Cycling the starting time sounds fine, seeding the top players are okay too. What i really like to see is some GSTL style clan war where you can discuss and decide which play to send out depending on his best MU!
Btw I really like the way some of you guys think, winning in the tournament is an incentive, enjoying it is all whole different matter.
The only way for the lower league players to play against top SEA players(Sometimes even KR players) and for their game to be casted is through joining tournaments. You cannot carry the mentality of ''Im going to lose anyways'' because then u`ll just lose and not learn. To improve, you need to try to win the game and then analyse why you lost when you do.
I started out in Bronze back in Feb/March and pretty muich hang around PRACBUD and Protoss Strategy(Everyone goes there). Although i was improving fast, i realised that, in other to push you across the threshold, you need to play against good players! That was when i asked around and discovered the countless tournaments SEA has if you bothered to join. Sure, it could suck sometimes to just lose every single game one, but when you do WIN one, i can assure you it feels pretty damn good after trying for so long Oh! And getting to play some Top players you see on the Blizz/Sc2Sea page is cool too! Its like playing against the Idra or HuK on NA!
I hope more lower league players can join the COs and ESL qualifiers, it will only do good for you and the community. Thats is why i spam about 10 channels with the CO Sign up link 1 hr before it starts and i think some of the channels might start to ban me now :O
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Last edited by aLtShortizz; Thu, 15th-Sep-2011 at 5:47 PM.
I think we need to put the context right for the CO with regards to my suggestions.
If some, NOT ALL, of the COs were made to be more inclusive, I think the FOCUS here is the community. This is an opportunity for players of all levels to learn, and not just be restricted to Masters and up. I believe the incentives here are not for the individual players, but for the community as a whole to grow and improve.
I understand you guys are all about growing the community with players across all levels, and I respect and understand that. But if the top tier of players aren't playing, the competition feels a little flat.
Sure top players might be all for helping grow the community, and they might help out every so often, but there are ALOT of events going on, and when a player is required to pick, he picks the one with the biggest prizepool.
You run an event without these players, and you'll get a bunch of medium level masters or some low GM's against Diamonds etc. Without the required prizepool to add the event to TL, the stream gets <50 concurrent viewers, and the event has nowhere to grow and we end up where we are now no matter the format (Format change makes it exciting for a week or 2, then it drops off).
What I suggest is something a little more large scale. Merge the Masters Cup, CO and GPD into a giant 8 week event with the following
CO: Top 3 qualify for the Masters Cup (8 weeks = 24 players)
GPD: Winner from each week places into the GPD finals, Top 2 from finals progress to Masters Cup
Then fill the remaining 6 spots with the players with the highest finishes in the CO that didn't qualify (Kind of like a points system, details irrelevent at the moment).
And then turn Masters Cup into a 32 player double elim tournament with a ~$500 Prize pool. Players can only enter if they have qualified. This encourages players to participate in the weekly events as opposed to just logging on SEA once a month for the Masters cup, and thus growing a more active community. If you run the CO's as more of a qualifier to the Masters cup, they should get listed on TL as well.
Details are irrelevent, but run the format like this and it forces players to participate or they miss out on Masters cup. It also turns Masters cup into a Double elim event, which players generally like more.
Or you can just change the format to one in the first post, but I assure you, that will not fix the issue.
Last edited by Benji; Fri, 16th-Sep-2011 at 11:02 AM.
Granted I would like to see some 2v2 action as a break from the 1v1 stuff
But in terms of the problem of CO I think benji's ideas really address them perfectly. It links all the sc2sea tornies together and gives players reasons to enter them at least until they qualify.
remains slots left after qualifying can be given to players on a points basis (adjusted for players who can't play as many tournaments perhaps. like 1 standard deviation below your average points per tournament applied to remaining possible points - assuming player plays at least 50% of available tournaments)
Being a lower league player it is great to join the CO as it is a chance to compete
Even if you don't make it very far, sometimes you might even get to verse the best of SEA!
Playing in tournaments are fun, who cares if you don't go that far. Most tournaments aren't open to lower league players so this is a great opportunity.
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