playing it and the pure will to master it.
Archea just spends hours of hours playing to be that good.
Its what CiB | StrikerX3 said and i can't agree more, if u like to improve play the good teams.
They wont improve out of it, but the lower team will improve in everysingle match slowly but steady
And yes for the lower team. That is what they are all scared of.
From each according to his kdr, to each according to his medpack spam.